I wish I’d never……..

I was chatting to a now pg IF friend of mine, telling her that one of the hardest things about being a new mom is that I have no idea if what I am doing is right.  I am so scared that in one, two, five or ten years time I was going to say ‘I wish I had never ….. (co-slept / demand fed / fed on schedule / smacked / not smacked / rocked to sleep etc).  Am I being too soft, too hard? Not strict enough? Etc etc.

I am so scared I am inadvertently making a terrible mistake, one (or several) which I will sorely regret later.  (Little niggling fear about letting them go to sleep in my arms before putting them down, but cant seem to find alternative).

As we spoke about a while ago, one of the losses of the modern world is that new mothers are no longer surrounded by communities of experienced mothers, grannies, aunts etc who would provide this advice and support. 

Luckily one of the great spin offs of the Internet is that we are able to provide some semblance of this in the form of virtual communities, like bulletin boards, blogs etc.

So dear experienced mothers, aunts and grannies, I am looking to you as my virtual community, your collective words of wisdom are once again required:

If you look back now (one month, one year, 10 / 20 years down the line), what do you wish you had not done?  What / how could I learn from your mistakes? 

Comments

[Mollie]

T, when you write your feelings right now, your fears of making some indelible mark that you will regret later, oh, Honey, I get it.

I agree with Naomi, it's pretty much what I would write, in terms of worrying, and the temporaryness of it all anyway.

One thing that was different for me was this intense need I had to have things MY WAY. My husband would try to do something for the kid and I would butt in and overdirect. I was so concerned about everything being right. I was a mess.

Even now that that one is four, I still have bad habits of thinking about his care that I want to break. With this new baby, I am so much more relaxed. Put her down awake, put her down asleep. Feed her this much, skip a feeding. Breast, bottle, open cup, whatever. Kid is smiling, must be fine. WHY couldn't I have been that way with the first one? WHY WHY WHY? I have my theories.

You have my sympathy, truly you do, having two "first kids" and after such a long struggle. I know when I adopted my son, I had been through so much in the process, and carried a lot of that baggage in with me. I think it made the normal "first kid" issues even more enormous. Being so deliberate in my "having a baby" just carried over into being overly deliberate in my parenting as well. When I was "surprised" with my daughter's conception and had a boring pregnancy that resulted in her full-term birth, it just felt like a bonus, a gift, plain and simple. And there was no stress. Well, very little. There's always some.

Sigh.

[Ally]

My boy is only 4 months, so I'm not looking back on a whole lot yet, but so far I don't really have any regrets. Sometines I nurse him to sleep, sometimes I rock him to sleep, sometimes he takes a pacifier. I've done enough researching to know that if these things become a problem in the future there are things we can do to correct them. Right now, he's my tiny little baby and mommy and daddy's arms are good places to be.

I do wish I hadn't spent the first couple of months terrified he'd choke or suffocate, but hey, first time mom jitters. What can you do?

[Kel]

Everyone's already mentioned all the things I'd have changed (stressing out, hurtling myself toward him at the first cry, getting more help...)

Here's what I'm glad I did and will try very hard to do with the twins I'm now carrying (I'm writing this for me to keep in mind):

1. Read every night. When we are both home, all activity stops and reading happens. We cuddle, we curl up, we read. This is hard because one of could be cooking or getting something done, but the message would be "this isn't the most important thing we do" and we wanted that to be so.

Its so cool to listen to him play alone now (just 3) because he's so dramatic in his own story telling because he's had such a good foundation.

We don't buy a lot of books, we go to the library every week: great outting, great way to teach responsibility about how you have to care for books (can't write in them, can't tear them), etc.

Most libraries also have a pretty good collection of kid videos and DVDs, which also helps keep that expense down.

2. I think I've posted this before and it sounds a bit preachy and new-wavey, but I need to remember it now more than ever (sorry). Babies are this magical bundle of energy. Mothering takes a lot of energy. I could have been drained by my interactions (working mom here) with him or I could make those moments with him (bathing him, reading to him every night, getting him to sleep by himself) blast me full of excitment and vigor. I made a choice almost every day to have it be the later. Sometimes (like when your hair hurts from lack of sleep), I faked it. But even when I did, I usually walked away more fulfilled than drained. This decision really does feed on itselfand I knew I could better handle the next time he called out if Icould come away feeling pumped up instead of worn down.

I never wanted him to feel I was a martyr to his needs (even when that was exactly how I was feeling). I wanted him to think there was NOTHING I wanted to be doing more than being with him. I think its made him feel very secure.

I might have really wanted him to get back to sleep so I could finish watching American Idol (or something equally as silly), but I think he never questioned that I was making a rule about going to sleep because that was just the best thing for him to do.

You are doing really great.

