(Un)helpful advice?

Embrace the chaos: this has to be the single, most helpful piece of advice I was ever given as a first time mum. Having a seemingly relaxed and carefree life before children was something that I definitely took for granted, as were a lot of things (spa treatments, relaxing baths, uninterrupted sleep, nice nails and hair, the smell of perfume rather than vomit etc, etc, etc). Once I announced I was pregnant, along came all of the usual helpful advice from those more experienced, and it made me start to panic about how on earth I was going to cope. I used to thrive on the routine of knowing what I was going to do and when. Apparently babies do too but they try their level best to turn that routine on its head, Small Boy and Smaller Boy have proven this one on many occasions. I used to become stressed out when thing went off track, but I found that by accepting that things were not always going to run as what I perceived as smoothly, made for a more successful day. But what about all of the other helpful advice that was thrust our way? The advice about feeding, sleeping, walking, traveling, playing, educating, bathing etc? Well I dealt with some of them like this:

Firstly, I'm a rubbish cook. Absolutely terrible. Experience has taught me that not only do my cooking skills not allow me to actually produce anything edible but that, actually, I don't want to. As simple as that. I despise cooking and the time it takes. So how on earth was I going to manage to produce wholesome, home cooked food for my PFB in between all of the routine following, baby groups, mum meet ups and educational lessons that would take place approximately every 15 minutes throughout the day? (Please excuse the obsession with educational experiences, the teacher in me can't seem to let that go). Well obviously it wasn't. So when it came to it I stuck with the simple things: veg, fruit, meat.  Nothing hard about that. Whether it's baby led weaning, puréed or a mixture of both it really doesn't matter. Small Boy ate what he liked,  threw what he didn't and made lovely patterns with the bits he wasn't sure about. Smaller Boy is the same (except probably eats one too many quavers).

Secondly, the helpful advice about milestones. My ears seemed tuned into the constant low level conversations about who was doing what at what point in their first year:  who was walking first, who could sign, which was better: crawling then walking or missing out the crawling altogether? Clearly, my 6 month old was behind because he could not yet recognise the 26 letters of the alphabet or sign the words to his favourite song when it came on the radio, which of course reflected badly on me as a parent. Of course now I realise it was just not important, not at all. As a parent you trust your judgement: approach it with logic as you would everything else in life. Babies do things at their own pace, panicking about it and trying to force things to happen doesn't serve to actually make them happen. All it does is take away that enjoyment, and I reckon most first time mums look back on the first year and wish they had taken less notice of others and more notice of themselves. I know I do, I definitely take this approach with Smaller Boy but even then it's a struggle to not slip back into old habits of worrying.

The rest of it? Well, I filed each piece of patronising, wrong and just plain stupid, ahem helpful advice in the B1N file for later. Someone else's way of doing things may be useful to you if you're struggling, of course our friends and family mean well. But that doesn't necessarily mean their way is right for you. It doesn't always hurt to change things a bit, but sometimes it's just not you, it's just the way things are. If things are working for you then you leave them alone, common sense and intuition are the most powerful tools we have as parents. If something doesn't feel right then don't do it, whether that's taking away the dummy or not using one at all, or co-sleeping or not co-sleeping. No one is right, or wrong 100% of the time. That reminds me, I need to take out the rubbish.


Retrospect is a great thing.