Migrant Mums

I get instant compliments on two things about Chelsea whenever and wherever we go:

1) Her looooong eyelashes which easily get utmost attention — they say she has eyelash extensions (plus her matching big and ‘beautiful eyes’ she would “twinkle” purposely whenever people praise her eyes) and

2) That she’s a happy baby and very well-behaved in public places (please note ‘public’ because she can be a raucous toddler-too-early-to-be-a-terrible-two in private!) even on planes!

I’m not the type of Mum who would belt out every accomplishment of my little one except on one thing — that we never had difficulties raising her up!

We didn’t experience sleepless nights when she was still an infant (except for the first two weeks I guess when we’re just learning to get to know her and all she needed was to be wrapped tightly as if she’s still in my womb). After the two-week challenge, it felt like normal. She would sleep straight into the night, our only clue that she needed feeding was when she started sucking her thumb. Up until now, she wouldn’t ask for her ‘dede’ until you mention it to her — if she repeats after you, she needs her milk but if she ignores you, she simply wants to play.

A lot of Mums have been asking me what’s my secret to a stress-free first year. Well, I should say thanks to my cousin, Oprah, and the power of internet!

My cousin, Met, saw it in Oprah and mentioned it to me but since she’s too forgetful to remember what it’s called, I had to search the internet and You Tube for that Oprah segment in preparation for Chelsea’s coming.

I swear by this and since I have three very good friends who are on the family way now, I’d love to share this with them and hope that they, too, will have a stressful-free first year with their little angels.

It’s called the Dunstan Baby Language.

It posits that babies make up distinct sounds called ‘reflexes’ to communicate with us what they need. Dunstan apparently studied more than 2,000 infants and discovered that most if not all of these babies make the same sound when they want the same thing. All you have to do as a Mum or as an adult caretaker is to try to distinguish those sounds and do what the baby wants you to do.

For instance, whenever Chelsea started crying with the sound of ‘Nyeeee, nyeee, nyeeee’ or ‘Ngeeeee, ngeee, ngeee‘, or “Neh, neh, neh,’ she needed feeding. All I had to do was to give her milk and voila, she’d stop crying.

“Ehhhh, ehhh” is for burping so I’d put her on her stomach so she can burp.

“heh, heh“, is for ‘Change Me, I’m wet’

“Owl” is for sleepy and ‘Eairh‘ is for I have wind.

I seldom heard the last two from Simone but the first three especially the ‘Neh’ and ‘Eh’ are amazingly true!

So before you lose your hair (and wits) from figuring out what your infant wants whenever he cries, try to listen more carefully, he might just be telling you it’s time for his afternoon nap.