Sangita Sinha

     We were introduced 14 years ago, I am sure we were.  I don’t remember our first meeting; she was one among dozens of new relatives and 100s of guests at my wedding reception in New Delhi.  In all these years added together we have spent just a couple of months together, and even then it was in a houseful of in-laws.   In English she is simply my sister-in-law.  In Indian English she is my co-sister.  In Hindi she is my jethani, which means she married the elder and I the younger son of the Sinha family.  Sangita Sinha is loyal, tenacious and warm hearted.
     Sangita Sinha is the friend we all wish for, a loyal friend.  She is a reserved person, but once she welcomes you into her heart she won’t let you leave easily.  She rejoices in the highs and mourns the lows, but she always rises above the coolness to bring back the warmth to her friendships.  When her longtime friend lost her husband, Sangita Sinha was right there to help her through this difficult time.  Her friend was fortunate and had many friends to help her.  But years later, she continued to use her tragedy to squeeze sympathy and manipulate her friends.  Sangita Sinha decided to step away from this toxic relationship.  It took a while, and even though Sangita Sinha had let the fires burn out, she reminded herself of all the wonderful qualities that had made them friends in the first place and she took the initiative to reach out and rekindled the flames of their friendship.  Now years later they remain friends.    

     Sangita Sinha is just as tenacious in her life as she is loyal to her friends.  Growing up she was a shy girl with a passion for Indian music and movies.  She will tell you that as a child she had no ambitions in life, but when she got the chance to work in a radio station, just a toehold into that world she clung on with all her might.  Even though she was a daughter-in-law, a wife and a young mother, she eked out time to take care of her baby and to take care of her infant career.  Her passion for music and movies gave her the motivation to hang on and build her career one hand hold at a time.  All it took to climb the mountain, she says, is overcome her shyness.  It took years, but today she is a well-known radio personality.  

     Sangita Sinha is loyal, tenacious and warm hearted.  She lives in a house, but isn’t the mistress of the house, that would be our mother-in-law.  She never seeks the spotlight; she works quietly to make the house a home.  She makes New Delhi a home for me and to all our family near and far.  If all of us in the family are the spokes of a wheel, she is the hub that holds us together even as all of us travel through our lives going separate ways.  If home is where the heart is, her heart is what makes it a home.

     In the years since I met her, we have shared a few laughs, we have shed a few tears, and we have had a few misunderstandings.  Sangita Sinha has been a loyal friend to me, has tenaciously brought closeness to our relationship even though we live half a world away from each other and with her warm heart has made her home, my home.  Today, I can sincerely say that she is not just my sister-in-law, but a sister to me.

Holiday Blessings

Diwali is one of the rare Indian festivals celebrated all over India with great pomp, last year Diwali was on November 5. Rare because it is celebrated the all-over-India celebration, not rare as in it only happens every once so often, much like Christmas it is back every year. One of the things people do is clean their houses – very similar to the idea of spring cleaning. Cleaning also involves repainting the house if needed, especially the exterior. Another part of the festival includes sharing wonderful sweets with friends and families. This is also the time many people buy major purchases such as TV, cars etc, so that they are bought on an auspicious day. People buy new clothes, burst crackers and generally have a good time. It is the time of good cheer in India.

Much like the US, however, India too has latched onto Diwali and the gift giving, new household purchases etc. with great gusto. These days you see signs of sales all over the place. But this could be a byproduct of the fact many young unmarried folks have good paying jobs and next to no expenses because they either live at home with parents (this is pretty much a custom – if a child does not stay at home when living in the same city, the assumption is there was a falling out between parents and their child) they have a lot of disposable income, so shopping is just logical thing to do.

My in-laws live in New Delhi and come from a state called Bihar, where a more important festival per their customs is celebrated six days after Diwali called Chhat – literally meaning sixth. It is an amazing event. My mother-in-law (MIL) tells me that this is the only festival that starts by worshiping the “setting sun” and ends by worshiping the “rising sun”.

One woman in a family fasts for 36 hours, because she believes that this will protect her family from harm and bless them with good fortune. This fast is quite austere, not so much as a sip of water is allowed. From past experience my MIL has learned that eating a big meal before the fast begins doesn’t help, if anything she eats a very simple meal. At the end of the first 24 hours in the evening the family dresses up and sets out to a river, pond, or any other water body to pray to the setting sun. My family has done both, they have gone to a river, which has its own charm because there are numerous other families there for the same reason. Nothing in India happens in a small scale. Another year, they filled up the little pond in the gardens in front of their house and did the prayers there.

Everyone returns home after the evening prayers and life goes on as usual, well for the rest of the family not the woman fasting of course. When my MIL fasts I notice she also becomes very quiet. I don’t know if it is because fasting depletes her energies, or fasting and its purpose makes her introspective as she seeks greater oneness with the powers that be.

This is also the time when loads of sweets are prepared at home, for which preparations have been going on for a day or two, to be distributed to all who come to the family’s celebrations and receive it as “prasaad”. It is quite a production and wonderful to watch all the preparations.

Early next morning (thankfully this is a winter festival so the sun doesn’t rise too early, but we are still talking about 5 am). The family dresses up again and sets off to the water body they prayed at the evening before. My MIL steps into the shallow water and waits for the sun to rise. As you can see in the photos there are several difference things on offer. I do not recollect them all, but among them is milk and fruits. First, my MIL offers the milk and then everyone in the family offers a tiny bit to the river and sun from the same pot. After my MIL finished her prayers she is becomes a holy person and her blessings are eagerly sought.

It makes a lot of sense that the morning prayers, which also signal the end of the fasting, is the time when most people show up. So now we have family, friends, colleagues and I don’t know who else show up. Not every Bihari family will have someone fasting, so when a friend or extended family member is doing it they all come to enjoy the company of friends as is typical of any social gathering and wait for the blessings from my MIL.  Total strangers might walk up and ask for her blessings too. After the prayers people walk up and touch her feet for her blessings. She puts kumkum on their forehead and offers them a small packet of sweets prepared the day before at home.

After everyone returns home, meal preparation is in full swing. My MIL is offered the first meal. If you have ever fasted for 36 hours without so much as a drop of water, you don’t simply dive in and eat a meal. You take a little bite, sip some water and wait for it to settle into your stomach, before taking another bite and so it goes on. It is much like offering water or food to a starving person, you can’t simply fill them up.

November December are also months when flu is in the air, not much different than here in the US. My father-in-law (FIL) had caught a cold just before Diwali. By the time Chhat was over he still hadn’t shaken off the cold, in fact it seemed worse than ever. So much against his wishes, after all who likes to go to the doctors, he was taken for a check up. At the hospital, the doctor was convinced that my FIL needed to be in the hospital for observation because he had weakened (a wonderful part if you are lucky to have access to medical help in India is that the hospitals are happy to keep you on for observation instead of sending you home ASAP). My FIL is nearly eighty years old, so it is not so easy for him to bounce back from illnesses. In their hospital room, the doctor was asking my sister-in-law (SIL) questions about the symptoms and progress of my FIL’s illness. While listening to my SIL, he never took his eyes off my FIL. Suddenly, he shouted out at the nurse to put my FIL on the bed and to use the defibrillator. As it happened, my FIL’s was just about fainting when he was swept onto the bed and revived. They later learned that his heart had stopped for a few seconds before starting again.

What a blessing that this happened in the hospital where he had immediate assistance, or we would most likely not have the joy of sharing our lives with him now. As is the case with any heart or head injury, you cannot tell what damages may occur. At first, my SIL told me that he behaved in a very childlike manner. Another change was if he thought of wanting or doing something, it had to be done NOW! He had lost his concept of time. Before his illness, my FIL’s day had a very structured day, he ate 3 meals plus tea and they were always about the same portion size and about the same time everyday. This of course, made him a very healthy man and added to his chances of a better recovery.

My husband was quite worried. Here we are in the States and there they are in India. First, the news of his illness itself is shocking, then, one is never quite sure if you are getting the whole story here, or the family is glossing over some matter. But more than that, no son or daughter can sit in peace without seeing their parent and assuring oneself of their recovery.

