What seems like eons ago, I wrote this adorable list of all of things we were always/never going to do as parents. And I promised I would come back and update it as all of these precious ideals got well and thoroughly trampled by this thing called real life, but I never did. Until my sister-in-law reminded me about it yesterday and I thought to myself, you know what? I have been feeling really great about my parenting abilities lately – let’s take a stick and beat that smug self-satisfaction right out!
So here is that list, copy and pasted from the original. Items which have been crossed off are lofty ideals that have now bitten the dust:
Things We Will Never/Always Do:
(With Additional Ridiculous Smug Justifications Provided Where Necessary)
- We will never give Olive a pacifier. Babies don’t need pieces of plastic shoved in their mouths! They need their mamas!
- We will never put her in a swing. Why would I let a machine rock her, when she could be in our loving arms?
- We will never let her sleep in the bed with us. It’s unsafe- what if I smother her?! Plus I could never get a good night’s sleep with her beside me.
- We will always buy her clothing secondhand. There’s so much gently used children’s clothing to be had for 1/10th of the price, why would you ever buy new? (to be fair, probably 90% of her wardrobe is secondhand, but I have definitely succumbed to a few irresistible new items here and there.)
We will always cloth diaper.Unless we are going to visit nana at her floating house where there’s no washer and dryer.And except for the week-long stint during a dark time for sleeping when I experimented to see if disposables at night would keep her sleeping longer (they did. And then they didn’t, so back to cloth.)And except for the 3 days before we moved because the diapers had to be packed and loaded into the moving van.Aaaand also except for when we resorted to using one what seemed like every other day for like a month after we moved because I all of a sudden couldn’t keep up with diaper laundry and couldn’t understand why and kept beating myself up over it (get it together, Madeleine!).Until, that is, I found three diapers forgotten at the bottom of our swimming bag and, yeah- oops!But before I found those three life-saving, routine-rescuing diapers however, disposables saved my (Olive’s) butt many a time. Even though we chose cloth because I thought it the more environmentally-friendly choice, I was very grateful for the existence of disposables because it meant I didn’t have to MacGyver one out of a tea towel and some hair elastics.
Disposable diapers are not evil, and you (and I) are not evil if we use them every single day, every so often, or once in a blue moon when we’re desperate. They’re just diapers. The fact that they create more trash and pollution is simply that: a fact. But using them doesn’t mean you’re evil, or a bad mom, it probably just means you’re busy. Or don’t own a washer and dryer. Or don’t want to wash poop. You know, whichever.
Judging people’s character based on what their baby poops into is the real evil here, folks.
- We will never let her cry herself to sleep. (We still haven’t done this one, Olive is tenacious, man. It would take HOURS. Ain’t nobody got time for that.)
We will always make our own baby food from scratch.We bought several of those little food pouches for plane rides, and even a few times grocery shopping when she was little and getting ragey from seeing all of the food she wasn’t allowed eating (now she gets an apple if we find ourselves in the same situation. Thanks, teeth!)We will always serve her free-range, organic meat.Adam has been feeding her bites of his turkey sticks, which are definitely not from “happy” animals, but other than that I think this one still stands- We will never give her juice. Still standing. I think the fact that I don’t really drink it helps, because she doesn’t see it or ask for it.
