So if I’m going to be perfectly honest I should probably start by admitting that I’m one of those people. Which people? The ones that judge parents out in public with naughty children. I have seen kids throwing tantrums in grocery shops and watch parents let them get away with it. Now that I’m a bit older and hopefully a tad wiser, I realise I truly had no idea what anyone was getting away with, if in fact they were getting away with anything. How could I? I was witnessing one tiny scene without having watched the rest of the play.
Because I used to be like this, when I went out in public with my new baby I felt like everyone was judging me. It was probably also due to my complete lack of confidence in my parenting ability. I haven’t been around young kids or babies much in my life so I really have no clue what I’m doing. Everything I do is my best guess. Bub would be crying and I wondered if people were thinking that I should be comforting him more, or maybe they thought I was comforting him too much. These thoughts can do your head in and they were consuming too much of my mind. It was time to pull myself together. I was far too tired to waste time and energy thinking about what strangers might be thinking of me and my parenting. Who are they to judge? They don’t know me, my baby or our situation. Why give mere strangers power? No more! I vowed to step out in public with confidence and give all my energy and attention to my baby. Easier said than done, but sometimes you have to fake it til you make it. Eventually I will genuinely feel, and more importantly act this way.
But what about family? That’s a different category. I’m all for constructive feedback. In fact I welcome it. I’m the first to admit I don’t know what I’m doing. This doesn’t mean I will take on every suggestion, but I’m open to hearing it. Someone in my family whose feedback I have great respect for is my dad. We have a similar way of thinking. I have often gone to him for advice and place a lot of value on what he has to say. So I was a little surprised when he said… oh wait, I have to back it up. In order for this to make sense I need to go back about a month or so.
So there was a time when all of a sudden my excellent little feeder stopped being so excellent. He never had any problem going on the boob. In fact, the boob was a guaranteed silencer. If he was crying or upset, I’d offer him some milk and he’d go from wah wah wah to gulp gulp gulp in under a second. But all of a sudden it had become a battle just to get him on. This was really annoying during the day, but at least I could just wait a bit and try again. But our nighttime routine relied heavily upon him feeding, as this is what put him to sleep and kept him asleep for so long. So after his shower, I would dress him and get him all ready for his pre bed feed. I’d ‘assume the position’ and before I could even get him on he would start crying. He’d do a bit of head banging and arching his back and throwing his arms around. He was really unsettled. I had no idea what was going on so I called my sister to see what she thought.
Sister: Hmmm, are you into baby wearing?
Me: Well, I have a carrier.
Sister: Why don’t you try wearing him during the day more? He could be unsettled because he’s not being held enough.
Me: What? Can that seriously make him like this? Not holding him enough?
Sister: Think about it. In third world countries mothers co sleep and wear their babies all the time. Do you see those babies crying?
I honestly didn’t know how much those babies cried. I’d never looked into it. But perhaps she had a point. I had nothing to lose in trying it. Thankfully it was the weekend and I had hubby home to help me. “Right, between the two of us we need to hold this kid as much as possible today.” I told him. So we passed him back and forth and didn’t put him down much at all. It was hard work but we committed to it to see if it would make a difference.
That night when I went to feed bub for bed, he went straight on, fed for an hour and drifted off to sleep. I was really surprised. I also felt terrible. I’m a bad mother! I haven’t been holding my baby enough. I couldn’t believe the effect this had on him. This was going to be harder for me to keep up during the week when I had him on my own, but at least we’d solved the mystery.
As the weeks went by I did my best to hold him as much as possible during the day. But holding or wearing him was rather restrictive so I couldn’t do it non-stop. I just did the best that I could. Sometimes my best wasn’t good enough and this was evident through bub’s unsettled behaviour. So I’d have to try harder. I would also try to make the most of having hubby home on the weekend. Kinda like trying to overdose bub on love for two days and hoping it would last a little into the week. Ha ha. Nice thought. At the end of the day it wasn’t practical to carry him ALL day but I learned to stop and give him extra time and attention if he seemed agitated. At the same time, I don’t think it’s a bad thing for babies to cry so I would still let him cry a bit too. I guess it’s all about balance and if anyone has figured out a formula for the perfect balance, I’d love to hear it.
