I know I originally started this blog to write about my experiences as a new mother, and to record all the memorable and cute stories / antics / pictures as Xuan grows up. Little did I know that I would be writing about pests. No, I am not talking about Xuan...although she was dressed up as a ladybug, my baby is not a pest, she is too adorable to be a pest. Part of being a stay at home mother / housewife includes having to deal with household pests.
One morning, I woke up and opened the master bathroom door to discover several little greyish squiggly worms crawling around the bathtub. Thinking nothing about it, I ran the shower to wash them down the drain. A couple of hours later, I went back into the bathroom and noticed a sour-ish smell. Having a bad feeling, I pulled aside the shower curtain, and saw that there were even more of those creepy crawlies in the bathtub! I started to wonder where were they coming from? Were they crawling up from the shower drainage hole? I washed them down the drain again, and covered the drainage hole.
Later in the afternoon, I went into the master bathroom, and found the sour-ish stench even stronger. And now there were dozens of those foul creatures in the bathtub and several were even on the floor crawling towards the door! Yucks! The first thought that came into my head was to kill these slugs before they crawled into our bedroom and attacked Xuan. Though, in all probability she would just pinch one up and put it into her mouth! Mega yucks!!
I took a can of insecticide and started spraying the worms, but they still continued crawling. Then I took the bathroom cleaner, which had bleach and liberally doused each individual worm but they still squirmed around. Finally, thinking that the slugs might be leeches, I took a container of salt from the kitchen and buried each creature under a mound of salt. To my horror, they still wriggled, but then slowly stopped after a while. Just in case, they were playing dead, I barricaded the inside of the bathroom door with a line of salt one inch high as a deterrent for them to go into the bedroom. I moved Xuan’s bedding and our bedding to the next room and announced to H that we would be camping there until this problem was sorted out.
Obviously the problem was getting exponentially worse. I now knew that the smelly creatures were dropping into the bathroom from the roof. Where else could they be coming from, after I had already blocked the access through the drain? Putting that together with the appearance of the greyish white wriggly worms, with one end being the head waving in the air, accompanied with the foul stench, I had a pretty good idea what our problem was.
The next day, I called a pest control company and asked if they dealt with removal of a dead animal carcass in the roof infested with maggots. Thankfully they said that they did. I do not know what we would do if they didn’t! That day, someone came from the pest control company to take a look, and they confirmed what I suspected, that a large rat or cat had died in the roof rafters, and the maggots feeding on the dead carcass were dropping from the roof into the bathroom. The next day, the pest control folks came to open up the roof, remove the cat carcass, sprayed antiseptic and deodorizer in the roof and bathroom to kill the maggots and remove the stench, and clean up the bathroom.
Needless to say, I insisted on camping in the second bedroom for at least 2 weeks and I cleaned the bathroom at least 3 times before we moved back into the master bedroom.
I have heard of stories about household pests, and even lived through some myself, but I really think this maggot thing wins hands down as the most traumatizing experience. Just for comparison, I will list down some other pest-capades down here, and you can take a vote, or even add some horrors stories of your own.
Termite City
This happened at H’s first house. We were not living there as he was away travelling every week. I was staying at my mom’s place. We were renovating our current house and used his first house to store some of our furniture and belongings. After the renovation was completed, we planned to move our things to the new house and sell the old house. Unfortunately, we had the termite attack before we could move.
Apparently, termites just love empty houses, as we found out after going to check on the house after a couple of months. Everything looked fine, but when we went into the kitchen and opened a drawer, we got the fright of our lives. The drawer looked like a scene from a horror movie. It was filled with what looked like a mass of dried twigs that were pulsing and teeming with termites. When H opened the other drawers and cabinets (I was standing at the far end of the kitchen), we found the same thing, the termites had devoured the entire kitchen cabinet and formed mud tunnels everywhere. They say that termites always have a main nest that is their colony outside, well, our kitchen sure looked like the termites were setting up a satellite city.
We had the whole house treated for termites, and the kitchen cabinet had to be rebuilt. Thank goodness the renovation for the new house was almost completed and we could move shortly after that. I spend several days researching termites to ensure we won’t be accidentally moving some lone termites embedded in our wooden furniture to the new house. I didn’t want to start a new termite nest in our new house and have the termites devour the house around our ears! It seems that termites cannot survive when they are cut off from their colony, good riddance!
