YANGGEN MAPOTGE' TA'LO I NANA, MÅS CHETTON I PATGON-ÑA GIYA GUIYA.
If a mother gets pregnant again, her child becomes more attached to her.
I was walking to a woman who was holding her baby daughter who was maybe a year-and-a-half old. The daughter is old enough to walk and frequently does so; she even runs a few steps now and then.
But the baby girl would not get down from her mother while I was talking to her.
Our chat was getting longer and the baby was getting heavier, so the mom tried to put the girl down more than once. But, each time she tried, the girl would grab onto her mother even more and make a fuss.
And it wasn't that the girl was afraid of me either. For a while the girl has been talking to me and has even come up to me while I'm sitting down and slaps my knees with her hands in a playful way.
Some of our mañaina (elders) believed that even a baby can sense when the mother is carrying a new child inside her womb.
There is no way a toddler aged 15 months can understand what pregnancy is, or that an unborn baby is inside the mother's womb. But the elders say the baby can feel it somehow. And thus the baby becomes clingy towards the mom.
Is it fear that the baby is being threatened by a sibling? It's hard to tell, isn't it, since babies cannot talk and explain their feelings.
And yes. The mother I was talking to, with the clingy baby, is actually expecting another child on the way.
I can relate to this, my 4 year old was like this to his mother before we knew she was pregnant with #2. We just thought he was growing or chalked it up to being "a mama's boy." Nope, he knew his wishes and prayers came true... all he wanted was a baby brother =)
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