A Bitter Taste the Morning After

Now, I've refrained from making any political comments on this blog due to the nature of my work and the fact that mothering a 3 month old sucks up most of my energy which goes to feeding and making disapproving comments at my husband.  But this is too much.

How does a person who receivws only 30-something percent of the valid votes, an obvious target of at worst, mass population dislike, and at best, depressed apathy, become the country's Head of State? That, in spite of running a campaign with as much appeal as BBC radio and spewing rhetoric that sounded like a broken record from the 1990s?

Easy, you would scoff, happens all the time, particularly if you live in America.

But this isn't America, land of the free, crazy and anything-goes!  This is Singapore, once a 40plus square kilometres stretch of beach and jungle that now houses 4 million people, a creaky transport system and absolutely no public dissent! Our one-party  Cabinet which has the mandate of the people who voted in ostensibly democratic elections has so far governed the country like the wise sages of China on the basis of their....well, wisdom.

Even in the years when you didn't get to vote, you let it slide because inside, you told yourself that the people in charge would do what was best for the country and what was fairest for you, the individual.  Even when you always had the niggling suspicion you were being forgotten in the collective or getting the short end of the stick (although without any reliable, hard evidence), you chose not to kick up a fuss because you still had a job and a so-so quality of life compared to the homeless in Manila.

Putting aside who would have made the "best President" or been the "best man" for the job (since these are pretty redundant issues for their ideological subjectivity), you would hope that a kind of justice could have prevailed on this morning of 28 August, that the man who got less than HALF the voting population's votes would not get to make a victory speech on a television station that isn't even capable of impartial, quality journalism (NB: we only have one television station).

So I feel, much like I did after the May polls, a profound sense of injustice, that a wrong has been done, but where no redress can be found for the collective grievance that must surely be weighing upon our island right now. You might blame Tan Jee Say and/or Tan Kin Lian for wading in and diluting Tan Cheng Bok's vote share. I don't, because I have to credit the establishment for their tactical prowess in allowing a 4-corner fight to begin with, no matter if it's intuitively ridiculous to have 4 candidates running for President of a country.

So you would understand if I am feeling a bit miffed at how the cards have played out. I assumed naively  that the will of 1.4 million people would have made a difference in denying the candidate whom MOST people did not want as President the seat.

Life will go on in the land of Big Brothers. Democracy once more perverted, and justice flouted in the name of first-past-the-post. 

Project Baby: Month 3

Ju is 3 months old and starting on his fourth. He's one of the calmest and most predictable babies in terms of his sleep and feeding needs. He hardly gets colicky except for one occasion when he screamed blue murder as he choked on his bottle. I had to abandon the bottle and rock/carry him to calm him down. He survived his first set of vaccinations (at 2 months) without side effects, even though he cried inconsolably after being fed the Rotavirus vaccine.  His only issue now at 3 months is hair loss -- lots of it.  His left side looks like a dog took a chunk out of it because it's near bald. He's ironically got less hair than at birth, but he's also lost quite a bit of his baby fat on his face. He looks pretty big for his age, people always express surprise when we tell them he's only 3 months old. He's hit quite a few milestones and remains the adorable center of attention for his grandparents and relatives.

Feeding
Ju takes an average of 120ml to 140ml per feed, an average of 8 feeds a day. It's consistent for his weight (7kg last I checked) and he is drinking mostly formula now that my breastmilk is drying up. I suppose it's my fault for not being consistent with the breastfeeding. Even my morning yield (when I express) has dwinded from 150ml to a measly 60ml this morning. I've given up expressing in the day. Ju is fine with it.

Sleep

Ju sleeps through the night now. He has his last feed from 9 to 9.30pm and sleeps till 6.30am at the earliest. Sometimes he can go till 7.30am. He still naps usually after each feed, but skips one or two in the afternoon. People ask us how we got him to sleep through, but we really didn't do anything I'm afraid. Maybe Ju's system is able to self-regulate his sleep cycles, it appears that your body's (including babies) ability to regulate its cycles -- breathing, sleeping, eating -- has a lot to do with your brain's reaction to stress and its ability to cope with it. Of course the worse your sleep, the more stress you experience and the worse your sleep, and so on in a vicious circle.

