A Day in the Life of A....

What are some of the things that these people do in an average work day?

• Accountant: Updates ledger / balance sheets, pay bills, chase for payments, ensures sufficient cash flow for the month
  


• Cook: Menu planning, mise en place for the day's meals
  


• Chauffer: Drives boss around, ensures that he / she gets to destination in time
  


• Housekeeper: Tidy / clean house, deal with laundry (washing, ironing, folding), grocery shopping, prepare meals
  


• Nanny: Feed baby, change diapers, gives baby a bath, plays with baby, prepares baby's meals / milk feeds
  


• Secretary: Ensures boss has the necessary documents for the day's meetings, manages boss' calendar


• Teacher: Plan curriculum, prepare teaching materials, conduct lessons, discipline students

What does a SAHM (stay-at-home-mom) do on an average day?

• Pay bills
• Ensures expenditure is within monthly budget
• Prepares breakfast, lunch and dinner
• Plans meals for the week
• Tidy / clean house
• Deal with laundry
• Buys groceries
• Feed baby
• Change diapers
• Gives baby / children a bath
• Plays with baby / children
• Discipline children
• Teach children manners, words, songs, numbers, colours, etc..
• Drives children to/from school and activites
• Ensures that family calendar is in order
• Ensures that kids go to school with their bags packed with what they need for the day

So is the SAHM truly a 'tai-tai' (local term meaning lady of leisure)? If so, why does she usually work more than 12 hours a day, with no annual leave, medical leave or public holidays? Why is it that it is socially accepted to hire a maid to manage the chores and care for children - the maid is paid for doing this and it is considered decent work, yet when one does all these and more as a SAHM, it is not considered work? How many times have I been asked, when are you going back to work? Am I not working already??

Quotable Quotes

I somehow 'collect' quotes in my head. Mostly, I remember them because they are thought-provoking and/or apply to my life. I will keep editing this post as and when I come across new quotes. Meanwhile, here are some. (Where possible, I will state the author's name. However, I usually can't remember the name, so if you do know it, you can help by commenting!)

• Do not worry that your children aren't listening; worry that they are watching.
• The term 'working mother' is redundant. (Seen on a poster at Brewerkz)
• It takes a village to raise a child. (African proverb)
• To parent is not to impose, but to guide, moderate and support.
• Raising a child is like flying a kite. Sometimes you need to pull back, but sometimes you need to let go... to really see a kite soar, you've got to let it go.
• If you want your children to respect you, respect them first.
• Write your plans in pencil and give the eraser to God. (Seen on a bumper sticker)
• Bone of my bone,
  Flesh of my flesh,
  Blood of my blood,
  Milk of my breast,
  Child of my heart,
  Person of your own. (Kristin Gillespie)
• The modern mother faces a very large problem: her own possible extinction. She has the same powers of observation, the same intuition, the same instincts, and the same love for her baby that mothers have had throughout human history. But she is threatened by a world in which it is no longer safe to be a mother.
• "You are not a pacifier; you are a Mom. You are the sun, the moon, the earth, you are liquid love, you are warmth, you are security, you are comfort in the very deepest aspect of the meaning of comfort.... but you are not a pacifier!" (Paula Yount)

Book Review: The Happiest Toddler on the Block

Author: Dr. Harvey Karp
ISBN: 0553384422
Publisher: Bantam
Format: Paperback
Published: August 2008
No. of pages: 336 pages
Available for loan from: National Library Board (www.pl.sg)
Price: S$22.17 (www.opentrolley.com)
Suitable for: Parents of 8 – 36 months old
Verdict: Recommended (3.5 / 5)

The sequel to Dr. Karp’s best-seller, The Happiest Baby on The Block, this book aims to get frazzled parents through the trying terrible two’s and three’s by teaching parents how to boost their child’s good behavior, curb annoying behavior and immediately stop unacceptable actions with a highly effective green light / yellow light / red light method for moulding toddler behaviour. Written in his trademark friendly, humourous and engaging manner, it is easy for parents to digest the information after a long day.

What I loved most are the insights it gave into my toddler’s mind – which make it a worthy read, even if the positive discipline methods don’t work. It explains why toddlers behave as they do and how to help them traverse their pre-historic world to become civilized pre-schoolers. Obviously, I don’t remember what life is like as a toddler and often assume that toddler J is a little adult and treat him as such. However, I found that it only made his tantrums worse when I tried to reason with him during a meltdown, or try to counter his escalating emotions with calm, low-key responses and lengthy explanations. The book helped me to understand that toddlers are far from being rational or logical, much less an adult. I found that he sometimes calmed down more quickly when I used Dr. Karp’s Toddler-ese and ‘Fast-Food Rule’ which is basically talking at your toddler's level when he or she is upset by using and repeating short, simple sentences and mirroring their emotions. This technique enhances the ability of children to label their emotions by providing them with the correct vocabulary. Toddler-ese needs practice and patience. It isn’t easy to master (and is sometimes embarrassing to use in public). I’m certainly no expert, but, it certainly does get easier over time. I don’t use it all the time, usually only when I feel that my normal way of defusing a situation won’t work. I noticed that it defuses potentially tantrum-causing situations. Toddler J sometimes looks at me with a ‘hey, mommy understands me so I don’t have to yell’ expression, calms down and is able to wait till I can attend to him or distracts himself with something else.

