No One Tells You How To Parent

There is some sort of mystery to every new phase of your life. You graduate high school wondering what college will be like. You meet the love of your life and wonder what marriage will be like. You work through things as they come, asking the Lord to lead you in the right direction.

Most of my life I have felt prepared for things. Not like I always knew how to do things, but usually things would come naturally to me.

Having our own baby is really different. I really love it, but it is really challenging and not as natural as one might think, even though I am adjusting to it just fine. To think that our baby is mostly just sleeping and eating and crying right now, and not too much more difficult than that. As one mom just told me... Wait til he can climb out of his crib, take off all his clothes, etc. Oh the joys to come!

I have spent the last 7 weeks trying to figure out our baby boy. We've had small leaps and bounds, but I would still say we are working on it, which will probably take his whole life. haha

Where I am at today in our Parenting Philosophy: (each day changes like the wind, but God is my rock.)

Our Routine:
I am letting "the perfect schedule" go for a time. I was doing a lot of Babywise principles and trying to get on a routine, etc, but what I was doing was not all good. A lot of it was good, but not all of it was, for us, that is. I have somehow let my baby get sleep deprived. I was nursing him, putting him down, and then waking him up short times later. It got to the point that he wasn't napping longer than 45 minutes. That is not good for him or for me.

I've been reading "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" and what I am finding is that I need to let Micaiah sleep if he needs sleep. So as a restorative approach, I am letting go of a schedule for a little bit and I'm letting him sleep until he wakes up. I plan to continue this until he is a more rested child. I know he will let me know when he is hungry and right now he is a BIG BOY (13 lbs at 7 weeks), so I'm not all that worried about letting him go a little longer at times between feeds. Earlier this morning he slept from 9:45 - 10:45, woke for 20 minutes really fussy and wouldn't settle, I moved him to his swing, and he slept until 2 pm. I would have woken him up at least once in that time before. He woke up calm and sweet and I fed him and he pretty much went right back down. NOW, I think I will believe that "Sleep begets Sleep." We've continued to have a pretty good 4-5 hr stretch at night and for that I will be thankful. As my brother, who is at Marine OCS, and I agreed... it sure is amazing what you can handle/do on just 4 hours of rest.

Cry it Out
I came to the conclusion that we needed to let him Cry it Out (CIO) due to various reasons. At first, I couldn't BEAR to have him cry. I would rush in, pick him up, put a paci in, adjust, do whatever it took... rock, hold, cuddle, to get him back to sleep. And boy, was I messing him up! I've learned that I was actually stimulating him too much during all of that, also contributing to him having some messed up sleep. Well, two days ago we started CIO. This was after our pediatrician told us to put him in his crib and let him CIO. Well... we started this, and I felt like we swung from one extreme to the other. Me constantly trying to "help" him vs. Me leaving him too alone to figure things out. Some might think I'm weak, but I feel like he is still so little and so I feel like we've got to have a balance. Now, as long as I can get him down as soon as I see his sleepy cues, then he goes down pretty easily. I might run back in a time or two to stick the paci in his mouth, or move him to his swing, but I don't think I'm gonna have him hard core CIO until he is older. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm not going to let him cry some. Babies do cry, you know.

Fear
I have had a lot of fear that I'm not doing things RIGHT. The perfectionist in me has really taken a beating lately. I was swimming in my own fear that if I didn't do "this" a certain way, then my baby would never sleep well or through the night. If I did too much of "this" then he wouldn't ever be able to "self-soothe." I've been having to surrender all of "this" to God and pray that He will help me figure things out when the time is right.

Consistency
Whatever I do with Micaiah, it needs to be consistent. This is what is going to help us get onto a routine after I feel like we can handle it a little better. I have started a nap time ritual, a bed time ritual, and a feeding time ritual. We will work on the "times" part of that to come.

So this is where we are with things. I'm okay with this for right now and I think it has taken me 7 weeks to get to where we are and me be okay with it!