TO SMACK OR NOT TO SMACK – THAT IS THE QUESTION!

My little Mohican (from 3-10 mths)

My girl had a head-ful of hair when she was born (see my post on my childbirth), with many standing upright. As with Chinese traditional, we shaved her bald during her full moon (one-month old) and I was hopeful that when her hair grew back, they will not stand up again – but they did, just like a Mohawk! Every now and then, we had friends asking whether I gel-ed her hair up to make it look like that! And do you know what’s the Chinese belief of those whose hair stood upright when they were babies? That they were hyper-active (for want of a better word). Some may just say ‘naughty’ behind your back! :p

During my confinement, our waking hours were turned topsy-turvy because she would not sleep, just looking up at you with her big eyes, gurgling away happily and it would be 3am or 5 am in the morning and you were dead tired!

I had to send her to a babysitter when I needed to go back to work after the 2 months confinement. After a couple of weeks, the babysitter said to me, “how come your baby doesn’t like to sleep? I’ve taken care of so many babies and they will sleep during the day, but your girl doesn’t want to sleep and it took so much effort to get her to sleep for just a short while!” :-(

GETTING BABY TO SLEEP!
You would have thought, ‘oh good, afternoon don’t want to sleep, at night sure sleep.’ But it was not so! By the time she was 4 months old and could turn around to see things, it got worse. We had to try all sorts of method to get her to sleep (so that we could get some sleep, too!) – my husband had to resort to swinging her (hard) in his arms, not rocking slowly because she would get restless with the slow motion, or patted her until we were tired and the minute we stopped, she would look up immediately. Finally, we bought a baby swing (‘sarong’) but we could be swinging for a whole hour before she decided to sleep but then she would be awake again after 20 minutes! (We had to swing hard manually although we had an electronic 'sarong' because the electronic one was too slow and she would be wiggling inside the sarong!)

At one point I was so desperate, I wrapped her up tight together with her hands so that she could not move them and then covered her eyes with a handkerchief. I was hoping she would get bored by not being able to see anything and just fall asleep! BUT every time I moved the handkerchief to take a peep to see whether she was asleep – *ding*! her eyes would open!

So that didn’t work out at all. :-(

When I took her to the paediatrician for her regular check-up, I asked the doctor why my baby doesn’t like to sleep and whether she got any remedy/advice. Her reply was, “you should be happy, that means while other babies were sleeping, she is still learning!” *Diong*! (pengsan/faint!) That wasn’t the kind of response I wanted to hear!

Somehow days and months passed, with only few hours of sleep by mum and baby every day, so much so that I was always yawning in office and my office mate would whack me playfully and chide me for being always sleepy!

This continued until she could walk and she would only be sleeping around 1am or 2am (and this was even with barely any afternoon nap at home or at the babysitter's!). Well-meaning friends thought we were pandering to her and suggested we try switching off all the lights and pretend to go to sleep and when she saw nobody was around to play with, she will get bored and go to sleep, too. We tried that, and while we lay down, pretending to sleep, we could see from the corners of our eyes that she was just climbing up and down everywhere, and not even bothered that we were ‘asleep’! So this didn’t work either. :-(

For her afternoon naps, we would still put her in the 'sarong' even when she was around 2 years old as that was the only way to get her sleep at least a little bit (same at the babysitter’s place). There were many times when I had to swing and swing and swing and she still wouldn’t sleep. I would get so upset and stressed that I would smack her backside hard and scolded "go to sleep ah, naughty girl, sleep!" and then she would start wailing, got tired and then fell off to sleep. Yes! This worked! And somehow this became somewhat of a ‘routine’ when she was being especially difficult! :p

One afternoon, when my girl was around 2½ years old, I was doing some reading and she was playing with her Barbie doll set which comes with a baby doll 'sarong’. I heard her saying something so I turned to her and when I saw what I saw, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry! Because my girl was putting her ‘baby’ to sleep in the baby 'sarong', and she was going like: (piak! piak!)* "sleep ah, you naughty girl, sleep!"(piak! piak!)* And she was only 2½ years old! At that moment, I was thinking, ‘oh God, what kind of an impression have I given my girl?’ I felt like such a lousy mother and from then on, stopped doing what I did to make her sleep. I couldn’t remember now what other ‘drastic’ actions I had to take to get her to sleep after that because this imitation from her made such an impression on me that it obscured all others! But I do know it had always been a constant battle to get her to sleep and there were still nights of crying before she finally decided to hit the pillow.

And one thing remained true until today - I still need to use different variations of ‘threats’ or ‘carrots’ to get her to sleep and she’s 12 years old now!

Do you believe this Chinese belief?

( *piak! was the sound of her smacking the doll’s backside)