Speech/Attention

Since my last report, Ju has been able to focus his attention on moving objects. He loves looking at anything that moves and emits sound. Basically he's crazy about his battery-operated mobile that blasts music and light. It's a great distraction when he's cranky as well and does wonders for his mood.  He's also been "talking" a lot; in addition to the "ah-goo's" he likes to squeal, gurgle and laugh, sometimes at the top of his lungs. He is most talkative when he observes and hears adults interacting with each other or singing to him. He's also able to smile in recognition when he sees me or Daniel. Funnily, he's taken to smiling at almost everyone recently.

Motor Skills
Perhaps his most visible milestone has been his fine motor skills. He graduated from thumb sucking to fist sucking and tugging at his blanket and whatever cloth material he can get his hands on. At first it wasn't coordinated at all, he would pull and tug as if by instinct but yesterday I noticed him examining his hands intently as he played with his sheep, Sepp. It was as if he was noticing how he could get his fingers to grasp and pull. Since this week he has also been able to bring his two hands together and clasping has become his new favourite pasttime. He likes to bring them to his mouth too, as if testing the contours and shape of his fists. He still sucks on his thumb when he is hungry or sleepy.

His neck has become much stronger and he can hold it up most of the time although it still sways precariously at times. We put him on his tummy (tummy-time) each day to help him with his neck. He isn't crazy about it, but a minute a day is good enough.

Cradle cap
His cradle-cap has improved since we switched to Dentinox shampoo for cradle cap. I'm too lazy to rub the olive oil on his scalp every day. His scalp doesn't flake anymore but sometimes I like to pick off the looser bits, taking a couple of hairs with it as well. The yellowish patches are mostly confined to the front of his head, on the fontanelles. I don't know if it's related to the hair loss, but everyone whose baby has had it confirms that it lasts a couple of months.

Overall, Ju seems quite happy to be taken out for walks in his stroller. He doesn't fall asleep in the car anymore and pays rapt attention to the stuff outside the window unless he is yelling in protest when the car is stationary. He still gets tormented by hiccups and they can drive him crazy sometimes. He seems to be better behaved when I am not around, i.e. I seem to have to offer him a comfort-suck on the breast when he has trouble taking his naps. Other than that, he's the model baby!

The Impatient Mother's Guide to: Surviving The Day Out

After a couple of weeks out and about with Ju and our stroller, going out is really a breeze if you have a predictable child with a predictable feeding schedule. Even if you don't, all you really need are diapers, a changing mat, and if you aren't breastfeeding a thermos, formula and bottles.  I would not recommend going out without at least one bottle of formula because you may find yourself in a situation where your kid needs to be fed NOW and now means in the middle of a crowded mall. Boob rejection might happen too, and trust me, you do not want a screaming infant in a small restaurant with good accoustics. I never let Ju get remotely close to yelling for his food but that's because I dispense with the breastfeeding completely when we are out. Too many things can go wrong.

I use a Playtex bottle to minimize the number of bottles I have to pack. Ju feeds 2-hourly, so this means an average of 3, maybe 4 feeds for half a day out. The great thing about this is the disposable Drop-ins that come pre-sterilised, so you just drop it into the bottle and fill it up.

Of course it looks a like you're leaving used condoms behind wherever you go, but it doesn't bother me. My only issue with it is the teat - the 0-3 month "slow" teat is ultra slow and it takes forever for Ju to finish a bottle. I tried the 3-6 month "fast" teat on him and it didn't go so well -- milk spewing everywhere. So we are sticking to the slow for now. The pro is there is almost no leakage with this teat. Daniel hates it because it's much softer than the Avent or Medela teats, since it replicates the natural nipple. I personally don't mind, it's really a matter of skill how you get baby to latch on properly. You can choose from latex (brown) and silicone (clear) teats.  The latex apparantly mimicks the real breast even better but I decided against it cos you can't sterilise it in a steriliser as you would the other stuff.

Going out with bottles also means Dad has no excuse not to help out while you shop!  You don't even have to fret if you forget your thermos (I did) as you can readily ask for hot water almost everywhere you go. Your baby is your sympathy card. Plus you can feed him anywhere, even while he's in the bassinet or stroller if you're caught out somewhere or in the middle of your own meal.

Project Baby Week 11: Sleeping Through the Night

Before I delivered, one of my biggest concerns had been how we would get the baby to sleep through the night. Checks with every Mummy-friend of mine revealed that almost none of the babies slept through before the 4th or 5th month (1 out of 10 had the good fortune of a baby who slept through from the get-go) and some were still waking up for night feeds at close to 1 year.