We will never let her watch TV.Olive used to watch cartoons with Grampa while I was at work, my mom has watched The Little Mermaid with her, and I think she has snuggled up to Adam several times while he was watching on of his (probably immensely violent) shows.She uh…also may have developed a bit of a narcissistic streak and asks to watch videos of “Ow-iff” on my phone. A lot. And sometimes I let her. So the “never” has definitely been slowly worn down into an “Okay fiiiiine fine whatever.”And she’s alive! Imagine that!She will never own or wear branded stuff.My mom found her some adorable secondhand Hunter wellies and she quickly became so obsessed with them that tantrums because I wouldn’t let her wear them inside/in the bath/to bed were almost a daily occurrence for a while there. I think that may be it, though.Brand integrity, intact! (Mostly!)We will always encourage kids to do age-appropriate chores.This one was an interesting one to catch myself failing at, and it was a perfect example of ideal life vs. real life. I have long said that you should get kids involved in chores during the toddler years when they actually want to help (are desperate to help!) and then it won’t be such a struggle when you want them to help a few years later.I feel like typically we don’t let them help with things because seriously have you ever seen a toddler? They are horrible little creatures! Poor hand eye coordination, unpredictable fits of rage and/or hysteria, plus truly zero understanding of concepts like “dirt” and “spilling” and “sharp knives”.Having a toddler help you basically ensures that you will get a task done four times more slowly, and 80% worse than if you simply did it yourself.So for the last month or so, I’ve been doing it myself. My mom always used to do dishes with Olive standing on a chair next to her “helping” (read: flooding the place and breaking shit.) Thus, every time Olive saw me filling up the sink she’d cry “Bubbles! Bubbles!” and I would distract her or put her off, I’d ask Adam to go give her a bath.
Then I realized that I am a horrible person, and just the type of horrible person I used to have ideas about. So she helps me with the dishes now. And it does indeed take four times as long and gets done 80% worse and the floor gets a good mopping every night.But she’s helping. It makes her so happy to help, and fostering that spirit- being truly happy to help someone, and offering help without being asked – is far more important than orderly dish-doing or not having to swab the decks after the post-dinner bubble flood. And hopefully by including her now, she will be just as eager to help when she’s five, ten, and fifteen (ha!)
So. There’s only two ideals still standing! Ohhhh how far we fall.
The point of this post, is I’m not perfect. I’m an 80% kind of person. If I can do anything 80% of the time, I’m happy, and I try not to be too hard on myself for the rest.
80% of the time I try to eat well, be patient, live an eco-friendly life, and generally get as close as I can to this arbitrary ideal that I’ve sketched out for myself.
The other 20%? Well that’s made up of the occasional disposable diaper, overdoses of caffeine and licorice allsorts, days where I spend way too much time on my phone trying to escape my child, and just generally doing everything that I stand against, really.
Yin and yang, y’all. Yin and yang.
I think we need to do this more. I think it’s really good for the soul to admit that our always and nevers are really more like usuallys and sometimes. No one is perfect, but especially in this era of Instagram and Facebook, where you can choose one perfect millisecond of your day to filter and present to the world as always, it’s even more important to admit it.
I showed you mine. Care to share yours? What did you always think you would never do, pre-kids? I know there are some doozies out there!
29 Comments
We were not going to let our kids watch tv until after age 2. Then I got pregnant with #2, the week after my daughter turned one, and soon after we moved the tv to the bedroom where I could close the door, and she could nap/ play/ watch toddler tv next to me while I slept.
Also tried to avoid jarred baby food, but daughter refused EVERYTHING I made and we ended up being sent to a dietician when she was one for failure to thrive, and I cracked up (remember pregnancy hormones?), and caved on the jarred food. She didn’t like that either, but I took it less personally.
Those are the worst two.
We cloth diapered 95% of the time, even with two in diapers, until I had to get my appendix out when baby 2 was 9 mo old. Then it ended as I couldn’t carry my baby, let alone a full basket if wet laundry. We did our part for awhile
Oh god, I’ve fallen this far off the wagon with one, I can’t imagine the fresh hell #2 will bring! I guess I’ll find out soon enough 😉
Stomach sleeping! (I know! Gasp! ) It allowed my son to sleep comfortably without screaming in pain from reflux and gas, so at 4 months (after much agonizing) I defied my pediatrician and the reminder message sewn onto his jammies and let him be comfortable.
Oh and he eats French fries. Totally no excuse for that. He was totally happy with other food but I was eating them and soon he was too. Oops.
Ooooh we did stomach sleeping for a bit, too! I remember checking on her every five minutes to make sure she was still breathing!
