4 S’porean parents share their parenting experience during the stages of pregnancy, infancy, childhood & teenhood

When it comes to parenting, it can be hard to discern what’s essential and what’s not.

This is especially the case in our highly digitalised world today, where almost anyone can claim to be an expert in parenting on the web, and the internet is overloaded with information about what you should or should not do.

In light of this, we spoke to four Singaporean parents to find out about their parenting experience in the stages of pregnancy, infancy, childhood and teenhood.

Hopefully, their experiences will serve as a useful guide as you navigate through your own journey as a parent.

Went into sepsis during childbirth and postnatal depression during recovery

Our first parent, Chen Ting, 30, described her pregnancy as being “pretty uneventful, which was great.”

According to her, “the only annoying thing” was being diagnosed with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) at around 24 weeks, although this was quickly managed with medication and diet control.

“I was rather irritated and disappointed at first to have to give up things like bubble tea and white rice, and having to prick my fingers seven times a day to test my blood sugar levels on two days every week. However, eating grass (metaphorically) regularly eventually helped with controlling my weight gain during the third trimester. Other than that, I tested positive for Group B Streptococcus (GBS), but it wasn’t really a big concern to me as I knew many pregnant women who had GBS and all I needed to do was to receive IV antibiotics during labour.”

Chen’s delivery, however, was a rollercoaster affair on its own.

While she entered the hospital with a normal temperature of 37.4 degrees after her water bag broke, Chen soon developed a fever while changing into the hospital gown.

She had to be placed into isolation and swabbed, while her husband was sent home to wait since he couldn’t be in isolation with her.

Due to complications which arose, Chen also could not get an epidural, and things only worsened when the doctor told her that they might have to do an emergency C section due to her fever and her baby’s heart rate flatlining.

During her extended stay at the hospital after this, she was told that the GBS bacteria had entered her bloodstream and had caused her to go into sepsis, which is something that very rarely happens.

It was also extremely close to infecting her baby, which would have been dangerous.

“Fortunately, I had a great doctor and team that helped to make the right decisions to save my baby. However, this also shows the need for continued resources and research dedicated to improving maternal healthcare.”

Chen felt that her postpartum recovery was much worse than the delivery of her baby itself.

According to her, the pain of delivery “ended fast” but her postpartum recovery was “a long drawn nightmare that lasted several weeks”.

“After I came back from the hospital, I started having severe abdominal cramps which came on after meals that lasted one hour, then two hours, and then it worsened to around three to four hours. I would be in so much pain I could only just lie in bed. This and really bad tailbone pain impeded my ability to breastfeed my baby as I could barely sit up. I even had to go to the A&E three times before the hospital managed to find out what might be causing the issue (possible gastritis) and prescribed medicine that slowly improved my condition after three weeks of abdominal pain."

What really helped Chen during that period, thankfully, was having the confinement nanny and her husband around.

“Initially, I thought that just having the confinement nanny to help would have been enough, but the support I needed the most came from my husband. It helped me a lot that Bryan, my husband, was very hands-on and could do everything – feeding, bathing, diaper changing, calming and entertaining the baby, etc. which gave me reassurance that the baby would be taken care of even if I was having an abdominal attack.”

If there’s one thing Chen wished she had a better grasp of before having a child, it would be how hard the postpartum baby blues would actually hit her.

“I was crying almost everyday and felt like I could not cope, being in so much pain on a daily basis and being physically unable to take care of my baby. I felt so guilty and like I was being a bad mum for not being able to take care of my baby and having to rest in bed for so long. The worst of it hit during my baby’s growth spurt, where things got so bad that I really just wanted to throw my baby out of the window because he kept crying for food and refusing to nap.”

Thankfully, Bryan got many of her friends to send many messages of love and support, while friends of hers dropped by to visit, which helped to take her mind off the constant stresses of having to deal with a baby.

Had struggles with breastfeeding and sleep training

For our second parent, Eunice Ong, 30, it has been one year and eight months since she gave birth to her baby boy, Hosanna.

According to her, parenting has been tough:

“To summarise everything, parenting is a full time job, plus over time. It is almost equivalent to you going into a new job that you are not trained in with a steep learning curve. There are so many things that you are not familiar with, so you have to spend a lot of time reading up and educating yourself. It’s an area in life where you are challenged to grow and develop as a person.”

During the first three months after her baby’s birth, breastfeeding and sleep training were problems for both Ong and her husband.

“Breastfeeding was painful for me and I had milk blisters, which happens when the baby doesn’t latch on the nipple, so milk gets stuck in the duct.”

To counter this, Ong read up on how to get a baby to latch well and treat the blisters. Some of her friends also recommended lactation consultants to come to her home to help with the breastfeeding process.

Ong and her husband did what they thought was best for their baby based on what they had read up on.

“There are so many different ways to sleep train a kid, and I wouldn’t put any parent through it (unless absolutely necessary) because all the crying was really tough and tiring to handle.”

Besides resources, having a community has also been very important to Ong, such as being connected to people who are going through the same phase as her, or who have been through the same phase as her.

