Sign language for babies.

A friend and I were chatting on FB one day about sign language for babies. She was surfing the Net for websites about teaching babies how to sign. She failed her first attempt to teach her 1st-born how to sign and wanted to do better with the 2nd.

Then, I remembered my own signing experience with Shahrin. It wasn't really a conscious effort at signing but more of a desperate attempt at understanding each other. He was a very fussy baby, plus his preemie-related conditions made things even worse, including the fact that he IS my first baby.

Shahrin was a picky eater as a baby and he still is. His main course would be milk and dessert would be biscuits. I tried every recipe I could find for infants who are undernourished BUT constipated (can you believe it? he doesn't eat, yet he couldn't poop properly), even bought the expensive Heinz baby food products for him. Thankfully, he's learning to eat better these days, though milk is still his staple food source.

Anyway, while he was growing up, he cried a lot (actually, he still does) and I usually don't know what was the problem or how to sooth him. Day by day, I'd try to communicate with him in anyway I can; talking to him, showing him things that I think he wants but doesn't know how to ask, and using the simplest hand movements to indicate something. The most memorable one is the hand-shake where I'd ask Shahrin if he wanted his bottle by shaking my hand up and down, like when you shake the bottle to mix the liquid with the powder. This one became a success because overtime, he began to do the hand-shake whenever he wanted his bottle. No more crying on his part and head scratching on my part. The pat-whatever sign is another life saver. If he's sleepy, he would pat the pillow, if he wants to play with something, he'd pat on it. Things got even better when he could talk, thank goodness.

Nazrin is a whole lot easier to handle, maybe because he doesn't have any complications. He also has the advantage of having a big brother to show him the ropes. We didn't need any signs to communicate with Nazrin, though we still have communication break-downs once in a while. Mostly it happens when I don't pay attention to his needs, so he'd throw a tantrum and it would take a while before I could calm him down, in order to figure out what he wanted in the first place. These days, he is using more and more understandable words plus the gibberish babies always use while playing by themselves. I'm looking forward to the day Nazrin would use a whole sentence when he talks.