Yup, our baby girl sleeps with us and when we were preggers I just assumed she’d be in a crib and would joke about her sleeping with us. Lo and behold her being with us at some point in the middle of the night helped us all sleep better. Like Olive, I’m sure she’d scream for way too long if we let her cry. Some nights I wish for my own space, but in the mornings when I wake to her putting her sweet little face in mine or patting me or just snuggling…all those selfish thoughts fly away.
Oh and sometimes we can’t resist a cute little outfit that is probably too expensive. Our latest justification was a cute sleeveless dress that could later be worn as a tunic with leggings or a shirt after that.
Sophia (mama to Delancey 15 months)
I think that your comment is right on, I just assumed a lot of this would go, and didn’t realize that there were other external factors at play (like babies like sleeping near their mamas, or grandma’s like giving cookies. You know, inevitabilities like that 😉
Aaah yes, I thought I would be the perfect mother. I would never use a dummy (she ended up using one a week after she was born in the special care nursery to help learn to suck, and then she became a “sucky baby”) We got rid of it when we used controlled crying to get her to sleep. I felt like the devil.
I would happily make all of her food. Which I do make, but I’m not always happy about it and often fight with the husband because he thinks packaged food is the devil (even the fancy new stuff in pouches).
The biggest one: I would never give myself a hard time about anything. Bahahahahaha! I give myself a hard time about EVERYTHING!!! I am not the perfect mother I had hoped to be. But I’m better than my mother!
I think it’s impossible not to give yourself a hard time, but I find it helps if I know that at least a few other people are embracing mediocrity and abolishing their precious ideals one by one, too 😉
I swore I would never co sleep and failed with both my children. Both were terrible sleepers from day 1 and the only way they would sleep at all is right next to me. Major fail and yet the greatest fail of my life. I wouldn’t trade those first months in bed with them for anything (they both sleep on their own now).
Snuggliest, sweetest fail ever,
I was positive we wouldn’t use a pacifier. My kiddo won’t take a pacifier but I certainly tried to cram one in there several times in a attempt to help her find some peace.
I also secretly promised myself that we would go find adventures outside every day and then winter introduced itself and I laughed at the naive version of myself who thought I would tolerate that nonsense. So sometimes we were forced to snuggle inside.
And, I thought I would NEVER nurse a toddler but here I am with a 13-month-old angel-monster-weirdo and I can’t seem to give it up (nursing, that is). Or she can’t. Or a little of both.
Ha! Me too, I went from “No pacifier!” to “Why won’t you take a pacifier why god why?”
I have yet to survive an Alberta winter avec bebe. I am terrified and pretending it’s not going to happen. Denial Denial.
(I also hear you on the nursing. HOOO boy.)
Yeah co-sleeping was a big no no for us. I liked to think I stood my ground with baby #1, but I actually spent so much time with him in his room / bed that I think it’s pretty much the same as co-sleeping.And then came baby #2, who was just as bad of a sleeper, in a 2bedroom house, trying not to wake her big brother ( who now sleeps perfectly on his own )…so almost 14 months later and she’s still sleeping in our bed. Oh and I loved to think I would always be super patient when my kids would drag behind on long walks and stop to look at everything…again until I had an other baby screaming in the stroller or carrier cause she’s hungry / tired while my son takes all the time in the world. Other than that I didn’t want to say ‘never’ and think I’d do better than anyone. But I do beat myself up for losing my temper or wanting to run away at times. Great reminder to be kind to ourselves, we are not perfect parents. And it’s ok that way.