The rest of the book has lots of great reminders about how to best communicate with our toddlers so that they feel respected and loved, while we parents get the essential outcomes we need and want to keep our kids safe and our homes sane. While some of his advice is common sense, e.g. clear and consistent limits, Dr Karp gives numerous suggestions on boosting good behavior e.g. patience stretching, so parents can choose to use those they feel most comfortable with. I haven’t used his ‘clap-growl’ method yet – which I find a little too prehistoric! My main grouse is with the book’s layout because it classifies the methods into green light / yellow light / red light, yet not all methods are suitable for younger ones around 1 year old. I would have much preferred the methods to be classified by age instead of having to flip through the book to find them.

About the Author(s)
Dr. Harvey Karp is a nationally renowned pediatrician, child development specialist and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine. He completed medical school training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in NYC, pediatric residency at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles and fellowships in ambulatory pediatrics and child development at UCLA. In pediatric practice, for almost 30 years, Dr. Karp has taught thousands of parents, from working moms to superstars like Madonna, Michelle Pfeiffer and Pierce Brosnan his secrets for soothing colic, boosting infant sleep, reducing tantrums, promoting patience and making parents and children happy.

Balancing Organic & Conventional Food

A fairly recent convert to organic products, I used to be skeptical about organic food… sure, I’ve heard all about the goodness of organic food but, like many people, was put off by the high prices. Over the past year or so, I’ve gradually become more convinced that organic is truly better: not just for our bodies, but also tastes better and is environmentally friendly. I have become more educated about nutrition, having learnt about the effects of ingredients such as sugar and salt on our bodies. It took me some time to find a balance between conventional and organic products and to buy wisely. As much as I wish to prepare everything from scratch, use 100% organic, etc… it is highly unrealistic, because like everyone else, I have constraints such as finances, time, health, and other day to day pressures.

When baby J started having solids, we started him on as much organic produce as we could afford – and it was easy to prepare his food, mainly steaming and cutting into bite size pieces or mashing. Since he eats so little, it is inevitable that our help was needed to finish the food. As he becomes older, I’ve started to include his portion in family meals and meal preparation became slightly more complicated, compounded with the difficulty of putting together a decent meal with a toddler literally hanging onto my legs. I struggled to find a balance between having a healthy lifestyle, home-cooked meals, while being time-pressured and making sure that we aren’t spending everything we have on food!

Hence, currently I purchase organic products if it is for baby J, if we are consuming it raw e.g. salads, or if it is a processed product e.g. cereals, cookies. I particularly focus on processed products because I was so frustrated trying to decipher nutrition and ingredient labels of conventional products - particularly those that list items in vague manner by using E numbers (who on earth can remember what all these numbers represent?!) or stating items like “permitted flavourings”, “permitted preservatives”. None of these tell me what I’m consuming, thus defeating their raison d’être! I found that organic or natural products are labeled in a manner that I can understand and tend to use better quality ingredients like sea salt instead of conventional table salt (which is a chemically derived product devoid of vital minerals) and healthier natural sweeteners like agave nectar or juice concentrates.

Ultimately, I feel so much better knowing that we are reducing our consumption of artificial flavourings, pesticides and artificial preservatives. This peace of mind and the potential savings on medical bills are worth the money spent on organic foods and natural health solutions. I have reached the conclusion that while it may be hard to go 100% organic, something is better than nothing – one just needs to determine the most suitable path to take after prioritizing financial and health concerns.

Organic? Natural? What's the Difference?

I recently had a conversation about natural vs organic produce and how it is important to distinguish between the two. Natural products can sometimes be priced as high as organic products, so whenever an organic version is available, I highly recommend choosing that over the natural alternative. One day, I came across this nifty little table on a cereal box that clears up all the confusion between organic and natural products so do read the label!

Ingredients / Processing	Organic	Natural	Conventional
Artificial flavours	NO	No	May be used
Artificial colours	NO	No	May be used
Artificial preservatives	NO	No	May be used
Artificial fertilizers	NO	May be used	May be used
Artificial pesticides	NO	May be used	May be used
Irradiation	NO	May be used	May be used
G.M. Ingredients	NO	May be used	May be used

Furthermore, organic products are required to undergo testing in order to qualify for the certification, whereas, no certification is required for natural products.

