I am not a great cook. I don't really enjoy preparing meals, going food-shopping, and, honestly, not even eating that much (unless it's cake. Cake always works).
So when I was pregnant and preparing for how we would raise Lily food-wise, I was sure I'd become the biggest Hipp customer of all times (Hipp is the main Austrian market for pureed baby foods in glasses). Mothers cooking their babies puree from freshly cooked ingredients? That wouldn't be me. I can barely feed myself healthily. The first problem I encountered with starting Lily to eat food other than breastmilk was that she simply wasn't ready at six months. I feel there is unnecessary pressure to feed your baby before it turns one years old. In German, the term for introducing foods is "Beikost", which translates to "With-Food", i.e. food that is slowly introduced alongside breastmilk or formula. The notion is that, while breastfeeding, you introduce pureed foods one at a time. However, most mothers I know don't do it that way. They replace one breastmilk-feed with a "proper" meal over the short span of days. My lactation consultant once mockingly said, "It's called With-Food, not Instead-Food". The WHO recommends breastfeeding for at least six months and introducing solids earliest from six months onwards. I sometimes felt "earliest at six months" meant "definitely at six months". In fact, we were on the later spectrum compared to other parents when Lily had her first spoon of puree at six months. Which, incidentally, she spat out immediately. While she did show some intrigue about the spoon, the food didn't entice her at all, so we stopped and decided to revisit the matter a little later. In the meantime, however, I realised that she was interested in the food I consumed. She would look at it and grab for it, so I cut it up and gave it to her. She wouldn't eat it, though. Just suck at it, lick it, mash it, smell it, and so on and so forth. I was torn. A part of me didn't want her to play with food - so deeply ingrained was that belief. I wanted to have this picture-perfect image of me putting the spoon to her face and she happily eating it. But she wouldn't have any of it. She didn't like being fed, but she enjoyed exploring her food with her hands. And it was a big mess. Her hands, her arms, her tray, the floor underneath - everything was compromised with what she'd eaten, and I worried whether this was the right way to do it. I started doing research and a friend brought me on to BLW - baby-led weaning. I hadn't heard of it before, but I guess we always need a fancy-schmancy name for something people have done with their babies worldwide for thousands of years (I doubt they had puree glasses in the Middle Ages). BLW suggests that babies don't need to eat purees but can immediately share our food - provided it's not salty, spicy or sugary. I delved into the idea of babies being perfectly capable to deal with chunks of food - even without teeth. While foods like nuts, hard fruit and uncooked vegetables should be avoided due to being a possible choking hazard, babies usually know how to deal with the food. Armed with my BLW book and the resignation that my baby would never become a "Hipp" baby, I started cutting my food in little chunks and strips for her to eat. Until today she doesn't really eat a lot of it most days, but she's eating completely unaided by me, which means I can eat the same time she does. It also means she can eat as much or little as she needs, and eat according to her preferences - which is the main benefit of BLW. But what about the mess? Have I come to terms with it? How can it be prevented? Is it OK for babies to "play with food"? Well, as with most aspects concerning parenting, I feel the problem lies mostly with the parent not the child. We have unrealistic images of how it "should be", possibly supported by other mums, our mothers or mothers-in-law. The fact is, life with kids is messy. If you introduce solid foods later, the babies still don't have the coordination to make it a completely mess-free affair. Maybe you can shift the mess to a few months later if you ladle food into your baby's mouth with a spoon, but you cannot avoid it, in my opinion. Also, is it necessary? Babies don't "play with food", they explore a new texture, material, taste and smell - just as they do with every other object. Eating a banana is not just putting it in the mouth like for adults, but it is a wholesome experience of the squishy texture, the strong, sweet smell, how it feels when it runs through the fingers, down to how it feels inside the mouth. As a Montessori child, I can only recommend having as many tactile and haptic experiences as possible - even if they mean a bigger mess. The moment I shifted my perspective to this realisation, it was infinitely easier to deal with the mess. Of course there are days where I worry if I could do things better (like, pretty much every day). What if she becomes a messy eater? What if she never eats from a plate (we put her food on the tray because she just upends the plate and things go everywhere)? When do I introduce cutlery? The "problems" are manifold, but mostly in our heads. With a little trust and a little patience, I am sure Lily will become a good eater who can enjoy not only the taste, but textures, smells and feel inside the mouth. Even though there are days on which I bemoan the fact that she doesn't really like the ready meals from the glasses, I am quite glad now that she's a determined eater, insisting on her independence. Maybe it means we can skip a few steps other mums have to go from their perfect spoon-eating babies to toddlerhood. I guess it all has its pros and cons.
