My baby book journey

It started with Gina Ford. Oh yes. Oh no! My sister-in-law had raved about it. So I read it. I thought to myself, you've got to be joking. It is all about putting your baby in a routine, big style. It even tells you when you, as a new mother, can have a piece of toast. To the minute. I'm sure that in the small print somewhere it says you should adapt the routines to suit your baby but the message is clear: your baby should fit into the method, not vice versa.

Someone at a pregnant mums do suggested the Baby Whisperer as a more flexible way of doing things. Maybe it works for some, but for me it just seemed a bit wishy washy. And when I had the baby and was thinking about implementing it it also seemed full of holes.

Next up was the Sears Attachment Parenting book. I read this a few months after he was born and it felt more like it. I was already carrying little man in a sling a lot, because it calmed his fussing and crying. Unfortunately, I also wished I had read it earlier because I had missed the chance to get used to co-sleeping and by then it was never really going to happen. Not if I was going to get any sleep anyway. It also added to the guilt about failing to breastfeed.

I also read the Continuum Concept, which is quite heavy going. It's more of an academic study than a how-to. I liked some of the ideas, but I also thought to myself that I was never going to actually be able to replicate the community life of a rainforest tribe and that rainforests don't have the same dangers to worry about as we do (fast roads being the biggie).

And now? I think I've finally forgotten enough of what I read to be able to do what feels right without worrying that it's not what the book says. Of course, now I have to start on the discipline theories...

Having your first baby is just such a bewildering experience in our society that you find yourself grabbing for some theory to make sense of it all, some foolproof method that tells you what to do. And whichever end of the baby care spectrum you look at, you can always find some expert and some scientific study backing it up. The fact is, it's very hard to know what a baby is feeling or what lasting effects our actions towards them will have. And so it's easy to impose theories on them. Our only alternative is to try to be in tune with them, imagine what it's like to be a small, helpless being who can't communicate its needs clearly. I think what we'd imagine is wanting to be cuddled.