Setting a routine for your baby is useful

Before Baby Claire was born, I was immersed on pre-natal stuff like what I should eat, listen, and what type of exercises would be useful for my delivery. I even took 10 lessons of pre-natal Pilates which I personally found it useful. However, I did not read anything about what would happen when baby is born.

Thus, when Baby Claire was not able to sleep at night, or only be able to sleep until it was 11.30p.m or 12.30a.m, we were concerned about why she slept so late at night. After searching on the web, most mommies and expert mentioned about setting a good and suitable routine is essential.

When I first started out, which was when Baby Claire was around 3-4 months, I tried using the Noob Mommy's schedule because it seems pretty simple to follow.

When trying out the above routine, I noticed that Baby Claire took a small nap at 7p.m or 7.30p.m at her bouncer after I bathed her (while I took my bathe). However, she woke up around half an hour or so. Back then, I was thinking was 7p.m her body's clock saying "I need to go to sleep". Thus, I also began to read up on how to catch your baby's sleepy cues e.g. rubbing her eyes, yawning, fussiness, etc.

While I was still trying out the above routine, I came across Gina Ford's The New Contented Little Baby Book, and noticed that her routines seem much more feasible for my baby and decided to try it out. Example of such routine would be the one below.

Now Baby Claire is 9 months and we pushed her sleeping time to 7.20 or 7.30p.m (Schedules will change according to the age of your baby). We bathed her at 7p.m and after which, we feed her milk and read her a short story before we put her down on her cot. She managed to soothe herself to sleep within 5 to 10 minutes with no crying and she managed to sleep til 6.15a.m or 7a.m.

This is now her current schedule which I deviate slightly from Gina Ford's schedule to fit into Claire's natural rhythm of sleep.

• 7a.m - Wake up and change of diaper and drink her milk
• 8a.m - Eat her cereal with fruits
• 9a.m - Bathe
• 9.15/9.30 a.m - Nap
• 10a.m - Wake up and play at her play mat
• 11.30a.m - Lunch
• 12.30p.m - Change diaper and nap
• 1.30p.m/2p.m - Wake up
• 2.30p.m - Drink milk
• 3p.m - Sometimes we will offer her a snack like banana, biscuits, etc
• 5p.m - Dinner
• 7p.m - Bathe, milk and a quick bedtime story and put on her cot to sleep
• 7.20p.m/7.30p.m - Dozed off. (When she was younger, she dozed off at 7p.m and her bath time was around 6.40p.m, Since she is now a bit older, maybe she doesn't sleep as much as before)

Do you know that we need to hold her, pat her and rock her to sleep with her pacifier when she was younger and we were truly exhausted till we tried out sleep training when she was around 5 to 6 months old which I will write in another blog post. :)

Another thing which I would like to share with you is that most babies, at least for my baby will become sleepy after 2.5 hours (2 hours when she was younger). She does not take long nap, which means that she is not able to sleep till 2p.m or 2.30p.m. Normally, she will only take 1 hr or 1.5 hr of nap. Thus, if she wakes up at 1.30p.m. Her next sleeping nap would be around 4p.m. I will change her diaper, a slow walk around my flat's corridor because we enjoyed the breeze, and then back at home. After which, I will feed her some water, and put her down on her cot. Sometimes, she will climb and stand up on her cot (By the way, she has started standing up. A major milestone for her :P) and move around. After 5 minutes or sometimes 10minutes, she will sit down and doze off to sleep.

How is setting a routine useful? Doesn't it seems too rigid?

Well, rigid comes with predictability and gives you better planning. E.g. if I know that Baby Claire's morning nap is around 9a.m or 9.30a.m, we can plan our outing and have her nap at our car while traveling or in her pram during her morning nap. However, it is recommended that babies have their long afternoon nap at home. In addition, a routine also guides your caregiver on when and what to do to make your baby comfortable, e.g. when to eat, sleep, bathe, etc.

This picture was taken when she fell asleep in her pram when we had an outing at a park. :)

So what's is your baby's routine?

Stay tuned for the next blog post on sleep training.

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Cheers,
Deariebear Mommie

Baby Claire's first swim

We've finally bought our little Claire to swim yesterday morning at Singapore Polytechnic. It is pretty near my house and the good thing is that the pool at SP is chorine free. :)

Some of my friends asked "Why did you take so so long to bring Claire for her first swim"? Well, we felt she is so tiny, afraid wait she will catch a cold and also partly because the fortune teller said that we need to be careful of her and water when she is below 3 years old.

However, I felt that she might be very fearful of water like she is stepping on the sand at the park. Thus, I woke my hubby up and say "Let's bring her for her swim TODAY".

We put on her new pink swimwear and put her on a pink top and ready to go!

Glad that I decided to ask Papa Justin to take out her toy to let her play in hope to calm her down, and she did!

After 5 minutes letting her to play her toy while I move her around the pool, I slowly removed her toy and she seemed fine with it and then the fun began!

We played in the baby pool for around 30 minutes and I guess it was pretty not bad for her first swim. :) Happy that the weather was good with some sun. And you know what?? We were really lucky because after our swim, it began to pour. :)

P.S: Papa Justin did not go into the pool today because his thumb is still covered with stitches. :( 

Cheers,

Deariebear Mommie

How to prepare to grind brown rice powder for porridge

When Baby Claire was around 7 months old, I decided to let her try real brown rice beside brown rice cereal and mashed potato.

Cracking my head on how I can cook a brown rice porridge at the quickest time (we all know that it takes quite some time to cook a very soft brown rice porridge)  and at the same time to save  electricity. I read several blogs and websites recommending many different ways such as using slow cooker, using rice cooker, and grinding rice into powder before cooking.

Thus, I decided to try out using my rice cooker which has a rice porridge function. Since baby does not eat a lot, we cook around only 1/4 cup or less of rice and some water. Result? It doesn't turn out to be very good. Rice is still lumpy or hard (maybe I put too little water). Taste wise..erm..not very nice too. I felt that it is a waste of electricity too. Besides, I need to wait for some time for the rice cooker to complete the cooking which is sometimes a hindrance especially when we do impromptu outings to the parks, shopping malls, etc.

Then I decided to try grinding these rice. We have a Philips HR2118 Blender which also has a chopper function.

This blender really does it job, it took us like less than a few minutes to grind the rice into the consistency we wanted. I tried to cook the rice by putting around 1.5 to 2 tablespoon of rice and some water, and in less than 15 or 20 minutes, the brown rice porridge with some frozen mashed vegetables and fish is cooked. :)

We also grind spagetti and barley too. Really save our time cooking time. Below contains a picture of the grounded barley.

By the way, I created my very 1ST video on how to prepare stuff. In this video, it shows how to prepare the brown rice for grinding. Hopefully, it may be helpful to those who need this information. :)

Cheers,
Deariebear Mommie