Anyway… so when I felt I could handle it, I decided to take a trip to visit my parents with my baby. It was just a short plane ride but it meant taking bub out of his home environment for a few days. Hubby had to work so he didn’t come. I was on my own.
At this time, my sister, her husband and children were also staying with my parents. Having kids there made it a lot more fun than my usual visits. But it also meant that I wasn’t comfortable putting bub down like I normally would. At home I would put him on my bed, the couch or in his bouncer on the floor or bench. I could do this and walk away to do whatever I needed to do. But with kids around under the age of five, I couldn’t exactly do this and leave him unattended. It was more work for me but it was only a few days so I wasn’t too worried. Plus, with bub in a different environment, I thought it was probably good for him to be held more to give him some extra security.
Well, my dad obviously observed all of this and when I spoke to him on the phone a week later I was surprised at what he said. I was saying how it was difficult to do some things when I had a needy baby that wants to be held all the time. And you know what my dad said? “He’s only that way because you’ve made him like that.” I was shocked. “What? I’ve made him needy?” “Yes. You’ve conditioned him to be needy, so that’s why he’s like that. But he’s a first child so I’m sure you’ll learn with your others. You’re not as bad as some people. But you’re pretty quick to pick him up when he cries.” Gees, if only he saw how much I let him cry at home before I pick him up. I had to stop and take a moment at this stage. I have a lot of respect for my dad’s opinion but this particular ‘feedback’ was based on his observations of me and my child staying in someone else’s house in unusual circumstances. He had no knowledge of the issue I thought I had just resolved with not holding my baby enough nor how I had changed my routine being in a different home for a few days.
My initial thought was to justify and explain all that he didn’t know. I thought it should be brought to his attention that he was a bit too quick to judge without all the facts. Maybe he would see things differently if he knew the background. But then I realised this isn’t the last time something like this is going to happen. If I feel the need to explain and justify my actions every time someone has a comment on my parenting, then I will be doing that the rest of my life. People are always going to judge or give me feedback that I don’t agree with. There’s nothing I can do to stop this. So instead I decided to take this opportunity to practise how to handle this sort of feedback. It’s hard when it comes from someone you respect, but at the end of the day there was way too much information he didn’t have. I have the whole picture, he has a small part of it. And although I trust my dad’s judgment, I trust my judgment of his judgment more – if that makes sense. He’d spent all of five days around my baby so this time I was choosing to discard his feedback. After all, can you really hold a newborn too much?
Because I used to be like this, when I went out in public with my new baby I felt like everyone was judging me. It was probably also due to my complete lack of confidence in my parenting ability. I haven’t been around young kids or babies much in my life so I really have no clue what I’m doing. Everything I do is my best guess. Bub would be crying and I wondered if people were thinking that I should be comforting him more, or maybe they thought I was comforting him too much. These thoughts can do your head in and they were consuming too much of my mind. It was time to pull myself together. I was far too tired to waste time and energy thinking about what strangers might be thinking of me and my parenting. Who are they to judge? They don’t know me, my baby or our situation. Why give mere strangers power? No more! I vowed to step out in public with confidence and give all my energy and attention to my baby. Easier said than done, but sometimes you have to fake it til you make it. Eventually I will genuinely feel, and more importantly act this way.
But what about family? That’s a different category. I’m all for constructive feedback. In fact I welcome it. I’m the first to admit I don’t know what I’m doing. This doesn’t mean I will take on every suggestion, but I’m open to hearing it. Someone in my family whose feedback I have great respect for is my dad. We have a similar way of thinking. I have often gone to him for advice and place a lot of value on what he has to say. So I was a little surprised when he said… oh wait, I have to back it up. In order for this to make sense I need to go back about a month or so.
So there was a time when all of a sudden my excellent little feeder stopped being so excellent. He never had any problem going on the boob. In fact, the boob was a guaranteed silencer. If he was crying or upset, I’d offer him some milk and he’d go from wah wah wah to gulp gulp gulp in under a second. But all of a sudden it had become a battle just to get him on. This was really annoying during the day, but at least I could just wait a bit and try again. But our nighttime routine relied heavily upon him feeding, as this is what put him to sleep and kept him asleep for so long. So after his shower, I would dress him and get him all ready for his pre bed feed. I’d ‘assume the position’ and before I could even get him on he would start crying. He’d do a bit of head banging and arching his back and throwing his arms around. He was really unsettled. I had no idea what was going on so I called my sister to see what she thought.
