Tharini’s post on feeding time battles inspired me to write this.

By the time I feed toddler and infant I go nuts. They are at an age (two and a half years; 11 months) where they have to be fed. Also I am the kind of mom who will feed them happily till I die. Not out of love, but because of the extra cleaning I have to do if I let them eat by themselves. So I bring up age as an excuse.

It takes me exactly 2 hours to feed them their breakfast. Same thing goes for dinner. Toddler eats lunch at her day care. Some days she eats well some days she starves. Of late I don’t even ask her day care provider if she ate well. It just gives me extra stress if I hear that she didn’t eat. So what ever she eats outside of home is an added bonus for me. We used to read books together and bond as I fed them their food. In the past five months things are taking the worst possible route. I play Barney or Curious George or some VCD from India while I feed them. (God, how I used to smirk at moms who used to say, “Oh, he needs his Dora or Clifford to eat. So I always carry a cassette or DVD along”. Life Lesson Learnt: What goes around comes around) At least if they eat well, I would not feel so guilty doing what I am doing now. They wait for me to finish feeding them and just as I put that last spoon full of cereal in their mouth, they throw up. I clench my teeth to prevent myself yelling, now a days I am left with a throbbing pain in my jaws.

After a lot of pressure from hubby, I decide to some how let go of my preferences and train toddler to eat by herself. This way I have only infant to feed. I gave her a variety of finger food – easy for her to eat, easy for me to clean. But after a couple of mouth full she declared that she is “All done Amma. Amma, can I throw it in the garbage?” and walked away. Then I had to chase behind her and feed the rest of the food for her, back to square one.

Then I made food interesting for her. She was very kicked when I presented “Shapes Upma”(I made rice rava upma, cast it in to a variety of shapes and steamed them). Same story all over again, she took a bite and walked away.

If I force her to sit in front of her plate she sits there and waits for me to turn my head. That fraction of a second I am not paying attention, she runs to the kitchen sink and empties her plate full of food in to the kitchen sink and says, “All done Amma. Amma, I put it for washing” I just loose it. I would endure about 10 throwing up sessions or 100 starvation sessions instead of seeing food being wasted like this.

It is the same with the desi kids I work with. It brings tears to my eyes to see how the preschoolers I work with, throw food. The kid wants a banana, the minute the teacher opens it, she/he would have already changed their mind and they would want yogurt. If the teacher tries explaining that the banana needs to be finished before the next snack is opened there is absolutely no effect. Either there is lots of crying or no eating. It is not the same with most of the Caucasian kids. They do justice to their food.

Is it all desi kids? I mean, is it something in the genes? May be desi kids can absorb the required nutrition from air and manage to sustain. Or, are the kids just trying to push our buttons? May be we desi moms are so uptight about food, quantity and quality that makes the kids act this way? My daughter’s pediatrician always says that the kid eats whatever he/she needs. But really, is 3 tablespoons of cereal, 2 tablespoons of mac and cheese and one Marie biscuit enough for a two year old for one whole day? Sometimes I am just struck, I can’t let go and I don’t have the time or patience to follow through. By the time I am done with breakfast, clean up, drop toddler off at day care, finish my chore, it is lunchtime for infant. That takes about two hours of cajoling, dancing and singing. Infant takes a short nap and it is time to pick up toddler from day care. Before the evening snack is done, I am getting their dinner ready. Couple of time I have woken up at 3.00AM, all drenched in sweat and with a strange sense of fear because I had dreamed that it is time for infant’s feeding time! No kidding.

I keep telling my toddler that it is not okay for her to waste food. I give her small portions and give her lectures about responsibility. She has heard so many of these ‘responsibility lectures’ it is impacting her negatively. Yesterday she threw her corn down and when I called out her name in that special tone, she realized that it is time for the lecture, she tells me, “I know amma, I know, I am not responsible”. Once she closed her ears with her hands, shut her eyes tightly and said, “Amma, I can’t see you, amma I can’t hear you”. (She tried walking away from the kitchen with the same pose and walked straight in to the wall. It was one of those crazy “you-have-to-be-there” funny moments. 🙂 ).I know that it takes lots of repetition and lots of patience to get through to them. But I will be glad if I see light at the end of the tunnel!

