Monday, November 30, 2015

An Active baby means Proper Development: Babies are most active when Their Health and skin are Problem Free!!


 Motherhood is the most beautiful and blissful moment under the sky. It’s the definition of pure and unconditional love. However the most pleasurable moments come with numerous challenges.  It’s both a daunting responsibility and a magnificent occasion.

With a child born, birth of a mother also takes place. Like the child explores the world day by day growing up with every single moment, so also a mother explores the world of motherhood.

I was always fond of kids. I used to adore kids in my neighborhood since I was barely 8 years old. I used to go to the neighborhood houses to play and cuddle the kids. Wow! They were so soft...soft.

I was a teenager when my brother had his first daughter. Till my marriage three of my eldest brothers had already married and had kids. However As I was staying in hostels, so I used to get less time to be involved with them. Also I could never see how as a newborn kid they were taken care of by my Bhabis and Mother.

When I became a mother, the world became the most beautiful place for me. It seemed as if within moments the “Theme of Life Changed”. Happiness, wonderful and other such words…I don’t think are enough to describe those feelings. I was holding a buddle of joy of some pound weight surrounded by my mother, Mother-in-law and other elderly ladies of my family to grace and bless us “Me and My Son”.
That was perhaps the first real moment when I learnt the truth of life that “highest Pleasure comes with intense pain”.
Well…little did I know that soon the pleasure is going to have a face-off with Challenges? With other parenting things, one of the most difficult parts for me was to deal with skin care activity of my little son. Though health was always an issue with him but I took no time to learn that my son has an extra allergic skin.

Initially I did everything what I was asked to do by my Mother, Mother-in-law and some other elderly ladies.  Their skin care included oil massage followed by a birth (not every day).  Weekly thrice Turmeric paste with oil massage and sometime some “roots and shrubs” paste used to be applied in his body. Also I was advised not to use diapers for the newborn baby.

Soon I realized that they were not going well with my son.  I noticed some skin rashes also. Actually it was The pediatrician who taught me first "the proper skin care routine" for my son.
I followed them and I’m sharing them here.

Oil Massage

Research have shown that out of five senses, Touch (Feel) is the one that is most developed at birth in babies. So massaging infants has enormous benefits for helping babies grow and thrive because while massaging the power of “tender touch” works wonders in newborn’s psyche. It soothes the little one to dreamland, eases its stiff delicate muscles and also provides a protection layer to the skin.

However the Oil for the massage should be chosen carefully as “one may work for my Baby but may not work for yours”. Also “One Kind of oil” may not work in all the seasons in the year also. For Ex. Olive Oil may work wonderful in winter but some time it is not advisable to use it in summer as well. So it is very important to choose “good body oil” for the Baby.

Daily Bath:

A baby should be given a bath daily followed by the Oil massage preferably in lukewarm water. A daily bath refreshes Baby’s mind, cleanses it body. However, if Baby is not well then bath can be skipped though sponging should replace it.  While bathing with a regular interval we must use a Tear less Shampoo and Soap
I always had faced difficulty in choosing soap and a shampoo for my son as he was allergic to most of the baby shampoos and soaps. Mostly I used medicated products. But nowadays many good and safe brands are available. It is very important to clean the scalps of the baby with a good shampoo (tear less or at least not affecting eyes) and a soap bath is also important to clean the body. Else it would result in some skin problems.

Good Fabrics and Clean Clothes:

Special care should be taken to keep the clothes of the baby clean and germ free. Babies should be wrapped up with clean, soft towels. I never compromised with the brand and fabrics of my son’s clothes. Lose and soft fabric clothes are best for babies. Clothes if not chosen wisely has a potential to harm baby’s body that has soft and tender skins. They develop rashes and sometime they are serious also. So cotton and soft clothes are best for the kids.

Use Diapers:

I had faced most difficulty in convincing my mother as well as mother-in-law to use diapers for my son.  Now also it is very unlikely in many families to use diapers for the babies round the clock. At night…it is a very big NO NO…

But it is very important to use diapers for the babies (and especially at night) because it gives the Baby a “Good Night Sleep” without any disturbances of wetness. We know Babies need adequate sleep for their physical and mental development. Diapers help them to have a whole night sleep (only occasionally twice or thrice…they need night feed)

Another fact is even Diapers should be chosen wisely. There are many brands with tall claims like maximum absorption, no rashes in the skin…etc. But some only meet the claims. For that reason…I would suggest “Pampers Premium care Pants” as some of my friends who have their second child found it very good. It absorbs wetness and locks it keeping the baby’s skin dry and Comfortable for long hours which are very important for smooth development activities of the babies.
To use diapers properly, after any cleaning activities pat dry the baby’s skin and sprinkle it with a good baby powder and let it dry for a while. After that only use the diapers and premium pants.

