I’m tired.
And sad.
And, if I’m completely honest, angry. Yeah, pretty angry.
The past 18 months have been such a wonderful, magical ride as a new parent of an incredible baby-now-little-girl. I have loved and continue to love and appreciate all of it. It is truly my place in this Universe. I know it every single day.
Then there is the shadow side of this wondrous journey.
It has come from many different people in varied forms. It has been conversation or a look or a silence.
It always ends the same for me. With a heavy heart, anger, and frustration. And, admittedly, sometimes tears.
My husband and I have chosen a path of parenting that is not common to modern day America. We willingly and purposefully share a family bed with our daughter. She has never–and will never–see the inside of a crib. I often nap with her and at the very least lay with her to fall asleep for naps and nighttime. I still breastfeed and plan to do so until Delaney decides otherwise. Delaney has only been in a stroller sporadically; rather, I have carried her in a sling, close to me, facing me, up where we can interact. I still carry her in one when she’s not walking herself. We respond(ed) to her cries and cues immediately, picking her up and comforting her. I am the only person who puts Delaney to bed, sometimes with my husband, often not. She has never spent a night away from me, and the most time she has been away from me is three and a half hours–the longest of my life. We make every effort to attend to her needs and build much of our life around that (which is not to say we don’t do many things–we just do it around her best schedule).
In short, we don’t know many people who do what we do. And we don’t talk much about it, because of the shadow.
Everything started with the co-sleeping early on. But the more I have learned about tribal societies, the more I have modeled my parenting after the more ancient practices (see Jean Liedloff’s work or www.tribalbaby.org or The Natural Child Project). It is the most natural, intuitive approach I can imagine. We simply do what feels right, and we let our intuition guide us.
For me, it’s the most joyous way to parent, because I have learned to be in sync with my child, and that makes everything else so much easier and more fun. There is little guesswork. I know her. I knew her needs. I understand her rhythms. We communicate in many ways, and I am proactive about meeting her needs as many moments throughout the day as I can.
And that is pretty much us as parents in a nutshell.
Back to shadow.
From day one, we–but I will say mostly I because I am her primary parent during the day–have encountered negativity, doubt, unsolicited advice, judgment, out-and-out disapproval, and icy silences. From the first week we had her when I was asked,”How does she sleep?” (which, by the way, I now understand is the most ridiculous question related to an expectation that’s so out of sync with how babies are programmed from evolutionary and biological perspectives–sleeping through the night is this red badge of courage for parents that’s so much more about the parents than the child) and I replied that she was sleeping in bed with us, I got the concerned look and “Be careful, or she’ll never leave!”
Seriously? She’ll never leave.
I guess that will ruin our plans for her to go to a great college. Oh well. At least she’ll still be in bed with us at 25.
The sleeping issue may have only been secondary in those first few weeks to the “aren’t you ever going to put her down?” issue.
Easy answer: no.
Actually, not as easy, because although my intuition nagged at me that I was right, I thought if multiple people had opinions about it, maybe I needed to give a little. Fortunately, my reading caught up with my intuition very quickly, and she was held most of the time with the occasional time in a swing.
But still with the put-her-down thing. Someone actually said to me when she was three months old and I picked her up in a restaurant, because she was fussing, “You know, they learn this young that you’re going to pick them up when they cry.”
Really?
You’re a goddamn wizard.
At the time, I was still timid enough in my just-being-formed beliefs that I said nothing. Now I would have proudly said,”Um, good. That’s the idea. I want her to know that I will comfort her when she needs me. That’s what I want her to learn about her world.”
Hopefully, this person is not a parent.
Then came the breastfeeding: How long was I going to do it? Shouldn’t I introduce a bottle already so everyone else can feed her?
And now, 18 months later with the breastfeeding: How long am I going to do it? I’m not going to be one of those crazy women that breastfeeds my child until she’s 8, am I? Is it even beneficial to her anymore? Is it normal to still be breastfeeding her?
And on and on and on and on . . .
So, here’s the thing. I wasn’t prepared for the unsolicited advice from the woman in Greenwise about carrying her in the sling or the uncomfortable silences from family, friends, and strangers when I mention co-sleeping.
Everyone who is a parent has laughed at me when I said I truly did not expect the unsolicited advice.
I didn’t. I really didn’t.
I guess I don’t live that way. Here’s an example:
I believe with all my heart that Dr. Ferber, the king of the let-your-child-cry-until-they-vomit approach to sleep training, is teaching women all over the world to go against their instincts as mothers and is further betraying generations of babies by dispensing his advice. And don’t even get me started on the Babywise method. It makes me sick to my stomach just thinking about it. And I would hope that it would every mother.
For the many people I know some of whom have definitely used his methods and some of whom I believe may have used them, it would never occur to me to offer them my advice on how to parent their child. It’s not my business really. I don’t walk in their shoes.
And nothing, I have learned, is more divisive than parent approaches, so who the hell wants to turn the key to ignite that conversation? Not my place.