** Be warned this is long one folks. **

It is that time for the year. Mother’s day is in the air. The preschools and day cares are making the kids do cute stuff for their moms. The television is thick with jewellery, perfumes, cell phones, chocolate advertisements, all sending out messages that you have to give something to your mother or grand mother or god mother or some one else’s mother. They don’t care about motherhood, they just want to sell.

This is my third Mother’s Day. I got portraits of hubby and baby#1 as a gift for the first mother’s day. Considering hubby’s aversion to dress up and get pictures taken that was a monumental gift! Our second baby arrived a few weeks after my second mother’s day. My parent’s were here, so hubby and self were able to take off for a nice quite lunch.

All this noise about mother’s day made me take a trip down memory lane. Quickly rewind to year 1999. I was a totally different person then. Newly married, young, immature, cocky, arrogant, selfish, stupid, naive are some of the words that can be used to describe myself. Hubby wanted to have a child because there is no time that would be the best time to have a child, so we might as well have one and get it over with. I was not ready. There were so many fun things to do. We had to travel to Europe, circumventing the Kailash, what about Egypt?, hike the Machu Picchu, great barrier reef, Japan….soooo maaaanyyy things to do and see. Besides how long was it going to take to have a child? You pick the right time of the month, do the thing you have to do, the sperm is going to find the ovum, millions of people have been doing this for ages, even animals do it, how difficult can that be?

I learnt it the hard way that it can be very very very very difficult. We started trying roughly around May 2002. We had been married for three and a half years. I was still immature, cocky, arrogant, selfish stupid and naive (young was starting to get debatable!). I didn’t have a problem getting pregnant; as a matter of fact I got pregnant three times. The difficulty was in keeping the baby.

The first time I miscarried at 12 weeks. There were no symptoms. We had announced to the whole world the minute the home pregnancy test came out positive. Here I was sitting on my high throne, expecting, demanding special attention from every one and taking maximum advantage of my situation, thinking that every thing was going on well and the baby had already died. There was no heart beat at the 12th week ultra sound. I was still clueless. I thought that the baby might be developing a little slowly, may be the baby needs one more week. It’s a funny thing how human mind works, till you believe that there is a little life inside of you, you hold it so dear and do all the special things. You find it so hard to let go even if there is scientific proof that things are not going well. But one fine minute you wake up, smell reality and this ‘life’ inside of you becomes ‘a thing’ to be more precise ‘a dead thing’. Words can’t describe how much that realization hurts. I wanted the thing out of me as soon as possible. I had a painful D&C and things were over.

8 months later I got pregnant again. We made no announcements. This time we scheduled an ultra sound at 6 weeks. The doctor said that the heart beat was there but the baby is too small for 6 weeks gestation and wanted us to come for another ultrasound in two weeks. I came home and started eating like crazy. Whatever I put in to my body goes to the baby, so I spared nothing but the kitchen sink. Some times it hurts to think how naïve I was. At eight weeks it was a horrible de ja vu all over again. There was no heart beat, the baby was frozen at five weeks development. It was like God was playing this cruel joke with me, “You prayed for a heart beat, I gave it to you. But you never mentioned for how long you wanted the heart beat to last”. As if one D&C wasn’t hard enough to go through, I had to go through two this time, thanks to the doctor’s screw up.

We changed doctors. We did all the tests. Hubby and self were certified as perfectly healthy people with no obvious defects. Did the news bring me happiness? No, I was looking for some defect that on diagnosis can be treated and we will be good to go! Now we had nothing to work on. 8 months later I got pregnant again. Oh, this is the most horrible of all my experiences. The implantation was in my tubes. Imagine an orange inside a straw. That was what happening to my tubes. The straw was threatening to burst. I had serious pain and high fever. Why I didn’t go to the doctor immediately? Well, in the past I have had stone formation in my kidneys and the symptoms are very similar. So I was sitting in the bed, drinking plenty of water and hoping to pass the stone. I was getting to a stage were even breathing hurt me like hell. I bore this pain for two days (hey, I have amazingly high tolerance for pain), and finally gave up. At three in the morning hubby and self ran to the emergency. We didn’t have to wait even for a minute; they put me on a wheel chair and I was taken to the ultrasound room and was wheeled to the operation theater with in two hours! Me being the naïve one asked the doctor if by any chance they can take the implantation from the tube and put it in to the uterus and save my baby. Duh!

