Calming Babies... & The State of Serenity

I must say most of the gifts we had received thus far for both En and Xuan have been really creative, innovative and immensely useful in nurturing and developing the creativity and skills for the babies.. from the musical instrument sets, to board books and the developmental toys..

Many thanks to Hsien, En and Xuan received this really nice and calming gift, this CD of calming music comes with a really nice board book too..

The only silly thing is.. our wall mounted CD player which we bought from Muji in Japan was spoilt by hubby when he forgot that the player needs to be plugged in to a voltage converter before it can play (as Japan and SG share different voltage input/ output). That is also one reason why Xuan did not received as much musical stimulation as En when he was in my womb..(next time if En is more creative, smarter etc etc, oops, we know why.. now I feel bad!!)

When I was preggie with En, every night we go to sleep to the music of Bach and Mozart.. Ever since the player was down, Xuan was only stimulated during the last 3 months of pregnancy, occasionally, when I remembered to play classical CDs from my PC..

So I am also trying to make up for lost time by playing him music often post birth.. the only thing is he is such a sleepy baby i wonder if he is getting it..

Calmness and Zen are critical concepts to parenthood, I find.. And it is such a challenge just to stay calm.. given the extreme lack of sleep and the demanding attention and patience needed to cope with babies.We will need to be calm first before we are in a good position to calm the fretting and wailing babies... and this is one of my weakest point..

But I must say, I am getting better.. Back then with En, I totally can't stand his colicky wails and hubby had to be the one to calm and pacify a very demanding En.. En's wails always made me fel like screaming too..

Now with Xuan, I am a lot more zen and calm.. and in turn, Xuan is a lot less frantic and less impatient compared to En. Xuan seems to be a more serene baby,which in turn, kinda influences me and has a calming effect on me.. which makes me wonder if calmness and zen-ness are feelings that are mutually influencing for babies and mum..

Still, there are off days which I am totally impatient with the daily toils of coping with a baby.. those are the days when I crave for a strong steaming acidic mug of coffee.. but I have not given in to the "Coffee's Trap" yet.. since I delivered, I have only half a mug of Old Town white coffee, and only because it was a new discovery which we made.. and tempting as the coffee is, I have made it a point to swear off coffee while I am breastfeeding.. perhaps, the lack of coffee also made my nerves less raw and edgy? and So I can stay more calm? I dunno.. but much as i miss the coffee (and lots of other stuff such as raw oysters and sashimi, bloody beef steak, lovely white wine and the toxic red, which are all taboos while breastfeeding), I will persevere!!