Sneaky Snakes
Within a space of 1 year, we had 3 snakes break into our new home. The first time, it happened at the back of the house and I noticed the snake crawling into our house. I screamed and the snake quickly turned around and started crawling back out. The firemen came with a 2 meter snake pole used for catching pythons (typically 5 cm in diameter and 3 meters long)...perhaps I didn’t quite tell them on the phone that it was a little bitty snake about 1 cm in diameter and only 3 feet long. The firemen actually laughed when they finally spotted the snake in the drain and caught it with their hands. Still, they did say that this type of snake was poisonous, but not when it was that small.
The second time it happened, I was staying overnight at the hospital when I was pregnant. H had just come home from the hospital when he saw the snake at the sink. Again he called the firemen to come catch the snake. The third snake break in happened at the front of the house when I was 4 months pregnant. We just reached home after dinner and I walked into the house, and when I turned around, I saw the snake at the base of the shoe cupboard. I screamed, and that resulted in the snake squeezing into the first crack it could find, right into the base of our built in shoe cupboard. H was not going to call the firemen to break down his new built in cupboard, so either the snake sneaked out later that night, or we have a perfectly preserved fossil specimen behind the built ins. The next people to buy our house and decide to demolish the built ins to have new ones put in would get a little surprise!
Leisure Suit Larry the Lizard
When I was a kid, a giant lizard used to live in our storeroom. This is no ordinary house lizard. This lizard was almost one foot in length, from head to tail and it’s body was 2 inches thick at the fattest point. It was grey in colour, with little blue spots. I refused to go into the storeroom for months, there were just too many hiding places for that giant lizard to hide and scare the living daylights out of me.
Crocodile Dundee
My sister swears that she once saw a baby crocodile in our toilet bowl. She said it was splashing around inside. I didn’t see it myself, my mom flushed it down the toilet. True or not, for a while after that, I think my sister checked the toilet each time before she sat down...no one wants to get bitten on the derriere!
Bird Central
My friend has a case of house attack from birds. Little sparrows would rest on his porch and greet him singing songs as he went off to work. Aww...how sweet you say...not so sweet when you have to clean up the bird shit off the floor. So one day he smeared rat glue all over their favourite perch, and one sparrow got stuck. And so every morning after that, my friend would go to work with one mummified sparrow giving him the evil eye. The other sparrows learned to stay away.
Kerokeropi
Another friend of mine has a lovely fish pond by the side of his house. The fish pond had fishes, and lotus pads. The lotus pads attracted some unwanted visitors, bullfrogs. Bullfrogs would come sit on the lotus pads. I thought the bullfrogs would be come in handy as they could eat the mosquitoes, but my friend found them really irritating. Perhaps I should send one of my snakes to his house to take care of his bullfrogs!
Who said you need to live in a haunted house to get freaked out? Do you have any pest-capades to share?
Monday, May 17, 2010
Friday, May 7, 2010
Month 9: All About Xuan
This month Xuan started crawling forward. She loves to play “I’m gonna come get you” uttered in a menacing tone which sends her squealing and crawling helter skelter to bury her head in the bearest pillow, with peals of laughter and delight.
On 15 Sept 2009, I put her in the high chair in the kitchen and I was washing up some dishes when I heard her say “Omm...mah”. Her first word! I was so excited I imitated her to get her to keep saying “Omm...mah” and she obliged. Now, you are probably wondering “What’s the big deal? It just sounds like gibberish, it’s not as if she said “Mama””, But trust me, it is the same big deal as her saying “Mama” because “Omm...mah” means mother in Korean! I know this because my roommate when I was studying university in America was Korean. And frankly, after all the Korean food I have eaten (kimchi and Korean noodles, big cravings when I was pregnant) and all the Korean drama series I have watched, I am practically ¼ Korean, which makes Xuan 1/8 Korean!
Anyway, the next day Xuan stepped up her game and said “Mama”! Ah hah! The only thing is she said “Mama” for 2 weeks and promptly forgot how to say it after that.
I love hearing Xuan laugh, and here is a short clip of her laughing while my mom was trying to feed her some pumpkin:
During the weekend, we brought Xuan to my mom’s house. Xuan was sitting on the sofa watching TV when my sister decided to teach her how to say aunty in Chinese, which is “Yee Yee”.
Sister: Xuan, say “Yee Yee”
Xuan: Mama
Sister: Yee Yee!
Xuan: Mama!
