Babywise saved my life

Parenting is the kind of thing they don’t teach you in school. As parents, we stumble and grope our way in the darkness, unsure of whether we’re doing the right thing all the time. It doesn’t help that there are a thousand different (often contrasting) parenting methods, each claiming to be THE REVOLUTIONARY parenting style. To top that off, our parents have their own ideas of how to raise kids, seeing that we turned out somewhat normal (normal being a matter of perspective, of course).

So is there a right parenting style, or do all roads lead to Rome? As long as we’re not Hitler or Joseph Walter Jackson, does it really matter if we co-sleep with the baby or let him cry it out? I am of the opinion that kids don’t remember a smidgen of what went on in the first 2 years of their lives and these decisions really end up affecting the parents more than the kids.

Before Tru was born, a friend introduced me to a book called On Becoming Babywise and that has been my bible as far as parenting goes. At first, it seemed like the hardest parenting advice I’ve ever heard, but upon witnessing the effects it produced, we were completely sold. 14 months in, we’ve never looked back and it is perhaps the only reason why we even considered having Kirsten 4 months after Tru was born.

In a nutshell, Babywise advocates parent-directed parenting, which places the responsibility of parenting squarely on the parents and not the kids. This is opposed to child-directed parenting, where they believe babies know what they want and parents should react to their babies’ cries at the drop of a hat, sending them into a frenzy every time the baby so much as whimpers. BABIES DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY WANT.

How it translates into actual parenting is this:

1. Babies cry. It’s what they do and there’s no getting around it. It’s also not the end of the world. It’s the only way they know how to communicate and crying is normal. Ok, it sends my blood pressure into overdrive, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not going to kill them.

2. Babies need a routine. Simply reacting to their cries makes parenting a real pain. Without a proper schedule, it could be due to a plethora of reasons, and chances are, we’ll pick the wrong solution. A routine helps to eliminate factors, making it easier to identify why the baby is crying.

3. Sleep has to be taught. It may seem like the most natural thing in the world but trust me, extended sleep is a skill that must be learnt. If babies have it their way, they would sleep for 3 hour stretches for the first 5 years of their lives and the number of parents committing harakiri will go up exponentially.

4. Independence is important. This whole babies need an extended womb theory is nonsense. If babies needed to be in the womb, they would stay in the womb and not come out. Now that they’re out, we don’t need to create an artificial womb and have them attached to our bodies 24/7.

The truth is, babies that learn to sleep well on their own end up being happy, cheerful, smart and independent. But the process of learning is well, PAINFUL as hell (for the parents) and it involves copious amounts of wailing and screaming (by both parties).

From day 1, my kids are placed in their own cots to sleep WHILE THEY ARE AWAKE and this makes me wildly unpopular. The idea is that they have to learn to fall asleep on their own without being rocked or carried. The benefits are twofold. It means that I don’t have to carry them for hours to induce sleep, only to have them wake up and scream once I lower them into the cot. Also, it will help them to fall back asleep if they wake up in the middle of the night. Of course it’s met by tremendous resistance and Tru had a legendary 6-hour crying session on a particularly trying day. I was pacing the floor outside his room screaming into a pillow and every 10 minutes, I would go into the room to pacify him. He only fell asleep after 6 hours.

But he’s come a long way since then. He’s been sleeping through the night since he was 12 weeks old, and nap times aren’t painful. When it’s time for a nap, I can put him down in his cot while he’s wide awake and walk out. Some days, he’ll talk to his soft toys for an hour before he falls asleep, but there’s none of that cot-resistance.

In a way, it’s a matter of necessity. With 2 kids, I simply do not have the time to carry them to sleep. But more importantly, it has done wonders for my sanity as well as my marriage. With the kids down for the night at 7pm, we get to spend quality time alone in the evenings instead of being flustered and exhausted. The best part is, with good sleep, Tru is like a ball of sunshine in the daytime, making it a breeze to watch him (that being relative as well).

In another 2-3 weeks, I’m hoping Kirsten will adjust to sleeping through the night as well. I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep in 5 weeks and it’s killing me. Any more of this and I’ll be too high strung to take care of the kids without snapping at them all day. A happy mommy results in happy kids.

So yes, Babywise saved my life.