My Motherly Wisdom - 6 weeks in

Look how he's grown!!!!!

That outfit used to swim on him, and now it's tightness accentuates his growing belly.

I've learned a lot in the last 6 weeks about being a mom.  On the days where he sleeps without crying and happily eats every 3 hours, I think I'm a great mom!  And then, inevitably, I'm humbled the next day  by less-perfect behavior.  But perfect or not (or not!) here is the advice I would give to new moms.

Get to know your baby, and then do what works for you.  

Every baby is different, so there's not one correct solution.  I think I spent too much time at the beginning worrying about fitting into a parenting mold that I'd read about.  For example, I read the Babywise book--and liked most of the ideas--but I was frustrated when I couldn't make those ideas work in real life.  So while feeding Santiago in the middle of the night, I'd be surfing the net on my iPad trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.  

In the end, the most helpful thing has been simple: take the time to get to know Santiago.  When 3 weeks hit, I realized I was enjoying motherhood so much more because I could actually tell why my baby was crying  (at least most of the time) and what his different cries meant.  I could tell when he was hungry, and understood when he was tired.  Without understanding your baby, no parenting technique will do any good.

Before having a baby I read about putting your baby on a sleep cycle of eating, staying awake a set period of time, and then having them sleep until the next feeding.  It sounded great in theory, but wasn't necessarily working out so perfectly in real life.  As I was troubleshooting my problem (thanks Google!) I came across a blogger who explained how to fix that specific problem: forget you ever read that parenting advice; it will never work.

All of a sudden I felt relief.  Just because I liked an idea didn't mean it was necessarily right for my baby. I quit trying to do exactly what I read, and learned to adapt my late-night research to fit my and my baby's needs.  The things I read were helpful for learning underlying ideas, and then I could pick and choose methods and change them as needed.

One example is with sleeping.  I thought for sure I'd be a supporter of crying it out.  [Meaning, put the baby in the crib at nap time, and then let them self-soothe and cry until they fall asleep, resulting in a happy baby that eventually sleeps without argument.] But honestly, Santiago never had a problem sleeping at night.  And letting him cry it out at nap time wasn't getting us anywhere. His hysterical crying never got him any closer to sleep.  And I just got frustrated.  Until I decided to just do what worked for us.  I put him down when he's tired.  I listen to the type of crying he's doing, and either let him cry himself to sleep or go pick him up/burp him/rock him/put him in the swing.

Another example is the pacifier.  There are a lot of strong opinions out there about what to use and when to use it.  For Santiago, sucking on a pacifier helps him relax his body and work out whatever's in his system.  Even though to some it probably looks like I'm shoving it in his mouth when he doesn't want it, he eventually will take it, and it solves his problem!  I'm sure every baby is different, but for us, it works.

Other things that have worked well for me:

• Gas drops!  The most common reason that Santiago cries is because he has gas in his stomach.  (Which is why some crying never led to sleep...)  Gas drops have been great!!!  Can't imagine what the last 4 weeks would have been like without them

• Use the crib!  For his first 3 weeks, the only place Santiago slept was in his crib (or car seat).  So there was never any adjustment necessary.  I figured that as a baby, he wasn't aware of how big the crib was in comparison to his little body.  Since then, I've loosened up a bit for two reasons.  First, I don't want to miss out on the opportunities to cuddle him in my arms occasionally while he sleeps, especially because he's getting big so fast.  Second, when the nap in the crib isn't working, I'd rather have him fall asleep in the swing and not get overtired from staying awake.  (And let's just say, the boy barely knows what my bedroom looks like...  we don't go there.)  Another benefit to having sleep in his own room is that I only wake up when he's legitimately crying.  I tune out the little noises he makes throughout the night.  So if he is waking up frequently, he's going back to sleep.  (I wouldn't know, because I'm fast asleep in my bed!)

• Full feedings!  Although I haven't followed Babywise completely, several of the key points have been helpful.  I see a lot of babies that 'snack' all the time.  They eat for five minutes, then twenty minutes later eat again, then an hour later they eat again.  By making sure the baby eats until he's completely full at every feeding you can avoid irregular patterns.  For the most part, Santiago eats every 3 hours.  If he cries in between those regular feedings, I don't automatically feed him because most of the time he's not crying out of hunger. 

• Cold bottles!  When I started to give him the occasional bottle, I only offered it to him at room temperature. Again, I figure if he doesn't know any better he won't complain.  (I'm sure he'd prefer a warm bottle if it was offered to him, but down the road I don't want to deal with heating bottles wherever I go.  So far he hasn't complained.  ha)

One note about breastfeeding.  In the hospital, they gave me a silicone shield to use to help Santiago latch.  I thought, "Great! He's eating.  That was easy."  Then I started reading online about how bad those things are and how they should never be used.  (You guessed it... La Leche League!)  I even had another mom tell me I was going to have problems because of it.  Naturally, I was then embarrassed to let people know about it.  But after my realization that I was the mom and could do whatever I wanted with my baby, I don't really care anymore. I think it's a great invention!  It made breastfeeding so much easier for me!  And my baby is growing just fine [look at that belly in the picture above!], so it's worked for us.  I'm curious to talk to the doctor about it at Santiago's next appointment.  I still use it at some feedings, because like I said, it works great aside from the slight inconvenience.  

With all this parental freedom of choice comes accountability.  I support parents making their own educated choices for the baby without peer pressure from the internet, books, or other moms, but I do think parents need to be responsible for the habits they help their babies form.  If you want to do attachment parenting, great, but you can't complain about how often your baby eats, or how they are making your bed crowded.  Or if you only let your baby fall asleep by themselves in the crib, you can't complain about missing out on a newborn falling asleep in your arms.  There are always trade-offs.  

I love letting other people hold my baby.  It makes them happy, but it also helps me realize that all their parenting experience combined doesn't trump the experience I gain with my baby by spending every day (all day) with him.  When he starts fussing in their arms and they say, "Oh, he must be tired," I can think to myself, "Nope, he just needs to be burped." It's not an issue of pride... I don't tell people they're wrong.  I just smile because I'm grateful that I'm learning how to be a good mother to my baby.  

And my other piece of advice to new moms is this: 

It gets better every day.