Sister: Hmmm, are you into baby wearing?
Me: Well, I have a carrier.
Sister: Why don’t you try wearing him during the day more? He could be unsettled because he’s not being held enough.
Me: What? Can that seriously make him like this? Not holding him enough?
Sister: Think about it. In third world countries mothers co sleep and wear their babies all the time. Do you see those babies crying?
I honestly didn’t know how much those babies cried. I’d never looked into it. But perhaps she had a point. I had nothing to lose in trying it. Thankfully it was the weekend and I had hubby home to help me. “Right, between the two of us we need to hold this kid as much as possible today.” I told him. So we passed him back and forth and didn’t put him down much at all. It was hard work but we committed to it to see if it would make a difference.
That night when I went to feed bub for bed, he went straight on, fed for an hour and drifted off to sleep. I was really surprised. I also felt terrible. I’m a bad mother! I haven’t been holding my baby enough. I couldn’t believe the effect this had on him. This was going to be harder for me to keep up during the week when I had him on my own, but at least we’d solved the mystery.
As the weeks went by I did my best to hold him as much as possible during the day. But holding or wearing him was rather restrictive so I couldn’t do it non-stop. I just did the best that I could. Sometimes my best wasn’t good enough and this was evident through bub’s unsettled behaviour. So I’d have to try harder. I would also try to make the most of having hubby home on the weekend. Kinda like trying to overdose bub on love for two days and hoping it would last a little into the week. Ha ha. Nice thought. At the end of the day it wasn’t practical to carry him ALL day but I learned to stop and give him extra time and attention if he seemed agitated. At the same time, I don’t think it’s a bad thing for babies to cry so I would still let him cry a bit too. I guess it’s all about balance and if anyone has figured out a formula for the perfect balance, I’d love to hear it.
Anyway… so when I felt I could handle it, I decided to take a trip to visit my parents with my baby. It was just a short plane ride but it meant taking bub out of his home environment for a few days. Hubby had to work so he didn’t come. I was on my own.
At this time, my sister, her husband and children were also staying with my parents. Having kids there made it a lot more fun than my usual visits. But it also meant that I wasn’t comfortable putting bub down like I normally would. At home I would put him on my bed, the couch or in his bouncer on the floor or bench. I could do this and walk away to do whatever I needed to do. But with kids around under the age of five, I couldn’t exactly do this and leave him unattended. It was more work for me but it was only a few days so I wasn’t too worried. Plus, with bub in a different environment, I thought it was probably good for him to be held more to give him some extra security.
Well, my dad obviously observed all of this and when I spoke to him on the phone a week later I was surprised at what he said. I was saying how it was difficult to do some things when I had a needy baby that wants to be held all the time. And you know what my dad said? “He’s only that way because you’ve made him like that.” I was shocked. “What? I’ve made him needy?” “Yes. You’ve conditioned him to be needy, so that’s why he’s like that. But he’s a first child so I’m sure you’ll learn with your others. You’re not as bad as some people. But you’re pretty quick to pick him up when he cries.” Gees, if only he saw how much I let him cry at home before I pick him up. I had to stop and take a moment at this stage. I have a lot of respect for my dad’s opinion but this particular ‘feedback’ was based on his observations of me and my child staying in someone else’s house in unusual circumstances. He had no knowledge of the issue I thought I had just resolved with not holding my baby enough nor how I had changed my routine being in a different home for a few days.
My initial thought was to justify and explain all that he didn’t know. I thought it should be brought to his attention that he was a bit too quick to judge without all the facts. Maybe he would see things differently if he knew the background. But then I realised this isn’t the last time something like this is going to happen. If I feel the need to explain and justify my actions every time someone has a comment on my parenting, then I will be doing that the rest of my life. People are always going to judge or give me feedback that I don’t agree with. There’s nothing I can do to stop this. So instead I decided to take this opportunity to practise how to handle this sort of feedback. It’s hard when it comes from someone you respect, but at the end of the day there was way too much information he didn’t have. I have the whole picture, he has a small part of it. And although I trust my dad’s judgment, I trust my judgment of his judgment more – if that makes sense. He’d spent all of five days around my baby so this time I was choosing to discard his feedback. After all, can you really hold a newborn too much?
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