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The days are long but the months are short - I couldn't agree more. Lily is now ten months old and officially in the double-digits. From the 9-Month-Update, you know that she started crawling at the end of May, and sitting up followed shortly after. I can't remember the exact day she sat up, which makes me feel like a terrible mum - I should know these things right? It's just sometimes I'm not sure whether it's still happening by accident, or whether she's intentionally sitting up now.
Fact is, for about a week now she's definitely doing it consciously, so I'd say around the beginning of June she started sitting up. Now that she's mastered this task, she's finally a little calmer again. Once crawling happened, she was just a whirlwind of baby, exploring every nook and cranny of the flat. Now, she also sits happily for half an hour, reading her books - yes, she's "reading" her books - and examining every toy she has (and there are so many). For me that means I get to breathe a little bit more, and I cannot overstate the pride I feel when I watch her develop. Apart from her personal mobile achievement, she's become rather clingy lately. She's "Mama, Mama, just Mama", and while I think that's very flattering, it's also annoying as fuck. I cannot even go to the bathroom at the moment without her knocking on the door and crying because she wants to be with me. Daddy - bless him - is just no good substitute at the moment. It's Mama. And Mama only. Which means, this Mama is looking for every second of rest she can get. Sadly, Lily's day naps are haphazard at best. Sometimes she sleeps for half an hour, sometimes for over two hours - which means she won't fall asleep quickly at night. Navigating her naps and sleep seems like its own full-time job sometimes. On some days it feels like all I do is putting her to sleep - unsuccessfully, mostly. On the plus side, most nights are really getting better. Tonight I think I only fed her once and she slept through the rest; however, I seem to wake up MORE TIRED when I get a full night's sleep, almost as if my body cannot take the overdose of rest. With a little AC-induced cold, it's not much easier. In terms of entertainment, putting things out of shelves is the clear winner. She just loves getting all the books off the shelves, clearing out the kitchen cabinets and putting things in and out of her wooden play farmhouse. Sadly, she's not really keen in putting everything back where it belongs, but maybe some day. We've also decided to do a little naming ceremony (we're not religious, so there won't be a christening) on her first birthday. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, we couldn't do it last autumn when we'd wanted to do it originally, but I think her first birthday is a nice date as well. Speaking of birthdays - I'm still unsure what to get her for her birthday. There are just SO MANY choices, but I don't want to get her any crap she won't know how to use yet; nor something that requires my permanent assistance, like a swing. Maybe a Bobby Car would be nice, and I think it's time for her first doll. We'll see. I've already decided there will be fairy cakes at her birthday, as I can make them sugar-free for her and delightfully unhealthy for the rest of us. Provided she'll eat anything, as eating real food is not her strong suit, really. She's having a tiny bit of this and that - and even some purees now - but calling it a real "meal" would be overstating it. As we're delving into the eleventh month, I will keep you posted on my journey through motherhood, and if you have any suggestions for birthday presents or requests, please let me know. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay A child hitting a child is Misbehaving, What do the Congo, South Sudan, Turkmenistan and most European countries have in common? At first you'd struggle to find too many similarities, but they all belong to the 53 countries which have officially outlawed hitting children as part of corporal punishment. Sweden started the initiative of not physically abusing children as a disciplinary measure in 1979, and most European countries followed suit within the next ten years (among them Austria).