Sister: Yee Yee! (At this point my sister was crouching in front of Xuan, hence blocking Xuan’s view of the TV)
Xuan: Mama! (Craning her neck from side to side, trying to look at the TV around my sister’s head)
Did I mention previously that we have a TV addict on hand?
At the end of September, Xuan got invited to her first birthday party! My friends’ son was turning two, and the party was at Gymboree. The party had a safari theme and guests (babies, not parents) were encouraged to go dressed as animals. I did not have any safari themed outfits for Xuan, the closest thing I had was a pair of ladybird pants. It was a gift from my cousin to Xuan, but unfortunately there was no matching top.
So I decided to improvise and make a matching top myself. I took a small square black cloth and sewed a red circle on it for the ladybird’s body. Then I sewed some black spots on the red body and added small white circles with a black center for eyes. Finally, I sewed the black square with the ladybird on an old, plain white romper. The next day, I tied Xuan’s hair into 2 bunches for antennaes, dressed her in the romper and ladybird pants, and voila! Take a look at our ladybird:
Back view of Xuan in Ladybird outfit
On 15 Sept 2009, I put her in the high chair in the kitchen and I was washing up some dishes when I heard her say “Omm...mah”. Her first word! I was so excited I imitated her to get her to keep saying “Omm...mah” and she obliged. Now, you are probably wondering “What’s the big deal? It just sounds like gibberish, it’s not as if she said “Mama””, But trust me, it is the same big deal as her saying “Mama” because “Omm...mah” means mother in Korean! I know this because my roommate when I was studying university in America was Korean. And frankly, after all the Korean food I have eaten (kimchi and Korean noodles, big cravings when I was pregnant) and all the Korean drama series I have watched, I am practically ¼ Korean, which makes Xuan 1/8 Korean!
Anyway, the next day Xuan stepped up her game and said “Mama”! Ah hah! The only thing is she said “Mama” for 2 weeks and promptly forgot how to say it after that.
I love hearing Xuan laugh, and here is a short clip of her laughing while my mom was trying to feed her some pumpkin:
During the weekend, we brought Xuan to my mom’s house. Xuan was sitting on the sofa watching TV when my sister decided to teach her how to say aunty in Chinese, which is “Yee Yee”.
Sister: Xuan, say “Yee Yee”
Xuan: Mama
Sister: Yee Yee!
Xuan: Mama!
Sister: Yee Yee! (At this point my sister was crouching in front of Xuan, hence blocking Xuan’s view of the TV)
Xuan: Mama! (Craning her neck from side to side, trying to look at the TV around my sister’s head)
Did I mention previously that we have a TV addict on hand?
At the end of September, Xuan got invited to her first birthday party! My friends’ son was turning two, and the party was at Gymboree. The party had a safari theme and guests (babies, not parents) were encouraged to go dressed as animals. I did not have any safari themed outfits for Xuan, the closest thing I had was a pair of ladybird pants. It was a gift from my cousin to Xuan, but unfortunately there was no matching top.
So I decided to improvise and make a matching top myself. I took a small square black cloth and sewed a red circle on it for the ladybird’s body. Then I sewed some black spots on the red body and added small white circles with a black center for eyes. Finally, I sewed the black square with the ladybird on an old, plain white romper. The next day, I tied Xuan’s hair into 2 bunches for antennaes, dressed her in the romper and ladybird pants, and voila! Take a look at our ladybird:
Front view of Xuan in Ladybird outfit
Month 8: The Decision I Wish I Didn't Have to Make
In August, we sent Xuan to daycare for 2 half days to see how she would adjust.
The daycare we chose was newly setup by a lady in her mid-30s, and through conversations ith her, we find that we like her approach to childcare. Her thinking is more child-friendly and similar to our own philosophy. Perhaps this is because she is younger and does not follow the older methods typically practised by the babysitters in their 60s.
As the daycare was newly set up 4 months ago, there are not many children. There are 3 babies, 2 of them are 2 months old, and the other baby is 8 months old, similar to Xuan’s age. There are 4 toddlers, 3 of them are 18 months and the other toddler is 2.5 years old. There are currently 2 caregivers for the babies and 2 caregivers for the toddlers.