I was lying there in the post-op in a semi-consious state. I could feel the commotion around me, but couldn’t focus on anything but the throbbing pain in my heart and a sense of worthlessness. All I want to do is just die, silently without waking up from this coma, then all my troubles will be over. Meanwhile my BP and pulse kept dropping; they had to transfuse approximately 2 liters of blood – no effect. Suddenly I felt a strange realization seep through, may be my life is not over, I may never have children, but there are other things that are meant to be done by me and I could almost hear the nurse saying, “BP stabilizing, pulse recovering”! Finally I regained consciousness.

4 months later I was pregnant with my baby #1. She came as a surprise. It was tough, all through the pregnancy, I was as detached to the baby as possible. I did all the right things I had to as a mother, but was mentally prepared incase I loose the baby. Every visit to the doctor was a major milestone, I would give a smile only after the doctor put the Doppler on me and let me hear the heart beat. Baby #1 came out without giving me much trouble. I knew I could bear the pain and deliver her without pain medication, but I still took epidural. Well I had already gone through enough shit, is some one going to build me a temple or what? Within 10 months, we were blessed with baby #2. She came 15 days early and was even more easier to deliver. She practically walked out of my womb!

The journey to motherhood really rocked the strength of our marriage. If at all I learnt something it is this – babies come when they are meant to, you can stand upside down but still you cannot ‘make’ it happen. The second thing I learnt is, men and women deal with pain in very different ways. Mentally it was definitely as hard on hubby as it was on me, he was the one who had to hear from the doctor that I had lost almost 2 liters of blood due to internal bleeding and that it will be a lucky thing if they can get to the tubes before the tube burst causing an internal infection. He was the one who had to be left in suspense in the waiting room, “Er, your wife, we don’t know, she is supposed to regain consciousness in 20 min, we don’t know why it is taking two hours”.

The most pathetic part was that some people around us thought that THEY were the victims in the whole game! I don’t even where to get started with the amount of confusion they caused in our lives. So people, never take it upon yourself to solicit worthless free ‘advice’ to other people in sensitive issues like this. You never know how much pain the couple are going through already.

From my personal experience and through my friends, I have seen it all – miscarriages, ectopic, birth defects, IVF, still births, D&C done at 20 weeks due to chromosomal abnormalities, babies born with heart defects and parents had to see their barely born babies go through multiple major surgeries, surgeries while the baby is still in the womb….., each one wondering if they are better of or worser than the others. It is tough, no one knows why all this happens. But we just have to keep trying and hope things work out. I know how difficult it is to put it in to action because I have been there and I have done it. Behind every woman who has become a mother, there is a big story. Sometimes it is a happy one and sometimes it is a sad one.

I had chicken pox when I was 11 years old. I remember my mother getting worried. On the other hand I was kicked that I got to stay at home for two weeks. I was missing the revision exam, how cool was that?! Chicken pox was associated with Mariyamman, so my mom tied a bunch of neem leaves outside the house, we turned away visitors, the house was cleaned twice every day, my clothes were washed separately, I got bland yucky tasteless food, my mother didn’t season any thing she cooked (even for others) for two weeks, I was given tender coconut water twice a day, no milk product of any kind for two weeks, plain boiled veggies like greens and squash, I was allowed to have a shower only after the blisters started to dry (imagine not having a shower for five days in the middle of april?!!), bath with sesame oil, neem paste and turmeric powder. My mom didn’t do her usual daily pooja because Mariyamman is already angry and she didn’t want to offend the goddess at home by praying to other Gods. And no medication of any kind, again Mariyamman gets offended.

A week back my 11 month old infant was diagnosed with chicken pox. If I could look at a mirror when the doctor said, “Sorry, it looks like chicken pox”, it would have had the exact same expression my mother had when I was down with chicken pox! Some things never change. Anyways the doctor said that good thing was chicken pox is much milder in babies and now she has life time immunity against chicken pox. Doctors directions were usual diet, apply calamine lotion if she gets itchy, give her Benadryl (antihistamine) if she is extremely itchy, Tylenol if her fever is troubling her, bathe her with baking soda, make sure that she stays quarantined till the contagious phase is over.

Though there was no treatment for the cause of chicken pox both in India and in USA, I couldn’t help noticing how different the approach was here when compared to the approach in our country. In India, chicken pox was considered as something connected to religion, in USA they treated it as a contagious virus.

