Sarong Cradle

On the way to Kijal, when we stopped for lunch at Kerteh,
we saw this sarung cradle hanging from a shady tree.

Inside, a boy was soundly having his siesta.

while his mother tended the food stall nearby.

When I was young, I too slept in a sarong cradle at your grandfather's shop
....she is telling her daughter

She really did, when she was born, the youngest child (10 years after Aunt Millie, 14 years after me) my mom dug out the metal holder that held the sarong, it had its tensile wire springs intact: she  slung it onto the wooden eaves at the hallway of our family shop, and she slept in it till she was quite big.  Do not underestimate this sarong cradle, its swing can lull and soothe a the most fretful and colicky babe to sleep, and its cool cloth sides hug and cradle you like you are in your mum's lap or womb, or safe in mummy's arms.

Mind you, her metal sarong cradle was not the mechanical ones you see now with buttons to switch on and do the swinging for you,  we actually took turns to jog the cradle up and down till she fell asleep!


Anyway, I stole the picture from the internet, a blog called A Malaysian in France:

Everyone in my family grew up with a buaian (Malay) or sarong cradle. It is called "swinging basket" in Chinese. It is designed so that the button part of the buaian is holding the baby, giving baby the feeling that he or she is still in the womb and being held. I was a colic baby, I won't not fall asleep if my mother didn't swing the buaian, it was in the swinging sensation I slept sound. Now they have modern electronic buaian so baby falls sleep without having someone manually swing it. The machine would do the work.
(this is written by Bee Ean, a Malaysian married to Fabien, a Frenchman, and she is now living in France. No, I do not know her, I only know Wan Hua Chapouthier, but I googled 'sarong cradle' and chose her blog and picture.)
I remembered now we called it "yo na" or "swinging basket" as explained by Bee Ean above.....it was like, "let's put her in the "yo na" now!".....as we were entrusted with looking after our smallest sister back then as mom and dad had to look after the medicine shop.