As expected, Xuan cried a lot during the 2 half days at the daycare. She hardly ate, didn’t drink any milk, she wailed during her bath and diaper change, and cried while being put to sleep, even though the caregiver rocked her to sleep. It took the caregiver 30 minutes to rock Xuan to sleep, a few failed attempts to put Xuan down, and after all this, Xuan only slept for 20 minutes! The worst part was, after just 2 half days at daycare, Xuan fell sick for the first time. In fact, I also fell sick. Xuan had a cold and it took her more than 1 week to recover. It as heartbreaking listening to her struggling to breathe through her blocked nose, especially when she was trying to sleep.
During this period, naturally I was severely sleep deprived as Xuan was waking up every 1.5 to 2 hours. I was seriously considering extending my unpaid leave for another year.
H actually wants me to resign from work to take care of Xuan full time. He is afraid that I would be too stressed out with work and insufficient sleep from taking care of Xuan. Currently, I still get 7 hours of sleep on average, broken up into 2 – 3 hour chunks, but this is because I get to sleep later with Xuan as I do not need to work. If I go back to work, I would probably have to survive on 5 hours of sleep, if I am lucky. Going back to work also means dealing with rush hour traffic and getting stuck in the car for 30 to 90 minutes a day. I would also have to work late a couple of nights a week, and might have to work weekends too. H is concerned that we might not get to spend enough time together as a family.
How would we deal with me working late when Xuan only wants me to put her to sleep? I can just imagine rushing to finish work at 11pm and stressing out because it is way past Xuan’s bedtime and she’s crying but H can’t put her to sleep and I still have to drive home. At this point, with Xuan still not sleeping through the night, I just cannot imagine dealing with even more exhaustion.
I am also worried about Xuan. I feel so guilty that she is so dependent on me for such basic things like milk (she still refuses to drink from the bottle and will only breasted) and for sleep (she only gies to sleep when I breastfeed her). I know that adjusting to daycare would really be horrendous for her. I keep picturing the caregivers being too busy with other babies and Xuan being left on her own crying out of hunger or thirst, or the caregivers getting too frustrated trying to get her to sleep and finally leaving her to cry to sleep on her own. My poor baby will be just left in the playpen, bored because she still can’t sit up or crawl or play. Ok, ok, I do tend to be melodramatic. But Xuan did fall sick after only 2 half days at daycare. How often would she fall sick when she attends daycare full time and got exposed to all those germs?
In the end, I made the very, very difficult decision to extend my unpaid leave for another year. It was an extremely hard choice for me to make as I am afraid of losing my motivation to go back to work after staying at home for too long. I am even more afraid that H would get too comfortable with me taking care of Xuan at home. It was not my intention to take care of Xuan full-time, I just wanted a break from the pressure of work and to spend more time with her in the beginning. I love my daughter very much, but I also like my job and colleagues and I believe that whenever possible, women should have a choice whether they want to work or stay at home. I would want my own daughter to have a choice when she grows up to be a working woman and a mother, to decide for herself if she wanted to work or take care of her children.
Now I see that my initial decision to take some time off work has set in motion some events that are difficult to undo, such as Xuan not drinking from the bottle, Xuan being too attached to me to the exclusion of other people, and Xuan not being able to fall asleep without me. My being responsible for 80% of Xuan’s care from the beginning has resulted in H not being able to put Xuan to sleep.
I hope me delaying going back to work for another year would give Xuan more time to be independent. Hopefully I would be able to wean her and by then she would look forward to interacting and playing with other children.
The daycare we chose was newly setup by a lady in her mid-30s, and through conversations ith her, we find that we like her approach to childcare. Her thinking is more child-friendly and similar to our own philosophy. Perhaps this is because she is younger and does not follow the older methods typically practised by the babysitters in their 60s.
As the daycare was newly set up 4 months ago, there are not many children. There are 3 babies, 2 of them are 2 months old, and the other baby is 8 months old, similar to Xuan’s age. There are 4 toddlers, 3 of them are 18 months and the other toddler is 2.5 years old. There are currently 2 caregivers for the babies and 2 caregivers for the toddlers.
As expected, Xuan cried a lot during the 2 half days at the daycare. She hardly ate, didn’t drink any milk, she wailed during her bath and diaper change, and cried while being put to sleep, even though the caregiver rocked her to sleep. It took the caregiver 30 minutes to rock Xuan to sleep, a few failed attempts to put Xuan down, and after all this, Xuan only slept for 20 minutes! The worst part was, after just 2 half days at daycare, Xuan fell sick for the first time. In fact, I also fell sick. Xuan had a cold and it took her more than 1 week to recover. It as heartbreaking listening to her struggling to breathe through her blocked nose, especially when she was trying to sleep.
