It all started with the need for sleep. I’m the kind of person that needs to have a plan for everything.
So it surprised everyone around me, including myself that I started out as somewhat cavalier about most things childbirth and parenting related. My pregnancy books advised I have a “birth plan” specifying all my preferences from medical interventions and pain management, to what kind of music I would like to play while laboring. I had no idea what it would be like and had no desire to try to plan it. Did I want an epidural? Eh, if I felt like I needed one. I didn’t want my birth story to turn into a classic sitcom moment where the woman who swears against epidurals suddenly screams, “get me the &#%@ epidural” only to have the doctor tell her the window for one was closed. So when I asked my midwife about the need to write a birth plan and she shrugged and told me it wasn’t really necessary.
“We don’t really like to call them ‘birth plans,’ ” she said. “We say ‘birthing preferences’. Because you can’t really ‘plan’ a birth. Unexpected things happen.”
When I told her I didn’t even know if I wanted an epidural and that I wanted to wait and see, she said I was a perfect patient. Woo hoo!
It worked out well, because nothing happened the way I probably would have dreamed up in my sugar-coated version of baby-having, and I might have spent a lot of time stressing out over details that would never see the light of day. (We’ll save the full birth story for another day.)
My theory on parenting was similar. Go into it open-minded. Go with the flow. Listen to my baby and figure it out. The author of a book doesn’t know MY baby. They don’t know what’s best for MY family.
My feelings on that subject are still rooted in those beliefs. But a lot has changed since I brought my little bundle of joy home. Five weeks of colic* change a person. Pretty much everything about parenting does.
So as I sat up rocking my baby while he fussed (read: screamed for hours) until the wee hours every night in his early months I held my son in the crook of one arm and my iPhone in the other hand and Googled “colic,” “how to get my baby to stop crying,” “fourth trimester,” “over-stimulation,” “baby sleep,” etc.
In my late night reading journey I discovered a number of surprising things. I had thought my baby would fall asleep whenever he was tired (with a little TLC) and sleep as much as he wanted/needed. That however was not the case at all. I read my newborn should be sleeping about 18 hours a day. That was not the case. Much to my surprise, I read he, as a newborn, should not be awake for more than two hours before tiring for a nap. That was DEFINITELY not the case. Oh my goodness I had so much to learn. Going with the flow WAS NOT WORKING.
Down the rabbit hole I went on a journey of Wiki-wandering that lead me to understand two very different theories of parenting a baby. On one end of the spectrum we have what we’ll call team Babywise. This team believes in getting babies on a schedule where the parent is in charge of when it’s feeding time, when it’s nap time, etc. On the other end of the spectrum is Attachment Parenting. This is where the parent forms a strong bond with their baby and learns the baby’s cues to know when they are tired, hungry, etc. and responds appropriately. In simplest terms, it comes down to who is in charge — the parent or the baby?
I’ll admit in my house the baby is mostly in charge. We lean pretty hard in to the Attachment Parenting lifestyle here. However, I didn’t get it all from books. As I read, I realized a lot of what I was already doing — because it felt like a natural parenting choice to me — was in fact a much studied, much debated, much written-about style of parenting. The more I read, the more I was hooked on reading more. I realized parenting is just like anything else. The more you learn, the better informed you are to make decisions.
I’ve learned a lot from the various schools of thought. I’ve even crossed party lines on a few key issues and tried some non-AP methods. And to each her own. This is a no judgement zone. I don’t believe in feeding into “Mommy Wars.” I think raising kids is challenging, full of big decisions and incredibly personal. So my goal is to make this blog about my educational journey and perhaps even help other moms find the information they are looking for to make informed decisions. I will try to link up to good sources and cite my information, but bear with me if I run stumbling through my thoughts without attribution at times. What was once a wide world of unknowns to me is becoming a second nature and some un-cited pieces of information are more an accumulation of much reading than a specific reference to expert’s of writing or another. Please feel free to comment on posts that require more attribution and linkage if you would like more information. I will be happy to oblige.
The books and writing I appreciate the most so far lay out a variety of common parenting questions and possible solutions to help parents create a plan that is best for their unique family. Books that understand there is no one-size-fits-all in parenting. Every family is different and even every child within the same family has different needs and challenges. One of my friends recently observed to me that her youngest and third baby is much more challenging that her previous two. Her sons loved to play rough and get tossed in the air by their daddy. Her new daughter will have none of it. Things that sent her sons squealing with joy at the same age send her straight to tears. Her older kids were happy as babies with a variety of caretakers. Her new little one is all about mama and sometimes no one else can comfort her. Her temperament is completely different and brings on a whole new set of rules to play by.
One AP-leaning book that empowers parents to make their own choices I’m currently reading is “The No-Cry Sleep Solution” by Elizabeth Pantley. She outlines bullet-point ideas for getting babies to sleep with notes under the subheads saying who might benefit from each idea. IE: All families may benefit from this idea, or breastfeeding and co-sleeping moms may benefit from this idea, etc. Expect a full review when I finally get to the end. The ironic truth is that I only have time to read it now that most of our sleep problems are behind us (knock on wood, every time I say something like that change comes up and haunts me.) I also intend to read “Secrets of the Baby Whisperer” which runs a more moderate line of thought. And to round out my education I hope to read a little more about the Ferber method (Cry it Out) although I’m saving that for last, because I don’t intend to go route from what I know so far.
Which brings me back to my original point. I have come a long way in a few short months and feel like I’m just scratching the tip of the parental education iceberg. So here we are. A place for me to keep track of my studies and thoughts and hopefully share something that might help other moms create their own road map to parenting — or at least get some sleep.
With that, GOOD night!
*My wise pediatrician informs me the medical community no longer refers to the excessive periods of crying some babies exhibit between weeks 3 and 12 as colic. Nonetheless, for the purposes of this blog, I will probably throw that word around a little, because most people know who know babies know what colic means in layman’s sense and “excessive periods of crying some babies exhibit between weeks 3 and 12” is kind of a mouthful. Or keyboard full, if you will.
PHOTO: My sweet boy napping in his swing at just two weeks old.
Mom Outside the Margins 