Down the Rabbit Hole

2020 is a very turbulent year, with so many challenges for so many people. Though it is a difficult year, on this occasion, I still find reasons to be thankful. I am thankful for the gift of family. Val and I welcomed our little bundle of joy this year. Giving birth in the middle of the first surge of the pandemic with Val overseas was not the easiest but my birthing team, my parents, and my siblings have been very supportive through the challenges of raising our little boy during his first months and helping me recover from wonky postpartum hormones imbalances and baby blues. They also take over taking care of him while I sleep in during the weekend because I write during the middle of the night when everyone else at home is asleep... as a result, I only log in two to three hours of sleep during the weekdays. Because I take care of the little guy most of the time, my parents and my sister have been cutting me some slack in the house chores department (I just run the dishwasher at nigh...

  Gone were the days when I can just hand my son over to my parents or to my sister so I can eat or use the bathroom. I didn't hear complaints; he was a chill baby back then. These days, however, as long as I'm within three feet of him, he's jolly; but as soon as I'm out of sight (behind a door or a wall), I start hearing him cry out in protest, especially just before nap time and when he's hungry. It's difficult to see him cry, knowing that he wants me to carry him, but I know that every baby has to go through this difficult developmental stage: when they start understanding the concept of "object permanence". This means that my son is realising that people and objects continue to exist even if they are not in the same room as him. Babies at this stage feel very vulnerable because their caretakers (their source of feelings of security and safety) left them where they don't feel safe... but the separation anxiety supposedly lasts only for a few min...

I am certainly not a baby whisperer. I am definitely hacking my way every day in my parenting journey. Ever since my son has been born, he's had crying episodes that could last minutes or hours. And my instinct tells me I should respond to my child's cries; this is contrary to parenting experts' advice of waiting to see if the baby will self-soothe. After all, during the early days, a baby's only way of communicating is through crying. Note that I don't believe that babies can manipulate parents and caregivers; hence, it is always wise to respond to a baby's cries. But how do I respond if I don't know WHY he's crying? During the first few weeks, everything was guesswork. But as my son grew out of the newborn stage and into the infant stage, I started hearing nuances in his cries. At last, I think I'm getting a grasp at what he wants to say! I probably have figured out some of the cries. But he's growing mentally every single day, so what...

Time flies! Once the wee one and I graduated from the sleepless nights of the newborn stage and rolling at five months, our next challenge is his introduction to solid food. This, to me, means it's now time to diversify his diet (which up til now is 100% formula milk). Finally, his food adventure begins! As someone who is a rice sensory specialist and who was involved in a project about food choice behaviours in Bhubaneswar, Odisha , and  Metro Manila , I've been looking forward to the day when I can start introducing flavours and textures to my son and see how his food preferences develop... even if this means that I have to stretch my own preferences and eat food that I don't like to eat. There are two approaches to introducing solid food to a baby. One is the so-called "baby-led weaning", in which babies start feeding themselves with slices of food (small enough to prevent choking) from the get-go. Then there's the more traditional purée approach in which...