If someone were to ask me generally what I think about sleep training, Dr. Ferber, etc. etc. etc., don’t get me started. I will give you an earful. But to offer unsolicited advice to a young mother who isn’t asking for it and who is doing the best she can? No, not from me.
Family members and friends were shocked to find out that Delaney slept with us. It was as if I had told them that we gave her tequila for dinner every night. At the youngest of ages, I was told that she needed to be on her own, more “independent.”
Independent. Again, seriously?‘
Well, I immediately went out and rented her an apartment and taught her how to balance her checkbook, cook, and grocery shop, because, after all, aren’t those some of the skills that you need to be more independent?
I’m so sickened by some of the parenting approaches that are commonplace in the United States and what it’s doing to our children. We favor schlepping our kids around in plastic containers from place to place to having close, intimate contact through babywearing.
Guess what: if you have your child up on your chest during the day, you are privy to some wonderful, magical details of their existence that you never get to see when they’re four feet away from you, facing out to a terrifyingly big world. And it makes it so easy to just go on with your day without truly being with them. You can talk on your cell phone and pretend they’re not there as long as they’re quiet. It’s so sad to me. I didn’t have a baby to pretend that she doesn’t exist.
We are one of the only cultures that insist on putting our babies down the hall in a separate bedroom at such a young age (another lovely by-product of our out-of-control affluence). And the benefits of sleeping with your baby can virtually be the difference between life and death, health and disease (see Dr. James McKenna’s research on sleep sharing).
I have many, many reasons why I believe we are parenting the way parenting should be done. Clearly. I could use this blog to cite reference upon reference that supports my viewpoints.
Don’t even get me started on breastfeeding vs. formula feeding . . .
But my point is that no matter what I believe, I don’t believe I have the right to offer stony silence or undermining questions to another mother about her parenting choices in the midst of conversation. I just don’t. It’s unfair and wrong.
Case in point: several months ago, a woman in the music class Delaney and I attend was talking about weaning her six month old from breastfeeding. Internally I was horrified. I thought, oh my gosh, poor child. I couldn’t believe she was doing it just for her own convenience. (Those of you who know me well know how passionate I am about breastfeeding and that I truly believe it is the most wonderful gift I have given to my child and to myself.)
What I said to her was something like,”Wow, good luck. I hope it goes well. I think Delaney would burn down the house if we tried to wean her now.” The group laughed, and we moved on to another subject.
Not to pat myself on the back or anything, but I’d like to think that this was a graceful approach to offering her support without talking about my viewpoints on the subject.
Not my business. But for someone I liked well enough, nice to show support and be kind about what she was going through.
Why have I met virtually no one in my sphere of friends, family, and acquaintances that can do the same for me? I have been continually met with naysayers, doubters, icy-silencers, and underminers. They may not mean to do that, but that is, in effect, what they do.
And I hate it.
I hate it, because it’s rude and arrogant.
I hate it, because it’s unsupportive and self-centered.
And I also hate it, because it offers the assumption (sometimes overtly and sometimes spoken right out loud, if you can believe it) that we have made the choices we make out of naivety and lack of experience.
Another person laughed when we mentioned that we don’t let Delaney cry, but rather pick her up to respond to her cries. She said something along the lines of,”Yeah, I did that with my first one. But with the second one, you learn to tune it out.”
Really?
That’s just sad to me. And I couldn’t do it. If I had 13 children, I couldn’t do it.
Furthermore, science supports my point of view. Enter Dr. Sears, the pediatrician I wish more mothers read.
The upshot of that was that this person thought we were merely responding to our baby in an attached, loving way, because we were inexperienced and didn’t know better.
And this has been the most difficult attitude to deal with.
Not that I need to recite this, but I’m going to. I am an intelligent, intuitive, and emotionally savvy person. I have a master’s degree in counseling and have worked with foster parents and children for almost ten years. My husband is a college-degreed professional who is brilliant in many ways and also very emotionally intelligent.
We are smart people who read, research, talk to one another, process what’s going on around us, take things in and judge them for whether they are right or wrong for us. Sometime we agree; sometimes we don’t.
But we take the time to make good decisions for ourselves and our child.
We don’t “just do it,” because someone said we should or because our mothers or grandmothers did it that way.
For people–especially those who know us–to look at the decisions we’re making and think anything other than,”Wow, that’s interesting. I don’t know much about it, but I’m guessing if you’re choosing to do it, it’s really the right thing for your family,” is beyond me.
I’d like to add that I can count on one hand the number of people who have actually taken the time to ask us questions in a curious way about what we’re doing and how we’re doing things.
To these people, I would just like to say thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Because the other part of this is that living in silence is not the easiest thing to do either. At some point, I just stopped talking about parenting in small talk situations. I just didn’t want to deal with it anymore. Which meant that I had less and less outlets to just be me as a mother and to contribute my thought, feelings, and experiences in conversations.