Our last trip to India had happened in summer of 2009 (see Blog http://familyandchildcare.blogspot.com/2009/08/summer-travel-to-india-part-i-bombay.html). This year my oldest is in fifth grade and I thought it might be a good time to visit in the winter and it might be more pleasurable for my kids as well, so they won’t be sweltering in the heat, not to mention, we could escape part of the Wisconsin winter. But I kept dithering about our plans. Hearing of my FIL’s illness the decision was taken out of our hands and we immediately made plans to visit in January.

When my youngest heard we were going to India, it is not his favorite thing because he says, “there is no food in India.” A reason, if you need one, not to raise picky eaters. But he was quite sure he wanted to have Christmas at home in the States. Well his wishes must be quite strong that year; we didn’t get tickets until after Christmas. His birthday is the 29th of December. So the next thing he wanted was that his birthday to be celebrated at home too. But we said we had tickets, so we were going.

We set off to the airport in a limo, it was quite funny, my husband and the driver were loading the limo with our luggage and the limo started to slide down the sloped driveway. The funny part was that both the driver and my husband are hanging on to the limo; like they could stop it was sliding down. When we reached the airport check in, we were at the counter for a really long time, before we discovered that while we had a current passport for my older son, his visa was on the older passport which we did not have with us. So we rented a car and headed back to Madison.

We had to reschedule our flights and guess what, we got tickets for the day after my youngest son’s birthday. So once again, his wish came true. Our next attempt to travel went smoothly enough. We arrived in India and the family bought a cake to re-celebrate my younger son’s birthday, so now he got two birthdays!

It was heartening to see my FIL doing well, he was no longer bedridden, he still had a nasty chest congestion that he couldn’t seem to shake, but with the cold weather it would be a tough fight for the fittest, and given his age, it was slow progress. His words a still a little slurred, he still did not have the concept of time. But even in the two short weeks we spent in India (my kids were thrilled because they skipped the first two weeks of school) we saw much improvement in his health. Which was wonderful to see and especially reassuring for my husband.

My husband encouraged my FIL to go out of the house to feel better and less like an ill patient. My FIL was all for it. It was a little amusing to see him get all dressed up every morning and ask, so what are the plans for today. One of the days, my husband said, today we are going to the Bengali Market for lunch. My FIL clapped his hands together and said, let’s go.

In the past I have only ever since him being like the head of the household serious, he does have a sense of humor, and he took great trouble to spend time with my kids and learn of their interests and talk about things they would be interested in. And at least once during our visit he loved to take me and the kids to the Parliament to eat lunch. My FIL has an office in the Parliament. It is the office for the political party my FIL and MIL have spent much of their life supporting and being active party members. The office in the Parliament is to maintain their political party’s presence. It was interesting to note he is next door neighbors with Sonia Gandhi at the Parliament. We didn’t get a chance to see her.

But now, he wanted us to be a part of many outings. It is hard to say if this change was because he had a near death experience which changes people. Where he thought, well I am now living on extra time, so I am going to use it the way I enjoy best and one of them is spending more time with my family in more fun events. Or if the stroke itself was a cause of the change, where he couldn’t control his impulses to have fun, as mentioned earlier, I think he always had that in him, but didn’t openly express it nor do it very often. But now he was all about having as good a time as he could with his family. I think it is a wonderful change, we get our extra time with him and it is such an enjoyable time too.

This year was the last time my MIL was going to fast during Chhat, she is getting older too, and the severe fast takes quite a toll on the body. Her fasting wasn’t for naught, it kept her family safe.

Kalpana Kanwar, Copyright ©June 2011

Sleepless in Bombay

We won a place in the Interior Design competition – Sharada, Parul and I.

We had 3 weeks to prepare and present our design. Like any other college students we postponed it until the deadline was on top of us. We had 2 days to come up with the design and presentation. Sharada and Parul lived in a dorm with many other architecture students. So we decided it would be best if I stayed over with them for a couple of days. If we needed something for a presentation we had a good chance of finding the materials from other students. We started late in the afternoon, right after our last class of the day. We worked through the night discussing ideas and coming up with a design we all agreed on. The next day, we went to our classes and returned to work on our project again. Now we had to finish the presentation. We stayed up all night for this. By mid morning, just an hour before the deadline we turned in our design.

After 2 days and 2 nights I returned home. As was usual I sat down with my family for tea. I told them about our design entry. After tea, I headed off to the bedroom to look for something. I sat on my bed trying to remember what I had come in for and fell asleep.

When I woke up, my bed was surrounded by 6 firemen.

After tea, my Mom had come in to tell me that all of them were headed off somewhere and since I was staying home, they weren’t going to take the house keys with them. Our front door was a self locking door. After a couple of hours they returned home and rang the doorbell. And rang and rang and rang. They rang it so much, that it actually broke down. Now they were really worried about me and wondered if something had happened. The neighbors had come out to see what was going. Someone suggested climbing over the balcony and entering through a window. This wasn’t really much of an option, as our apartment was on the 13th floor.

After some more waiting around and talking with our neighbors, my parents called the emergency number. Soon, a fire engine came, lights flashing, horn blowing and swung into our little compound. Now the whole building was curious as to what was going on. People spilled out of the building, a few were in the landing on our floor.

The firemen charged up, asked everyone to stand back and kicked open the door. By now it was late in the evening, so it was dark in the apartment. Torches on, they barged into the apartment and finding no funny business they let my family in. My Dad came and touched me. I up and found 6 firemen around my bed. Boy, were they cute.

You see, right after I went into the bedroom, I fell asleep. I don’t even remember lying down to rest or sleep. But after 2 nights of no sleep and intense work, I was so wiped out that I didn’t hear a thing until my Dad came in to wake me up.
Later my youngest sister told me how exciting it all was - the fire engine coming blaring through, the men kicking the door in, the whole shebang. She was the only one who thoroughly enjoyed the whole drama.

Blackberry Blues

There was a time when I did not carry or even own an appointment calendar. Any contacts I wanted to keep were simply written down on a piece of paper. Of course, then life was simpler too. I was in college and other than family, friends and school there wasn’t anyone else in my world.

My first Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) was Palm Zire and I don’t remember why I bought it. My guess would be that after marriage and kids life got a little more complex – doctor’s appointments, school dates etc and there was no way I could carry all that around in my head. Paper seemed too retro, so electronic it was. I liked my Palm Zire, it was only Black-and-White, but did the job. One of the best things I liked about it was the 2 way sync with the Palm’s Desktop Manager. Since the syncing was with software developed by Palm themselves, it was quite smooth. No duplicates. Best of all, I could enter major information, use cut and paste on the desktop and just update my handheld, instead of slowly entering with a stylus.

After a while, I thought to get myself upgraded and got Palm Life Drive. I was already a fan of Palm, so decided to simply go with them. I have to say, I didn’t spend any time researching other than to go to the store and check out their Palm products and choose one of them. Why Life Drive you ask?

First, it was Palm. Second, it was now colored. So I could have a different color of each of us in the family and I managed all our appointments. By now our contact lists had also grown. The simple fact that my husband and I merged our contacts, and then add on various jobs, internships and friendships along the way, and our contact list was growing too. My original paper system may have continued to work, but when I could have it all in my fingertips why not.

Third, it still synched with a Palm Desktop Manager. And what’s more transferring all my information from the Zire to the Life Drive was a snap. A fourth cool thing about the Life Drive was that you could actually use your stylus and write notes as you would on paper.
The Life Drive came with a huge memory capacity and I thought it might be nice to use as a backup device too. And it worked great.

The down side to the Life Drive was that it was a chunky thing to carry around, and the mode of entry using stylus had changed. So I didn’t even bother to learn the new stylus entry system and simply used the keyboard on the PDA to enter data.

But then sometime last year, my computer crashed. After I had it fixed, I tried synching my Life Drive and nothing. I took it in to the Geeks and they didn’t have any answer. Then I learnt that Palm would no longer support the Desktop Manager programs. The drop deadline was sometime February of this month. So I thought it might be time to look for something else in the market. If the Life Drive wasn’t going to be functional, then I needed something else.

So off to the store I went. I learnt that nobody makes simple old PDAs anymore. Everything is a Smart Phone - an oxymoron if I ever heard one. Well that threw a wrench in my plans. I wanted to stay with Palm if possible. But if I had to combine it with a phone, I wanted to stay with Verizon. Palm had just introduced the Palm Pre with AT&T. But I gave priority to the phone company. Now I wonder why, considering the fact that I have the smallest calling plan on my phone and it works just fine for me. So obviously I am not using my phone a lot.