Kel

[HeatherP]

My philosophy is *you only really regret the things you don't do*. I love this piece on mothering - v v long, sorry, but well worth the read. I wish I knew who wrote it, but I don't.
-------------------------------
If not for the photographs, I might have a hard time believing they ever existed. The pensive infant with the swipe of dark bangs and the black button eyes of a Raggedy Andy doll. The placid baby with the yellow ringlets and the high piping voice The sturdy toddler with the lower lip that curled into an apostrophe above her chin. ALL MY BABIES are gone now.
I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves.
Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber duckie at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.
Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach. T. Berry Brazleton. Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early- childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories.
What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations -- what they taught me was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all. Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One boy is toilet trained at 3, his brother at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow.
First science said environment was the great shaper of human nature. But it certainly seemed as though those babies had distinct personalities, some contemplative, some gregarious, some crabby. And eventually science said that was right, and that they were hard-wired exactly as we had suspected.
Still, the temptation to defer to the experts was huge. The literate parent, who approaches everything; cooking, decorating, life as though there were a paper due or an exam scheduled, is in particular peril when the kids arrive.
How silly it all seems now, the obsessing about language acquisition and physical milestones, the riding the waves of normal, gifted, hyperactive, all those labels that reduced individuality to a series of cubbyholes. But I could not help myself. I had watched my mother casually raise five children born over 10 years, but by watching her I intuitively knew that I was engaged in the greatest and potentially most catastrophic task of my life. I knew that there were mothers who had worried with good reason, that there were children who would have great challenges to meet. We were lucky; ours were not among them.
Nothing horrible or astonishing happened: there was hernia surgery, some stitches, a broken arm and a fuchsia cast to go with it. Mostly ours were the ordinary everyday terrors and miracles of raising a child, and our children's challenges the old familiar ones of learning to live as themselves in the world. The trick was to get past my fears, my ego and my inadequacies to help them do that.
I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub- quiet codicil for an 18-month-old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.
Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, What did you get wrong? (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?
But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did NOT LIVE IN THE MOMENT ENOUGH. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.
Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity.
That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.
Author Unknown

[Amber]

I thought I would tell you "rocking my son to sleep"...for every nap & bedtime...until he was 12 months & 5 days old. At which point I did a CIO/Ferber method to get him to go to sleep on his own. It worked in 2 days.

BUT I don't regret that. Yes, I could have had alot more time. My house could have been cleaner. I could have taken more showers. But now that Austin is 18 months old, he never lets me hold him. He is on the go from the time he wakes up until he passes out in exhaustion. I have to steal hugs & kisses when I can. So I am very thankful for those memeories I have of rocking him for HOURS, convincing him to go to sleep.

No regrets for me. I know I am doing the best I can. I know I am not perfect. But I do know that every decision I make regarding my son is thought out, and once decided, I am confident it is the best thing for him, at that time.

Besides, when he grows up...and has some issues, I want him to be able to blame me...would hate to have him think it was his fault. He is perfect!! LOL!! j/k

I guarantee you...you are doing the right thing for your babies.

[Orange]

I wish I had somehow realized that the baby wasn't going to die if I took 15 minutes for a shower every day.

I wish I'd stopped pumping sooner--and I only lasted 2 months. It was a looong 2 months!

I have NO regrets about holding him when he fell asleep (naptime and nighttime), or about co-sleeping. Of course, he's almost 5 now and he still sleeps with us. In a way, I love the closeness, and in a way, I wish he'd moved to his own room at 3. But no regrets about the cuddling.

I also wish I'd known just how hard mothering a newborn was going to be. I felt like a total failure for a few stressful months there.

[Annie]

I wish I knew that it was ok that my daughter needed to be held and close to me to sleep and that other babies existed just like her. There was no book that said there are babies who will wake up every time they are put down and that was hard. I don't regret that she slept on me for the first few months of her life, I just wish that I knew there were other babies like her!

I wish I wouldn't have beat myself up for not being "perfect", whatever the fuck that means. I will never regret the co-sleeping or the breastfeeding, but I wish I had been ok with it from the beginning and not felt like I had to defend myself from all the people who disagreed with me. I let my own bullshit and unsureness of being a first time parent guide me at and that's what I really regret. I regret that I didn't say fuck off to my mother-in-law more often with her "spoiling" comments. I wish I had known how fast this second year was really going to go.

I wish I had taken more video!

[j]

I re-read my comment, and it sounded so harsh, like we never cuddle or rock our babies. We do, all the time. For comfort, or pleasure, or just because. Often right before bed, with a bottle. Just not to go to sleep.

[K]

I wish I hadn't let myself worry about what "other" one-month-olds, five-month-olds, 1-year-olds were doing.

It's easy to get caught up in the comparison game, even if you never thought you would be that kind of parent.

I wasted too much time and energy on that the first year. It was a tough thing to let go.

Your babies are beautiful, by the way.

