Let's say you're pregnant. Or thinking, dreaming, of becoming so. You wonder about motherhood. You say to yourself, "Maybe I should study up a bit?" You read a book, some blogs, you are surprised. "Have we lost our minds? Shouldn't taking care of a baby be simple? Weren't we designed to do this?
Let us deconstruct. I've thought about this for years. My first child will be 24 in July. My second, and last, will be 21 in a few weeks.
Here's the root cause behind so much of today's parenting craziness.
- Babies need lots of nurture to stay alive.
- The requirements for said nurture, specifically feeding, mean at minimum severely interrupted sleep and, at worst, cracked nipples, milk duct infections, even defeat. Oh, and babies often prefer to be held all the time when they are awake. No lazy sitting around, they want you walking. That's more to do than any one or even two people can handle reasonably.
- Babies usually have only one mother and one father. With any luck, a grandmother or a few aunts can pitch in, but they often live elsewhere, and provide only occasional help.
- When, exhausted by providing said nurture, you ask for advice, read books, or blogs, in search of ways to make the task easier, the entire world will advise you. Unfortunately, they will say EITHER that you must respond to your baby's every quiver and fidget, OR that you must start immediately to structure and discipline your baby's life. That you will in fact wreck that baby via unlimited nurture.
- Not to mention Freud, and the legions of psychologists who followed.
What you learn, in the end, is that there's no such thing as culturally and emotionally unbiased advice.
In the first months of parenthood you make decisions that may have a huge impact on your child's well-being. Certainly they will affect your own. Or not. You don't know for sure. The problem is, sleep deprivation and hormones disrupt all your logical systems. Worse, there
is no clear, reasoned, correct answer to most of your questions. Which is not to say there are no answers at all, to the contrary, there are millions. But an actual understanding, by anyone, of the true psychological impact of baby care choices? Rudimentary.
Sure, we know that very bad care is very bad for babies. But once you reach adequate, we don't know much about the different impact of sufficient versus deeply attached. We don't know for sure which matters more, responsiveness or structure. We just don't know.
People with different politics, or emotional backgrounds, favor different kinds of childcare. And everyone wants you to follow their path.
Some personal stories. My first baby, my daughter, had ear infections from the time she was 5 weeks old. Nowadays they know antibiotics aren't always required, but I didn't know it then. Homeopaths said don't use antibiotics, my old-school pediatrician said dose her or risk hearing loss. We used the medicine. We'd take a little syringe without a needle and shoot the pink liquid between her gums and cheek. She'd cry and throw up. Of course, when the ear infections came on she'd nurse and then throw up. Off and on for months, this happened.
When she was 4 months old, we went back East, and saw some old friends. They said, "Tell me, are you just SO in love with her?" "No," I said, "I'm mostly scared."
Conflicting advice, and the sense that if I only had more information I could do a better job, caused more distress than the problem itself.
But babies throwing up pink antibiotics wasn't wasn't half so difficult as sleep. Or lack thereof. I struggled so much with my children waking at night. I went to my daughter and nursed her every time she cried. Until she turned 2, and I got pregnant again.
By the time my son was about 11 months old, I'd been waking in the middle of the night for several years. I had tried nursing two children at the same time - tandem nursing they call it, what a term - and had come down with bronchitis and dropped 15 pounds. At my wit's end I decided to try the Let Him Cry It Out method. I regret it to this day.
I will never forget the sight of my son's beautiful chubby face, pressed up against his crib bars, as he knelt, sleeping, still sniffling from crying. His eyes were closed and his body was still crying.
I needed a more graceful way to degrade. I was exhausted, true, but I am too highly-strung to survive a little one crying alone. Most likely, my children share that hard-wiring. Most likely, my son took it harder than other babies, sons of tougher mothers. Had I trusted myself instead of a system, had I been able to withstand the peer pressure and anxiety of competing thought systems, I'd have made a different choice.