After a very brief consideration, the choices were iPhone or Blackberry according to my Facebook poll. Don’t get me wrong, I love Apple products and I think they work great together. It’s when you mix the Apple and PC worlds I feel things go wrong. But this is from experience several years ago. For all I know things are markedly different now.

As you can probably tell, this is leading to the Blackberry. I figured, it has been around a long time and they know what they are doing. Blackberry was one of the first names I recall hearing things like “I can’t live without my Blackberry.” “People who have Blackberry’s just love them.”
So again without any further ado, I purchased a Blackberry Storm 2. I was eligible to get a phone upgrade from Verizon and yet, I paid for the phone. The sales agent told me I will get a rebate in the mail. Nope, didn’t happen. So now I have a phone that I paid for. Who does that anymore?

Now begins the great adventure. First, we had to find a way to transfer data to the Blackberry. Turns out if I used MS Outlook, this would be a snap. Now MS Outlook is only available with the Professional Version of Office and is quite expensive. So obviously Blackberry was not meant for the Mom market. Then it turned out if I used a Google calendar I could sync it to my Blackberry. But I could not transfer from my Palm to Google calendar. So I just decided to simply start using Google calendar going forward and synch with my Blackberry. The Google calendar itself is quite sophisticated and allowed me the same color coordinated entries as Palm did. Unfortunately when it synchs with the Blackberry, everything is black.

This was the easy part. Let go of the past and look forward regarding appointments. What to do with the contacts? Again, apparently it would sync great with MS Outlook. I can’t say because I never went that route. Blackberry claims they can synch with the Google contacts. But if you look at the data entry modes in the Blackberry and Google contacts they do not match, so if you synch with Google contacts, it shows up as one continuous line of information on the Blackberry. But that wasn’t even a problem yet. I simply did not keep contacts on Google, except to save email addresses. It was not my address book.

I tried to do some research. I am sorry I won’t be able to tell you the whole miserable experience, but just let me say, I had to export files from my Palm in a certain format, go to Yahoo and convert them to another format and then try to import them into the Blackberry. Didn’t work. So I took my Blackberry back to the agent and asked for his help. He had this neat device where he could copy from one of those files from Yahoo or whatever and transfer them onto my Blackberry. It worked. Sort of.

So now I had a bunch of contacts on my Blackberry, most of the information was intact, but it was in a mess. For example, the address would show up as one long line – 800 Washington St,New York,NY. Considering we have a lot of international contacts and some of those addresses appeared thus – 14 International St,near tall pillar,behind well,City,Country,Zip.
But I was not ready to give up hope. I figured I had reached as far as I could with the trying to upload data business. So I went through each contact and painfully corrected each one. The frustrating part was that some of these contacts would randomly return to their original mess. Finally, I would simply delete that record and create a new one. That seemed to work better.
Since I had to take care of synching etc, I downloaded Google Sync for Mobile and synced stuff. Voila my calendar appeared albeit all black text. But then I realized that my contacts were messed up again. Why, because it had downloaded every single email from my Google account as contact and managed to mess up several of my other contacts.

Well this was the learning part, so I don’t mind so much. I realized I could go in and choose not to synch my contacts with anything, just synch the calendar. This worked quite well for sometime. Until one day, I turned on the phone and it said, would you like to upgrade to system whatever. I said yes. It went through its song and dance and when all was done, my calendar looked fine, but my contacts were a disaster. Now I had multiple entries for several people. Now I can understand if Mary Smith is copied from my Facebook contact, Gmail contact, etc. But why duplicate even the ones I already had on the phone. So now I could have as many as 6 Marys. Mary, Mary Smith (only email address), Mary Smith (all contact), Mary Smith (again). How do I know it copied its own self too?

See the wonderful thing about Palm contacts was that you could create categories, and I am not sure how executives do it, but as a Mom, my people categories were simple. Family, Friends, Neighbors, Work, Doctor, etc. You get the point. Well in the Blackberry too you could create categories, but if you created Home and selected Mary Smith, it would ask which phone number do you want to add. It would not include the whole information. Basically, I had to divide Mary Smith into Home, Work, etc. Who operates like that? Even in the business world, I would imagine if you know someone and have their contact information, both personal and professional, you are likely to categorize them in the category you are most likely to look for them. If they are personal friends, maybe FRIENDS works and if you need to call them at work, you just look up your friend’s work number. If they are business contacts, maybe BUSINESS works. But wouldn’t you want to have all of Mary Smith’s information in that one category you went to? And the whole point of categories is to break down your contacts into manageable lists. For example, if I am looking my doctor’s number, if I simply chose the category DOCTOR, there it would be within just a handful of names. At least, that is how Palm did it.

So I soon realized that categories in Blackberry are a dud. If I am wrong, please tell me. But now I had this long list of people in my contact list. And no matter how many contacts you have in your list, you don’t use more than a dozen on a regular basis. It was a pain to scroll through so many names. So the top 10 names became A Mary Smith, A John Doe. You get the idea, since they now started with A they would jump to the top of the list and voila no more scrolling, there they were in the screen.

Now going back to my story about duplicating records, I knew it duplicated my own records because I had 2 A Mary Smith, 2 A John Doe, etc. But I wondered why did this happen anyway, just because I upgraded the software on the phone.
Turns out that upgrading reverts all the settings to some default and it synched calendar and contacts (from various sources such as Facebook, email accounts and apparently itself). So I had to go back and deselect the option to synch contacts yet again. And once again I had to scroll through the contact list and delete the duplicates and unwanted contacts. This took me a whole hour. Since I had already done this once before, you can imagine I was not pleased.

How long have I had the phone? Barely 6 months and in this time, I had trouble finding a smooth way to transfer data from Palm to Blackberry. Now Blackberry has its own Desktop Manager. But all this does is let you use your Blackberry phone as a USB drive and copy files into it – the obsession seems to be media files. And create backup files of the data on your phone. Which I can see will be useful, if I need to reinstall that in my phone or a new phone sometime. But there is no desktop program where I can view what is on my Smart Phone. So any information I enter is typed in awkwardly and without copy and paste, is quite slow going. Now I know people text a lot these days and probably find this funny. But I do not text. I prefer a voice at the end of my phone or an email.

It is nice to be able to check my email and Facebook accounts on my Blackberry. But really they weren’t essential to my being. What I really wanted was a reliable phone, color coordinated calendar and contact list. I have the phone part, but the rest is sadly lacking.

Now I hear Palm has released a phone with Verizon and they do not have a Desktop Manager for it and suggest using Google calendar too. However, there are 3rd party software that will synch Palm to a Desktop Manager similar to the one Palm had or to Palm’s own Desktop Manager. Or so they claim. I am waiting to hear more on that. As an aside, did you hear they had a phone contest and the Palm Pre won - http://blog.laptopmag.com/march-smart-phone-madness-game-13-palm-pre-plus-vs-htc-hd2

Another feature I have not been able to understand is the Silent mode. When I chose my phone to be silent, not vibrate, not low, but SILENT, it won’t ring if I get a call, but every time a Facebook or email pops in, it beeps. Silence means silence, not beep sometimes.

Then the phone comes loaded with all these features, which just seem so redundant. Different programs seem to do the same thing. I am sure people have their favorites and don’t use all of them. Wouldn’t it make sense to only get the ones you use and make them work well rather than have a dozen programs that work somewhat inadequately.

Take voice activation, the button is on the side, very convenient. All you have to do is say, call Mary and voila. Now I will admit I may have a slight accent, but not enough to stump the phone. So I say, call Mary, it asks do you mean John? Whaaa? Oh, and I have even asked my born and bred American friends to try it, same results. Meanwhile, my husband has a Droid and the voice feature on it works just fine when we talk into it. So it is not my accent, it is the program.

I like that I can record a voice memo, I am sorry to lose the ability to scribble a note (no stylus).

As a first time owner of a Blackberry Smart Phone, I must say I am not impressed.

