Naik Buai

And so Aiden’s having his Naik Buai event this Sunday morning. What is Naik Buai? The translation into English literally would be “cradling”. Naik Buai is practiced widely by Malays in Perak to celebrate a new born, and is usually held as soon as the baby turns 44 days old. And because Aiden’s proud grand daddy is from Perak, and big on traditions, he was adamant on organizing one for his first grandson.

The cradle is prepared way before hand. According to tradition, for normal babies, the cradle is made with 3 layers of material, for babies from a noble background, with 7 layers of material; and for babies from royalty background, with 9 layers of material. Before the baby is placed into the cradle, the Mak Bidan or midwife would snip a lock of the baby’s hair and the hair is placed into a young coconut shell. The midwife then proceeds to parade the baby around and offers attendees of the event to do the same. Sometimes, if the baby is a boy, the whole head is shaved. Then the baby is placed into the cradle and rocked to sleep with marhaban zikir recitings.

So I am going crazy doing preparations for Aiden’s first big event. At the very least I do not have to worry about the decorations for the buai (cradle) and the preparation of bunga telur (decorated eggs given as favors during the event), as all these are being prepared by Aiden’s stepmothers back in Ipoh.

However, I do have to worry about multiple other small matters:

1) Jubah – this is a type of robe worn by males. Unfortunately, they aren’t usually available in newborn size. And none of the tailors I went to wanted to sew one up for Aiden as he was too small. Minimal fabric but maximum time and effort! I finally convinced someone back in Ipoh to sew a simple jubah for Aiden. As a back up plan, I also borrowed a jubah from a friend’s baby and have altered it to make it smaller.

2) Mummy and daddy’s attire – My dad wanted a theme colour for the event, so we chose white and green. Why not blue you may ask? Because the last time I had blue as the theme colour for my wedding, it turned out to be turquoise blue and all the flower girls ended up wearing their school uniform because the material was turquoise blue. Talk about saving cost!! Anyway… I will be wearing my white baju kurung which I wore only once when me and hubby exchanged wedding vows erm… nearly 4 years back? So I have been dieting like crazy to ensure that I fit into the baju kurung! Oohhh and I need to check hubby’s white baju melayu just in case!

3) Photography – My dad’s not exactly a big fan of candid style photography or those arsty farsty artistic photography, while hubby loves it to bits. So we’ve decided to engage our own photographer for the event. Unfortunately, as the event coincides with the school holidays, our first choice of photographer was fully booked. Fortunately an old friend of mine, way back during school days, does photography for a living and has agreed to record these precious memories…

I really hope that Aiden will behave during his Naik Buai ceremony, as he is quite prone to shouting his lungs out whenever I am not physically cradling him. Blame it on the breastfeeding! He is so attached to me until even dear hubby is starting to take offence with the cute little boy. Haha!

Anyway, we’re off to Ipoh this evening, and I shall post some pictures of the event when I get home! Here’s to Aiden!