For me, corporal punishment was always closely associated with the backhanded way Catholic schools disciplined children. Stories my dad would tell me about his school time at a Catholic boarding school would render me speechless what teachers could do "back in the day" to children. Even more so was I shocked to find out that in the US, hitting your children - or "spanking" as it is called to soothe the mind of parents who practise this cruelty - is still legal in a variety of states, including Idaho, Alabama, Missouri and Texas. While I thought corporal punishment in schools and at home was a thing of the past, it still seems to be very much a thing in the United States. Even though it feels ridiculous to even point out why hitting your child isn't a good idea, apparently there are still many parents who haven't got the memo yet. The problems with it should be obvious, yet many parents on social media still proudly state that they spank their children - and that is the first big problem for me: the term spanking. Language plays a crucial role in how we perceive actions. While "hitting" a child would unanimously be agreed on as a physical assault, "spanking" leaves parents room to make it into a disciplinary measure instead of physical abuse. However, spanking can include a belt or hard item like a cooking spoon, so it's definitely physical abuse as well. Especially as the lines between hitting and the supposedly less cruel "spanking" are not clearly defined, this leaves children vulnerable to legal abuse in the home. However, apart from the fact that hitting your child should - obviously - be wrong for anyone who has a morsel of common sense, it is also worth looking at the issues that occur beyond the physical abuse. I've seen parents on social media sharing children throwing a tantrum and stating that spanking a child can prevent such tantrums. First of all, that's simply not true. Children act out because they have needs to be heard, so regardless how much you threaten your child, eventually, in some way, it will make itself heard. Secondly, when a child throws a massive tantrum with fits where they hit their parents, the first response shouldn't be "oh dear, this child needs to be hit", but "oh dear, a lot has already gone wrong for a long time." As I stated in my post on the impacts of sleep training, babies and children have needs and they will employ any method which gets them heard - because their survival depends on it. Parents who consistently ignore their child's needs - or only act on them irregularly like responding to their cries during the day, but then let them scream themselves into sleep - create an unstable environment in which the child doesn't feel secure. In order to be heard, children find methods that work for them - they don't care whether they get negative or positive attention, for attention is their key for survival. A child who has regular tantrums on the floor, spits and hits their parents is a child whose needs aren't heard and responded accordingly enough. Hitting such a child under the cover of "spanking" doesn't respond to the child's needs - on the contrary, it silences it in a cruel and emotionally un-responsive way. Parents who spank their children after they act up shouldn't be surprised that these children have difficulties voicing their emotions, which can lead to big communicative problems in their adulthood. Children mimic their parents. Which makes parenting so easy - but also so hard. When mummy and daddy eat with fork and spoon, I want to use cutlery too. When mummy and daddy dance around to music, I want to dance, too. When mummy hits me when she's angry with me, I will hit when I am angry, too. It's as simply as that. By "spanking" you instil in your child that physical violence is the only way out of a conflict situation. Instead of learning how to communicate respectfully and finding the language to express their emotions, children are taught that physical violence is a good way to voice your anger or discomfort. Worst of all, parents who "spank" their children, incidentally would also punish their child hitting another child - by hitting their child. It doesn't take a lot of brain cells to see that this is highly ambivalent, and also hypocritical. Apart from the problematic instilment of physical violence as a method to express anger, "spanking", i.e. hitting your child, also deeply hurts the communicative relationship between parents and their children. For what does "spanking" really do? It is a method to make your child behave through fear of punishment - not because the child has learnt why their behaviour is wrong. Therefore, these children need constant authority threatening them to abstain from bad behaviour, whereas children who learn emotionally and who are communicated through their actions will refrain from abusive behaviour because they want to - even without an authority supervising them. No healthy, self-sufficient and self-confident adult has emerged from being physically or mentally abused. Those who were abused and came out the other end "fine" either have demons to battle they are not aware of yet (for they've never been taught how to express their emotions in another way than physical), or they have turned out fine despite their parents hitting (spanking) them, not because of it. The notion that being abused can in any way foster a better self-confidence or inherent discipline is clearly wrong, for a plant also doesn't flourish when you whip it all day. And finally, for those who still claim that "spanking" yields results and the children "turn out fine", le me say this: just because a method is working, doesn't make it right. And the question is whether you want your children to have respect because they're scared of you, or because they've learnt respect and how their actions affect other people emotionally. It is our job to equip our children for this world, and a communicative strong and stable person is valued much higher than someone who lashes out whenever things don't go their way. M-O-T-H-E-R
Two syllables. Six letters. A very important meaning. We all come from her, Not only physically, But are moulded by the radiance of her presence. Or absence. Mothers infuse every fibre of history. Hitler had a mother. So did Gandhi. From mother to daughter, we say. For every daughter may become a mother, Formed from the ideas of her mother, Of her mother. Of her mother, Of her mother. There is no such thing as individual motherhood. How we mother is formed and shaped by what we learnt from our Mothers. And even if we do everything differently, She still made us the mother we become. Before a mother came more mothers than stars in the sky. And after her will follow more mothers than moons surrounding planets. We are one in billions and billions. A particle shaping the next generation of Mothers. Does that mean we do not matter, if we are only one in so many? We matter greatly. We may only be one of many mothers to come and go. But to our daughters we mean everything. We are the stars, sun and the moons of our sons. We are their universe. Today marks the 9-month mark of Lily's life. Now she's been outside of the womb for as long as she's been inside, and she's developing rapidly. The past weeks have brought so much change in her. On April, 26th, she officially started crawling at eight months and almost three weeks. She'd been trying around and robbing herself through the apartment long before that, but now she's really got it - and she's fast! We couldn't baby-proof the flat fast enough! We'd thought we'd done it already, but our little baby girl proves us wrong every day. For every day is another opportunity to explore that sharp edge, find a little fluff on the floor to put in her mouth, or explore our charging cables.