Baby Care - 5

Pacifiers
I don’t believe in them. If they are going to self soothe, I much rather they learn to use their fingers or thumb. For one thing, when they learn use their fingers, you don’t have to keep searching for a pacifier and making sure it’s clean. Just wash their hands a few times in the day and no searching. Next, when they start crawling around they have to use their hands to crawl and pick up things etc, so they can’t have their fingers in their mouth at the same time and so without really doing anything about it, they will quit putting their fingers/thumb in their mouth or at least reduce their dependence on it significantly. Stats say most kids like over 95% stop thumb-sucking by 1 year of age on their own without any assistance.

With a pacifier you are stuck and you actually have to do something about having them break that habit. For one thing they can have it in their mouth and crawl around and pick up toys etc. Second, if they use it to fall asleep (most common use) then you have to get up and put in their mouth till they are old enough to do it themselves. How many wakings is that? The average person supposedly wakes up 3 or 4 times in the night. So with a baby (even when she has finally learned to sleep through the night) you could be waking up to put a pacifier in. What a pain. I say, go natural. Let her find her thumb herself. D2 was using his thumb since he was 3 months old, as soon as he could get his fingers in his mouth. Before then he would randomly suck on his hands. It’s a great help, he soothes himself to sleep so well. I don’t have to look for pacifiers, or boil them or anything.

Many parents talk about the pacifier soothing their baby. This is somewhat true, since at such a young age, nursing or feeding is such a comforting time for the kid. But in another way, everytime the kid talks (cries at this age), we shut them up with the pacifier. I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem nice.

I know many parents swear by it. I still say, go with what you think feels better. I choose to differ, but that is just me.

Solid Foods
Regarding solids, I started with rice cereal first. I used Earth's Best Organic Rice cereal. It has a bit of texture (looks like tiny rice flakes) rather than the Gerber one which looks like rice powder.

But first you have to watch for signs of readiness. Our doctor said you can start solids anytime between 4 and 6 months. You don’t want to start too early if they are not capable of swallowing well they can choke more and also there is danger of allergies developing later in life or so some studies say, and is it really worth it, if it only means waiting a month or two to feed your baby solids. Many parents believe feeding solids makes your baby sleep through the night. I say, one is not related to the other. If your baby’s brain development is at the point to sleep through the night, then she will, otherwise she won’t.

You also don’t want to wait too long because there is a window of opportunity to introduce solids and if your miss this they can get hung up on textures and refuse to eat. As babies grow older they start having opinions, imagine that, and the older they get the stronger their opinions. Babies see everything in black and white. Yes, they want it, or no, you can forget about it.

Signs of Readiness
So what are these signs of readiness to eat solids. Both D1 and D2 ate well almost from the start. I like to believe because I really waited until all the signs of readiness were there.

First – They must at least double their birth weight. This is an easy one.

Second - Around 4 months babies also start drooling more (teething etc), when they start drooling lesser (this is really a question of their ability to swallow and a little tricky, because when the teeth come closer to erupting the drooling really increases a lot). You see, when babies are drinking milk, they are not swallowing, the milk is simply squirting down their throats.
Watch for signs like when the baby burps does it always drip out of her mouth or does she swallow up small burps. If she is swallowing well, that is a good sign she is getting ready to start eating.

Third sign - Does she like to watch you eat. D1 will stop anything he is doing as soon as someone is eating near him. He watches very intently. And even works his mouth sometimes like he is chewing.

Finally - Is she drinking tons more milk (I guess the official word is more than 32 oz – D1 never got close to that number so I think that number is way too high) suddenly and remains hungry or needs more feeds for more than a week. Start solids. Most important, she should be able to hold her head steady. Its not necessary for her to be able to sit by herself, but should be able to hold her head steady when picked up.

For their first solid feed (just like with bottle introduction) start when they are not full of milk but not quite hungry for their next meal. Because it is a lot of work to eat and a slow process if the baby is hungry she will not have the patience to eat it and will get frustrated and associate that feeling with solids. So between meals is the best time.

For a few days D2 ate a small amount of cereal between meals. But it was soon obvious he could eat well, so I would feed him at his feed time but before he asked for it. That is I waited till about 2 to 3 hours (depending on when the naps fell in between) and then fed him cereal before he cried for a meal.

Anyhow, I started with some rice cereal mixed with breast milk (since D2 hadn’t had formula yet). You can also use water and formula of course. With D1 I used formula since he was mixed fed with breast milk and formula. The more nutrition the better I feel. But all baby cereals are fortified with iron so she might get constipated right away. Don’t feed too much rice cereal even if she is good at eating it, rice is binding and doesn’t help with constipation. I still mixed only about enough in 1 to 2 oz of milk, even if D2 could eat up more. Too much iron is constipating. Besides let their bodies adjust to the new food and learn to digest it slowly.

Most importantly, introduce foods one at a time. I usually wait a week for each new food introduced. I started the boys on their cereal at about 4.5 months. They both ate well almost from the start. The reason for at least a week or more between new foods is simple, if your baby develops rashes or other symptoms, you know right away which foods are doing this. D1 didn’t do well with peaches and that fruit family when he was little. It was a standing joke in his daycare, that he was an exotic kid, because I had to hunt up fruits like mango, papaya, etc for him.

The second week I started with yellow vegetables - squash. After he took that well ( a couple of days) I let him eat as much as he wanted to (so it would take the place of a nursing or bottle at daycare. The vegetables have enough fiber in them to counter the constipation of the iron in the cereal. I tried to keep the proportion of vegetables and cereal about 50-50 and maybe a little more vegetables than cereal.

Until they are 6 months old they are still supposed to be primarily on milk. So even though D2 was doing so well and would love to eat all day long, I waited till he was 6 months before adding another solids meal time in the day. But I continued to introduce one new food at a time.
With D1 I started with Rice cereal, Banana (really ripe one squashed up), apple sauce ( you can do regular apple sauce by the time they are 9 months or so), yellow vegetable, sweet potato, then green vegetables - beans, peas. Then other fruits - pears etc. D1 had a reaction to the pears, peaches, apricots - all fruits of that family. So I quit and started guava, mango, papaya (I guess he wanted to be an exotic baby).

Bananas are constipating too and D2 became constipated with his cereal in the beginning so instead of fruit I started with vegetables. Rice cereal, squash, carrots, oatmeal cereal, sweet potatoes and then fruits - banana, apple, pears etc., then peas, beans. You don’t want to start your baby with fruits, they might like the sweet fruit taste and reject plain veggies. But you also don’t want to introduce green vegetables since they are harder to digest, so the sweeter vegetables seem the way to go, squash, sweet potatoes etc. By the time they have tried through all these foods, they are ready for the pre-made baby pastas or really your own food, make sure it is very soft and mashed up.

I tried to buy organic foods as often as possible. Other than the cereals, I did use Gerber foods too. They don’t have preservatives so they are probably fine too. Now they have an organic line as well. The organic brand we got was Earth's Best and I don’t know if there are others, doesn’t have many food choices and seems to me they offer mixed foods (mixed vegetables or lasagna) etc more. And since babies are supposed to start eating one food at a time the organic ones didn’t always work out. (I am talking about 6 years ago, by now I am sure things have already changed and there are more choices and more readily available).

Self Feeding
No matter how good they are about eating, it is still messy. Those cute bibs - useless. In my opinion you have 2 options - feed them naked easy to wash the whole baby off and you don’t have to take food stains out of their clothes or get one of those long bibs that covers almost their whole body. I used cotton diapers, the ones that are not pre-folded. Works great. It just drapes over D2's whole body. They stay messy eaters for a really long time.

They have to start feeding themselves at some point. And if you don’t use a bib much they will resist it later. Although 6 months is still early, you can go the naked route in the beginning and try the bib when she is ready to sit on the high chair by herself.

D2 loved to grab the spoon and feed himself. He hindered more than helped at this point. So I offered him his own spoon to wave around. This was a really good idea. Because pretty soon after he sat on his own and ate, he would want to feed himself (couldn’t do it, but try telling him that). So with D1 I would give him his own bowl and a spoon with a little food in it and then my bowl and feed him from that. He loved to try and feed himself (couldn’t get anything in for a long time, but loved trying) and only then would be let me feed him (they do want to survive). And I say, when they want to feed themselves go with it. It gets truly messy, but if you don’t encourage that phase they will come to believe only you can feed them and then you are stuck for a long time. Feeding themselves is not really a concept many Indian families have, and I have seen many an Indian kid who won’t feed themselves even at 3 and 4 years old!!!! So this is a real danger.

