I have been super defensive towards comments people say about my baby, like “ Oh he’s a BIG baby” or the eyebrow lift from one of the parents when I told her that my six month old needs to take a nap every two hours! And my ultimate favorite is when somebody tries to convince me that my baby doesn’t need a nap when he is obviously rubbing his eyes, yawning, and getting fussy!
I think I need to post a sign on my door or maybe around my neck that says “beware of mommy if you say the following”:
– DO NOT and I repeat DO NOT say “He is a BIG baby” followed by “HOW much do you EXACTLY feed him?”. I feed my baby as much as he wants when he wants! So enough of that! He weighed 5 lbs. at birth! In my opinion the fact that he is 20 Lbs. at 6 months is amazing and an achievement in itself!
– When baby is taking a nap in my sling DON’T hover over his head and shout “IS HE SLEEPING??”
– When you walk in and I calmly gesture and say “SSHHHHH…” don’t point out loudly that his eyes are still open! Do people have any idea how long it takes to get a fussy baby drowsy and that if they wake up from their drowsiness it takes forever to get them to sleep again!
– When I’m getting ready to feed my baby DON’T say “he is probably not hungry yet”
– DON’T compare my baby to other babies his age, it is true he is taking his time to sit and roll over (he threatens to do them both all the time so any minute now) but he was a premie for god’s sake do your research he will take longer to develop those skills.
– DON’T go around making jokes about how I keep my baby locked in the house. He is still a baby he needs his sleep and after seven p.m. the mosquitos come out to play! WE ARE IN AFRICA….MALARIA ANYONE! ! ! If a gathering happens around his nap time guess what! I’m not attending! I called the grocery store today to ask if they had a certain product and the guy on the phone said “word on the street is that you don’t like to take your baby out of the house” …….what the….!!!!!!!!
That said I do believe that I’m overly defensive at times. My hubby would be casually bringing up a conversation about baby’s routine or about his development skills in comparison to babies his age and I actually can feel my blood boiling! I guess it’s part of the process of realizing that I really don’t know everything about parenting (even though before I became a mother I thought I did!) and all the available books and research out there can be helpful at times, but in general they truly made things even more confusing for me which resulted in stressing me out and second doubting my decisions as a mommy. A very stressful situation when you want to do your best for the baby and want to take the best approach when it comes to parenting. During my pregnancy I would spend my days reading parenting books, every time my mom would walk in she would exclaim “ I’m going to burn all those books one day, just go with your instincts!” and now I finally confess that she was right! (Another example of how mothers always know best!) I’m not going to burn them all just yet, but for now I will put them aside and go with my instincts, I have so many conflicting theories and strategies in my head that I’m starting to get them all confused! So many articles and books on how to be as a parent and how to respond to your baby and what could be going wrong! I’m putting a stop to all that chaos in my head and concentrating on my common sense and just addressing my baby’s needs as they come, after all I understand him more than any book!
The picture on this post was today’s Advent Calendar addition you can see all the previous days here
babybluerockingchair 