The first month, Ju had 3 hourly feeds throughout the day until midnight. Then he would sleep a max of 4 hours before the cycle resumed, this meant we had two night feeds between midnight and 6am.  The second month Ju suddenly switched to 2-hourly feeds throughout the day ending at close to midnight. Besides this being a nightmare for the one minding him all day (since there was now less time in between his feeds), we noticed that he could sleep up to 5 hours at night. We noticed that if he went early to bed (before 9pm), he would inevitably wake for his night feed sometime between 2 and 3am. 

So we started making his last feed sometime between 10 and 11pm. This is really a stretch because he looks like a druggie by 10pm. This is his third month and he can sleep up to 7 hours, going past the spendid 5am mark.  Last night, he slept from 10.30pm to 6.30am, hallelujah!  We cut back his 9pm feed to 90ml (which wasn't an issue for him since he was asleep by the last 10ml) and he started sucking his thumb before 10pm even though his eyes seemed to be glued shut. I breastfed him and stuck 40ml down him before 10.30 and he went completely under by the time Daniel put him to bed.

Needless to say, we had a fabulous night (of sleep) until 6.30am. I must admit we've been exceptionally lucky with this baby.  If all goes well and Ju does not have any revolutionary changes to his metabolism in the next few months, I won't have to make the painful decision to sleep-train him before going back to work.  For more needy babies, however, there are some methods that may offer that precious respite from the 3am feed, or worse, the 2-hourly round-the-clock baby:

Cold-turkey

A baby cries to be picked-up, rocked or fed or all three. So even if he isn't really dying for a meal, he would still cry as long this gets him the comfort he realises crying gets him.  So letting him cry it out -- basically ignoring him -- till he falls asleep is one nailbiting but effective, as some swear by it, method of ending those nightime feeds and cries.

"Ferberizing"

According to Dr Richard Ferber, a baby can be conditioned to dissociate crying with the gratification of need. This is less heartbreaking than going cold turkey and something I would've tried myself. You put baby to bed while he is still awake and if he cries, you wait a minute or two before going to soothe him or pick him up. Once he's back in bed and acts up again, you do the same thing except this time, you stretch out the time he has to wait for attention, and you don't pick him up.  The next time, you wait even longer and you don't touch him at all, gentle and soothing sounds or words would suffice. You do this over and over, each time making him wait longer, until eventually he figures out that he isn't getting anything but a "shhhh" and quits.

The problem with this method is, I don't think my hungry baby is going to stand for it.  A baby can keep crying for up to 1 hour (my friend's 4 month old) and this can be really nerve-wracking as well as hell for the neighbours. But the point of conditioning is precisely to train your baby to sleep through, even if it means going hungry. With Ju, we tried upping his intake at 9pm, but he would fall asleep and the extra would be wasted. I guess with some babies, they will drink as much as they need and want, whether it's more or less than you desire.

I personally believe in as little intervention as possible in the baby's rhythm.  From birth, I observed Ju's regularity and duly responded to his needs as he dictated -- on-demand parenting as some call it.  Even without my intervening, he would fall roughly into his own sleep-eat-play-sleep rhythm.  All I had to do was to spot the signs of his tiredness and get him as comfortable as possible for sleep, and learn to anticipate his 2 hourly meal-time fussing and get either my boob or bottle ready. 

A word on sleep: some babies need help going to sleep, and even a baby as easy as Ju sometimes needs that pacifier or blanket.  Ju discovered the fradulence of the pacifier and so if I am at home, I would offer him a 2minute suck on the boob if he seems to be really distressed and sleepy.  Recently Ju learnt how to suck on his thumb and he now gets his own comfort DIY before his nap. It staves off his hunger pangs as well.  We avoided swaddling him from birth or "managing" the environment (like darkening the room or playing music) whenever he slept.  This proved to be a good move because Ju can sleep almost anywhere as long as he's tired. Messing with the environment gets your baby reliant on having certain conditions for sleep. All we do is to cover him with a blanket whenever he starts to show signs of sleepiness to help him associate that with napping. I don't know if we managed to condition him, since he would kick off his blanket and fidget until he is good and ready. We also only put him in his cot at night, after his last feed, to get him accustomed to it as his bedtime spot. In the day, he takes naps on the couch, in his rocker or in his stroller if we are out.