With D1 and D2 I didn’t use a high chair. When they were ready to sit well on their own, I had a tiny table and stool (backed up to a corner) so he wouldn’t tip over and have support to sit him on. D1 loved the independence of sitting down himself and getting up. Instead of being strapped in. Do you realize how often we strap up our kids like prisoners, in the car, in the stroller, and in the high chair? In fact, they spend a very small part of their early childhood being free.
They will try to get up between meals sometimes, but you keep reminding them and holding their hands to bring them back to sit down. And so long as you don’t offer them any food anywhere other than at the table, they soon figure out they have to sit and eat. This is a really good idea, because they do understand they have to eat at the table. In a high chair they are strapped in, it isn’t something they learn, it is something that happens to them. So when they outgrow it they don’t always know to sit down and you have to teach them that whole idea anyway. Teaching them limits is more effective then tying them up I believe. With D1 we didn’t even baby proof our house other than some basic precautions, we just set limits (we did use visual or other apparent barriers), but not exactly physical barriers for everything and never had trouble with D1 playing with wires or things like that. It really works. It seems like more work because strapping them is so easy. But one time or the other you have to do it and it is easier when they are younger and more malleable and get the idea than when they are older and stronger and faster.

Baby Care - 4

Nursing
Here is a big stress/worry factor - nursing. After D2 I realized I could have done better with D1.

You know, I really don’t remember much of day 1 for both D1 and D2. They did sleep a lot, and I don’t know how often I tried to nurse them. Then on day 2 they are really vocal. So I had D1 latched on the whole time. This unfortunately set up a vicious cycle, where he nursed and slept and nursed and slept in short intervals and I got no rest and I don’t think I produced enough milk in a 1/2 hour to feed him enough, so he was hungry soon and so on.

With D2, I got lucky, not because I was smarter, but when I was at the hospital, my nurse that day was a lactation consultant and she said, all 2 day old babies are hungry and cry. You just nurse him every 2 hours (meaning start times 10, 12, 2, 4, 6 etc). She said, I could nurse him for upto 40-45 minutes at a time if I wanted to, but I needed to get the rest too. So that is what I did. Trust me there was a lot of crying that 2nd day. But by day 3 my milk was in just fine and we got to nursing every 2 hours. At first I still nursed about 40 minutes each time and this slowly reduced and we are down to 15-20 minutes a nurse now.

D2 tended to fall asleep during nursing a lot during the first few days, so I kept waking him up so he would get a belly full, so we wouldn’t fall into the same cycle as with D1. This worked well for me. Ways to keep the baby awake - try to burp him often, change his diaper in between changing breasts (mid-bottle), tickle his toes, get him naked (they hate that when they are little), tickle his ears, jiggle him gently.

I also had to wake him up a lot during the first couple of weeks to nurse him. Not longer than a 3 hour interval at first. Later I let him sleep as long as he wanted in the night and had a 4 hour limit during the day. If he sleeps longer than that I wake and nurse him. My babies were born on the little side, so no surprise, I was concerned about them gaining as much weight as possible, not to mention the doctor and nurses also made it sound like a positive thing that the more weight the better since they were not so big to begin with. Today, I don’t know if it was necessary to wake him up for a feeding when he was ready to keep on sleeping. It seems their bodies would know when to sleep and eat. And while as parents we want to try and place a pattern to it, I don’t know that we have to be regimental about it.

I know they say feed on demand and I did do that, but there was a 2 hour limit (once in a while I would do 1.5 hours, but no less). Other than that, I nursed round the clock every 2 hours if needed. If he cried before, I would try to soothe him or just let him cry it out and just sit by him and gently stroke him and talk with him. I have done so much better with nursing and he is definitely gaining weight quite well.

Sore Nipples
You will get sore nipples. For one thing the baby nurses for 40 minutes each time about 10 times a day, that’s a lot of nursing. Later on your nipples are not sore, I don’t think it is because they harden or toughen up, but the baby is simply not nursing as long. Also, the first couple of months, your milk will come in copious amounts. Way more than the baby needs and this all overflows. Especially, with the first baby. With D1, I couldn’t keep my clothes dry. With D2 I only leak when I nurse.

When your nipples are leaking constantly and all that nursing is going on, they are never dry it seems and this makes them really sore and even painful to nurse. So much that you might seriously consider quitting. I am not kidding. I tried using pads, not wearing a bra and just changing my shirt, so my nipples were not in a wet bra or pads the whole time. But be careful too much no bra will make your breasts sag because they are so heavy with milk.

Another reason for sore nipples early on is, the babies have such little mouths and they are just able to suck on your nipple, which gets painful and sore easily. Later as they grow, their mouths latch on to the breast and not pull on the nipple. So the soreness goes away.

When I was nursing with D2 and was home, I would use one of those little ziploc 4oz containers and stick it under my bra and nurse on the other side. This way all the milk leaking collects in the container and I am dry. I don’t know if you can wear these all day or not. But it’s worth a try, if they will keep your nipples drier and out of friction with your shirt. Or you may get lucky and not leak as much.

Finally a note on to nurse or not to nurse. I think sometimes it works like a charm, sometimes you have to work at it. Sometimes, it is simply not meant to be. Despite what lactaction experts tell you, I believe (I don't have any proof of this) that some women do not produce enough milk to feed their babies adequately. Accept where you are and you will reduce so much stress from you life and enjoy your baby more.

Baby Care - 3

Bathing
Regarding bathing, the baby's doctor will probably tell you no water baths for the baby until the umbilical cord drops off (about a couple of weeks) - just 'dry cleaning' until then. One thing to take note is to make sure to clean the neck and behind the ears everyday. D1 never got chubby so I never had trouble with his neck. But D2 was quite chubby and even when I think I have cleaned his neck properly, I still find stuff in there. You really have to make them turn their head this way and that (they don’t like it one bit), but the stuff that settle in their necks makes their skin red.

Lotion
My pediatrician is a very strong advocate about this and I agree, no lotions of any sort, no matter how natural the claim on the bottle. I just use almond oil (any organic oil will do - coconut and in a crunch even olive oil). I buy almond oil from an Asian grocery store, much cheaper than getting it from a wholefoods kind of store. J&J Mineral oil is a big fat No No. The molecules are too fine and tend to plug the pores, as compared to the organic oils which are literally fatter and stay on the surface where they need to be to provide a protective layer.
A new baby has very dry and thin skin. So I would put a little oil on it, but not on the creases (which look so red and raw). This goes away though and in a week or so the skin starts looking better (may still be dry though).

Soap
My pediatrician repeated this to me almost every time I took the baby in. The best soap is Ivory soap. Plain old ivory soap. Not even J&J baby soap. Ivory soap is supposed to be the most gentle soap in the market. I used it for both D1 and D2 and it certainly didn’t dry out their skin.

Ear Infections
Here I will unfortunately be of very little help. I was lucky enough that D1 and D2 didn’t get their first ear infection until Kindergarten. Which is apparently quite common.

Colds
When they do get colds, you know they can’t have any medications so the best you can do is use the little bulb to clear their nasal passages. Especially before nursing or feeding, so they can drink some milk. For sleep, when D1 was in the crib, I would hang his mattress so it was on a higher rung on one side and a lower one of the other side (just one rung apart though). Then make sure to put him to bed at the bottom of the crib, so his feet are close to the end. He is going to slide down anyway, but this way I can be sure he won’t get buried under a blanket or something. In the cradle I put a big book under one end to make a slight angle. It helps them breath easier.

Diaper Bags
I got a big bag from Lands End. It was nice, but I usually don’t need to use such a big bag. But that is because I really didn’t take the baby out for long periods of time. I usually did really short excursions between meals. So most feedings were at home for example, I rarely fed him outside the home. But depending on how you plan to spend your days you may want to think of the size of the bag. They are useful (although I don’t carry mine all the time). But one thing I would recommend if you think you will be using yours a lot is getting one that is like a backpack. It is quite a pain to have a bag hang from one shoulder and balance the baby on the other side, especially when you have to carry the baby in the carseat. It seems the bag is constantly slipping off. Big pain.