With her eight months and three weeks, Lily is just in the average of when most babies start crawling (the average concluded from various studies is eight months and one week). It's rather interesting that I still hear people say, "oh, so she's taking it slowly then", as well as "Oh wow, she's an early crawler." I don't understand why we always have to comment on the velocity of our children's development. What difference does it make whether your baby starts crawling at five months or eleven months? Eventually they all learn to walk, talk and eat (unless there is some sort of developmental condition, of course). Lily also doesn't have any teeth yet. Personally, I am glad about that fact because it means I can still push away the potential bite during breastfeeding. She's been going through a teething phase in the last days (oh, what a pain for both of us), but there is no tooth out yet. Still, she's doing rather marvellously devouring her bread and fruit, and even meat. Ironically, for a baby with no teeth yet, Lily dislikes pureed food. Without entirely planning it, we've gone full BLW (baby-led weaning) and she already shares our meals (sugar and salt-free, of course). I'm going to do a BLW post in the near future when I've had time to try out some more recipes to share with you. However, I can already say, I prefer it much to feeding Lily. Feeding her always meant sitting down, not being able to eat myself, and begging for every spoonful. Now, my man and I eat and chat while she explores her cut finger food by herself and in all peace. Also, without meaning any offence to people who do it, but what's up with the weighing of baby food? I know mothers in baby groups who broadly explain how their baby eats exactly 45g of grain in the morning, then 120ml of milk and 30g of pureed food at lunch, half a glass of apple sauce as snack, etc. etc. Most grown-ups don't weigh their food, right? So why do it for your baby? I feel this is just another thing that sets you up for worrying needlessly. I try to look at the baby, not the scales and the books, and as long as Lily is healthy, happy, poops and pees regularly, what could be wrong? I also could never weigh her food, because even if I did, most of it lands on the chair, the floor or on her lap - but she seems to enjoy squeezing her food, then sceptically smelling it before taking a hesitant bite. Learning by doing, right? Alright, this hasn't been exclusively about crawling, but a little 9-month-old update was there in the mix. Are there any topics that would interest you to read about? I always love getting some inspiration :-) Let me know here or on my social media channels (which you find in the bar menu on the side). When having a baby, mothers usually conglomerate to exchange tips, horror stories and, quite frankly, to get out of the house. Thankfully, I’m in quite a few lovely mothers’ groups and it is always interesting what other parents do/don’t do. Over the course of these meetings, reading books and exchanging information in Facebook groups, I can thank many other parents for their generous advice, fantastic support and positive parenting tips.
However, I must also say that I have read incredibly much about parenting strategies which simply baffle me and make me wonder how they can still be a thing in 2021. With the wealth of research available, innumerable studies at hand and shared advice from big organisations like the NHS, La Leche League and the WHO, I have delved deep into various topics like sleep trainings, pacifiers, the carriers versus pram debate, when to start giving supplementary foods, digital media and more. From these topics, I want to concentrate on the one most engaging me (negatively, I must say), which is sleep training. I have written about it previously, but upon reading numerous books on the subject matter, there is just so much more to share. By sharing my personal opinion on this matter, I don’t mean to discredit individual parents – I don’t know your whole story, I don’t know what you’ve been through, I don’t know what led you to the decisions you've made. However, as a whole with the research and personal experience in mind, there is no doubt for me why I cannot get behind this method, and I will share why. The days are long, but the years are short.