Keep the Baby Hydrated to Keep the Baby’s skin moisturized:

For a healthy, problem free skin, baby needs a lot of “magical syrup” i.e. Water. Water keeps the body hydrated, locks the natural moisture intact with the body never letting it to dry and helps in gut cleaning processes. With growing years, Babies can be given lots of fruit juices and liquids. Moistly oil works as a moisturizer but sometime with changing weather Baby’s skin needs extra care. For that reason a good moisturizer can be applied in the little one’s body (though no moisturizer worked good for my son). It works excellent.

Apart from the above things, some other dos and don’ts should be taken care of while handling babies.
Never ever hold a baby without cleansing your hands and wearing clean clothes.
Never ignore anything in the Skin of the Baby…even if it is a small rash or inflammation.
In any emergency or any other problems, never take advice from others…consult a pediatrician immediately.

Babies are most active when Their Health and skin are Problem Free and an Active Baby means appropriate physical and mental development of the Baby.

Motherhood is a treasure hunt game. It always puts challenges before you only to discover more pleasure in it. It’s not only exploring the treasure but also playing this divine role is a “Treasure” in itself

The heavenly role of Motherhood is a reward from God and a key to his plan of Happiness for all his children!! 



“Pampers brings you the softest ever Pampers Premium Care Pants. Its cotton-like softness is #SoftestForBabySkin and allows it to breathe, thus keeping baby’s skin soft and healthy, and your baby happy. ”

                          

Thursday, November 26, 2015

LET THE WORLD REIGN BY DOCTRINES OF PEACE, LOVE AND HARMONY!!!


When terror Struck, Humanity is the first Casualty. Peace and Harmony Become Orphans.  


The lifeless bodies in Paris Might be resting in peace
The stillness of graveyards resonating in them
But The World is struggling yet to come out of shock,
From Nightmares of Terror, agony and intense pain

The innocent souls in restaurants, stadiums and concerts,
Perhaps having their last share of Fun and Smile on the earth
Unaware of the Chase of Devils to make them silent
With a scripted sordid saga of slaughter and Bloodbath

It is really a terrible nightmare to wake up to a world
Where an ardent effort is made to prove God Wrong
HIS claim that “Humans” are HIS best Creation
As HE blessed them with “Hearts” that are filled with love
  
I really wonder… from where on earth or entire Cosmos
They outsource so much hell of hatred in them
To execute mindless killing of innocents and naïve
And cheer in the midst of whimpers, cries and pool of Red

What chill and thrill they get by making lively bodies still
In the name of God, Religion and such Doctrines
May be God finding it hard to hide his Tattooed Face
Carved with “Sanguine Fluid” from piercing bullets with blood stains

Is this why they are sent on this earth here...I wonder
To break the law of Humanity without Fear
To hear those Mother’s sobs, weeps with tears
Tap, clap and dance to the Devil’s song of Cheer?

I really fall sorts of words to express my grief
As my heart gone hollow with the brutal inhumanity
But My Soul has the Strength to combat the sin and vice
And defeat the Purpose of Devil’s effort of Barbarity
  
I have the weapon of “Love” in my heart and Mind
To win over their hatred and To Silence their Guns
To make them realize that they’re in “Lost Paths”
And Hatred has never served God’s any Purpose

Peace is what we all always want on Earth
As it makes the world blissful and Heavenly abode
World becomes a beautiful place to live and breathe
When Flag of Peace remain unfurled with Love

God has given all Humans a Divine Grace
The Chamber of “Heart” blessed with eternal Love
So that no one should disgrace the Human Race
And spoil the divinity of Earth and heaven above

Let’s not bow down before a few lost souls
With sunken consciousness and sick minds
To ruin our Lives and instill it with Fear of terror
Only to Claim that they’re enemy of mankind
  
Our Strength Grows When We Dare
Our Unity Grows When We Pair
Our Conviction Grows When We Share
Our association Grows when we Care

Let’s Be United at this Dark Hour of Chaos
Let’s Tirelessly Speak about Peace, harmony and Love
Let’s prove them that Harmony still Exist on Earth
Let’s Diligently Practice Them as a Mark
Let’s gather the broken pieces of Courage and hope
Let’s tell them...