I had to decide what I must do to take care of my little girl. So I tried to analyze the logic behind the practices in India. I am pretty religious, but I didn’t want to follow tradition blindly.
Neem leaf, turmeric – they are considered disinfectants, also soothes the itchy feeling.
Neem leaf tied outside the house – just to warn people to that some one at home has a contagious virus.
Washing clothes separately, not letting other people visit, frequently cleaning the house – to maintain hygiene
Tender coconut water – cooled the body
Low calorie tasteless food, no milk, boiled veggies – When you are sick you have low appetite. Also the body has to spend lots of heat digesting food high in fat. The cause of Chicken pox is considered to be the result of the body getting over heated. So why make the body work harder to digest high calorie food?
No shower – you don’t want to break the blisters. The blisters might get infected and are contagious if they are oozing.
No seasoning, no pooja at home – I have no clue why? May be make the food so bland that Mariyamman gets sick and tired of the bland food and leave. No pooja for the other Gods….well I frankly think that Mariyamman must share more.

So I followed the things that made sense to me and altered the things that I didn’t agree with. This is what I did:
• I applied Caladryl clear calamine lotion on her blisters. It did help with the itchiness.
• I was determined not to let her temperature raise more than 99. So I gave her Tylenol as per needed.
• I was able to get tender coconut in Chinese supermarkets. So I gave her about 4-6 oz of tender coconut water everyday.
• I made her sip water every chance I could get.
• I gave her a diluted version of her regular diet. Formula, rice and lentils, mashed vegetables and yogurt. I diluted the full fat yogurt and also the formula, so that she didn’t have difficulty digesting the food. At the same time I didn’t want her to end up too weak and tired after the illness had passed.
• I mixed one cup of baking soda to a bucket full of water and bathed her. This was when the blisters were fresh. Baking soda alleviated the itchy feeling.
• Once the blisters started to dry, I applied coconut oil or sesame oil on her body, gently rubbed the oil off with a mixture of dry neem powder (available in Indian stores) + turmeric powder + powdered moong daal and washed it off with water.
(I grind some moong daal, sift it in a sieve and have the fine powder in a container. I mix it with turmeric powder and bathe my daughters. It is a pain to clean the tub, but I don’t care, what is the hurry to use soap?)
• I made sure I wasn’t carrying her when I was cooking.
• All of us at home washed our hands frequently.

My baby girl is doing so good so far. The doctor said that sometimes the old blisters dry out and she might break out with new ones a few days later. We have one more week to go, I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Ms.Mariyamman, I haven’t offended you right? If so take it out on me, not my baby girl. It already tore me to see her break out in 40-50 of red blisters within a matter of two hours. I certainly was no fun watch her curl up on my chest with a tired expression in her eyes.

PS: There are blisters even on the scalp. So do not comb the baby’s hair. May be gently detangle hair with fingers. We had recently shaved her head, so I didn’t have that to worry about.

This happened about three months back. It was a Saturday, I was trying to get ready for the rest of the week, grinding dosa batter, doing laundry, making chapathi dough, prepping and cutting my veggies…etc. Toddler was pestering me for attention. She wanted me to sit next to her and show her pictures of Bharathiyar, M.S, Gandhi thatha* from google images. I did it a couple of times, but I had to get back to my chores. So the next time she came and asked me for Bharathiyar’s pictures, I told her that Bharathiyar is sleeping and we can’t see him. Then she asked me for M.S, I said that M.S amma I sleeping and we can’t disturb her now. After a few minutes she came back and asked for Gandhi thatha. I said that Gandhi thatha is sleeping, and we will see him later. This routine went on for another hour and then she eventually gave up. I finished my chores and went to check on her. After a few minutes I asked her if she wants to do penguin, penguin for me(she keeps her hands next to her hips and does a cute dance singing “penguin, penguin what do you see?” ). She tells me, “Amma, penguin is sleeping. No dislulb**”.

