Corrigenda: In my last column, I described how my Mother-in-Law had advised the Wife to avoid eating yams during the postnatal confinement period because 'people say the baby's 'down there' will be itchy'.

According to my Mother-in-Law, however, I misheard her: In fact, it is the mother's 'down there' that will allegedly be afflicted. She wishes me to correct this immediately, lest 'people' think she has been dispensing erroneous advice. Yam-lovin' mummies, you've been warned.

If I were ever to have a superhero name, I'd be Kancheongspider-Man.

Because, as I'm learning, dealing with a newborn baby is an enterprise fraught with anxiety.

With every little thing you do, you hear a tiny imp whispering in your ear: 'You're doing it wrong. You're going to ruin this child forever. You're going to make her (pick any one of the following or feel free to substitute a catastrophe of your own choosing): cross-eyed/bow-legged/botak/

stay back one year in kindergarten/

ineligible to get into an Ivy League university.'

I've been feeling especially uneasy of late, which I think has something to do with all these mainland Chinese women staring daggers at the Wife and me as we trundle Yakuza Baby about.

'Look at that one over there,' I murmured to the Wife. 'If she could, she'd hiss at us.'

'Hiss neh'mine,' replied the Wife. 'Wait she spits at us, then we habis. Walk faster.'

Nothing makes you feel less Chinese than living among real Made-in-China Chinese, and boy, are we feeling it here where we're currently based, in the New York suburb of Flushing, the largest Chinatown on America's East Coast. And it's all over the issue of baby bundling.

At first, we were mystified by all the dirty looks and clicking of tongues. But it all became clear one sweltering summer day, when we took Yakuza Baby to the neonatologist for a routine checkup. En route, we encountered yet another Chinese lady scowling at us.

'You can't dress your baby like that!' she barked at us in Mandarin.

'Like what?' I was puzzled. As the temperature was a muggy, Singapore-style 31 deg C, we'd dressed her in a light cotton shirt-and-pants combo with a frilly bonnet to shield her from the sun.

'Your baby will be cold,' she said.

'It's so hot you can fry an egg on the sidewalk,' I retorted.

'Babies are different,' she insisted, and raised her own baby for us to see. Well, you couldn't actually see the child at first, because he was hidden behind a mound of clothes. He had a heavy woollen knit hat pulled over his eyes and wore a fleece baby bunting outfit under which was another full bodysuit.

He looked like he was auditioning for one of Sir Ernest Shackleton's expeditions to Antarctica. 'Dress your baby warmer!' she scolded us as she huffed off with her Eskimo child, who was as stiff as a board.

'Can she be right?' I asked the Wife, panic in my eyes. 'Are we child abusers, exposing Yakuza Baby to the risk of catching frostbite in summer?'

Now that we'd been enlightened, it was true that practically every Chinese child we saw on the street was bundled up like mini-Michelin Men, even as their parents mopped their own sopping brows. The same couldn't be said for the babies of other ethnicities, however.

'It's a Chinese thing,' said the neonatologist, a Caucasian lady who did her best to keep from rolling her eyes when we consulted her. 'My husband's Chinese and his mum's always bugging me to wrap my kid up. Even when he's sweating. Did anyone tell you you shouldn't shower for a month? Or eat ginger constantly? They're obsessed about the cold.

'I think there's a deep cultural memory among many Chinese people of living in the harsh countryside, where freezing was a real concern,' she posited. 'When a trip to the bathhouse in winter was to risk freezing, and eating heaps of spicy ginger was the cheapest way to keep warm.'

The doctor assured me that babies do just fine in air-conditioned places. 'Your daughter spent five weeks in the neonatal ICU, which was at a constant 18 deg C. As long as you don't place her in the full blast of the air-con, she'll be dandy.'

I was relieved. Quite apart from being acquitted of baby neglect, I couldn't help but think: My daughter wouldn't really be a Singaporean baby if she couldn't tahan a little air-con.

As for dealing with the ire of our mainland cousins, well, We'll just have to give them the old cold shoulder.

This article was first published in The Sunday Times.