As Many times they would tatter "Peace into pieces" to vanish it from Earth
We would assemble the “Pieces of Peace” to bring it back
Even if their untiring effort to reap us apart
We would “live In Peace and Not in Pieces”

Most of the problems of the world can be solved easily with love and compassion. But it seems that a set of people have lost their trust and conviction in these celestial qualities and have downcast themselves lower in the scale of consciousness. They have come under the Devil’s clutch and have embraced hate and violence.
Only Love Win Over Hate. Each and every one of us needs to think, speak and act with love and only love, and this will enable a collective consciousness to work for universal gain. We live in a World of  vibration that responds to our vibrations, and if were to believe the law of attraction, and we see acts of violence, it must be true that at some level the world is vibrating with negative emotions, and we are unknowingly inviting these things into our consciousness.

 It has been often said that even one evolved, compassionate soul is equal to a thousand unawakened souls. If this is so, then it is our duty to rise in love, and act with love. This will fill universal consciousness with so much love that there would be no place left any longer for hate and violence. And The earth will be Ruled By Peace, Harmony And Love.



Monday, November 23, 2015

SPINNING CONTENT – WRITING FOR THE WEB: A Creative Writing Work Shop by BlogAdda


Your Creativity is the only place where no one can ever be!!
I had read this line in one of the chapters of the book “Who will cry, when you will die” By Robin Sharma.

With the advent of digital media, mobiles, ipads, kindles have taken the place of books and papers for the purpose of reading. So there is a need for effective and creative content writing.

Online writing is not easy as reading something online is much different from reading it in print. There are many issues involved like concentration, distractions…etc as well as if there are any typo-errors, grammatical mistakes; lengthy paragraphs….that distract a reader reading the texts in web.

 Also now days as everything is now in digital form so there are an increasing demand for Web Content writers as well. So it is very important to know the technicalities and “do’s and don’ts” of Writing for The Web.

On 20th November 2015, BlogAdda had organized a Creative Writing Workshop for content Writing for Web, #SpinningTheWeb workshop at #SMWMumbai
SPINNING CONTENT – WRITING FOR THE WEB #WritingForTheWeb


The Speaker was Parineeta Mehra . Apart from being sweet, soft spoken and friendly, Parineeta Mam was quite smart in engaging the participants.

First she made us play a game of “six word story about your Partner”. We were given an A4 size paper to fold it in the middle along the Length. Then write name on it and in the four corners draw four things (without any word) about Native Place, Favorite Food, Hobbies and after five years where you see yourself.

Then we were grouped with four participants in each group, discussed our meaning behind our drawings. Then introduced our partner only with “Six Words”. That was really amazing.
The following Tips were discussed in the work shop that are vital for a digital media content writer to be effective and creative in writing for web. We were asked to make charts of those points.

The Points are:

  • The content should be concise and simple and to the point for target reader.
  • The content shroud be relevant and contain topics that are trending (Hastags), that are freshest, hottest and most talked about
  • The content should be well researched and include the “Key words” for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
  • The objective of the content should be clear and written in simple language. So that even an average person can read and understand.
  • The content should be free of errors that include spelling, grammar and typography. Help of language tools can be taken for that purpose.
  • While writing content use of short forms e.g. asap, lol..Etc should be avoided.
  • Words are power…true but only when they written properly, rightly and effectively. One should never settle for anything less than amazing and powerful words.


The participants also discussed about how writing is a way of life. One should carry a notepad every time to capture ideas and write whatever comes to mind at that point only. It amazing that some participants also discussed about some paper apps which work as a digital dairy. For example, Skitch,  GoogleKeep, Infographics…etc I’m yet to explore those apps.
It was really an amazing workshop that helped me learn new things, connect with new people and explore the world of Web Content Writing. 

In the Second Part of the day I attended Social Media Week, Mumbai 2015. #SMWMumbai. To read my Post on it CLICK HERE





Social Media Week: A larger canvas to our thoughts and expressions!!

Today we are living in a world of “Social Media”.

In Today’s world we cannot imagine our existence without our presence in a virtual world where we create, communicate and share/exchange our thoughts, Information or ideas through computer-mediated tools called as social media.

Social Media are nothing but a group of internet based applications build on the ideological and technological foundation that enable us to communicate with different people beyond any geographical boundaries.

To be honest the Evolution of Social Media in recent years actually has revolutionaries the “traditional Human Communication processes” that dominated over a long period of time. It has given voice to the voiceless, speech to the speechless, sound to the hearing-impaired narrowed the distance between the powerful and powerless by giving them a same platform to communicate.

From 16th November 2015 to 20th November 2015, a five day Digital Extravaganza by “Social Media Week - a leading news platform and worldwide conference that curates and shares ideas, innovations and insights how social media and technology are changing business, society and culture around the world – took place in the heart of Mumbai
 Over the week, Mumbaikars as well as social media enthusiasts from other parts of India got a chance to hear speakers from different genres including Media, Entertainment, Advertising, Travel and Food at Social Media Week Mumbai #SMWMumbai.

