What If Parenting Didn’t Have So Many Rules?
Milestones. Sleep length. Arm length. Head circumference.
Have you checked your head circumference in the last decade?
Becoming a parent is one of the most extreme changes to happen in your life. One day you are walking around only worried about what you are doing, the next you are completely responsible for another human being who is doing all sorts of things you do not understand. Then there is the recovery for your body after putting it through hell to get them here, and the incredible grace you require for yourself in order to feel some sense of confidence in this unpredictable and confusing time.
Added to all that are all these rules that everybody tells you exist!
Did you know that if your baby sleeps for 3.26 hours each day at specific intervals, and gets 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep at night, they will grow to be the next John Mayer?
It’s amazing really, that somebody managed to figure that out. All we have to do is follow these simple rules and everything will work out.
What the heck did humans do for the thousands of years before science told us how to raise a human?
What is that thing that tells you when to eat food?
What is the part of you that feels sleepy?
What about the part of you that can take care of a small human, even without any education on it?
Could it be that we can in fact, function without somebody telling us what to do? Without having some sort of inferiority complex when your kid is different than another kid.
I do not have a grown child to show how it should all go down. Heck I’ve only been in this game for ten and half mo- oh shit, did I remember to turn the monitor back on? Gulp, okay turning on…. Please be asleep, please be asleep, please be asleep….ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, blessed silence.
Anyways… it is not a formula. I believe that because life is so much more fun that way. It becomes lighter and I can enjoy my baby because I’m not trying to make her conform to all these crazy ideas. I can laugh a little bit to myself when she’s crying because I know it’s going to be okay, and sometimes babies cry over spilled milk. I can laugh when my boob is leaking everywhere and I’m just trying to do a normal human thing and have a coffee.
I suppose the rules were created to help us. I think they only help us when some part of you sighs with relief when you read about it. Because on some deep level, you already knew it, you just needed to hear it from somebody else. If instead it makes you want to cry because your baby is never going to be like that, and you are a failure and you are never going to get any sleep…. It is not a good rule.
Babies are crazy and confusing. So are grown up babies. Let’s leave them a little space to be who they need to be eh?
