Things You Learn From A Baby

Having had our newest member of the family for 1 month and 4 days today, there are several things that we can learn from a baby. Among those that I can think up right now are: -

1. Ninja Skills - Stealth
Once the baby goes to sleep, and before the baby plummets into deep sleep, they can easily be awaken by any sound at all. If they were to fall asleep in noisy places, this is not a problem, but in the bedroom, to get out of the bed and to the toilet or kitchen or whatever, you really need to practise your tip-toe skills and sign language between husband and wife. Interesting, and fun.

2. Reading Body Language
Somehow or rather, nearly all my friends I know who have babies says that the probability of babies releasing their pee during a diaper change astounds mathematicians. A pee takes about 10 seconds to complete. A day takes 24 hours or to be detailed is 86400 seconds. Let's say a baby pees once every 30 minutes, that's 10 seconds of pee for every 1800 seconds. We'll give a figure for length of time for a diaper change to 60 seconds. In layman terms, the probability of baby peeing during a diaper change is once every 30 diaper changes. But my friends, for our baby, it's about once every five diaper changes. Only logical reason is that a baby feels 'ahhhhh...' to pee not feeling a soiled diaper. Reading the baby's body on when the baby is gonna release is a skill to be mastered.

3. Understand Japanese-Created Characters Successes
Now we know why Hello Kitty, Doraemon and Sin Chan are a success in Japan and the world! They cute. What makes them cute is that their head size is equivalent or bigger than their body. Same goes for baby! Baby's head is at a 1:1 to their body, while us as adults are about 1:4 of our body, which makes us a lot less cute. :-( But then ah..... we also have Lat cartoon whose head is bigger than his body, however, Lat is not cute coz' of his porcupine hair lah.

4. You realise you have time
Besides doing personal stuff like taking bath, eating dinner and fixed deposit in the toilet, most of the 'home' time is spent with the baby, be it just be nearby to look at at every few seconds, or holding or soothing the baby. Now, how is it that I have time for all of these. It seems like as if I have totally wasted my 'home' time before baby came doing what ah?! I also can't remember liao.

5. He/She ain't heavy, he/she's our baby.
Why is it that carrying a 3kg laptop is quite tiresome to the body, but carrying or holding a 4.5kg baby is fine? Maybe coz' laptop is not flexible enough to mold into your hands while a baby is. Anyhow, baby's weight is totally ignored in the process of cuddling, soothing and the likes. Love conquers all.

6. Doing Things Efficiently And Effectively
With baby's tendency to start crying without a written notice or agenda, doing things like taking a glass of water, or brushing teeth, or switching on the lights and tv have to be done as quickly and as successful as possible, or else you'll end up only halfway before the baby cries to call for you again. Baby keeps us on our highest alertness and sharpens our basic skills.

7. How To Appreciate Your Wife
Besides the common appreciation of pregnancy, labouring and delivering, there's also....i) the separation, whereby the baby sleeps between us and how to sleep with your wifey lar? You will surely miss having your wife like you used to. ii) the time sacrifice, while I'm sleeping and not hearing when baby wakes up, my wife will wake up to sooth him, sacrificing her sleep to ensure my own sleep to go to work. iii) the body sacrifice, coz' when the wife is taking care of baby, there's a high tendency to neglect taking care of herself.


In conclusion, there's a lot of things a baby will teach us, and that's only during the baby's first month. There's more lesson to come from the little one, for sure!