I was going to post this is on my blog and categorize it under “Humor For The Day”. Then I stopped to think. I did tell my friends and hubby about this, but I never analyzed my toddler’s thought process at that particular moment. Was she trying to get back to me? ‘Amma, you were so busy that you couldn’t spend some time with me. Now I am giving you a flavor of your own medicine. Eat it woman’. Naahhh. A typical two year old is very fickle. They have very short memory. They are very trusting, especially towards parents. On top of all this their brain is not capable of forming the required correlation between (I want some thing) -> (mom gives me the run around) -> (Now she wants something) -> (I give her the run around) ->(Message sent: Mom don’t mess with me)

Then I realized that my toddler was learning. This is a typical example for how children learn. I could analyze the five W-s of learning from this example.

What, Where, When, Why, (From) Whom does a child learn?

What – They learn what they see.
Where – At a non threatening environment. Most of the children feel the most ‘at home’ at home. So they learn a lot at home. You can send them to the best school, still they learn A LOT at home.
When – All the time.
Why – Why not?? They learn because they can! They are good at it.
(From) Whom – At a tender age nearly every thing from parents. After they grow up, from the people who inspire them.

(Just for the heck of it I will throw a H in to the theory)
How do they learn? At this age, quite a bit from repetition.

At the end of this analysis I was happy that I got an article for my portfolio on child development, but it also scared me. It is tough being a role model and do the right things at all times. So a big cheer for all of us parents!

*thatha – grandfather
** dislulb – that toddler for “disturb”

We have a battery operated doggie toy. When switched on, it barks and does flips. It is a gift from my friend’s MIL to my infant. Both infant and toddler like playing with it. Toddler likes the toy, but is scared of real dogs. Our neighbor across the street has a Daschund named Padget. Padget hangs out a lot in their front porch. So toddler peeps out of the house, checks if Padget is within eye sight before she ventures out. Though Padget is leashed all times, she is scared. If she sees Padget, she thinks Padget is also looking at her and is out to get her, that her logic.

For the past two days toddler was abusing the toy dog, generally pushing the dog, kicking it like a foot ball, pulling it by the ear and throwing the toy half way across the room..etc.
When ever she abuses her toys I tell her that she has to treat her toys well. Otherwise the toy will break and when she really needs it she can’t play with it. I keep repeating it but she acts as if she has never heard me.

Today, when she threw the dog, I started my usual advice, but stopped and said, “Do you know who this dog is? Its Padget’s friend. If you don’t treat her well, she will tell Padget and Padget will come to our house and ask you why you did this? So be nice to the toy dog”. She immediately stopped what she was doing, picked up the toy, kissed it and said, “Sorry tog*, hele** Amma, put it in my toy box”. It was pretty funny. 👿

Who all thinks me is mean?!!? Come on, I have to some how get back for this folks.

*tog – Dog
** hele – here

It was a tiring day yesterday. Infant is down with chicken pox. Though toddler was cleared by the doctor, I decided to have her at home and not send her to day care for a week. So for the past 4 days it has been crazy, I haven’t even peeped out of the window to see how the world looks. Yesterday was extra stressful. Scrubbing the house, 7 loads of laundry, cooking, infant is throwing up water/snack/food/anything/everything, fought with hubby(what’s new?!!), was carrying around infant like a mama kangaroo, dealing with toddler’s jealousy(“I want Amma carry. Amma carry baby, amma carry me”). I was looking forward to sitting down and putting my feet up for a minute, just a minute. At last infant had gone to sleep and I had convinced toddler to go out with her father. After lots of fuss toddler agreed, (she was still skeptical that I am sending her out of the house so that I was going to do some special bonding with the infant), so this was my window, my few minutes of peace and quite…yippe yippee yeah yeah. Toddler wore her shoes, before I realized ran in to the room where infant was sleeping and yelled, “Bye, I will see ya later. Have fun”, woke up the baby and stormed out of the house. Baby started screaming, extra special screaming because she was woken up abruptly. Now God, should I laugh at your sense of humor or start crying. What the heck, I did both. Did I tell you?, it was a tiring day yesterday. Infant is down with chicken pox. Though toddler was cleared by the doctor……….. 🙁

I have two girls, they are 15 months apart. I had always wanted two kids, initially I had no preference as to the sex of the baby, at least that’s what I thought. But thinking back I now feel that I have always imagined having a boy and a girl. Well balanced picture perfect family right? Not that girls are any inferior or it is easy on parents if they have boys. I still have memories of my mom being ridiculed that she had a girl (I am an only child and hence the preconceived idea that I will have two children, one boy and one girl). I was just shooting for perfection…or what I thought to be perfect.