Oh I am also embarassed by how often I find myself saying “Come on! Let’s go! Hurry up!” on walks, especially when we are walking to no specific destination with no time limit. Sigh.
why would anyone try to make an ideal out of NOT cosleeping? have i entered the twilight zone? to me, that’s like reading on your list “i will never breastfeed”, b/c cosleeping is such an important and helpful part of giving baby a healthy psyche, and it’s so clearly what babies are expecting from us (that’s why so many babies are unhappy and not willing to sleep unless they’re in a sling or laying next to/on top of us). they find it jarring and lonely to be left all cold and alone in another place, instead of with their parents(/siblings). maybe some of you don’t idealize it as much as i do. but why you’d resolve to NOT do it, as if there were anything WRONG with it (instead of the best possible scenario that sadly happens to not be possible/appropriate for every family) is not what i expected to read here! but it makes me feel happy to read how many people here (who didn’t expect to cosleep) gave in to their parental instincts and coslept. it really is best for the psychological wellbeing of our little ones, making them more calm and confident, b/c their brains aren’t nightly bathed in a lonely fight-or-flight soup, strengthening/reinforcing the channels of panic, fear, insecurity, etc… babies’ brains rather need to have the channels of comfort, sociability and reassurance strengthened, so their reactions to life and all its hardships will default to these tendencies. cosleeping is one very important piece of this puzzle, so everyone who realistically can, should! not to mention, nighttime breastfeeding is so much easier when cosleeping and requires momma to stir hardly at all, getting a better night’s sleep, only waking for diaper changes. okay, i’ll quit raving about cosleeping now. 😉
Jamie I am so curious where you’re from! I feel like in North America the “ideal” baby or a *good* baby is one who sleep well independently. I’d never even heard about attachment parenting or the ideas espoused by it until I had Olive.
I find myself often battling between this ideal and feeling proud when Olive sleeps well in her crib, to really loving it and knowing it’s good for her when she does sleep with us every so often.
You seem like you are surrounded with such amazing women who cosleep and do extended nursing and it is accepted as normal, instead of somehow indulgent as I feel it’s often seen here. I’m just curious if you live in Canada/US and are just in an incredible hippie enclave, or in a different culture altogether?
oh, hehe, yeah, i guess i do somewhat live in a hippiesque (well, and hipsteresque) area, where people drive hybrid cars, carry their babies in slings, listen to NPR and are into historic preservation (northeast L.A., known for silver lake, eagle rock, and highland park). i honestly don’t even see dr. sears as being particularly progressive or controversial. when i said twilight zone, i meant i wouldn’t have expected you and your readers (whose style/tendencies i thought i kinda had a feel for) to have added “no cosleeping” to a list of what’s ideal. i mean, i guess i see the slings everywhere and think, AP is everywhere. and you canadians, i always ascribe such cool, progressive, open-minded thinking to (everyone, seriously everyone, i’ve ever met from canada seems like they could be from portland)! i just always (perhaps falsely) assume wherever we are, canada is one step ahead of us. and so far your blog seems to confirm these notions. like, i was telling my wife how cool you are (i verbally share tidbits from your blog with her all the time) and then i add, “well, she’s from canada” and my wife goes “oh, of course!”… i guess we idealize you guys a bit! so naturally in my mind, this witty & conscientious earthy crunchy momma up in canada whose blog is so constantly awesome was just the last place i expected to find unawareness of the fabulousness of cosleeping. i do seriously think that the foundations of mental health are forged in the parent-child relationship, and though there are numerous pieces to that puzzle, a big important one in creating a future generation of loving, cooperative, compassionate people is the stuff that gives babies a safe & secure attachment, and helps them steer clear of having their fight-or-flight system primed and ready to dominate their lives (a huge public health problem all over north america, to be sure… check out anything about stress from stanford’s robert sapolsky). we’ve seen that babies who are never cuddled or nurtured end up sociopathic/antisocial, apathetic, selfish, anxiety-ridden, depressive, etc., but i have how that this stuff is exiting society now that the mid-century fad of being as rigid and detached as possible has finally been proven to be bad for our mental health (crime is down, and so is interpersonal violence; harvard’s steven pinker [canadian!] lays this out in the beefy volume “the better angels of our nature”). i feel like science and social science are converging on this realization (and i’m actually one of the late folks to the scene) that love and affection (what the curmudgeons might call “spoiling”) are in fact really as wonderful and magical as seemingly