Any mother will tell you how entertaining it is to listen to a first-time parent-to-be tell you about all the things they are never going to do with their children. Some of these things, it must be said, are quite practical, but there are usually a few that you will know from experience are never going to work out.
So, here are my three top “I will nevers”:
- Give my baby a dummy (pacifier)
- Controlled crying
- Co-sleep
The dummy one went out the window the day my eldest was born. She was born with pneumonia and was in special care. The nurses told me that she was having trouble settling and sleeping (she was attached to a multitude of tubes and wires), and they asked if they could try a dummy to help her settle. My “I will never use dummies” went straight out the window because my baby was sick, in a humidicrib and not settling. The entertaining post-script on this is that while she did take the dummy briefly in the hospital, she wouldn’t take it once we went home. I kept trying (because she was often unsettled and would startle herself awake), but she never took a dummy after the hospital. I tried dummies with the other two as well, and neither of them would take one. At the time it was frustrating, but afterwards (when I didn’t have to wean a baby off a dummy) it was actually quite good J
Controlled crying only happened with our eldest, and only because I was at the end of my tether. She woke every two hours overnight, and wanted to feed for 30 minutes each time. She had to be patted to sleep on her side, then carefully (slowly, oh so slowly) rolled onto her back. Everything startled her, and every startle woke her. By the time she was six months old, I was so tired that I tried letting her cry one night. Let me point out that I sat right outside her bedroom door and cried along with her that first night, but it actually worked with her. It didn’t mean she slept through the night by any means (she didn’t do that in any consistent fashion until she was over two), but it did mean that she would sleep for four hours at a time, and only wake up once during the night. And that was lovely.
Co-sleeping (well, technically bed-sharing) just happened one night. Our eldest was about 12 or so days old and I was feeding her in the bed. She fell asleep feeding. I fell asleep. She woke up again for a feed two hours later and I freaked out that I’d fallen asleep in the bed with my baby. But she was feeding while I was having this freak out, so I stayed where I was. Once she’d fed, I put her back into her cradle. We didn’t co-sleep all the time, but it did happen from time-to-time. When she was older, she would get night terrors and it was easier to settle her when she was in the bed with us. She rarely needed to fall asleep in our bed, it was more that she got spooked in the night and needed us then. She was also a very good bed-sharer, so it was a pleasant experience. The only reason we stopped letting her into bed with us was because I was having another baby and we didn’t want them both in our bedroom!
Co-sleeping with Kid 2 was a matter of necessity. It was, quite literally, the only way she would go to sleep for the night during the first three months of her life. Technically, I suppose, it wasn’t really “co-sleeping”, since I would lay beside her and feed her till she fell asleep, and then I would get up and go about my evening’s business. She’d wake for a feed just before we went to bed, and then she’d go into her cradle beside the bed. After three months, she moved into the cot and shared a bedroom with her sister. Once she was older (between two and three) she loved to get into bed with us in the middle of the night and snuggle in. She was a terrible bed-sharer, and would often lay longways between us, her head on her dad’s hip and her feet in my back. Again, we finally booted her from our room because of the imminent arrival of Kid 3.
Kid 3 was a different kettle of fish entirely. He hated co-sleeping. Hated to be swaddled. Hated to be rocked or patted or snuggled to sleep. As an infant, he would feed to sleep, but he gave that up early on. Kid 3’s idea of the perfect bedtime involved me putting him into a baby sleeping bag (arms most definitely free), laying him sleepy (but not sleeping) in his own cradle and walking out of the room. The only time this because a hassle was when he was genuinely upset and needed to be soothed or calmed down. Because he hated to be rocked and snuggled to sleep, any attempts to soothe him to sleep resulted in a far angrier baby. It was easier to let him sit up and calm down, then put him back to bed. Like his sisters, he would come into our bed in the night (especially if it was cold). He shared relatively well, but he always had to be touching me, which meant that I never got much sleep. It took me several weeks at the end of one winter to convince him to stay in his own bed all night, but I did it.
So, new parents, you can have your never-evers. Some of them might really be nevers for you. Some of them might change by necessity or simplicity or due to oh-my-goodness-I-need-sleep! And some of the things that were definitely going to be part of your parenting life (breastfeeding, stay-at-home-parenting, working full-time, cloth nappies, screen time, home-made baby food, whatever it may be) just might not work for you and yours.
I was never having children, and now I have three. I was never going to be a stay-at-home parent, and yet here I am. My child was never sleeping in my bed . . . but that’s happened in the past and still happens on occasion now. There is more screen time in my kids’ lives than I thought I’d be happy with, but I’m ok with that. Things change and babies have their very own ideas about what they like, thank you very much, and sometimes you just have to go with it.