I have hated that silence. But I just got tired of feeling like the odd man out, because out of a roomful of ten mothers, I was the only one still breastfeeding my child. Or that comments about having her in a carrier instead of a stroller always carried a tone of criticism instead of interest. Or that mentioning sleep sharing always–and I mean always–yielded some sort of comment that was critical.
I have missed my friends in Vermont very much since becoming a parent. All of those friends to varying degrees parented similarly to the way we are. I honestly thought it was the norm, not the exception, due to those wonderful individuals. I am blessed to have witnessed their parenting long before we had Delaney. It made their intuitive, intelligent choices normal to me. So I didn’t give it a second thought to doing it myself. It just made sense.
I don’t really have a neat wrap-this-up-with-a-bow ending. It’s not as simple as “let’s practice tolerance,” because I am often intolerant myself. I work on it every day.
But I think kindness goes a long way, and I don’t feel I’ve been shown a lot of kindness in people’s willingness to just accept and embrace my husband and I for who we are as people and as parents since Delaney was born. For those friends, family members, and acquaintances who have made comments, if they truly looked at themselves and their intentions, it would be clear that they couldn’t–just for one moment–put their own issues aside to be supportive to us.
It was really just about them needing to find a platform for their own crap and for feeling “right” about something.
And that’s just sad to me.
Because if you can’t put that aside during a joyous occasion like the birth of a baby, when the hell can you?
I will continue to live as a human being and as a parent with as much compassion and dignity as I can on a moment-to-moment basis. I hope that means that Delaney will witness me walking through the world and interacting with others with kindness and support and, ultimately, love. I am no Mother Theresa, that’s for sure. But I will continue to try.
The shadow side of parenting has left me a bit bruised, battered, and untrusting.
It has also broken my heart open in ways I could not have imagined, because I have been true to myself in parenting the way that feels and is right for my life and most importantly for her life. And that has been filled with a sweetness I could not have imagined. The rewards so outweigh the effort.
But I would have appreciated more support, more understanding, more compassion. I would have thrived even more so if I lived in a community full of people that embraced and, through their support, furthered my capacity to become the parent and human being I want to be.
I will continue to wish for that community. And I will continue to let the disappointment seep in when I am confronted with harsh judgments and lack of understanding.
And I will continue to do my best to live and let live . . . with as much heart as I can muster up.
Sing it sister! Thank you for sharing. Know that I am always here for you, anytime. I’m so honored to know you and hope that we get to celebrate more cherished moments with you. As for what others say, I know how it feels, I go through it too. I think even “normal” parents do too, there is always someone who thinks they can butt in. To those people I say thank you, not for the disturbing advice, but for the reminder that I am strong enough in my will for my life with my child to make a difference and it shows. I don’t want to be “like everyone else”. I am proud to be me. And that makes people uncomfortable, but that is also what inspires and creates change. You are the change you wish to see!
Love and hugs
Lori
p.s. most of the moms in our little group have very similar parenting approaches, you are honored here!
Corinne,
Standing ovation! I experienced some of the same looks and snears. I admire you for doing what you feel is right for your beautiful baby and loving her enough to give her everything that she needs despite the pain that society bestows upon you for making your own choices.
I miss you greatly my friend and think about you all the time.
Michelle
How sad it makes me to know that you feel so judged by others and that you have to struggle so just to do what you feel is natural and right. I think you are a great Mom and I am proud of you every day of my life…it may be hard to find others who are of like minds, but when you do, they will be worth keeping as friends. Keep that chin up and keep doing what you are doing for my wonderful granddaughter.
Hi Corinne –
Good for you guys!! We have done the family bed with all three kids. We still have one with us now – and I would NEVER change it. It was the right thing for us, for the boys, and so far for Gigi, our youngest.
And, like you, I don’t know any other parents that did this.
The boys rarely come into our room anymore, but it is such a kick in the pants when we all wake up together on a Saturday morning! Just love it!
You are obviously a beautiful mother who has turned herself completely over to the parenting of your daughter, and I applaud you. It is the most precious gift you could give her and yourself. Cherish this time, it passes so quickly! And please don’t give negative people the power to tarnish your joy. They cannot understand because they have not experienced parenthood the way you are experiencing it- it is their loss.
Cori,
I only read this now during my afternoon facebook time but I think it’s very admirable what you are doing and that you have the courage and strength to stand up for what you believe in. I obviously don’t have kids and don’t know if I will, but I hear mothers around me all the time make comments and judgements on how other mothers chose to raise their kids. And it does make me angry that people can’t accept that the same things aren’t right for everyone. Different does not equal wrong. I think it’s wonderful that you are so dedicated to Delaney and have chosen the approach you have. I also don’t understand the concept behind having children and yet not wanting to spend your time with them. I thought that was why you had children. I always thought that you and Kyle would make great parents and Delaney is very lucky to have you both. I hope that if I have children one day that I’ll make as positive of choices that you both have.
Love always,
Stephanie