World Breastfeeding Week 2010 Essay Competition

Breastfeeding Mothers' Support Group (BMSG) organised an essay competition for this year's World Breastfeeding Week. The aim of the competition was to determine how hospitals can help mothers establish successful breastfeeding through implementing the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) starting by first finding out what mothers want. I submitted the following entry - it's not a great piece of work as I did it at the last minute and had only 1 night to write. But I won a consolation prize - a $20 New Maternity Voucher. Guess that can help me add 1 more nursing top to my collection! :)

I stumbled into the breastfeeding world as a teenager, when I came across a La Leche League Singapore calendar. The photos of the breastfeeding mums and babes look so calm and blissful; it became a memory that resurfaced when I conceived. Hence, I did not hesitate to aim for the gold standard of exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months.

While pregnant, I voraciously read any breastfeeding material that I could get and attended BMSG workshops. My husband and I decided not to stock any formula and milk bottles to deliberately make giving up breastfeeding difficult. We also invested in a Medela PISA. I involved my mother, who would be helping out during confinement and she joined me at the workshops when my husband was unable to make it. That turned out to be a good move as she came from a generation when formula milk was the ‘in’ thing and she was pretty ignorant about breastfeeding. The workshops were an eye-opener for her, an experienced mom of two!

All my research was very handy as my doctor shocked me during a pre-labour workshop that he conducts for all his patients a month prior to their due date. To quote, he said, “It is ok if you can’t or don’t want to breastfeed, formula is just as good.” I suppose that his goal was to ease the anxieties of new moms but I don’t think that helped anyone who wasn’t adequately prepared. I also couldn’t help but notice that a formula manufacturer representative was at the talk. We left with a full-size ‘sample’ tin of infant formula – dashing my hopes of not stocking any at home. I had to hide it in a corner to avoid its temptation!!

As part of my labour preparations, I took a Hypnobirthing course and developed a birth plan which I subsequently discussed with my doctor. Achieving a drug-free delivery was my main goal. Aside from my concerns about a previous spinal injury, I also read that it will help pave the way towards establishing breastfeeding. Now, I think that this was a major factor in facilitating my short and easy labour as well as breastfeeding in the delivery suite mainly because my wishes were made known to the staff, allowing me to avoid dealing with questions immediately post-labour.

Shortly after my son was born, the nurse approached me and proceeded to knead my nipple to extract the very first bit of colostrum. I’m unsure if that was necessary, as it was rather painful and I would have preferred to let him approach me at his own pace. However, that first whiff of colostrum enticed him to start suckling immediately for the next 20 – 30 minutes.

After we left the delivery suite at about 5am, I was left alone in the room with my newborn and when he cried around 7am, I tried to latch him on by myself. Unfortunately, I did not realize that the latching was incorrect and ended up with sore nipples! The LC came for a quick visit in the morning and tried to show me how to position the baby, etc but she was speaking very quickly and somehow I just couldn’t absorb everything. Subsequently, I’ll page for the nurses at almost every feed. They were usually helpful, adjusting piles of pillows to get the right position and giving me lots of support and encouragement. But no one told me how to get the right position when I’m home. It was a case of giving a man a fish and he eats for a day, instead of teaching him to fish so that he eats for life. Occasionally, I encountered some unhelpful nurses. One accused me of not wearing a nursing bra (untrue!), another suggested formula milk when all I needed was some positioning help and yet another insisted that I had to rest, therefore my baby should be in the nursery till it’s time for his next feed. I was too exhausted to fight the last one and caved in but I found little rest as his welfare was on my mind all the time and I worried that he might be given formula without my consent.

As I delivered on a Saturday, there wasn’t an LC present to help out the next day. I finally got to see one again just before being discharged on Monday. However, I felt that her explanations were overly technical and I couldn’t relate to it. I wondered if she had ever breastfed before and left feeling that I just had to grit my teeth and get on with it by myself at home. We left the hospital with a bunch of brochures - thankfully no formula samples, but there wasn’t any information about BMSG or similar support groups. After our discharge, it took quite a long while before we finally found a comfortable position. I often wished that someone would visit and show me how, just like the post-natal support that my friends in Europe get, with a midwife visiting every couple of days for the first month or so to check on the baby and mom. While I was aware that I could arrange for a private visit with an LC, the cost was a prohibitive factor.

