As new parents, the wife and I have received some child-rearing tips from, oh, just about everyone we know. I'm not saying we're not appreciative of such tips, but some of these pointers have been downright unusual. Not surprisingly, the strangest pointers have come from my own mother:
- "Make sure you massage his head so it will stay round."
- "You should leave the lights on at night when he sleeps, so he gets used to it."
I know I'm new to this whole parenting thing, but I'm perfectly satisfied with the current roundness of my kid's head, and leaving the lights on at night just makes no sense to me. Ironically enough, I can rest a beer on my own head because it's so flat, and I'm nocturnal. Strange, that.
So despite my mother's good intentions (at least I think her intentions are good), I've pretty much ignored her "sage" advice. However, there was one nugget of knowledge that spilled from my mother's mouth that did kinda sorta make sense: "Tinola is good for increasing breast milk production."
"I can produce breast milk?" I asked my mom.
"Not you, your wife!" she corrected me.
I told you, I'm new to this.
Anyways, Tinola is a simple-to-make rustic Filipino chicken soup. Like the chicken soups of most other cultures, Tinola is also known for its healing and restorative powers--helping to recover from cold and flu symptoms--this much I knew. But I had never before heard that Tinola was also good for nursing and feeding newborns.
So I wasn't sure if my mother was just perpetuating some old Filipino wives' tale, or if Tinola indeed possessed any lactic magic (I'm very pleased with myself that I came up with that rhyme). But if cooking a pot of Tinola would make things easier for my wife, and indirectly get some Filipino food into my kid, I was all for it.






