One Size Fits All?

One of the most frustrating things I've found so far with parenting is how inconsistent expert advice can be. Despite the fact that all babies are different and there's no 'one-size-fits-all' solution, there's no shortage of people willing to tell you what you can do to achieve 'results'.

There's a lot of disagreement about what results you should be aiming for, let alone how to achieve them. For example, when Hamish was a newborn, we were given wildly differing advice from the hospital staff about breastfeeding. It was really confusing because you'd think there'd be universally accepted facts about things like how much a newborn needs to feed, but no - one midwife told us 30 minutes of good sucking was a full feed for a day-old baby, while the paediatrician told us 1 minute per hour was sufficient for the first day or so! Hmm, so am I aiming for one minute or thirty? We ended up going home earlier than planned because we were getting so confused - with every shift change we were being given different instructions!

One particular area where the expert advice is confusing and contradictory is that of baby sleep, which is something new parents are understandably keen to hear about! Despite the fact that no-one really knows how much sleep babies need, and that no two babies are the same,there's plenty of books out there promising to have your baby sleeping through the night in no time. They establish what I've come to see as unrealistic expectations. Some babies (including mine) don't start sleeping through the night for some time, regardless of what techniques their sleep-deprived parents try. We're yet to get there - and I went through a fair bit of grief thinking I was failing as a parent before realising that perhaps the experts were wrong, not me!

This negative view is reinforced by people who ask "is he a good baby?" (I mean, what's a bad baby??) and "is he sleeping throug the night?". It can get depressing to keep having to answer in the negative - so I've changed my approach and now say that he sleeps really well and only wakes a few times, instead of groaning and saying how he just won't sleep for longer than a few hours at a time!

It's very hard to judge how you are going when even the experts can't agree. It was only when I figured out that there was no definitive answer on most topics, and no one-size-fits-all, that I was able to relax, and rely on my own judgement instead.