During this period, naturally I was severely sleep deprived as Xuan was waking up every 1.5 to 2 hours. I was seriously considering extending my unpaid leave for another year.
H actually wants me to resign from work to take care of Xuan full time. He is afraid that I would be too stressed out with work and insufficient sleep from taking care of Xuan. Currently, I still get 7 hours of sleep on average, broken up into 2 – 3 hour chunks, but this is because I get to sleep later with Xuan as I do not need to work. If I go back to work, I would probably have to survive on 5 hours of sleep, if I am lucky. Going back to work also means dealing with rush hour traffic and getting stuck in the car for 30 to 90 minutes a day. I would also have to work late a couple of nights a week, and might have to work weekends too. H is concerned that we might not get to spend enough time together as a family.
How would we deal with me working late when Xuan only wants me to put her to sleep? I can just imagine rushing to finish work at 11pm and stressing out because it is way past Xuan’s bedtime and she’s crying but H can’t put her to sleep and I still have to drive home. At this point, with Xuan still not sleeping through the night, I just cannot imagine dealing with even more exhaustion.
I am also worried about Xuan. I feel so guilty that she is so dependent on me for such basic things like milk (she still refuses to drink from the bottle and will only breasted) and for sleep (she only gies to sleep when I breastfeed her). I know that adjusting to daycare would really be horrendous for her. I keep picturing the caregivers being too busy with other babies and Xuan being left on her own crying out of hunger or thirst, or the caregivers getting too frustrated trying to get her to sleep and finally leaving her to cry to sleep on her own. My poor baby will be just left in the playpen, bored because she still can’t sit up or crawl or play. Ok, ok, I do tend to be melodramatic. But Xuan did fall sick after only 2 half days at daycare. How often would she fall sick when she attends daycare full time and got exposed to all those germs?
In the end, I made the very, very difficult decision to extend my unpaid leave for another year. It was an extremely hard choice for me to make as I am afraid of losing my motivation to go back to work after staying at home for too long. I am even more afraid that H would get too comfortable with me taking care of Xuan at home. It was not my intention to take care of Xuan full-time, I just wanted a break from the pressure of work and to spend more time with her in the beginning. I love my daughter very much, but I also like my job and colleagues and I believe that whenever possible, women should have a choice whether they want to work or stay at home. I would want my own daughter to have a choice when she grows up to be a working woman and a mother, to decide for herself if she wanted to work or take care of her children.
Now I see that my initial decision to take some time off work has set in motion some events that are difficult to undo, such as Xuan not drinking from the bottle, Xuan being too attached to me to the exclusion of other people, and Xuan not being able to fall asleep without me. My being responsible for 80% of Xuan’s care from the beginning has resulted in H not being able to put Xuan to sleep.
I hope me delaying going back to work for another year would give Xuan more time to be independent. Hopefully I would be able to wean her and by then she would look forward to interacting and playing with other children.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Month 7: Bottle Battle
What do you think of when you picture a baby Well, normally, I mean previously, I would have pictured a bottle of milk, a sweet baby sucking hungrily or contentedly on a bottle of milk. That bottle of milk is no longer what I think of now.
Have you ever met a baby who doesn’t drink from a bottle? If you haven’t, please say hello to my darling daughter. Xuan does not drink from the bottle. Actually, “does not” is putting it mildly, what I really mean is “point blank refuses” or “screams at the top of her lungs with fists clenched and eyes squeezed shut if I so much as approach (try to) with a bottle in hand”. To my surprise, there are other babies in the internet who also do not drink from the bottle, much to their desperate mothers’ despair. Yours truly, is one of those desperate mothers.
After checking the trusty internet, one of the suggested strategies in a bottle battle with your baby is to try different bottles and different teats, to find one that the baby likes. In the multi-million dollar baby industry, you can all sorts of bottles and teats you can buy to try if your baby would take to one. Need I mention that most of these brands boast to be close to breast or best like breast and reduces or eliminates colic? I tried Medela, Pureen teat, Pigeon teat, Tollyjoy teat (most teats were too hard), Avent (Xuan had no idea what to do with the extra long teat, do women really have such long nipples?), Tommy Tippee bottle (suppose to be “Closer to Nature” but Xuan was not fooled), Breastflow (two teats, one inside another, but the milk was not flowing for Xuan) and goodness knows what other bottles. The only reaction from Xuan was to scream louder than the previous attempt. I think H was half afraid I would spend thousands of dollars trying every brand in the market, and then some.
