Look at that little face, and see if you can guess what she has planned. I think there's a faintly menacing air about her...
Look at that little face, and see if you can guess what she has planned. I think there's a faintly menacing air about her...
Yes, and welcome to the wonderful world of parenting. In the photo, she appears, in spite of her cuteness, to be plotting her next best Jabba move.
Interesting discussion about parenting styles; I vote for doing the best you can. Pretty much, anything else will make you crazy.
The Mommy Wars are appallingly stupid. You’ll find that it’s not the parenting experts who are taking sides in this fray. They will all be pretty much unified in saying that, for example, you should feed a young infant on demand and hold them frequently (with small variations according to their pet theories). There is some interesting history behind this. AP style is made out to be something “new” but in actuality it reflects the style in which human infants have been parented throughout history, and still are in most nonwestern countries. I have a parenting book from around 1900 that instructs mothers to nurse on demand and pick the baby up when he cries. There was some pretty scary advice being given out in the 1920’s through 1940’s, and much of it is being repeated to us by our grandmothers (there was one book in particular that was popular in Germany that advocated no touching or affection at all. Many people think it is not a coincidence that a bunch of sociopaths took over about thirty years later). It is all pretty closely linked to breastfeeding, since many of those “hands off” methods rely on bottle feeding in order to work.
I feel every child is lucky that has two loving parents. Even one is a lot more than many kids have. Whether they work or not is not nearly as important as a loving, safe, supportive environment to grow up. It’s great to have a full time stay at home mom or dad. That is what I always wanted when I was a kid, and I am happy to provide that for my son. But it’s also good to know your parents have rewarding careers and are positive role models, so there is value for working parents, too. I am not sure what you mean when you say that AP style is labor intensive. Having a child is labor intensive. Babywearing and cosleeping made life *easier* for me because I had a “fussy” baby. Maybe some babies can be trained to eat on a schedule and sleep in a crib, but I don’t think that’s an entitlement, and it is something that will fail miserably with high needs children. In general, the demands of parenting put a lot of pressure on careers. Not just Moms but Dads, too. That’s just life. Many employers are quite understanding, but never think that you can have it all. Having a child is always a sacrifice. I hope you find it worthwhile. I know I do!
I think she read your journal where you wrote “She’s much like a sack of potatoes” and is plotting her revenge. 😉
Love those chubby baby cheeks! 🙂
Catherine, I think this depends on the individual parents and kid, again. For example, I’m a heavy sleeper, and I think I could co-sleep with Kavya fine; I’d get used to her little movements and noises pretty quickly, and still be able to sleep. Kevin, on the other hand, took months and months before he could even relax enough to sleep with *me*, and I sleep like a log. If he tried to co-sleep with baby, he’d be constantly woken, and would end up getting no sleep at all. So I guess what I really mean is that AP is *potentially* very labor-intensive, depending on the specifics of the parents and baby. I can see how it might also make life easier for some families, as in your case!
I’m also a little suspicious of the AP argument that this style of parenting is what’s standard in non-western countries. My mom parented in this style, yes, with me — when we were in Sri Lanka, and she had eight younger siblings as well as her mother and a couple of servants to hand the baby off to. I probably hardly ever was put down as a baby, but that’s mostly because we lived in this huge joint household with so many adults. My mom carried me *herself* a lot less than I currently carry Kavi, ’cause the only person I can hand baby off to is Kevin, who is also asleep for several hours of the day. It’s a bit dangerous, I think, for some of the theorists to make sweeping statements about what people did through all of human history and in other countries and try to apply those practices here, where we don’t have the family/village structures to support them.
I think I want to get your last sentence here engraved on something.