“Even parents who have one or two year olds - being able to get some advice from these people helps,” Ong added.

Greatest challenges in parenting are with time management, screen time and having to be extra careful with words and actions

Our third parent is Joanne Heng, a homemaker in her 40s with two children who are aged 11 and 13.

To Heng, the greatest challenges she faces in parenting are with time management, screen time and having to be extra careful with her words and actions around her firstborn Gwyneth and second child Gabriel.

According to Heng, “there was lots of fun, bonding and laughter” when Gwyneth and Gabriel were less than 6 years of age. This was also the period of time Heng states were “the best years”.

“The children ate well, slept well and played well. Perhaps due to their 7am to 7pm routine per day, they did not have any major illnesses. Even when they saw the doctor, it was either for milestone checks or compulsory vaccinations, as well as to stock up on necessary medications for travel.”

Before her children entered primary school, Heng and her husband had also made it a point to bring them on overseas trips every year, something Heng says was very “carefree and memorable”.

“Because we didn’t have to be restricted to school holidays to travel when our kids were younger, we were able to see all four seasons at different places. We are grateful that we could expose the kids to different cultures and ways of living in the different countries we visited, and establish great bonds with each other.”

After Gwyneth enrolled in Primary 1, however, timing became a lot less flexible for the family.

“Time management became a struggle because the kids had a fixed routine to follow for school. I needed to manage their time in submitting work and preparing for examinations, as well as learn about their strengths and weaknesses, and how best to optimise each of their potentials.”

Screen time had also not been an issue for Heng till the end of last year.

“When the kids see that their friends are able to freely use their own phones in school and talk about the games they play or the anime they watch, they will ask for permission to be engaged in some of these activities. Again, I would have to start thinking about my responsibilities in using my own phone. I used to be able to watch my dramas in the evening after the kids slept but now that they’re older, they can’t go to bed so early as they have more homework and revision to do. As a result, the kids now ask to sleep later on a Friday night or on the eve of holidays just so that they can partake in more screen time.”

Besides struggling with screen time, Heng also recounted an incident that made her aware of how careful she has to be with her words and actions when her children are around.

“When my children come back from school, they have to surrender their phones before setting aside three to four hours to do their work and revision. During this time, I don’t usually touch my phone because I’d sit with my kids or prepare snacks for them. There was a day when an American channel happened to have some live events and I took out my phone to watch silently. The next day, the kids tried to do the same and when I reprimanded them, they retorted that since I did the same, why couldn’t they.”

After this incident, Heng realised that all her “words have to be minced before using” and that her “actions cannot be careless”, since whatever she says and does is being “watched” by her children.

Requires deliberate effort and awareness to keep up with interests of teenage daughters

Our final parent, Daryl Loh, 42, shared with us his thoughts about being able to bond effectively with his two teenage daughters, aged 13 and 15.

According to Loh, “parenting style differs from family to family based on various factors from both the parents and the child such as personality and character, likes and dislikes, background, personal experience, and more.”

Because of this, he reminds himself of the rapid changes that his teenage children are going through and tries to keep up with their interests.

Loh shared that one way he expresses interest in his daughters’ lives would be to give in to their requests to take over the car audio selection when driving.

“When listening to the type of songs that they play, I would try to strike a balance between making appropriate comments of interest while letting them enjoy their favourite songs in peace. This sounds simple, but it did take me some practice.”

When his daughters chill and watch YouTube videos in the living room after meals, he also tries to see what is trending for them at the moment.

Loh tells us that he does all of these to show his daughters that he is interested in being an active part of their life and growing-up journey.

Besides this, Loh also converses with his daughters on many other aspects of their daily life including heavier topics like boy-girl relationships, although he feels that such topics are just social issues for discussion, and are not extremely relevant to his daughters at this stage of their life.

Check out Parent Hub to adopt healthy habits for you and your child

While there may be no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to pregnancy and parenting, there are still many ways for parents to learn how to adopt healthy habits for their children and teens.

One such way would be to visit Parent Hub, a one-stop health content portal for parents where articles on topics from the pregnancy phase to your child’s teenage years are available for perusal.

Along with useful information about some of the problems faced by each of the four parents such as breastfeeding, postnatal depression and screen time, other resources on the website include:

• Postpartum depression screening tool
• Sleep related content for children aged 0 to 2 years old
• Sleep related content for children aged 3 to 6 years old
• Mental well-being related content for parents and children
• Activity ideas for parents with young children

Various different scenarios that affect different children, teens and parents are fleshed out in each self-help article, so there are a wide range of perspectives and solutions that different parents can seek answers for.

All articles are also backed by scientific research and vetted by topical experts or medical personnel, so you can be assured that all information provided is legitimate and accurate.

Upcoming content you can look out for on Parent Hub next year includes screen time guidelines and recipes to prepare for young children.

To check out some self-care and role modelling tips, click here.

This sponsored article by the Health Promotion Board made this writer aware of the joys and struggles of parenting.

Top image via kevin liang on Unsplash and Annushka Ahuja from Pexels