Another strategy recommended was to dab a little bit of breastmilk on the bottle to entice the baby to take the teat into the mouth and voila, start sucking! This didn’t work with Xuan because the minute she saw the bottle, she started screaming, and well, you can’t exactly suck on a bottle when you are screaming, can you?
Yet another strategy was to get someone other than the mother to give the baby the bottle. The rationale behind this is because the baby can smell the breastmilk from the mother and would refuse the bottle. Again, it didn’t matter who as holding the bottle, H or my mom or me, Xuan would just start screaming when she saw the bottle.
One strategy I didn’t try as to let Xuan go hungry until she drank from the bottle. Some people swear by this method. One of my friends did this for her son when he was 7 months old, and after one whole day of crying, he finally gave in and drank from the bottle. I could not bring myself to do this. It really breaks my heart to see Xuan cry until she could hardly breathe.
If we ever have another baby (and this is a real question mark at this point!), I would definitely give the baby a bottle from day one, nipple confusion or no nipple confusion. A bottle is so much more versatile. You can feed a baby breastmilk, or formula from a bottle. Someone else can feed the baby. You can even slowly dilute the milk with water to night wean the baby from waking up and feeding at night. There is no way you can dilute breastmilk when feeding the baby directly!
The one advise on our bottle battle I did use from the internet was to forget about the bottle and introduce the sippy cup if the baby is more than 6 months old. Afterall, we are advised to wean the baby from the bottle at 12 months. I am really pinning my hopes on Xuan drinking from a sippy cup eventually. Will give ourselves a couple of months before trying to introduce the sippy cup to Xuan. Hopefully I won’t have to buy all the sippy cups in the market before finding one she will drink from!
Month 7 Milestones:
Xuan started semi-solids this month. Her first taste of food was rice cereal. After 3 days, I gave her carrots and then pumpkin, she loves both.
Xuan started crawling this month...but she can only crawl backwards and ends up crawling in a circle!
Have you ever met a baby who doesn’t drink from a bottle? If you haven’t, please say hello to my darling daughter. Xuan does not drink from the bottle. Actually, “does not” is putting it mildly, what I really mean is “point blank refuses” or “screams at the top of her lungs with fists clenched and eyes squeezed shut if I so much as approach (try to) with a bottle in hand”. To my surprise, there are other babies in the internet who also do not drink from the bottle, much to their desperate mothers’ despair. Yours truly, is one of those desperate mothers.
After checking the trusty internet, one of the suggested strategies in a bottle battle with your baby is to try different bottles and different teats, to find one that the baby likes. In the multi-million dollar baby industry, you can all sorts of bottles and teats you can buy to try if your baby would take to one. Need I mention that most of these brands boast to be close to breast or best like breast and reduces or eliminates colic? I tried Medela, Pureen teat, Pigeon teat, Tollyjoy teat (most teats were too hard), Avent (Xuan had no idea what to do with the extra long teat, do women really have such long nipples?), Tommy Tippee bottle (suppose to be “Closer to Nature” but Xuan was not fooled), Breastflow (two teats, one inside another, but the milk was not flowing for Xuan) and goodness knows what other bottles. The only reaction from Xuan was to scream louder than the previous attempt. I think H was half afraid I would spend thousands of dollars trying every brand in the market, and then some.
Another strategy recommended was to dab a little bit of breastmilk on the bottle to entice the baby to take the teat into the mouth and voila, start sucking! This didn’t work with Xuan because the minute she saw the bottle, she started screaming, and well, you can’t exactly suck on a bottle when you are screaming, can you?
Yet another strategy was to get someone other than the mother to give the baby the bottle. The rationale behind this is because the baby can smell the breastmilk from the mother and would refuse the bottle. Again, it didn’t matter who as holding the bottle, H or my mom or me, Xuan would just start screaming when she saw the bottle.
One strategy I didn’t try as to let Xuan go hungry until she drank from the bottle. Some people swear by this method. One of my friends did this for her son when he was 7 months old, and after one whole day of crying, he finally gave in and drank from the bottle. I could not bring myself to do this. It really breaks my heart to see Xuan cry until she could hardly breathe.
If we ever have another baby (and this is a real question mark at this point!), I would definitely give the baby a bottle from day one, nipple confusion or no nipple confusion. A bottle is so much more versatile. You can feed a baby breastmilk, or formula from a bottle. Someone else can feed the baby. You can even slowly dilute the milk with water to night wean the baby from waking up and feeding at night. There is no way you can dilute breastmilk when feeding the baby directly!
