Baby shower diaper cake

Today is my toddler's 2 year-old birthday, we didn't host her a big party, just the family get together and enjoy a nice chocolate gateau, yum! She loves it, especially the icing flower! We thought well, only once a year, we'll let her have a bit of sugar delight. Her finger was on the chocolate cream before we finished singing her the happy birthday song! :-)

Talking about cake, I received a very special gift for my premature baby that I think it's quite creative, it's both a practical and nice looking gift. It was in a 3 tier cake shape, and when I opened each layer, there were different gifts and the outer layer was wrapped in diapers (nappies)! It's a perfect gift for baby shower as the parents could keep the diaper cake until the baby's born. I'll save this page for my future gifts to newborns. :-)

Baby sleep training

Finally everything starts to go on track, I'm not a routine person, but I found that once I get a routine started, I get more prediction on what my day will be like and hence more time to rest and more free time for me to write blogs! There was a time I felt very stressful, as I felt like I was non-stop for the whole day, either changing nappies, cleaning, cooking or feeding.

Just was reading an article on sleep-training, it's quite interesting to find out that there are many methods to train our baby to sleep through the night. The article recommends training babies from 5 months, which is now for my baby. My first baby was sleeping through the night since she was around 3 months, but my second baby wakes up 4 hourly for feed until now.

The Sears Method seems to be more humane, it's called the no-cry method, it's about being flexible to change approaches (eg. cuddling, pacifier, nursing..etc), and being consistent to try one method for a while before changing approach. This method is created by Dr. William Sears who's an advocate of attachment parenting, his book is called The Baby Sleep Book: How to Help Your Baby to Sleep and Have a Restful Night. Other similar method include Secrets of the Baby Whisperer: How to Calm, Connect and Communicate with Your Baby.

Another method is the Cry It Out, also called the Ferber method which leaves the baby cry for a set period of time, and check to calm after the set period. Highlight is to put babies in the cot awake, and basically leave the baby cry until he/she sleeps on his/her own. His book Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems has strategies to teach babies to have a good night sleep (and most importantly parents won't be overtired with sleep deprivation)

I heard parents from the hospital that says the Cry It Out method really work, and a day care centre manger also said, "Sometimes you'll need to be cruel to be kind." meaning letting the baby cry so they can learn to sleep on their own, which is good for both the baby and the parents. I've tried this at the beginning for my baby, sometimes she cried for about half an hour before falling asleep, which I think she's just too tired and dropped off. But every time when I went to her, she'd give me that sad look on her face whenever she awoke. So I try with the pacifier, and sometimes cuddling her for a while before putting her to the cot. I found that when I bath her before going to bed at night, she'd sleep for longer period. Now I'm getting smiles on her face whenever she sees me when she wakes up! :-)


As for my toddler, she loves watching DVDs, especially the Brainy Baby series, she now can recognise and count from 1-10. I think a reasonable TV time is good for children, those DVDs do the repetition, which is essential in toddler's learning, for us. iQ Toys has the DVDs at a good price. It's funny to see her said 'wee' and nodding her head to me once, she picked it up on the French preview!

My premature baby arrived!

My baby arrived early at 28 weeks and weight only 1.13 kg, the labour happened so fast and before I know it, baby was born. I didn't feel much of contractions, I thought it was abnormal pain from my heavy tummy. People actually commended during my pregnancy that my tummy is big, a bit low and baby might come soon! After delivery, the hospital took a whole lot of examination to find out what trigger this early birth. They also advised me that 95% of premature babies survive, and they might develop other disablilty if not taken care of carefully. They found out there was a bug in baby's blood, and that's probably why she was born prematurely. Thinking back, I guess during this pregnancy, I got flu often, and one time diaherra for about five days, it lasted that long because the doctor wouldn't give me any medication as I was pregnant, and the same with the flu and cold. So I guess there're constantly bugs in my blood around month 5-6.

For my 1st baby who was born healthy, it was thinking more about how to educate her, and this time, I am thinking about survival, and wants to learn more about how to raise a healthy premature baby. As long as she's growing up healthy and normal, this is all that matters. More info about the Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in the ADHB website.


Other support:

Parent Care - 9th Floor Auckland Hospital (outside NICU)
Ph: 307 4949 wxtn: 25469
Email: prems@ihug.co.nz

They also host playgroup for NICU and SCBU babies, and Mums and Dads Evenings.

Internet Forum
www.everybody.co.nz
--> Communities -->Parenting --> Premature Babies.

TABS (Trauma and Birth Stress)
Email: sue@tabs.org.nz

Books to read with young children

Here's some recommendations from storylines, a Children Literature Charitable Trust of New Zealand:






















A Book of Pacific Lullabies

My Maori Colours

How much sleep does your child need?

Good resources to share:

How much sleep does your child need?

15 months toddler

Time flies.... my baby is already 15 months old! The main thing that concern me now is her education, when should we start teaching her different things like manners, letters or numbers...etc. However I still think it's a bit young to teach her any of that, I'm more concern about what interest her? Saying what we're doing to add her vocaburary of the language, and just go along with her. And try not to say too many 'no' to her, instead use positive languages like teeth are for eating, not biting.

Another thing is health issues, babycentre has a good page on Toddler Symptom Guide that could refer to.

It's time to have a look at our home and possibly re-arranging it.

At eight months old, babies usually range from 25.25 inches long and 15.25 pounds (10th percentile) to 28.5 inches long and 20.5 pounds (90th percentile).

Once your baby starts pulling up on furniture, it's time to inspect your home for rocking chairs, recliners, and anything else on wheels or that's unstable. If your baby tries to pull up on an item that moves, shifts, or falls over, he can go tumbling (and the item can fall on top of him too). Block his access to these unstable items as much as possible using baby gates or simply move the item to a room that is inaccessible to your roaming baby.

- Parenting Weekly

My baby doesn't seem to crawl yet, she seems to be pushing herself backwards or sliding backwards instead of crawling, but heard from a friend that her baby didn't crawl and go straight to walking. She doesn't seem to drink much milk these days, and she starts to understand a few words, it's so exciting!