When we found out the first one was being a girl, we didn’t give any second thoughts about the sex of the baby. We had lots of other issues to think about. Even though the baby was doing great and I had a dream pregnancy and a picture perfect delivery, getting to the point of conceiving a baby was very tough on hubby and self. So all we wanted was a healthy baby in our hands. Or may be I had it in the back of my mind that I have second chance, so I didn’t care about the sex of the baby this time. The rest of the family must have felt the same thing, so they were very supportive, but kept dropping comments that it is good to have the girl first because later when the baby brother comes along she will be responsible(for the baby brother).

When I was pregnant with my second child we found out that we are having another girl. My picture of perfection was shattered. But I never voiced it out till this moment, because 4 years back, I was desperate for a baby, it seemed so wrong and ungrateful to be choosy. Plus I have a history of longing for the things I cannot or do not have. But my parents were disappointed because they feared that I might be pushed in to a spot where I might be forced to have babies till we have a boy. Others were disappointed because…well it is another girl.

Every time some one asked me if we knew if the second one was going to be a boy or a girl and when I said that it is another girl, these were the response I got:
Okay better luck next time.
Oh…(the tone, ahhhhh the tone bothered me)
Poor you…
That’s okay. In our family we always have three girl and then a boy, so don’t worry the fourth one will be a boy (why the hell will I have four babies)

A Caucasian dude who came home to fix some termite damage said, “For your own good I wish that this one must be a boy.” I didn’t share with him that we already know that we are having another girl.

I felt irritated and dreaded the question when ever I went out. Partly because I was nursing a secret longing for a boy and since this was my last chance I was disappointed. I hated myself for this thought but couldn’t help thinking this way.

Now my baby girl is 11 months old, she is so precious. My daughters look at me and smile I forget all my troubles. I see a drop of tear rolling out of their eyes it tears me up. When they reach for me and hug me…..oh man it is so divine. Who cares if I have two girls, I am happy, hubby is happy.

We go to India with both the children, immediately it starts,
“Oh, both the girls look like the father, so the boy will look like you”.(Okay sick people when is the next flight back ? I came all the way for this????)
“The first child’s ear piercing was in 2005, the second one’s ear piercing is in 2007, in 2009 we will have your boy’s ear piercing” (Can you come closer, I feel like piercing something else.)
“I will worry only if you have five girls. Till that point I will not worry”(Yep, it is not your responsibility, then why will you worry?)
“Did you get the operation done already? You will get it done only after the boy right?”(They want to know if my tubes are tied or not. This question was posed to me by three different people, whom I have met only 6-7 times through out my life, in a family function, while others were starring. Come on people how much more personal can you get?)
The house help tells me with lots of self amassed liberty that, the next trip I make I must come with a boy otherwise I need not make any trip to India. (Good God that would be so perfect.)

Seriously how big is this in this time and age? Boy or a girl, you still have to put them through college, take care of them and there is no guarantee that they will be taking care of you in your old age. I am not worried that I will not go to heaven after I die because…people…have you seen my daughters smile?…I ALREADY AM IN HEAVEN.

Disclaimer: This post has nothing to do with potty training. I am just trying to analyze if a mother treats all her children the same way.

When I was pregnant with my toddler I had the visions of the perfect mother I was going to be. I took plenty of rest, listened to classical Mozart and Beethoven, I used to strap on a head phone to my pregnant tummy and played music for the baby every chance I got. After she was born I would nurse her till she turned one, nothing other than breast milk for the first six months, I will play classical music when she slept, she would be this angel who spent the first three months of her life feeding and sleeping, she would do great with all her milestones (rolling over, crawling etc just like they say in baby center). Have you seen kids who yell and throw tantrums at public places? My angel would never be one of them. Any new scenario or change of schedule I would calmly explain to her once and she would quickly understand and follow my directions. I would be her best friend and she would be mine. My expectations could go on for pages.

Out came the baby with plans of her own. She was one of those colicky babies who cried and cried and cried. I had to start supplementing because she was hardly gaining any weight. I had to stop breast feeding after 8 weeks and switch her to hypoallergenic formula because her pediatrician thought that it would help with her colic. I have never felt more of a failure in my life.As she grew, she never rolled over, never crawled, never sat up, never moved on her own till she was 11 months. I never played classical music when she slept. She did not like her routine to be disturbed when we took her out, so she threw tantrums in restaurants and other public places. After 5 months she did not want to drink any more milk. Till she was a year old she threw up at least once a day.