The one advise on our bottle battle I did use from the internet was to forget about the bottle and introduce the sippy cup if the baby is more than 6 months old. Afterall, we are advised to wean the baby from the bottle at 12 months. I am really pinning my hopes on Xuan drinking from a sippy cup eventually. Will give ourselves a couple of months before trying to introduce the sippy cup to Xuan. Hopefully I won’t have to buy all the sippy cups in the market before finding one she will drink from!
Month 7 Milestones:
Xuan started semi-solids this month. Her first taste of food was rice cereal. After 3 days, I gave her carrots and then pumpkin, she loves both.
Xuan started crawling this month...but she can only crawl backwards and ends up crawling in a circle!
Month 6: Happy Father's Day
Wow, it’s hard to believe that Xuan is 6 months old! She’s a happy, chubby baby at this stage. She has the cutest face with the smoothest curve to her cheek. Her lively eyes are so observant and light up at the smallest discovery. Sometimes, she would scrunch up her face (I call it her scrunchy face) and it makes her look so cheeky and impish. H and I find it so amusing when she pumps her chubby arms and legs up and down when she gets excited while her daddy carries her in the Baby Bjorn.
Her hair has grown much longer, and I just love her curls, they give her such an impish look. Everyone we meet is fascinated by the thickness of her hair and her shiny curls. She can’t pull herself into sitting position, but when we prop her up, she would try balance herself and sit up. Her head is still bigger compared to the rest of her body though, so it’s quite easy for her to lose her balance and fall face forward. In fact, she did bump her poor head on the floor of the bedroom. Thank goodness she was ok, just a little bruise on her forehead, not noticeable really, under all her hair!
Xuan loves to listen to music and she likes to watch the vcd of nursery rhymes my sister bought for her. She would wave her arms and legs in time to the music. I can just tell we have a young TV addict in the making.
She loves to put things in her mouth, I have found her biting her fingers, jamming her whole fist in her mouth, nibbling her toes, enthusiastically biting the corner of her pillow, gumming the legs of her caterpillar, happily chewing her fish (it’s kinda smelling fishy at this point), even salivating all over the belt of the car seat! You would think that we never fed her, and she’s on the brink of starvation!
During Xuan’s doctor visit this month, he asked us if she has started turning over. He has been asking me this since she was 3 months old. Surely babies do not turnover when they are 3 months old? Anyway, I started feeling a little of the competitive mom anxiety. Thank goodness, Xuan turned over for the first time on dd July 2009! It happened quite suddenly, I walked to the bathroom and when I turned to look, she had turned over from her back to her stomach! So, technically, I didn’t see her turn over, I just saw it after the fact! Way to go, Mom! She did it again that night when I was putting her to sleep, I excitedly called H upstairs to see but Xuan refused to do a repeat performance. Finally, on Sunday night, with me, H, my mom and my sister cheering her on, she turned over and we captured it on video!
This month, H and I also started talking about whether we would send Xuan to daycare or to a babysitter when I start work again. We went to meet the owner of a new daycare center and we were quite happy with the setup and the owner was very friendly.
The advantages of daycare is that there will be more than one person looking after the children. I know very well how tiring it is to take care of a baby, and when there are more people around, at least there will always be another person to help. The daycare owner told us that she would strive to maintain a ratio of one caregiver to three children. The daycare is also equipped with toys and learning stuff for the children, and babyproofed for safety. Another advantage for the daycare is that Xuan would have friends and benefit from the interaction with children. The definitely downside of the daycare is that there is less one on one care, and the potential for her to fall sick because of catching germs from the other children.
We also went to visit a babysitter. This babysitter is caring for another toddler, about one year older than Xuan and looking to take on another baby. The advantages of a babysitter is more one on one care, compared to the daycare. Also, hopefully Xuan would not fall sick so often when there is only one other child. However, if the babysitter fell sick, or wanted to go for a holiday, H or I would have to take leave to take care of Xuan, as there is no backup carer. Another disadvantage is that this babysitter insists that Xuan needs to drink milk from the bottle and sleep in the swing. In the first place, Xuan has refused for months to drink from the bottle. For the second point, it is not recommended for babies to sleep in the swing, it is dangerous unsupervised, as the baby may fall out or crawl out.