Sleeping
For sleeping I referred to a book called Sleeping Through the Night by Jodi Mindell. I read the book and then took stuff from Your Self-Confident Baby by Magda Gerber and Allison Johnson and developed my own plan for self-soothing and started from there. Go with what feels right for you. But remember don’t chose an option just because you are chicken about making tough decisions for your kid. Some tough love goes a long way in keeping both of you sane.
When I was expecting D1 I read and read up stuff. I knew nothing about babies. The stuff I am writing are things that worked for me and helped me out.

Baby Care - 2

Bottle Feeding
I decided to breastfeed. But it was very difficult. I can now admit to myself that I was not one of those women who produce copious amounts of milk. And if I had a do-over, I would still nurse, but supplement with formula, even if it meant that I would have become dry faster.

I respect people's decision to bottle feed (pretty much everyone else in my family did), but there is something special about nursing too, the thought that you are producing the essential food for your baby and providing all kinds of immunity for them. But aside from that, it just as wonderful to bottle feed them when they cuddle up with you.

When my kids were a few months, they both had to do some bottle feeding when I returned to work and they went to day cares. For bottles we decided to go with the bottles where you put in a liner. I knew before D1 would be a year old we would be traveling to India. While I would have to sterilize the nipples myself, at least eliminating the bottles for sterilizing was a huge break.

Regarding nipple selection, there are tons of them out there, but I chose the bottle with the liner and they only have a couple of nipples to choose from, I offered it to my kid and that was that. I don't think kids are as fussy about nipples and stuff as the manufacturers would like us to believe. When the babies are hungry, the milk is the right temperature, and it flows through when they suck = Happy Baby

It ended up having another advantage I had never thought of, as they got a little older and were able to sit up. They liked to drink from their bottle sitting up, whether I was holding them or they were sitting up by themselves. Since the liner simply works on suction, they can keep sucking the nipple and the milk with keep flowing. One of by boys also like to keep sucking even when the milk was over. Just for the fun of it. BTW, also easier to get the air out of the bottle.

The reason I say this was an unexpected surprise was because when I switched them to cups, the never noticed that they had to sit up now as opposed to lying down to drink.

Another decision I made with D1 and later with D2 was to switch them from milk bottles to bottles with straws. For one thing they have a very similar look, although it still takes them a couple of tries to figure out how to suck through the straw. Again, they didn't have to learn yet another thing, tip the cup to drink. They simply held the bottle straight like they did with their milk bottle and drank.

My reasoning for a straw bottle was again our trip to India. I didn't want to carry a bunch of sippy cups and a package of straws is so much easier to handle. Not to mention any place we go I could get my kids to drink even in the absence of a sippy cup. Those days, people in India still did the simple way, kids didn't use sippy cups. Nowadays, they are pretty common.

Sleeping
D2 was so good about sleeping I forgot how consuming an issue it can be. D1 was really difficult in that regard. Babies sleep 16 hours the first few days, I don't know when those hours were when D1 was a baby. You may get lucky and get a sleeper.

But if you don't, just remember one thing, whatever method you choose to soothe the baby you are going to be stuck with it for a long time. So choose wisely. Walking the floor and rocking and singing seems very easy when they are only 8 lbs and fall asleep in 5 minutes. Soon they are 15 lbs and getting bigger and take longer to fall asleep and before you know it, you are pacing the floor for an hour and more, and several times in the night. So do think about this one issue seriously.

We decided that D1 and D2 had to learn to soothe themselves as soon as they were 6 weeks old. This can become a major issue if you get a sleep resister, like D1 was and still is at 10 years old. Especially because it cuts into your rest, and I believe you cannot be a good parent when you are sleep deprived and exhausted (some amount of exhaustion is to be expected, but not to the point where it begins to affect judgement, which is what was happening with D1).

Putting babies down to sleep has nothing to do with the debate on holding babies. I believe when they are awake and they want to be held, hold them. They like being held up and being able to see the world from a different view. But if they are happy and staring at the wall and not fussing, let them be. Even if you cannot understand what is so fascinating about the wall, so what, let your baby have her enjoyment.

Another thing to remember is baby's sleeping patterns are not uniform. That is just because they started sleeping through the night at 6 weeks, doesn't mean that at 3 months he will not start fussing again at night. Usually, babies have sleep disruptions during growth spurts - brain growth wise. This is especially stark when they are about 9 months old. That is the first time, they begin to recognize, familiar faces and strangers. And for the first time they become uncomfortable with strangers. They usually start waking up at night again for a few weeks.

More on baby sleeping myths. They are not quiet, in fact, they are quite noisy, even when sound asleep. In that first year, when they go from sleeping 16 hour days to 4 naps a day and down to 2 naps a day. That again doesn't happen on some predetermined schedule written in a book. I believe if you find some balance between learning your kids tired cues and sticking to some kind of pattern regarding sleep times and rituals, they will do reasonably well. Will this work every sleep time? No! For one thing, they may be getting ready to give up a naptime. They can't do this overnight. So some days they will nap 3 times, some days 2 times, some days 3 times, but one really short one. It takes a while. Sometimes they won't nap, but you know they need their rest, so you can say, even if you don't want to nap, this is rest time and you can lie down quietly and/or look at a book. Many times, just quieting down puts them to sleep, if not, they have still rested enough so the rest of they is not painful for all.

Another debate is co-sleeping. People all over the world do it, it is natural. However, that doesn't mean it is always the best choice. I started co-sleeping with D1, but like I mentioned earlier, I don't know when his 16 hours of sleep began. So within a few short days, I was so sleep deprived I was walking around like a zombie. One night he fussed in bed and I thought I nursed them. I heard him fussing again and thought, didn't I just feed him. I hadn't fed him, what I had done was fling the comforter away from me and it was over him. That's when I decided sitting up at night and feeding him was better than having him with me. We both actually did better after I moved him to his own crib, although he was still in our room.

The hardest part of parenting at this time is not having any control on your own time. It is so totally tied to your baby's schedule. And if that isn't bad enough, you get a million comparisons from people about how this baby is doing this and that baby is doing that. Sometimes we get so caught up with that and start feeling guilty that you are not being a good enough parent. You should be doing more. But the simple truth is, you are doing just fine with your kid if you enjoy being with him.

Unfortunately, because we don't know what we are doing most of the time we start feeling guilty. Remember this, parenting is about feeling worried and guilty all the time. If you can overcome this emotion, you are home free, the rest is easy.

Baby Care - 1

When my first baby boy was born, like many other moms, I read a ton of books, got wanted and unwanted advice from family and friends. At that time I was also big into keeping notes on my babies growth. So as a natural byproduct for me, I started to keep notes on things I found useful from various books, websites, friends, and family. The places are too numerous to list, and this was 10 years ago, so I couldn't even track down references if I wanted to.

I found my own notes useful when my second baby boy came. Its amazing how much I had to read through them again and again. I have also passed these notes around to friends who have told me it was quite useful to them. I know of at least one friend to forwarded it to her friend. For all I know, this stuff is now randomly floating around in cyberspace going from new mom to new mom. If so, I am so happy for them if they find any of it useful.

Enough of about this and now to my notes...

Cloth Diapers
I used them with my first baby D1 the first 2 months but not with my next baby D2. D1 was so sensitive to the cloth diapers that he would wake up every time he was wet (other babies I know just sleep right through), so little D1 did not get to sleep well for the first 2 months. I guess he just did not like that damp feeling. Not that I blame him. As soon as I switched to disposables, he started sleeping better. It might have been great for toilet training, because D1 was already starting to cry before he peed even at 2 months. But since he was going to be in daycare all day, and in the Us people don't believe in toilet training kids this early, there was no point in pursuing it. But maybe if I was a stay at home mom. Don't believe all those myths about toilet training can't happen till they are 3 years old. I have seen 6 or 7 month old babies in India, who cry and then when taken to the bathroom do their business there. No diapers nothing. Do accidents happen, you bet. But think about how many diapers and landfills you save.

Wipes
With both my boys I used large cotton rounds (the kind you use for make up etc), with warm water for the first few weeks. No commercial wipes for at least 2 months. Their skins are so sensitive that even the no alcohol, no scent etc version causes rashes. It did for both my babies.
Changing diapers - Just change the baby every time she wakes. Dont worry if she poops and then promptly falls asleep. If you are nursing, her poop will not cause a rash and when they are this little the sleep is more important than changing the diaper.

