Has Samuel been wronged?

Throughout Samuel’s dinner today, he refused to sit in his baby chair and kept pointing at the window. He cried and tried to struggle free but I refused to give in; I was determined to have him brought up with good meal habits.

Each time when I gave in and took him out of his chair, he only wants to go play at the bay window area near the dining table. At least that’s what I thought since Samuel couldn’t speak his mind yet. And so I put him back into his baby chair and attempted to feed him again.

He cries and points at his room instead. I got really frustrated. I tried to hold my frustrations and continues to feed him quietly. Even though he is still eating, he cries every now and then especially when he hears the door opening/closing sounds. He tries to engage his grandparents and seek for their rescue. Needless to say, it got me even more frustrated when each grandparent kinda of check on him. And so I told my mum I’m really getting angry if she kept coming to his rescue. I need him to focus on his meal and nothing else. I was angry with Samuel’s grand parents for trying to coax him. But his grandma couldn’t bear to hear his cries in her room and she wanted to check if he might be unwell or has poo and offer to feed him again by coaxing. To me, I rather not spoil the baby and I want to emphasize again how good eating habits are cultivated. So no TV and no play while eating.

Later that night as I was feeding him his night milk before sleep, Samuel refuses to look at me. When he does, his expression is a strange one.

Finally as I sat here and reflected on what happened earlier, it dwells on me that Samuel has the same expression his dad has whenever he feels he’s been wronged. There used to be a balloon at the window. Could Samuel been looking for his balloon? Is that what he was crying out for? Maybe he even wanted to go find the balloon in his room? His dad could have been right. Samuel don’t usually cries so much and have always been good with his meals. Perhaps I have misunderstood him? I start to feel really bad now looking at the adorable sleeping boy.

I need to tell myself that I need to try to understand him more. To build a rapport with this baby, or he would never listen. Writing this down is first step to make sure this should not happen again.

Introducing the solids…

With the new routine in place, it’s becoming more obvious that the cub is still not sleeping through the night. His day naps are now strictly monitored and capped to 3 hours max. So the ‘too much day sleep’ reason has been ruled out. Even the 2 hourly feed is not satisfying his appetite, cub continued to trash his legs and cries with increased fervor.

Today I finally decided that perhaps it’s time to introduce solids. With the lack of rest, my body is giving in and I’m beginning to doubt if I’m providing enough nutrition for the cub’s development. Could it be a case of not be enough fats or that my fatigue is interfering with the letdown reflex resulting in lesser milk?

So here it goes, his first taste of food is the brown rice. To be careful, we added a lot more water than what was indicated.

The solids (strictly indicated for 4-6 months baby)

As you can see from the photo, I bought a lot more than I should, not knowing what I could feed. And every time he cries, we stopped to check if there’s the cue to stop. The process was smoother than I thought. Definitely much easier than feeding the bottle. 😛

Cub’s first time feeding on high chair

This time he managed to stay asleep for an hour before he cries for hunger again.After this, even the hunger reason has been ruled out. Anti colic drops have been given to the cub earlier with the brown rice and yet he continued to wake up and cries making the usual ‘panting’ sound. Could this be the beginning of teething?

The sleep routine

I have been ignoring about the fact that cub does not sleep through the night (and that cub detests the bottle). I kept hoping he would eventually learn on his own one of these days. But as days go by, as it grow closer to the end of my maternity leave, I’m getting panicky and I wondered if he would ever grow out of this. For us, It’s like a vicious cycle. Cub not sleeping at night would mean more naps in the day and hence more alert at night. Nights are spent feeding the cub every 2 hourly as he demands for milk and fidgets in discomfort. Mum is feeling more tired as days went by. It’s easy for Cub’s pediatrician to state as a matter of fact that cub could be throwing his legs up and acts uncomfortably due to colic. So does this mean there is no solution? It seems doctors are just using the colic reason for everything unexplainable.

Finally 3 weeks left and it seems changes will need to be done so cub can learn how to sleep through the night. But changes mean efforts. For the sleep deprived me, this is lots of efforts. To implement, this would mean more discussions with my mum to undo and to modify the existing routine. (I’m dragging this and praying that she won’t take this the wrong way).

First and foremost, we need to get rid of the early bath timings in order to build sleep routine at night. That is to educate cub to expect sleep after his shower, massage and feed. Once he learnt to expect, he would learn to sleep on his own nightly without struggle. This is in theory.

Secondly, to reduce his daytime naps. I have to admit in the beginning I really thought cub does not sleep enough just like what my mum claimed. I have to highlighted her belief is that babies should just sleep and eat. But today as I monitored, cub has slept like 4 hours in total. He has literally spent the whole day sleeping and feeding without any time for interaction or activity. So we need to work on reducing these day naps to 0.5 hour in the morning and 2.5 hour in the afternoon. From my observations, because he has been sleeping too much in the morning, he end up staying awake in the afternoon and then sleeping in the late afternoon. So no more sleep after 10am and 5pm.

Today is the first day of change. Just as expected, the implementation is painful. Cub became very unsettled without his usual bath. And hence he missed his morning nap. As a result, he became overly tired, more unsettled and hence demands for more comfort sucking. And his grandma starts to question if the new changes are going to work and how her other friends who are caregivers with babies have it easier with no routine. As usual, exchanges were done to and fro about differences between breastfed babies vs. formula babies. By now, I’m tired of having to explain myself over and over again without any success since cub’s grandma seems pretty convinced I’m complicating things by all these strange rules.

Fortunately by the time we were done with his night routine, he was tired and sleepy. At one point, he even drifts off to sleep on the play gym. I even thought happily that yay! Cub is finally sleeping on his own without the usual rocking and it’s only 6:30pm and the night routine works! But the success is short-lived (cub’s grandma was happy and quiet for that moment and I thought I could have my dinner in peace). Yet half an hour later, his hunger woke him up. Since he was drinking so much before, I run out of milk. (Or maybe because I’m too tired by late evening). Next, cub’s grandma attempted to bottle feed him. And so he struggles, he pretends to drink, he threw out all the milk and he bites the teat so no milk can drip into his mouth. As I write this blog at 9:45pm, I could hear his loud crying going on and on in the next room. It pains me but there’s nothing I could do.

All I could do is to tell myself to stay focused on writing this blog and hopefully the TV noise could drowned off all the cub’s crying. And hopefully one week later, I could happily write a blog about how cub is now sleeping through the night.