H prefers the daycare, so we have decided to go for a 2 day trial at the daycare to see how Xuan likes it there.
This is a video of Xuan having a lovely long chat with Daddy after his long day at work. Would really love to know what she’s telling him! “Mummy is such a sleepy head Daddy, it took me 5 minutes screaming at the top of my lungs this morning before she rolled over and opened one eye! And her KPI for changing my diapers is just not improving, she’s so slow...you really need to have a word with her about that...”
Month 6 Milestones:
Weight – 7.0 kg
Height - 66 cm
Xuan can sit up for a short time and turn over
Her hair has grown much longer, and I just love her curls, they give her such an impish look. Everyone we meet is fascinated by the thickness of her hair and her shiny curls. She can’t pull herself into sitting position, but when we prop her up, she would try balance herself and sit up. Her head is still bigger compared to the rest of her body though, so it’s quite easy for her to lose her balance and fall face forward. In fact, she did bump her poor head on the floor of the bedroom. Thank goodness she was ok, just a little bruise on her forehead, not noticeable really, under all her hair!
Xuan loves to listen to music and she likes to watch the vcd of nursery rhymes my sister bought for her. She would wave her arms and legs in time to the music. I can just tell we have a young TV addict in the making.
She loves to put things in her mouth, I have found her biting her fingers, jamming her whole fist in her mouth, nibbling her toes, enthusiastically biting the corner of her pillow, gumming the legs of her caterpillar, happily chewing her fish (it’s kinda smelling fishy at this point), even salivating all over the belt of the car seat! You would think that we never fed her, and she’s on the brink of starvation!
Mmm...this hippo is really yummy...
*nibble nibble*
Fingers are so yummylicious...and convenient too!
My little pony hits just the right spot!
Wow...this caterpillar leg looks delicious...
...gotcha!
During Xuan’s doctor visit this month, he asked us if she has started turning over. He has been asking me this since she was 3 months old. Surely babies do not turnover when they are 3 months old? Anyway, I started feeling a little of the competitive mom anxiety. Thank goodness, Xuan turned over for the first time on dd July 2009! It happened quite suddenly, I walked to the bathroom and when I turned to look, she had turned over from her back to her stomach! So, technically, I didn’t see her turn over, I just saw it after the fact! Way to go, Mom! She did it again that night when I was putting her to sleep, I excitedly called H upstairs to see but Xuan refused to do a repeat performance. Finally, on Sunday night, with me, H, my mom and my sister cheering her on, she turned over and we captured it on video!
This month, H and I also started talking about whether we would send Xuan to daycare or to a babysitter when I start work again. We went to meet the owner of a new daycare center and we were quite happy with the setup and the owner was very friendly.
The advantages of daycare is that there will be more than one person looking after the children. I know very well how tiring it is to take care of a baby, and when there are more people around, at least there will always be another person to help. The daycare owner told us that she would strive to maintain a ratio of one caregiver to three children. The daycare is also equipped with toys and learning stuff for the children, and babyproofed for safety. Another advantage for the daycare is that Xuan would have friends and benefit from the interaction with children. The definitely downside of the daycare is that there is less one on one care, and the potential for her to fall sick because of catching germs from the other children.
We also went to visit a babysitter. This babysitter is caring for another toddler, about one year older than Xuan and looking to take on another baby. The advantages of a babysitter is more one on one care, compared to the daycare. Also, hopefully Xuan would not fall sick so often when there is only one other child. However, if the babysitter fell sick, or wanted to go for a holiday, H or I would have to take leave to take care of Xuan, as there is no backup carer. Another disadvantage is that this babysitter insists that Xuan needs to drink milk from the bottle and sleep in the swing. In the first place, Xuan has refused for months to drink from the bottle. For the second point, it is not recommended for babies to sleep in the swing, it is dangerous unsupervised, as the baby may fall out or crawl out.
H prefers the daycare, so we have decided to go for a 2 day trial at the daycare to see how Xuan likes it there.
This is a video of Xuan having a lovely long chat with Daddy after his long day at work. Would really love to know what she’s telling him! “Mummy is such a sleepy head Daddy, it took me 5 minutes screaming at the top of my lungs this morning before she rolled over and opened one eye! And her KPI for changing my diapers is just not improving, she’s so slow...you really need to have a word with her about that...”
Month 6 Milestones:
Weight – 7.0 kg
Height - 66 cm
Xuan can sit up for a short time and turn over
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