Baby Wants to Play… Or Sleep?!
I really pitied the little baby. He was yawning and his eyelids were fluttering shut. But every time his eyelids shut, his grandmother would poke him on his chin to wake him up.
“Erm.. I think he’s very tired and wants to sleep..”
“No lar! He doesn’t want to sleep! See! He’s wide awake! I shook him in the sarong and he eh eh eh!” his Ah Ma negated my remark.
The sarong she was referring to was a cloth cradle that hung beneath a spring suspended to the ceiling. Personally I am totally against letting an infant sleep in such a contraption. Firstly, because of the up and down movement. The adults and children tend to be over exuberant in the shaking and it does no good for brain development. The infant tends to get used to the movement and can’t sleep otherwise. Sleeping in such a condition doesn’t give quality sleep, another reason on the hampering of brain development. Besides, it is hung in the living room, where everyone congregates, with the television switched on. How could the poor baby sleep in such a condition??!!
“Why don’t you bring him into the room so that it’s quieter and he can sleep better?” I ventured again, out of pity for the poor little thing.
“He wants to play!” Ah Ma happily continued to poke him on his chin, waking him up whenever his eyelids fluttered shut.
I swear that if I were the baby, I would go nuts. Whenever I was about to nod off to sleep, someone would wake me up by poking me on my chin?! I can’t imagine such a thing happening to him. But then again, I’m an adult, he’s just a wee thing who still can’t express himself.
Oh well… he’s not my child. I’d better keep my mouth shut before I receive complaints on my behaviour. His caregivers should know better. But if I were his mother, I would have snatched him out of her hands, barricaded myself in the room and put him to bed. Who cares if I’m branded as an insensitive daughter-in-law, preventing my mother-in-law from showing off my baby.
To stop a baby from sleeping is a BIG SIN!!