All my expectations were shattered and I was not handling it well. Parenting was new to me, this one was not a text book baby, I wasn’t abusive, but I used to force her to drink milk, was in tears every time she threw up (try cleaning throw up from the carpet at least once a day and the laundry…oh God). I was embarrassed with her tantrums, so stayed at home and kept to a few familiar places and was getting depressed because I felt I missed out on lot of things.

When I got pregnant the second time, my elder one was barely 7 months. It was a whole new experience. I was sleep deprived most of the time. I was running around all the time, I hardly put on any weight, my OB was worried. I never listened to classical music, I never had the time to play music for my pregnant tummy. Sometimes I would even forget that I was pregnant. I would look at a nice maternity top and would think, may be during my second pregnancy I must get something nice like that and then it would hit me, “I ALREADY AM PREGNANT WITH MY SECOND CHILD!” I was prepared to supplement or for that matter put her entirely on formula.

When my younger daughter arrived, she was a screamer, who never slept, just like her elder sister. But luckily the new pediatrician diagnosed that the baby had acid reflux and hence the non-stop crying. She was prescribed antacids and I was able to breast feed her exclusively for the first four months, and kept at it for three more months.

After a rather long rambling, the point I am trying to make is, I saw so much difference in my attitude even when the baby was in the womb. With the first one, I thought of nothing other than this precious little thing that was inside me. Every action I did, every morsel of food I ate was targeted towards the baby’s welfare. With the second one, things were different, I had to take care of my elder one plus you are no longer a novice. You realize that it is perfectly okay if you don’t get your 4 servings of dairy for a day, it is not going to affect the big picture.

After the child is born the differences just keeps growing. My elder one started day care only when she was 22 months, but my younger one had to start day care when she was just 8 months. I force fed my elder child milk till she was 20 months, with the younger one, I gave up in 7 months (yes, both my kids are milk-o-phobic). Now the guilt starts, who am I being unfair to? My elder one (because I forced her and now she hates milk with a vengeance) or the younger one (by depriving the younger one of the nutrition). When my toddler asks me to carry her, I sometimes give her the, “You are a big girl” speech, the guilt just kills me that I am forcing her to grow up and be the big sister. Again I look at my baby, hey she didn’t ask to be born, I feel even guiltier. I end up carrying both the kids at the same time. I have a whole bunch of picture of my toddler, I have probably a tenth of that for the baby. My toddler was not allowed to watch TV till she turned one. The baby started watching TV when she was 6 months. And the list goes on…

So if any one tells me that she treats both her kids the exact same way, I don’t believe it. Every one makes mistakes the first time and corrects it the second time. So either the person still hasn’t learnt from the previous mistakes or is under some kind of an illusion. Plus every baby has his/her personality. How you interact with them depends entirely on their personality and their personality gets formed depending on the way you interact with them. It is a feed back loop.

In a nutshell the minute we sign up to have kids, we sign up for a never ending guilt trip. Even people who have just one kid sometimes feel guilty that they are depriving their child of the joy of growing up with a sibling don’t they?! Guess all we can do is assess the situation and do what we think is fair.

Both my children suffer from loose stools every time they cut a tooth. They just have frequent BM, but are active in general.

If your baby is having loose stools, more frequent than normal, but is not in any major pain or discomfort there are a few traditional cures for the problem.

What to give

Tapioca Stew(Javvarisi kanji in Tamil)

Ajwain(Omam) tea

Roasted channa daal

What to avoid
Spinach or any iron rich food.
Excess of dairy

This book is recommended for 3-5 year old children.
But don’t be put off by the age limit.
It is simple enough for a two year old.
My toddler loves it.
Though she know knows the book by heart, she insists that I read, re-read, re-re-read it to her!
Available as a board book, so perfect for toddler’s rough and tough ways of handling.
Teaches the child about the different animals and also about colors. Must read for beginner readers.

Other favs from the same author and illustrator
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Polar Bear Polar Bear What Do You Hear?
Panda Bear Panda Bear What Do You See?
The Mixed Up Chameleon