simple-minded stories would have us believe. certainly you’ve heard about how an orphanage-neglected adopted kid with an attachment disorder can be healed with intense attachment-style parenting when that kid is already a tween? or, less dramatically, how many abused children finally flourish in an environment of love & respect? i feel like everything around me, in science, in journalism, in TED talks, in my peers, is all pointing in the direction of a newer, kinder, gentler way of relating to our fellow humans (which all starts with parenting), and the basics of attachment parenting, like cosleeping, are just the beginning. i think it can get fairly progressive, but AP hasn’t gotten there yet. i am actually into a style of parenting (and relating to children) that stops treating them like they’re less deserving of respect, attention, control of their bodies, etc., than adults, and attempts to control them as little as possible (with the belief, of course, that coercion is never how we become who we are; but rather that we are *drawn to* what we love and respect in what we are surrounded by). i believe that you should never minimize, belittle, ridicule, or rush a child’s emotional pleas, just the same as you would do with a close friend (though you may offer them age appropriate advice). i don’t believe in punishment or love withdrawal, either (that honest communication about feelings and what the world is like, for better or worse, is the way to go). anyway, you get my point, that yes it does get really progressive inside my head, and i know that, but i just didn’t think of cosleeping as being very out there (among other earthy crunchy peeps), so i was totally taken by surprise. sorry if that was an excessively lengthy reply. but you know as well as i do, once you’ve rambled on a bit, it takes SOOOO much time to pare it down and now you’ve already spent far too long typing something (and in my case swyping it on the screen of my android phone so i can’t see more than a sentence or two at a time) so the choice is, hit send/post, or forget it altogether. and seeing as how you’re very (perhaps way too) busy, you can’t let that be wasted time, so you must leave the behemoth intact. you must be acquainted with this phenomenon, right? and thus, roll your eyes a little less? ok, cool, thanks! 😀
Oh yeah, no soother, no cosleeping, no commercial baby food. I had everything else on your list too, but figured I’d cut myself some slack on those sometimes. The soother I am now glad never did take, because I find it disconcerting to see babies sucking on them… I don’t know why, it’s like my squick factor about belly buttons. It just is. For the first eight weeks or so, though, I wished he would take it so he could be soothed without breastfeeding. I’d come back in the morning to the NICU and find five soothers around his head, meaning he’d been wailing and the nurses had been trying to calm him (frequently unable to pick him up) and he’d been spitting out one after the other. Awful. Even if I was there and able to hold him, he was often not allowed to eat because of surgery, or be bounced like we learned at home he liked, and I’d have given anything to be able to get him to be settled by a piece of plastic like the other babies. In the NICU world, soothers are a critical tool for babies that frequently can’t be given the normal sources of comfort. Even once we were home, I couldn’t leave him for twenty minutes for anything without coming back to a hysterical baby and a dad frantically holding a soother in his mouth just trying to get him to hold it together.
The commercial baby food was a godsend when Mr. Gags-on-everything would vomit up any hint of texture. Only Gerber could atomize food smooth enough, no home blender could do it. And I really needed him to take solids to prepare for surgery (didn’t happen he still wasn’t ready). He’s now 12 months and just now taking my home made food, after months of training with textures.
Cosleeping in my family is considered deeply wrong. It obviously results in sexless marriages and maladjusted children that will be codependent and possibly torture animals, or something. When he came home, I’d have his bassinet as close to the bed as possible, but still waking up to feed every hour for months was brutal. By three and a half months, he refused to transfer at 3am, so he got to stay in bed. A week later, he was in the bed all night, and here he stays. I tried to get him to sleep in a travel cot next to our bed… Three nights of screaming awake every twenty minutes broke me. We sleep great all in the bed, and face the judgement feeling vaguely guilty because we know we’re “bad” but it doesn’t feel bad. I could, I suppose, break his will instead, but it would cost us all more nights of sleep than I’m prepared to go without, so I just can’t see why I should. Maybe after he skins his first cat…
Okay, can I just say that I hereby exonerate you from any and all mom-guilt? You have walked through fire for this baby, and probably cried your weight in tears (of both joy and sorrow)
Enjoy your cosleeping. Enjoy the snuggles and the smell of dreaming babies. Let the thoughts of your crumbling, sexless marriage and the unbelievable harm you’re doing to your family and your child lull you to slumber.
