“As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
– Nietzsche
This is a an open letter to every parent out there that has been asked to set aside their parental instinct and ignore their child’s cues by their most trusted and reliable sources of information. You are not (always) wrong.
I remember the first time this happened- in the hospital when my daughter was first born. I had a favourite night nurse that would come in and sit with me for hours. She was an older lady- had raised 3 kids of her own and had worked as a midwife for 35 years. She would come into my room at 2am and tell me stories of other babies. Her analogies would comfort me as I sat in my hospital bed, simultaneously bewildered and enamored by the little creature I had just birthed.
She had just given me a litany of enormously helpful advice and I was so grateful for the wisdom and calm she brought to our care.
She turned to me as she exited my room and looked me in the eye knowingly as I held my baby, yet again, so she would fall asleep in my arms. “You’re spoiling her, you know. She’s going to get used to that.”
I looked down at my daughter, then a day old, and of course the thought spiral at 3am began. Instinctively, as a new mother, I wanted to hold her so she wouldn’t cry. I didn’t want to put her down, I wanted to keep her close, where I knew she was safe. Where I could see her breathe and hear her little sounds. Where I could watch her sleep and just feel it all in this small little room that no one else could share with our little family right at this moment. But doubt had now invited himself in.
Ten minutes of Dr Google later, I still held onto my daughter and thought I had convinced myself that I couldn’t spoil a one day old. But I still wasn’t sure.
This is pretty much how I would begin to feel about every micro parenting decision to come- unsure, unsteady but also unwavering in my desire to keep misinformation from standing in between my daughter’s care and my parental instincts.
The barrage would come- don’t feed her so often, don’t pick her up every time she cries, don’t let her sleep with you like that, she’s going to expect you to do that every time now, stretch her out a bit, it’s not controlled crying, it’s spaced soothing. She will never sleep by herself- and my ultimate favourite; don’t you want her to be independent?
Of course I want my daughter to be independent. I want her to be confident and brave and everything she wants to be. But I just don’t believe in the insanity of the modern parent conundrum. I’m a scientist and a mother. A doctor and a parent. It’s not a textbook with an index that says “good parenting pg. 213”. I’ve come to realize it’s just an active choice as an individual and you make them as you go. Sometimes the science makes sense. Sometimes the research is dead on the money. And sometimes the voice inside my head, the one that says “that can’t be right” is right. And I’m tired of feeling like it can’t be.
To every other parent out there that is sick of Instagram, sleep consultants, the latest “tech” and every other marketing material that tells you how to parent- sometimes you can tell them all to stuff it. You’re not always wrong.