- What happened? Why is she coughing all of a sudden? - I don’t know. Let’s check in Google.
Looking at Neva, everyone compliments her with kisses for her cuteness. They try to convince us to let them take her with them. I giggle in my mind thinking about the chaos they’re going to face with the unknowns.
Neither Daya nor I am a skilled babysitter. We had no clue how to raise a baby and were still fighting through it. We never hired a nanny because we wanted to understand the hardships of parenthood.
Like any unknown situation, we decided to walk with our heads up into the rabbit hole and follow the basic trait of learning: trial and error.
Here’s one of the learnings.
A year ago, we started feeding Neva with Chicco’s feeding bottle but she hated it. She just wouldn’t suck the milk out of it. We read some articles and tried different ways of holding the baby.
Failed.
Gave her milk at different temperatures to see if she was a fan of hot or cold. Tried when she was half asleep. Tried squeezing the milk out of the bottle.
All failed.
However, we couldn’t give up because milk was her only source of food. So during all the failures, our last resort was the baby spoon. We had to stick to it for a while.
After another round of googling, we realised that the goal was to choose a nipple that closely resembles a mother’s breast so the baby feels confident and relaxed. That’s when we moved from Chicco to Tommee Tippee.
Those feeding bottles took us to a whole new level of relief. Neva liked them very much and it made our lives easier.
When it was time to give her semi-solid, purée-like food, Pigeon’s weaning bottle became necessary. At this level, the texture of the food had to be maintained and there was a cooking time for each puree. If we crossed it, Neva just wouldn’t swallow it.
Anger. Patience. Irritation. Tiredness. We experienced it all. We fed in parks. Corridors. Backseats. Flights. Malls. Parties. Every two hours, Neva had to be fed. It was a discipline to be followed.
Once my friend asked me what the right time was to have a baby. I told him, “ The right time is now and have one for all the chaos, crazy times and not for the cuteness. It’ll break you but you’ll love it. “
Did you know that babies change every 20 minutes?