Sweet dreams!
(In all seriousness though, you have been through so much and epecially after missing out on all that contact while in the NICU, I think cosleeping is a fantastic way to make up for lost time.)
Thanks Madeleine! I find the fantasies of the future of breastfeeding and letting him climb in bed until he’s 15 to be soothing, as well, as we drift off to sleep on the 1/4 of the mattress we’re allowed (baby gets half, cat gets the other quarter). But why stop at 15? I hear I’ll never get him out so I’ll be going to join him in his dorm at college, too.
Pacifiers and TV watching were two I said I’d never do… add juice and sugary snacks to the list, caved on that one too.
How about letting the kids go to bed without a bath and thorough scrubbing every day? Yeah, it happens. 🙂
Just cry hippie on that one! I know a certain…er…person…that doesn’t bathe her daughter every night because the water is too drying for her skin. And also: reasons. This…person…uses the extra time to go on facebook while her daughter runs around cackling maniacally and destroying piles of folded laundry. I – I mean SHE calls it mama time.
I love you. Just putting that out there. Our ‘no screen time’ rules definitely took a beating when we had our second baby, especially that time my husband went to Moscow for 5 days and left me with a 5 week old and a two year old. LET’S ALL WATCH DISNEY ON REPEAT! But we have diligently stuck the ‘no chocolate’ rule out, so I’m pleased with that. I think it’s like you say about the juice, if it’s never around (while they’re awake obvs) then it becomes normal and I’m happy to have delayed tantrums at the supermarket checkout because he wants a chocolate bar, so it’s basically all for selfish reasons. Anyway thanks for sharing. Well done for sticking to no CIOx
I hope you found yourself yelling “You should just STAY in Moscow, dammit!” at least once because I feel like that’s really a once in a lifetime thing to yell at your husband. Also, you are supermom and I hope you got some good vodka out of the deal.
p.s. is ten minutes after bedtime naughty-food eating time for you, too?
I was sure I’d breastfeed for at least a year. And then I found out (because nobody told me) that as it happens, sometimes breastfeeding just doesn’t work for some mamas.
I also had at one time been committed to cloth diapering but thanks to our first 3 months being so incredibly rough (see above about breastfeeding) it never made it to the top of the list of important things, and since my PPD was so bad I could hardly dress myself there I was no way I was going to be able to have any energy left to commit to cloth diapering.
I’m pretty pleased though that we committed ourselves to no co-sleeping and getting the baby comfortable in her crib from night one, and with the exception of one or two nights when I just gave up, she has slept in her crib since the day we brought her home. She sleeps through the night and shows no signs that she is developmentally or socially stunted. She doesn’t even like being in my bed with me now.
PPD is hell and I am so glad you came through. Definitely give yourself a pass on the breastfeeding and cloth diapering. Not because you weren’t up to it or didn’t try hard enough or couldn’t do it, but because it wasn’t the right choice for you.
xo
No TV, I managed to stick to that till he was 2 (does music on an ipad count?) No pouches, I almost managed to stick to that. I bought pouches for when we flew to India as a back up…he wasn’t a fan anyway. No ipad/mobile distraction when he’s eating – complete and utter fail!! He regularly eats listening to nursery rhymes. Breastfeeding will be easy and I’ll pump – didn’t happen the way I planned. No juice – Almost…if he gets juice (fresh juice), its 1 part juice to 5 parts water! We co-sleep and I still don’t understand how a 2 yr old can shove a 30yr old out of her 6ft bed!!
They take up a disturbing amount of space for such small creatures, don’t they?
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