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After a few years of hiatus, I have restarted another blog here:
http://thebeginnerproject.blogspot.sg
Do visit the link to see my latest updates!
Hello 2011
Happy New Year!
I love new years. There’s something about a brand new start that always make you feel refreshed, as if everything that you have done in the past year has been wiped clean and you can begin your life all over again.
Not that the past year has not been good. In fact, it has SUPER great! Let me count some of my blessings: I gave birth to a cute little daughter, and embarked on a crazy learning journey. I started this blog, and made a lot of friends in the process (thank you Paik Ling, Jus and so many others who keep coming back to make comments on my blog). I moved back to my parents’ house, and got to enjoy my Mum’s fabulous cooking everyday.
So what’s a new year without resolutions?
Besides wishing that my baby will be happy and healthy (that doesn’t count as a resolution, ‘cos it’s the wish of every mummy), I hope that I can bring this blog to greater heights. My dream is that this blog will become a premier resource for everything that makes mums’ life easier. That includes savvy parenting tips, great reads for parents and honest reviews of mummy and baby products. And while we are on this topic of product reviews, I have included a Disclosure page on my blog to clarify where this blog stands with regards to sponsorship of products for reviews.
To all those reading this post, here’s wishing you A GREAT NEW YEAR! May you and your family have all the good blessings for the months ahead!
Fidgets: Singapore’s largest indoor playground
I’ve found another gem in Singapore. It’s Fidgets at Turf City, Singapore’s largest indoor playground for kids.
This is the first time I’ve been to a commercialized play area for kids. Kids have to pay to enter the place, but adults and babies below one year old goes in for free. Since I went with a family of 6 adults, one new born and a one-year old baby, we only paid the entrance fee of one baby ($8 for babies below 2 years old). Hehe, not bad for an afternoon of fabulous fun time!
It’s a great place to come if you have really energetic kids. There are plenty of slides, tunnels and climbing walls for them to expend their energy. My niece had a blast of a time climbing up a play structure and then sliding down. In fact, she loved it so much she repeated the same thing countless of time, all the while shrieking and laughing.
Come to think of it, this may be the first time she ever climbed up a play structure by herself. Most playgrounds in the neighbourhood are made of hard materials, so it’s not suitable for one-year old toddlers to climb. This is a designated soft play area made from Playtec furniture, an Australian company specializing in playground equipment.
The food’s surprisingly good too. There is a café there that serves mainly pizza, sandwiches, wraps and spaghetti. Price-wise, it’s about $10-$12 a pizza, so it’s still quite reasonable.
All in all, I give this place a big thumbs up.
The only thing is I may have found the place a little late. It seems like the government may be taking back the land for the Turf City Shopping Mall next year. I wonder what will happen to Fidgets then? If it survives, I will definitely be back for another great time with my family!
Secret Technique on how to burp a baby
I don’t know whether it’s a coincidence or what.
I hit upon this youtube video yesterday. I’ve only tried this method a few times, but the few times I tried, the burp came up faster than usual. Try it on your baby and tell me if it works for you. I’m really curious to know!
Beware of Over-stimulated Baby
Ok, so we have been going out a lot with Baby R. But ’tis the season to be jolly. With the Christmas mood in the air, how can we not go out and celebrate? And when we go out for family gatherings, friends and family will want to hold and play with the Baby (‘cos she’s so darn cute! Mama’s interpretation, of course…)
But from what I have learnt so far, the baby gets over-stimulated from all these outings. Then, there will be hell to pay when we get back home and try to put her to sleep.
So what to do? There’s more holidays coming up in the weeks ahead.
As usual, when I have a question, I turn to google for the answer! (I swear that with a baby in the house, I’m becoming an expert google by the day.) Some useful tips I’ve picked up so far:
- Be sensitive to baby’s cues. If she starts to yawn, or tries to look away, she has had too much. Try taking her to a quiet place for awhile to give her time to regroup.
- Stick to your routine as far as possible. If she’s used to napping at a particular time, let her nap instead of letting her play.