Crying Baby
Babies may cry because they are hungry, have to burp, need to poop (this is an ordeal for some reason), need to sleep (they need to soothe themselves like this for some reason). If you pay attention and take a few moments to figure out what they need when they cry, you will soon be able to figure out the differences in their cries. They are actually different for hunger, sleep, burp, poop. Its their own special language. Ask any mom who's babies have outgrown that stage, they can read those signs just fine in other babies, even if they were too emotionally close to do it for their own, like me.

Talk to Your Baby
Talk to the baby about everything related to them in a normal voice and avoid nonsense words or mangling them. Especially things you are going to do to them or when they are around. Like if you are going to turn the tap on, and she is in the room or you are holding her, let her know in words that you are going to turn the tap on. D1 used to cry at sudden sounds, but when I talked to him about it, he was calm, but if I forgot to tell him he still cried. This will serve you well as they grow up. For eg., always tell the baby when you are leaving them and will be back after whatever task is done, or time or whatever. Just remind them you will return. When they are real little they don’t react to this much, because they don’t really understand it. That's the best time to start, because they start getting used to hearing it. But soon enough they will understand your words and still cry because they don’t want to be separated. But what this will teach them very early in life is that you will come back to them. Don’t forget to add this, I am leaving, but I will be back before your nap or after your nap or whatever and Daddy, friend whoever will take care of you. They need to learn that you will return, and they will not learn this if you try to sneak out on them everytime and when they turn around looking for you, you have disappeared on them. Imagine how scary that must be for them. They need to trust you and feel comforted in knowing you will return to them. And they do learn this. It is very reassuring for parent and kid when this happens. Trust me, this happens a lot earlier when you talk to them about it, but a lot later when you don’t. I am not saying this will mean no tears when daycare/preschool/kindergarten will start. But they will be more confident in their trust in you.

You don't believe me? When my D1 was less than 2 months old and I changed his diapers, I would say, I am going to change your diaper, I am going to open the snaps followed by the action etc. When I lifted his legs I would say, up, up up. When both my boys were only 4 or 5 weeks old, they started trying to lift their legs for the diaper change when they heard the words up, up, up. Before I even held their feet to lift them up. It was adorable, they were trying so hard to help me (even when they are that little).


Burps
I was lucky, my boys were not big burpers, so I pretty much only burped them when the whole meal was done. After you figure out how your baby responds, burp her a lot or a little. Like between breast changes or before the whole bottle is done or every 5 minutes. If they have a huge burp stuck, they can't eat any more, they squirm a lot, and they can't fall asleep. What's worse (at least as a mom, although I think it doesn't harm them), is to see this big burp get released and out comes this gush of milk from their mouth, and you think oh no, they are losing their milk. But it is only a small part of what they have eaten.

Warmth
You know lot of books and nurses will tell you babies need to be at temperatures like we find comfortable. What I have realized is that yes, you can keep the house temperature comfortable for you, but make sure the baby has another extra layer on. It may not be for warmth, but they sure like the snugness of being cuddled in.

Which leads me to the next thing, when you bring the baby home from the hospital, receiving blankets are great. But don't go out and buy a ton of them, because after just a couple of weeks, they grow so much, they cant fit into them and whats more, they don't like them any more (at least mine didn't). Although they both loved it the first week.

When D1 was born, he was so skinny, he had almost no baby fat on him. For the few couple of days, he was using all his energy just to stay alive and was gaining no weight. I called a nurse, and she asked me to get him naked and place him on my naked belly so his body doesn't need to worry about producing warmth and can now use his food to gain weight. After just a few days, we were out of the woods.

Milk Supply
I decided to nurse, and I struggled with D1, but with D2 it has been a breeze. Was it because I had a better lactation consultant who stayed with me when D2 was born and took the time to get things started right. She told me the first two days are critical on how things progress. But I didn't get that the first time around. And apparently I was not Mother Earth material where things just fell into place regarding nursing. In retrospect I think, I shouldn't have put such a big stresser on me to nurse. I should have tried a mixture of nursing and bottle feeding, or when things were just not going too well for me, turn to bottle feeding. Having said that, during their regular check ups they were progressing just fine along the growth chart, so I guess, even if you feel things are not going well, they might be.

Make sure to drink a glass of something cool every time you nurse, and try to fit in another glass of water in between nursings too. You will find you need to use the bathroom a lot too. Make it part of your ritual. Trust me if you do the same thing every time, the baby will stay calm. When D2 was hungry, I would say to him, ok, I need to use the bathroom and get a glass of water and he waited for me and his crying had stopped. If I did get delayed for something else along the way then he got mad and let me know he had waited long enough.

I can't stress this often enough, so long as you do the same thing every time they will wait. D1 used to wake up so early in the morning, I just felt I had to wash my face and brush my teeth before I could deal with him. So every morning when he woke up crying, I would say, I need to wash my face etc, and you know what? he waited the full 10 minutes it took me without crying, waiting to be feed. I did this every morning, he heard me talking and the noise from the tap etc and he waited. Every morning, same thing. Babies love routine, same thing, same thing. This is sometimes hard on us, because after a while all the feedings, diaper changes seem to merge together and you cant remember, did I nurse on the left or the right. It seems you nursed and nursed. You feel brain dead, because you may been doing so many more multitasking, brain stimulating activities before baby. But they love it.

I called the lactation hotline tons of times with D1 and the first few weeks with D2 too. So if your hospital/clinic has one use it. If not there is always, La Leche League. They are a nation wide organization. Look them up in your area. Trust me it helps so much.

