Officially a Stay at Home Mom

Hope it's not too late to wish ya'll Happy New Year!

i started the year off by doing something entirely new: being a stay at home mom or in short, SAHM. So today was my eighth day of being a full time mom.

Jangan salah paham.. Sebenarnya, bukanlah quit kerja terus. i'm on 3-month unpaid leave. Kenapa?

As i have blogged in this post, Afif has hearing problem. We have been attending speech therapy sessions since December 2013. In the sessions, the therapist, Dr. Basyar emphasized that parents' role in helping the child develop good speech and language skills are very big. She said that there are two scenarios for hearing impaired toddlers like Afif:

Scenario 1: grow up to have good speech and language skills with no/minimal need of sign language. Kids like this will be in the speaking society and can attend public school.

Scenario 2: grow up to have poor/minimal speech and language skills, need to use sign language as mean of communication. Kids in this category belong in the sign language society and will need to attend special school.

Don't get me wrong. i am not against disabled people, further away from discriminating against them. i believe that disabled or not, a person can aim and put effort to be whatever they want to be. But as a parent that belongs to the speaking society, i'd like for Afif to be in the speaking society too. i dream for him to attend pre-school, kindergarten, go to sekolah kebangsaan and menengah and follow his dreams to be what he aims to be in life. For that reason, i will do whatever i must to help him obtain good speech and language skills. So yeah, i aim for scenario 1.

It's easier said than done. Before this, Mr. Chenta and i thought that buying him the hearing aids is sufficient enough. Wrong! Getting him to wear hearing aid in all waking hours is challenging in the first few months. We also have to interact, communicate and let him hear sounds to help him to speak.

Masalahnya, kalau duduk dengan babysitter, i can't monitor his HA usage. Dia suka tanggalkan.. Aku pon kekadang hilang sabar nak pakaikan balik, apatah lagi babysitter yang ada baby lain untuk dijaga. Other than that, we feel that he might not get enough interaction for speech development. Maka dengan itu, aku dengan rela hati amek cuti tanpa gaji.

Ideally, a child needs to be with a parent/guardian full time until he can speak clearly in full sentence "Mama, Afif nak makan pasta". That takes about 3-4 years. Eventually, it's either hubby or i have to quit our job. We'll think about that as we go along.

For now, i'm gonna enjoy being a full-time mama to Afif Haiqal (while figuring out the next step..)