Home Alone

Last Friday we had a church meeting to attend at night, but my mum-in-law was not around that night to baby-sit Jan for us, so one of us had to stay behind.

In the past, either of us could had stayed behind, since we both could put Jan to bed.  Recently however, Jan has become increasingly stickier to her mother.  She would cry uncontrollably for her mother during bedtime or when she gets woken up from her sleep.  Anyone else (except my mum-in-law) going to her rescue at those times would be greeted with more desperate cries.  I suspect it is somehow related to the fact that children of Jan's age is near their peak of separation anxiety.  Well, Jan's screams at me are probably also getting back at daddy for not attending to her cries in the middle of the night...

Anyway, strangely enough, we decided I would stay behind that night.  When my wife left the house, I was filled with much apprehension, as I have not put Jan to bed for a while, and I was worried that if my wife comes back to a crying baby who had way past her bedtime, she would not dare to go out by herself again...and I really didn't want that to happen.  So I prayed to God that Jan would quickly finish her milk and then quickly fall asleep.

After I prayed, I began executing my plan.  I had planned a series of activities to slowly wind Jan down.  At 7:30pm, she has already finished her dinner, had her shower and donned her sleeping clothes.  I let her run around for half an hour before I took her into the room to read her some stories.  By then, I had turned on the air-con and dimmed the lights, hoping that to use the cool temperature and the lighting to induce sleepiness in her.  I was started restricting her movements by placing her in the cot.  After a few stories, it was milk time!  Thank God that she held the bottle herself and drank more than usual (usually, she would only hold the bottle occasionally, drink a little from the bottle and would rely on us feeding the remainder of the milk to her using a spoon)!  As such, the milk feeding task was actually easier than usual.

Top: Jan holding her own bottle during our return flight from Hong Kong 

Once the feeding was done, I dimmed the lights further and played a music CD.  Now, I was really getting worried, because I still do milk feeds everyday but it must have been eons since I put her to bed.  With apprehension I put Jan into her cot and used the most soothing voice I could master to tell her to go to sleep.  She fidgeted around a bit before lying down, and within me I felt a rush of excitement as I felt I was nearing success.  Then I noticed she was clawing at her diapers.  Worried she had poo-poo'd in her diapers, I quickly picked her up to do a quick check.  Luckily no poo-poo, but I decided to change her diapers anyway since she was already on the changing counter.

The frustrating bit was that by the time I got her back to the cot, she wasn't as sleepy already...she roamed around her cot, made some attempts to lie down, before she decided it was time to summon the real bedside angel.  My dearest lovely Jan then started crying "Ma Ma!"  "Ma Ma!"...*faint*....

I quickly picked her up from the cot and whipped up my last trick--cradle her in my arms and walk her to sleep.  I have done it a trillion times and it almost always worked...only that we stopped doing that eventually 'cos we didn't want to make it a habit for her. 

The trick worked flawlessly--the crying stopped, her eyes started showing signs of sleepiness, and before long, she looked like she was going to doze off.  I battled in my mind if I should carry her till she was fully asleep--but risk re-enforcing a bad habit, or put her back into her cot then and risk her jolting her into full-wakefulness again. 

Left: Jan sleeping in the baby carrier during our Hong Kong trip.  Of course she would only fall asleep when it's mama carrying her.

I decided to be brave.  I put her down, and then held my breath to see what would happen.  Jan landed on the cot, sensed that she was out of the comfy of daddy's arms, flipped her body to a face-down position, and then started fidgeting around.  I quickly used my hand to pat her bottoms in the comforting granny way.  She looked asleep as long as I continued patting, and finally I realised that she had really fallen asleep!  Three cheers for Daddy!

Haha...a simple matter but amazing that I could write such a long post about it...heehee...really thank God for making it happen.  I even messaged my wife that the whole episode was a piece of cake ;-)