Building Our Custom Home – Part VI – Anecdotes

So we finally started construction. First they mark and put stakes on the ground. Then this big digger comes by and digs a huge hole in the ground. And after this I am not sure how they re-measure the corners of the house. They frame up and pour concrete for the foundations. All this proceeds along at a brisk pace and it is very exciting to see it develop. But then there is a long wait – 3 weeks as we wait for the cement to set strong.
While we were building this house, my father-in-law told me that it is customary to place a snake like object in the ground on which the house will be raised. I had a pair of earrings that were wiggly, and threw them in the part that would later become the basement.
After three weeks they started framing the house. I made it a point to stop by everyday to look at the progress. I just couldn’t resist. I am glad I did. Because before they had completed framing the main floor, I caught two windows that were framed to the wrong size. I pointed this out to the framers, at first they didn’t agree with me, I asked them to measure the windows and lo and behold, they had to reframe. Luckily they were early enough in the process that these changes happened quickly and without delaying the project. Upstairs in the master bath, I kept a watch and as they were framing it, reminded them that one of the windows will be raised higher than per the plan – same size window just raising a lower sill height to a regular sill height.
Then all the tradesmen came in. The HVAC (heating/cooling) systems were being installed, when I noticed that one of the wires for the thermostats was located in a place that would fall behind the door. At the time I was at site, so was the HVAC guy, I asked him if it was ok, to have it behind a door. He said, it had to be in a clear spot and moved it. How did I know to ask? I have no idea.
Another time, I was at site with our builder and we were in the master bath. The plumber had started work and had drilled holes in the floor for the various pipes. There was one hole in the shower area, but it was located in a spot that would come under the built-in bench. Apparently, no one wanted to tell the plumber he had made a mistake. So here we are standing there, the builder, a carpenter and me, wondering who would do the deed. The next day, I met with the plumber and told him about the misplaced hole. He totally disagreed with me. But the very next day, I saw he had patched up the hole and now it was located in a new correct place.
One major mistake I did not pick up until the drywall was up was the size of our walk-in closet. I know how the error happened. The closet width was supposed to be 7’11½”. However, there was line showing the measurement of the whole length running through one of the ones. So the framers read the dimension as 7’1½”. This was a huge difference, it meant; I could not have hanging shelves on either side, because of the positioning of the doorway. I asked with the builder to correct the dimensions. We went back and forth on it for 2 weeks. He asked me to meet with a closet designer who tried to tell me he could design a closet in it. I said, I know you can design a closet for this space, the question is can you design a closet with double hanging sides? Since the answer was an obvious no. I stuck to my position and asked the builder to make the change.
At about the same time the master bath was nearing its final tweaking of locating the shower, tub etc. And the shower was going to be a couple of inches shorter than the plan. I told the plumber in the builder’s presence, what is an inch or two. My builder said to me; keep that in mind for the closet. Anyhow, I insisted and one day when I came by to visit the site, the wall had been moved, including all electrical wiring to the correct position. This meant the lights and fan that had so carefully been centered to the old room dimensions were a little off. But we have a sloping roof, and the off-centered lights don’t stand out so we left them as they were.
There are so many decisions that are made during the construction, no matter how detailed the plans are. The day granite countertops were going in with the double sink, it so happened I was on site, and they were getting ready to drill the granite for the faucet and soap dispenser. Because I was there, the guy asked me which side I preferred the garbage disposal and soap dispenser. If I had not been there he would have made the decision for me.
When the tilers were ready to come in, I asked them several times to let me know the day they will start work. But they just didn’t give any regard to my request and started tiling. In the powder room, they were cutting the tiles to accommodate the cabinet. As luck would have it I found them when they had only cut a couple of tiles. I told them that the plans mention that the cabinets float and do not rest on the floor, so they will have to tile the whole floor. Same story with the location of the floor vent, it would not come from the baseboard of the cabinet since there would be none.
As the tillers continued their work, I asked them once again to call me when they were ready to work in the master bath. We had 3 different tile colors going in. I was going to match the off-white floor with a baseboard of white tiles, then our green tiles to frame our steam shower and backsplash for the bath tub and finally, a line of 2 colored tiles alternating across the whole wall. I had in mind the height I wanted the tiles to be. When I reached the site that day, they had started tiling (didn’t call me) and the alternating tile line was set. I would have liked it one more tile height higher. But they made that executive decision for me. Aagh. Then as they were building down from there to the shower floor, they had to cut a tile and they wanted to do a whole tile or something and so that one white tile height baseboard turned into this tile and half height. I mean, it looked so off, I am surprised the tilers wanted to do that. Didn’t they have any pride in how their work looks? I asked them to remove all the white tiles and just forget the baseboard idea in the shower and go all green. They were most unhappy with me for making them do more work.
But the wonderful part was the people who work for a longer period on the house, like the electricians and the carpenters. Once they realized I came by everyday, they would hold off on decisions that were different from the plan, like a floor joist where a light should be, or an unusual corner situation. They would even offer their suggestions to give me more ideas to consider and help make my final decision.
Another time, I caught the electricians installing light fixtures in our mudroom. Two of the light fixtures just above the window were to be smaller than the other lights. The electrician was starting to install the larger ones, I told him they had to be smaller. They checked the plans and placed the rights ones.
I decided on bamboo flooring in our whole house. Here in Wisconsin, there aren’t a whole lot of bamboo choices. I only had two colors to choose from. I decided to go with the lighter shade and put dark trim around the house. I also wanted bamboo treads. While we could find vendors for the flooring, no one carried treads. I finally found something online and asked my builder to order them. He had our floor vendor order them, but they didn’t warranty them. That was just fine with me.
When the treads were being installed, they had to be cut to size, which meant exposed sides. At first, the carpenters tried to cut a diagonal and place an edge to the sides. But bamboo is tricky to trim. I looked at the cut edge and saw that you can see the pattern of the bamboo construction and said, let’s leave the edges exposed. The carpenter noticed that not all the treads had the same pattern, so they opened all the boxes, counted each pattern (two kinds) and then alternated them on the main floor and since we didn’t have an equal number of both, let the jumble of treads be in the basement.
When I was picking out the fireplace, I so wanted a modern style and since we were putting in a gas fireplace, I would have liked something different inside than fake logs. But you simply couldn’t find anything, I even looked online. Everything really interesting was in Europe. I had to give up on that idea, as that would be too expensive for me to consider. And the only “modern” looking design I could find was one reflecting a southwestern pattern.
I was going to place the fireplace flush with the wall. But when the fireplace was installed I realized that wouldn’t work too well, because they are designed to be placed with tile or stone around the fireplace. So I had to do something to frame the fireplace. I told our kitchen/bath designer that I would like the frame to be made of stainless steel like the backsplash we had picked for the kitchen. He said, it could be done, but I would have to choose a thicker grade of stainless steel. He also warned me that I would have to pay for the whole sheet, even though I will only get the part after it was punched out. I agreed to that as well. Now the stainless steel vendors refused the job at first, said it couldn’t be done, wasn’t safe, and what not. My kitchen designer kept at them and they finally agreed to do it but didn’t want to warranty it.
Now, our kitchen window is this huge picture window. When the window first came, it was a foot shorter than the framing. That is how the original plans had shown it. But I had changed it to match the sill heights of the windows in our living room (all of them are in a straight line). I had told the door/window salesman about the change and insisted he note the change right in front of me. But still we got the wrong order. As usual they tried to convince me to keep the window, but I stood my ground and got the window I had wanted.
There are also things I didn’t notice until the house was done. There are electrical requirements that determine where the electric outlets must be placed and how many according to the dimensions of the room or wall. Our electrician was so good, he waited for me to be on site and walk through each room asking for preferred location. Now the silly thing is, our loft is only about 6’ x 10’ and we have four electrical outlets there.
In the mudroom, I asked for an outlet in the closet to charge cordless vacuums. My desk is also in the mud room, so I asked for extra outlets there, for computer, printer and whatnot. I just assumed the walls would have their outlets every 6 or so feet per regulations like the other rooms in the house. Now I don’t know if the electricians just missed that altogether, or the same regulations do not apply in the mudroom. I had this wonderful idea that the long countertop could act as an ironing spot right next to the washer/dryer and also for any sewing I might want to do. But guess what, no electrical outlets. If I want to use that counter I have to use an extension cord from the closet.
I knew I wanted a really colorful home. I had always lived in government house or rental property. Even when we bought our first home, we always knew we were going to be there only for a short while so we didn’t change anything in the house.
I hired an interior designer to help me pick the colors. The only color I was sure about was this bright green for our kitchen. We walked through the house and in less than an hour had the colors all picked out. She made the decision making so easy, she would offer me two maybe three colors to choose from after we had talked about which color to use to contrast or complement a color. We have 11 different colors in our house, including gold. When the bright colors were going up on the wall, our builder would tease me saying he has post-its in these colors on his desk.
Finally when the house was done we had to get the occupancy certificate. When the inspector walked through the house, he pointed out three things that had to be fixed, a couple of screws were missing (the builder knew about it, the crew had run short and had to get more from their shop), our porch needed a railing because it was more than a foot higher than the ground and our fireproof garage door didn’t have a sticker on it that identified its fire rating. The first two were no problem to fix, but the builder didn’t know what to do about the door. He thought to contact the manufacture or the vendor and see if we could get another sticker. As luck would have it, I was looking through the cabinets in the mudroom and guess what I found, the door stickers, which the painter had very safely placed while painting the door.
Which reminds me, when I were selecting the fireproof garage door, I looked through the catalog the door/window place gave me. Our fire door has a small window in it. At first, the salesman’s reaction was, it cannot be done, and fireproof doors cannot have windows in them. I showed him that the catalog said that it met all the fireproof requirements. He was most surprised and said, in 10 years of his working with doors and windows he hadn’t known of one like that.
Some freebies I got with my house – the window/door showroom said they would give me the exterior door from kitchen to porch at no cost. The screened porch was supposed to be bare concrete, but it got fine cracks in it. This meant the builder had re-pour the concrete at his own cost. So instead he offered me the choice to pick outdoor tiles. I picked the tiles and while he thought they were pricy, he stuck to his word and paid for them. I had not planned anything special for the porch. My builder thought cedar roofing would look good and gave me remnant cedar from another job at no cost to me.
Some moments of pride – our kitchen was featured in a magazine and our house on “What you get for your money” on HGTV. In addition, once in a while we spot our kitchen in local media when our kitchen/bath vendors are advertizing. I don’t think it is because we have the best kitchen in town, but because we probably have the brightest colored kitchen in town.
And so we had a new home.

THE END

Aside: Our home was featured on HGTV's What You Get For the Money. Episode #214
Our kitchen was featured in Signature Kitchens & Baths - Pages 24-25

Copyright Kalpana Kanwar August 2009