If I had a New Year’s resolution to give every parent it would be to trust yourselves—you know more than you think you do.
Over the holidays I met a couple of new babies. One only four weeks old, was leading his parents a lively chase by feeding frequently. The issue came up of whether it is possible to spoil a baby by picking him up too much.
I remember well when my son, like this one, wanted to breast feed every two hours, day or night. A young and very inexperienced mother, I agonized about picking him up all the time and worried that my milk supply would adjust to these frequent feedings, creating a vicious cycle of less milk and ever more frequent feedings.
Looking back the only thing I would have done differently is to have stopped worrying about it, allowing me to pick him up and feed him as much as I wanted without guilt.
The infant support program I was a part of in New Mexico was in the business of reassuring new mothers and fathers that it is impossible to “spoil” an infant, and the best advice is to trust maternal and paternal instincts. Mothers have been responding to baby’s cries for thousands of years and the built in response that strikes that inner cord and says “my baby is in distress” can be relied upon.
Now this doesn’t mean that you always respond quickly to a baby’s cry. As time goes by a parent will learn that a baby who has a little fuss in the middle of the night, if left alone for a bit, may just be semi-awakening and will go back to sleep. The key is to trust the instinct.
When a baby is older–six months or so, and your instinct now tells you that this cry is different, maybe it feels a little manipulative or demanding when everything should be fine, then you might get a little more suspicious, but here again, a trust of what a parent “knows” will work, judging by the sound of the cry. Sometimes everything should be fine but lo and behold- teething–baby in distress because of mouth pain.
It does not harm an infant to be carried around and held all the time. We know many cultures that strap the child to the mother’s body following birth. In this culture Mom, of course, needs a break and some sleep. That’s why we have dad’s and grandmas and aunties. A very young infant operates out of a primitive feedback system that doesn’t distinguish caretakers. By three or even two months, the baby begins to distinguish mom from not mom but especially in those early stages the distinction is between comfort and distress.
The resolution to trust yourself as a parent doesn’t stop in infancy. From advocating for your child with a coach or teacher to being suspicious of a tale a teenager is telling you about where she is going–trusting your instincts will get you through.
There is one important caution, however, and that is to be careful of doing or saying something in a state of anger. Handling one’s anger with children is an important skill and a topic for another column. Suffice it to say that if a parent is angry, a deep breath and a time out of some kind should be undertaken before any action.
There is no shortage of advice for parents these days, but as I look back over my life raising two children and thinking about all those families I have worked with, the times we didn’t trust what we knew was true in our hearts were the times we made mistakes.
Dec. 29,2001