- Baby Sling. Try using a baby sling. If baby has had too much, turn her head inwards so that she is shielded from all the attention.
- Do not play with baby when she gets back home. This is my personal experience. Sometimes when we get back home, she will be all happy and sunny ‘cos she just had a little nap on the journey back. So we start to play with her. But all of a sudden, she goes into a terrible meltdown. So actually the little nap is really not enough for her. If she is wide awake, just let her have some quiet time to play by herself.
It’s tough. Sometimes we just have to balance family gatherings with the baby’s needs. So it may be best to deal with the baby when we get back home and comfort her as best as we can when she get’s over-stimulated.
Can you drink coffee when you are breastfeeding?
When Baby R was in my tummy, I was really good and refrained from coffee, soda and alcohol. Now that she is “out”, I cannot stand it anymore. One of the first things I asked for after my delivery was a cup of coffee to go with my breakfast. But can a breastfeeding mum drink coffee?
Breastfeeding and Coffee
The good news is: you can! Generally, a baby will not be adversely affected if the breastfeeding mum drinks less than 5-oz cups of coffee or 500 mg / day. As a comparison, a cup of starbucks coffee (short) is about 8-oz. That means a small cup of coffee a day will not affect the baby much. Of course, every baby is different. So it is best to drink a little and observe your baby to see if there are any effects at all.
What are the signs?
The signs of a baby who is over-stimulated by caffeine includes:
- Wide-eyes
- Unable to sleep for long
- Difficulty in falling alseep
- Unusual fussiness
Quite commonsensical actually. The baby behaves exactly like an adult who drinks too much coffee. You know that dreadful feeling when you are dead tired but you somehow cannot make yourself go to sleep?
But when the baby can’t sleep, it is the parent that suffers! So beware, and start small. Drink a small amount of coffee first and observe the effects.
Things to pack when going out with Baby
I thought that for the first few months after I have had a baby, it will be very hard for me to get out of the house. But I thought wrong! Baby R has been an absolute angel when it comes to going out. In fact, she seems to love going out to new places (takes after her father, I believe…).
So far, after her first month celebration, we have been out to the Changi Airport, Marina Square, a restaurant, a reservoir park and tonight, we are going to Orchard to see the Christmas lights. And she is just 7 weeks’ old!
Of course, with a baby, we have to plan our trips quite carefully. Usually, we time in such that we leave the house immediately after her feed. Also, we will give her a diaper change just before going out too. Finally, we have to pack the usual things for going out.
If you need a list of things to pack when going out with baby, here’s my personal list.
Things to bring when going out with Baby
Feeding items
- Thermal flask with hot water
- One small bottle of cold boiled water
- One empty milk bottle
- Milk powder
- Burp cloth
Diaper changing items
- Diapers
- Diaper cream
- One set of clothes to change
- One small changing mat
- Baby wipes
- Tissue
- Plastic bags
Other items
- Pacifier
- Blanket
- Hand santiser (optional)
- Baby sling (optional)
I usually leave most of the items in the bag when I come home, so that the next time I go out, I just need to pack a few more stuff such as her milk powder. One thing to note: even if I do not use the milk powder when I go out with her, I will usually use it up by the end of the day as it has already been exposed to air and may not be good the next day. That’s my personal best practice.
What do you do when you leave the house with your baby? Any special tips for other mummies?
Trying the Baby whisperer 4S Winding Down Ritual
Baby R is the sort of baby that does not go down for naps well. Lately, we have been trying to introduce a naptime routine to condition her to fall asleep. According to the Baby Whisperer, babies thrive on routines. If you consistently go through the same set of actions before her naptime, the baby will automatically expect to go to sleep and will not resist it that much.
The Baby Whisperer suggests a ritual consisting the 4S:
Step 1: Set the Stage. Once you spot her tired cues, set the stage by drawing the curtains and making the place conducive for a nap.
Step 2: Swaddle. Swaddle her arms so that she feels nice and snuggly.
Step 3: Sit. The Baby Whisperer suggests that we resist the temptation to rock or jiggle her. Instead, we should just quietly sit with the baby to reduce her reliance on the need for movement before sleep.