I was fortunate to attend the same conference in Day5 on 20th November 2015. Here is my take on it…

Session #1
The session began with 
IS SOCIAL ADVERTISING REALLY TAKING OVER TRADITIONAL ADVERTISING?
 and The Speaker was
Joy Paul – Chairman and Chief Creative Officer, BBDO

There is no “Versus”, there is only Us. It’s not social Vs Traditional. It’s traditional to the power of social…that’s how he started with.

His speech was around the point that “social media is not an alternative to traditional media as far as advertising is concerned. In fact both are complementary to each other. His way of promoting a product is through acts and just advertisements. Because as per him, Acts are commitments where as ads are just conversations. Promotion of any product is more influential when acts are created by creating platforms for them rather creating slogans”.
He talked about a case study about advertising on Gilette and how it helped the brand to grow among audience and another case study on Whisper’s #TouchThePickle campaign for the end of the Period taboo that was quite effective and successful. A very interesting session it was. Smart campaigning strategy. 

Session #2
Can social media exist as an island, what happens when integrated?

The panelists were:

Deepak Sharma – Executive Vice President &Head. Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd.  
Pranayesh Singh - Heads Social Intelligence, Accenture
Ram Subramanian - Internet Artist, Writer & Director, Handloom Picture Company
Uma Talreja - Director Strategy, Raymond Ltd
Nitish Tipnis - Director-Marketing & Sales (Nissan) , Hover Automotive India Ltd
It was quite an insightful session. There was some amazing information like Kotak Mahindra was the first bank globally to connect Twitter with banking i.e. twitter banking,

The insights of this session was, We are a country which is going to become the 2nd largest country in the world to use internet - 400 million users, so if any brand try to encase the profitability to have committed consumers, then they can’t ignore “Social media”. Also they have to focus on at human level contact, transparency in services without any hidden agenda, authentic and credential claims and look for more and more innovative ways of communication as it is a large two way communication platform.

The Most Interesting and exciting Session was on

IS SOCIAL MEDIA SHAPING JOURNALISM FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE?

The discussion was held by a power packed panel consisting of: 

Sidharth Bhatia - Journalist, Writer & Founder/Editor, TheWire.in
Arnab Goswami - Editor-in-Chief, Times Now
BV Rao – Editor,Firstpost
Sruthijith KK - Editor in chief, HuffingtonPost India (Moderator)

As expected the crowd seemed most excited as Arnab Goswami was on the dice. In fact on a lighter note I must say, no one can Moderate Arnab. He is as usual very firm on his opinion.

Well coming to the point, it seemed as if all four other than Arnab spoke in support of the motion that Journalism is changing through Social media and digital media is certainly invading in the reign of traditional media. Arnab was firm on his opinion as TV journalism has broken the paradigm of journalism. Social Media has nothing to change in it. Since 2010, particularly times now has taken an aggressive way of throwing news in way to make people consume it.

However I feel a bit differently. Of course traditional journalism that includes TV and Print media are quite a powerful medium and dominated journalism since years and Social Media is at present at a very early stage. But even if there has been some spectacular achievement in breaking stories in recent years, traditional journalism is still remain a “one way communication”. Also they still don’t have a reach the remote places of India (villages) irrespective of their resourcefulness. How many cases they’ve broken that happened in interior areas?

These days TV or print journalism is no more just giving news, they are in fact giving their views and that to agenda based. They are in fact imposing their opinion on public on certain instances. As rightly pointed by Dhanya Rajendran - Managing Editor, www.thenewsminute.com, there has been some selectiveness also. I mean ignoring similar instances in other part of country when an incident is trending.

Actually there is a large gap between traditional journalism and the people which can be invaded by Social/digital media by giving voice to more and more people. For the traditional media Opinion of common people doesn’t matter but I think “Opinion of people matters most in a healthy democracy”. Social Media had democratized journalism and even if Digital media is less resourceful I think they can really make a Change in journalism the way it is done today.

The other sessions were too insightful and informative giving a broader vision of “pros and cons” of social media.


It was a great day with much insightful learning. Social Media Week was where the intellectuals gathered together to discuss Social Media as a larger canvas to our thoughts and expressions. A great day of my life.

It was co-sponsored by TATA MOTORS and I had my#madeofgreat moment with none other than Lionel Messi – The Global Brand ambassador Of TATA Motors.



(There was also a Creative Writing workshop "SPINNING CONTENT – WRITING FOR THE WEBConducted by Blogadda in the first part of the day. To Read My post CLICK HERE