I've heard this quote a thousand times in relation to children, and I must say it is true. Mind you, there haven't yet years passed, but the weeks fly by, and now Lily is already eight months old! My plan to update this website every step of the way was also quickly tossed, as it's just not as easy to find the time, sit down and craft a blog post once a week. However, I still want to check in as often as I can, so I thought I give you a quick update on what's been going on. Lily has become a little personality and is just on the edge of crawling. Even though I read all the Pikler books and try not to cheer her on to be one of the "early crawlers", I cannot always resist from lamenting that she cannot crawl yet and takes her time. Partly because it frustrates her a great deal as well, and I wish it for her. On the other hand, crawling signifies a milestone for me that shoves her from tiny baby to full-on mobile, and a part of me cries for my tiny bundle for whom I was the entire universe. It's the same with solids. She was pretty reluctant at six months, so we took our time, and now she's slowly warming up to the idea of other food than breastmilk. Again, I am torn between exhilarated that she's growing up and sharing our food, and mourning the time where my boobs were everything she needed all day. As for solids, we're doing a mixture between pureed foods and baby-led weaning (i.e. where they eat proper food like adults in chunks, just unsalted). A part of me is still worried she might choke, but I prefer BLW in general because she can sit with us and explore her own food while we can eat in peace, instead of having to feed her. She prefers to have command over the things that go into her mouth, and I understand that completely. Even if I give her pureed foods, she wants to hold her own spoon, which is great regarding independent eating and terrible in terms of how it looks under our kitchen table. Baby-proofing the flat has also been a crucial part, and whenever I think I've got every corner covered, I spot another safety hazard Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay "Just do your job, then let go." As part of my new morning routine, I work through the Lebe Inspiriert Book by Debora Karsch, as well as reading the Tao for my spiritual work. I realised amidst the topsyturvydom of motherhood, being sleep-deprived and coronavirus lockdown nr. 373 (or so it feels), I needed to establish a routine that allowed me to concentrate and reflect spiritually every day. The Bible is just not my book, so I'm working with the Tao translation by Stephen Mitchell.
Today, the quote above was part of the text in the Tao and it hasn't let go off me ever since reading it. As a control freak, I find great power in the message of letting go, and it is something I practise to do every day. The reason I am sharing it here on my Mama Blog site, is that it goes in accordance with so many great books on child-rearing I've read in the past. Maria Montessori's famous motto was, "Help me to do it on my own", when she worked with children. I am also reading the books of Emmi Pikler at the moment, who advocates for an environment in which children can develop and explore the world sheltered, but on their own. With children, particularly, I feel this quote pretty much sums up parenting. "Just do you job, then let go." Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay When I browse through Pinterest, I get hundreds of "Routine with Your Newborn" etc. etc. pictures that give you minute daily routines to the second that you should implement on your child as quickly as possible. In the many, many books I've browsed, many also speak of daily routines with exact nap times, wake up times (whoever woke up a sleeping baby has clearly never had one) and feed times.
In the beginning, these routines stressed me a lot, as Lily had her very own routine and every day is a little different than the other. I beshoulded myself with how she should always get up at the same time, eat at the same time and poop at the same time, until I reminded myself that she is a human being and not a machine. I've written in previous posts that I feel many parents want their children to "function" as quickly as possible - sleep through, fall asleep on their own, feed at the same times - so they can quickly return to their previous life rhythm before baby. I find requiring your baby to function demeaning. What if she's had a bad night and needs the eytra 30 minutes? What if she's just not so hungry today? What if it's hot and she's thirstier than usual? Sure, it is very tempting to read these books that promise your baby will fall asleep within seconds and then sleep twelve hours straight, but in the end they always include trickery and/or harming sleep trainings that deeply affect the bond between mother and child. For me, it is important that I see Lily as a human being with her own personality, needs and preferences. I cannot "train" her like a dog so she obeys when I need her to - and I don't want to do that. Imagine someone told you you had to eat, sleep and poop at the same time all the time, wouldn't you feel humiliated? I certainly would. So does that mean I don't think a structure to the day is important for us? On the contrary. I think a daily rhythm that generally repeats itself is very important for babies and children as it gives them signposts within the day on which they can rely on. Little rituals help them realise when what is done and I am all for it. However, a baby doesn't know whether it's 7 or 8 am, neither does it know when you put it in bed half an hour earlier or later. I put her to bed sometime between 7 pm and 8 pm when she's tired, but I don't count the minutes anymore. When you think about it, in the history of humankind, the clock makes up for probably the very last quarter of an inch in a very long rope. Humans had children long before the clock was invented. They fed their babies when they were hungry, put the down when they were tired and they lived on as well. I feel this time-picking isn't good for anyone. For the mothers it leads to frustration when your baby doesn't fall asleep at the same time as you intended to - and for the baby it's confusing because she doesn't know it's 4 o'clock now, she just knows she's not tired at the moment, so why go to sleep? I feel grooving into a mutual rhythm also allows you much more flexibility. Especially in the first year the rhythm of the babies changes continually. The minute you think you've got her figured out, she's changed again - so why enslave you and your baby to a stupid routine made up by someone on the internet? For me it only led to stress, so we now trust the rhythm we've grooved ourselves in and I let her take over most of the day - at that age they're pretty good at telling you what they like and what not, so let's not drill that out of them, but listen carefully and enjoy more quality time and less looking at the clock. When I was pregnant, and even before, I held smug views on baby sleep. First of all, I was convinced MY baby would have no trouble falling asleep because it would be so cocooned in love and warmth that it would happily nap off whenever she felt like it. I also pronounced myself clearly against dummies, white noise machines and all the other stuff that promises a "sound sleeping experience" for baby.