Step 4: Shush-pat. If the baby starts to cry, we can pat the baby on her back rhythmatically, while saying “Shh shh shh” continuously.
My verdict on trying this method
I must say the method is not completely effective for me. If we catch her at the exact period of time when she is tired, but not over-tired, then the method works like a charm. Else, we will have to shush-pat for a really long period of time, all the time struggling with a wailing baby. At this stage, it will be terribly hard to resist rocking and jiggling her in an instinctive need to calm her down.
So my conclusion is that, instead of an elaborate ritual, catching the right window of opportunity is THE key to getting the baby to go down for a nap without resistance. Of course, performing a consistent set of actions to condition the baby makes perfect sense as well, since babies thrive on associations. If you always rock her to sleep before bed-time, she will come to associate rocking with sleeping. Over time, she will need to be rocked before she can go to sleep. So it is very important to pick the right (i.e. easy) actions for baby to associate sleeping with. Shush-pat seems to be easy enough!
Product Review: My Brest Friend
Nowadays, there are so many “must-haves” mummy and baby products out there that I am very wary of buying anything. But once in while, I do hit upon products that I really love. One of them is this brand of breastfeeding pillow called “My Brest Friend”. Of course, for any product, there are good and bad things about it. Here’s a short review of its pros and cons.- Wrap around design
When I first started learning how to breastfeed, I had a lot of difficulty learning how to position the baby. One of the reasons was because my existing breastfeeding pillow (handed down from my sister) was too soft. When I put the baby on the pillow, there will be a natural gap between my body and the pillow as the baby sinks into it. This makes it hard to maintain a proper position for the baby. My Brest Friend overcame this issue by having a wrap around design that secures the pillow to the body, which really made a world of difference.
- Elevation of baby to the right level
With the pillow securely fastened around my waist, the baby is elevated to just the proper level for a proper latch on. In fact, nowadays I can breastfeed using one hand, and free the other hand to play with my handphone and do other stuff, which is really great.
- Washable
This is a godsend since my baby oftens regurgitates milk all over the pillow. Just unzip and take the cover off, much like a pillow case.
- Convenient Pocket
There is a handy pocket sewed to the side of the pillow. Personally, I do not use this pocket very much. But I do keep some emergency supply of burp cloths and tissue in case both items are somehow not within my reach.
Cons
- Not made for football hold
This pillow seems to be made more for cradle or cross cradle hold. If you want to use it for football hold, you still need to prop your arms up using lots of blankets. I ended up using only the cradle hold for breastfeeding, which is alright except that football hold is the best position to use if you are just starting to learn breastfeeding, since it gives you the most control over the baby’s neck.
- Difficult to put cover back after washing
The cover fits really snugly across the pillow, which makes it a struggle to put it back after washing. For the first time, I spent about 10 minutes trying to put the cover back.
- Size
This is the drawback for all breastfeeding pillows, I suppose. I wish someone can invent a pillow where you can fold and put away neatly.
Bottomline
Yucks, my baby pooped on me!
I guess every parent has a poop horror story to tell. Mine just happened yesterday.
Baby R is the type of baby that WAILS when you take off her clothes, WAILS when you change her diapers, and WAILS when she is put into a bath. She is so loud that we dubbed her The Little Trumpet. She is not only loud, she struggles and kicks and scratches vehemently as well.
Yesterday, we had our usual wrestling match of me trying to put her into the bath tub. This is how our conversation went:
Me (trying to get a good grip on her in the tub): Baby R, be good. You know how good the water feels.
Baby R: Waah, waah, waah…
Me (taking her out of the bath tub): Now, now, we are done already. See how nice and clean you are now…
Baby R (wailing and struggling even harder): Waaah, waaaaaah, waaaaaah…. (Poop!)
And out comes out a load of shit.
The shit hit the towel, and a big part of my shirt as well. Luckily it missed my hand. But… yucks! I still shudder when I think of it now.
The Savvy Mummy 