As a first-time mom, I felt that post-maternity support is severely lacking. 1 week later, my son suddenly refused to feed throughout the day; he would latch and cry in frustration a short while later. Finally, close to midnight, I realized that he was dehydrating. In desperation, I called the hospital’s emergency line, only to be transferred from person to person. My call was eventually answered by the duty nurse at the ward where we stayed – her response was disheartening: “Why did you call so late?!? What do you expect me to do? Just give him formula!” I refused to give him formula and she told me I could express if I wanted. I hung up feeling angry, discouraged and upset. We raced to the 24-hour NTUC to get milk bottles and I started expressing for the first time. True enough, my poor baby was starving and gulped down the entire bottle before falling sound asleep. It turned out that he caught a viral infection and a stuffy nose was preventing him from nursing.

We became more proficient as the weeks went by, but it was a rocky road paved with pain, discouragement and tears. At 6 weeks, I developed an abscess which required surgery under GA. Subsequently, I encountered countless painful blocked ducts, sometimes, as often as once a week, at least 2 bouts of mastitis and an episode of thrush. Thankfully, I am blessed with angels who held my hand and helped me along the way:
- my supportive husband, who did much more than I can list here;
- my mom who would drop everything to help out;
- my Hypnobirthing instructor (Ginny Phang of Four Trimesters) who always answered my calls for help and massaged away countless blocked ducts and for her encouraging words;
- my very skilful breast surgeon, Dr Joy Lee, for her patience, kind demeanor and encouragement;
- the unnamed counselors at BMSG who answered my calls when I was at my wits’ end.

All the trials and tribulations I’ve endured only made me more determined to persevere. I am now proud to say that we managed to achieve the gold standard. Today, my son is a healthy, bubbly 19-month old who is still breastfeeding and shows no sign of weaning. Although I sometimes tire of his breastfeeding antics and long to not wear nursing clothes anymore, I think we both enjoy the closeness too much to give up anytime soon.

Book Review: Happiest Baby on the Block

Author: Dr. Harvey Karp
ISBN: 0553381466
Publisher: Bantam
Format: Paperback
Published: May 2003
No. of pages: 288 pages
Available for loan from: National Library Board
Price: S$21.43 (www.opentrolley.com)
Suitable for: Expectant parents,
parents of 0 – 3 months old babies
Verdict: Highly recommended (4 / 5)

This is my favourite book on newborns! A thought-provoking read, Dr. Karp blends modern science and ancient wisdom to prove that newborns are really not ready for the world when they are born. Written in a friendly, fun and engaging manner, I liked the sensible way used to explain the rationales behind the practical solutions that he provides.

Essentially, this book explains why newborns cry (and cry so much) and most importantly, how to soothe them with the simple 5’S approach that trigger the calming reflex (swaddling, side/stomach position, shushing, swinging and sucking). For centuries, parents have tried these methods only to fail because, as with a knee-jerk reflex, the calming reflex only works when it is triggered in exactly the right way. Dr. Karp explains away the age-old myths behind colic, gas and other reasons that have been given for non-stop crying and literally redefines our understanding of the needs of newborns. When first published, this book stunned the medical world (and made parents cheer!) by solving the 3000-year-old mystery of colic with the discovery of the calming reflex – the incredible “off-switch” for infant crying and on switch for baby sleep that can soothe most fussy babies in minutes and add 1-3 hours to a baby’s sleep.

Although I read this book when baby J was 4.5 months old, some of the tricks still worked and above all, helped me understand why he had non-stop crying spells every afternoon (the doctor said it wasn’t colic) and why he would only nap when carried in a sling during those early days. It certainly helped soothe my ‘new mother’ anxieties that I must have somehow gotten something wrong. On the downside, I wished Dr. Karp provided more information about weaning the baby off the 5’S as we are still very much reliant on one of them (sucking).

An accompanying DVD is also available. While I have only seen the excepts on the website (it’s just amazing to watch the screaming infants stop crying almost instantly!), I believe that watching the DVD will be useful in helping one to better understand and visualize the tactics. Certainly, if you are a bleary-eyed, exhausted new parent, watching the DVD will be a much faster solution to yours (and your baby’s) sleep deprivation issues.

Having spoken to many other mothers, it seems that these endless crying spells are a definite with all newborns; so in this regard, this book and DVD is a must-read / must-watch for all expectant and new parents.

About the Author(s)
Dr. Harvey Karp is a nationally renowned pediatrician, child development specialist and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine. He completed medical school training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in NYC, pediatric residency at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles and fellowships in ambulatory pediatrics and child development at UCLA. In pediatric practice, for almost 30 years, Dr. Karp has taught thousands of parents, from working moms to superstars like Madonna, Michelle Pfeiffer and Pierce Brosnan his secrets for soothing colic, boosting infant sleep, reducing tantrums, promoting patience and …making parents and children happy.