It’s Starting…

Yesterday, I had my 1st not-so-good experience of being a mum of 2.

So far, all the encounters I’ve had so far in the last 3 weeks or so were pretty positive. Joey has been responding well to Jayne, perhaps because we make a conscious effort to include her in as many things pertaining to taking care of Jayne as possible, and we keep emphasizing to her how important her role as an elder sister is.

But the past two days, Jayne seemed to be feeling unwell because we could hear her wheezing (though there was no runny rose whatsoever), so she was not sleeping as well as usual. She would wake up every hour crying and we had to keep carrying her and patting her to put her back to sleep again. We slept without air con last night, and she seemed to be better already. But because of the constant attention needed for Jayne, Joey showed her impatience last night.

Over dinner, my mum in law, in an attempt to get her to finish her rice fast, told her that I would tell her a story if she finishes her rice quickly. Just when we got started on the first page of the storybook, Jayne started to cry, and I had to quickly go & pacify her.

Joey came into the bedroom, and tugged at my hand and said, ‘Don’t bother about her la… you finish your story first!’ But how could I do that right? Baby was feeling unwell, and crying, so I had to attend to her first. Sigh, but reasoning does not work on a kid sometimes. And Joey kept urging me to drop the baby and continue my story-telling with her. In the end, she saw that it was all futile and left my room feeling very frustrated, ‘Aiya! I don’t like you to be like this!!!’ There.

I felt very guilty of course, because I hate to break a promise to my kid. And she obviously felt that her sister had taken her mummy away from her. Sigh, but what else could I do at that moment?

By the time I finished pacifying Jayne and putting her back to sleep, it was almost 30 minutes later. So I quickly went back to Joey and told her we could finish our story-telling. Thankfully, kids have short-term memory and Joey was no longer upset with me. We continued our story before she willingly went to her bedroom to sleep.

Phew… not easy! How do those parents with 3 or 4 kids manage?!