While my views on sleeping aids for babies still uphold essentially, I must concede I have a more open attitude towards them now. If there is one thing I have learnt as a new mother: Do not, under any circumstance, underestimate constant sleep deprivation. Lily is, generally, a good-ish sleeper. She's not a crier and usually slumbers off soundly on my boob. However, with her being increasingly interested in EVERYTHING ELSE but my boobs, this also becomes trickier at night. During the day, she doesn't sleep more than 30 minutes in a row, which is driving me nuts. Also, I struggle to put her down. The last weeks, I have lain down with her in bed and nursed her, but as her nursing intervals become increasingly longer, that isn't the only go-to move anymore. Also, I don't always want to lie in bed with her all the time. The only way she falls asleep without me being close or sucking my breast is in her pram. There she nods off gently and without any aid but the rocking of the pram - a dream sleep-in, which I wish she'd do in bed. Which is why I've recently thought, "Hey, what if only there were a bed that could rock?" Turns out, there is such a thing and while I didn't want a rocking crib, I'm starting to regret that now because I wonder if she could fall asleep in her rocking crib by herself during the day, so let's keep that in mind for baby number two, shall we? Lily also doesn't take a pacifier. We've tried three months in when I was increasingly weary of being her human dummy, but to no avail. She simply doesn't like it (and we've tried various types). One part of me, the not-completely-knackered part, is happy she doesn't take it because it means we don't have to wean her off; however, my dominant completely-knackered part just wishes I could pop the pacifier in and she'd be sound asleep - as if! There even was a point where I thought I could record my humming and just play it in a loop so she'd be tricked into believing I was still there, but then again, I don't think she's so stupid, and so I'd also have to fill a massive bag with rice, make it smell like me, add something that resembles breathing and occasionally caresses her head - and I think we all agree that would take it a bit far. I feel like sleeping is a huge issue, regardless what you do. Whether you "sleep-train" them (against which I am clearly opposed, you can read about our sleep habits here), have them in bed with you, carry them around, or insist they sleep in their own bed during the day - sleep seems to be something to deal with for every family. So, in the end, I am glad she sleeps with us because she's at least cosy and falls asleep knowing she is loved. Yesterday I was a little annoyed because I had to be in bed with her so long, then she threw up above all and I put her in the baby balcony to change the bedding and left her there for a while. Eventually, so tired and alone, she started wailing like she hardly ever does - a heart-breaking, angry and desperate screech which makes her head go red like a tomato. It took me twenty minutes of non-stop rocking and hugging to calm her down (serves me right) and eventually she clocked off on my shoulder, completely wet from the tears and sweat (I kind of have to cry just writing this). In this moment, it became crystal-clear that I could never sleep-train and am glad she's with us for the night. How anyone could listen to such desperate wails and NOT take their child up is beyond my comprehension. I deem it to be cruel and demeaning - and utterly detached from natural motherly feelings. So, even if it sometimes frustrates me and I am warming towards the idea of some sleeping aids for the day naps, there is no other way for me than cuddling and rocking my baby to sleep. And I am sure there will come the days when I will cry after the time she only fell asleep snuggled up with me - but this short cry of desperation still had to be, I hope you understand :-) |