I imagine some of you are thinking, "Wow, she was one of those crazy moms. I will never try so hard (care so much fret worry agonize) like that." The funny thing is, after the early years, I became a fairly relaxed mother. Not one to lose my temper, forbid sugar, require total obedience, or lose sleep over a little dirt. Now, I never stopped thinking, or trying to figure out the best approach, that's who I am. But, simply put, once I'd gathered enough data I settled in and started to feel like an expert of sorts. An expert on my children and my way of mothering.
As I look back, I could have trusted biology more. I think the word instinct is misused. We live in a world far beyond instinct. But your hunches, and your deep feelings, those you can follow. In other words, my babies had soft hearts, high sensitivity, and a strong will in their heritage. I could have gone with my gut, because my babies shared that gut, in many ways. If I'd adopted, I would have trusted in my observations more. What you see before you is always more valuable than what you read.
I also wish I'd done more research, not on child care, but on infant development. For those of us who think a lot, having a good conceptual framework helps carry us to a place of gut-trust. For example, I found it deeply comforting to know what the greats of child psychology and animal behavior believe. Some facts.
- You can't spoil a child before 6 months. (I'd say more like 11-18 months, but for that I have no proof.)
- The number of mother-child interactions over time is so huge that no one thing you do will determine the nature of your relationship or your child's psychology.
- There is such thing as temperament and some traits are genetic, shyness for example, and response to authority. That baby is not a blank slate.
Finally, here's what I came to believe, even though I can't prove truth.
- It's worth trying as hard as you can to provide pre-civilized nurture. Perhaps they call it 'Paleo Mothering,' these days. I don't know. I believe that civilization is alienating, albeit necessary.
- However, in modern society, this will prove at some point to be just about impossible. The trick is to know when you've done all you can, and switch to a different strategy before you collapse, resent, ignore, or damage anyone. Yourself included. Degrade gracefully.
- Do set up some structure early on, designed primarily to support your own sanity. Days can be long, confusing, and boring. Having some idea of what happens next can be comforting.
- Once you have your structure, your day pattern, be prepared to tear it down. Babies keep changing their minds. So you build and tear down, build and tear down. You aren't supposed to know what to do automatically, or immediately. You are supposed to work with your baby. The two of you figure it out together. What a great way to learn about relationships. Humans are an interdependent species, one that relies on communication. It makes sense that good mothering is more about a shared understanding than any one right way.
- I had a friend who would lay her baby down, look into his face and say, "Hello. You are a baby. Hello baby." I always found that very useful, and comforting.
- There's no such thing as a bad baby. Some are easy, some are difficult. That's it.
- A difficult baby is not necessarily going to be a difficult toddler, or a difficult teen. The converse is also true. Easy babies may enter their teen years and become veritable hellions. At which point those of us with more demanding babies get to laugh, demonically.
- Start imposing limits for the sake of your child - later. At let's say, 18 months. If you haven't imposed any by the time your kid is three and half, you'll regret it. Be sure to pick your battles. They've got some strong little wills, those kidlets.
- Find yourself a like-minded community in which to raise your children. Since there are no answers, you may as well get opinions from people with whom you share values. I highly advise finding a newborn mother's group.
You will continue to learn.The first year after my daughter was born, I wrote a long letter to two pregnant friends, I concluded by saying you can only be as good of a parent as you are a person. I was wrong. I am a better person for having loved my children as I do, for having nurtured them as I have. I did anything but a perfect job, but tried every day to do better.
Your baby, oddly, is your Buddha. The effort to do better is worth it. But make the effort with as much peace in your heart as you can find.
One day, maybe three months after giving birth, you put your baby in the car seat, and walk around to get into the driver's seat, only to realize she's watching you. She knows you are the mother. Then, a few years later, in that same car, or maybe a new one, you're driving home and your toddler starts to sing the lullaby you put her to sleep with at night. Only she uses different words,
"Lullaby, and goodnight, go to sleep now darling mommy." And you're sunk. If you weren't already.
Images:
Me and my daughter, a couple of hours after she was born.
My daughter, at 3 weeks, over the the space of 5 minutes.
That chubby, apparently dark-haired creature, is now a tall slender redhead. As I said, they surprise you.
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