[karla]

I wish I had trusted my own instincts more and felt less like a bad mommy because I didn't do exactly the same thing everyone else was/told me I should be doing. My eight year old is still alive and my 4 month old is thriving so I must be doing something right. I stopped letting other people dictate to me how to raise my kids. I learned to take what I needed from well meaning though sometimes pushy people and filter out the rest and to also be brave enough to say "I am so glad that worked for you and your family, but I think I will go a different route". Do I second guess myself? Hell yeah! But I think all moms do at one time or another. Sometimes I stop everything I am doing and just cuddle, look at, play with my miracles, laundry be damned! I don't want to look back years from now and regret not spending enough time with my babies because the laundry or dishes needed doing. I think if you love your children and want the best for them it's pretty hard to mess up. You are one kick ass mommy and you are only going to get "kick-assier". Trust your instincts, they were given to us for a reason. :)

[whitney]

I didn't read all the comments so I don't know if this has been said or not......

I learned after my first, who is now 3, to trust my instinct. Nothing beats a mother's instincts about her own children. And I am learning with my 15-month-old, a total opposite of my 3-year-old, that what works for one kid doesn't always work for another. You just kind of have to "go with the flow" and do what feels right for YOU and your children, not what books or friends or family or even doctors say sometimes.

And remember, if you feel you have screwed up, your kids don't know because they have nothing to compare you to!! LOL>

[Jessica]

What people seem to often forget is that human beings are very adaptable. Just because you start doing things one way, it doesn't mean you have to do things the same way forever. I really believe you should do whatever works best for you and your family, and when it stops working, you should trust that you can change it.

People also seem to forget that a baby's needs change over time. A newborn's needs are totally different that a 6 month old's, etc. etc.

My one month old sleeps with me right now, almost always in my arms. He feels secure there, I worry less about him ( I tried putting him in his crib a few times only to get up and check on him every 5 mins) and we both get more sleep that way. Right now, it works best for us. Sometime in the near future, I plan on moving him into the bassinet in our room, and then to his own room (when he's not waking up every few hours!). These changes may be difficult initially, but it seems silly for parents to think they can never change anything, especially as their babies grow older and their needs change.

[AyEnDeeAreEeAyAitch]

I wish you didn't have so many commenters. It would be nice to give my 2 cents sometimes. But, every day when I get here there are always over 60 or so responses so I just move on.

I bet I have something really smart to say too. Oh well, your loss!

[Nicole]

Tertia -
I think the most important thing is that you do what works for you and your family. There are a million "rights" and "wrongs" and interestingly enough if you start comparing other's list you'll find what is "right" for one, is "wrong" for another. So I think you have to find your own groove as a mother and as a family. You're already doing this naturally.

That said, it is good to listen to other's experience as long as you keep it in proper perspective. What people are usually sharing is what did or did not work for them. This is useful not b/c you need to mother like the next person, but b/c eventually something that has been working for you, won't work for you anymore. And when that happens you'll need to try different strategies so that you can transition to something that works better for you.

I hope this makes sense.

As I look back over the last 5 years raising two kids I can see many transitions. We co-slept, night-fed (for a year), used pacifiers, I held my first for naptime for almost 6 months (and so glad I did). But you see all of these things eventually change, either at my urging (b/c it didn't work for me anymore) or at my child's urging.

One of the most important things I've learned is to recognize when something doesn't work anymore - either I'm unhappy, aggravated, or frustrated with something, or the kids are. The sooner you recognize this, the sooner you can chart a new course. What often happened in my days as a new mom was that I waited until I was about to explode before doing something different. Once I hit that point I wanted immediate results (which in the world of babes and tots isn't usually forth-coming unless the result you desire is endless screaming and crying.) IME gradual transitions work best, you just have to have patience with yourself and your little ones. In the moment of frustration it sometimes seems like it will never end, but this too shall pass.

So if something in your daily routine is becoming unacceptable to you, then start brainstorming with other people about what specifically you might do differently. But don't just stop doing something you enjoy with your kids b/c someone else says you shouldn't.

There's my two cents of assvice. I hope you know you are doing a wonderful job! Just keep following your gut, and take everything anyone else says (including me) with a grain of salt.

[jeninco]

I do not regret the hours I spent holding my babies and rocking them to sleep. Those are some of my fondest memories. I do regret trying to be "normal" again---feigning keeping up the pace and activities I had before I had children.

Finding the balance between my needs and my children's needs took time---years. Maybe it is impossible with a baby, and certainly with two. But I still believe, for babies, just go with your instincts. Hold them, love them, give them all you can, answer to their needs. This creates a great base of comfort for them, a resource for later when psychology comes more into play. It is good that babies are babies first and not for very long. This is the time to just forget psychology and go with your animal self. Remember, culture and expectations have changed, but the biology of babies hasn't.

[hols]

i wish the ppd didnt hang out for 6+ months.....i wish i would have let people actually touch my daughter. i didnt let people hold her until she was like 3 months old. i know, im a freak, but i was afraid they would break her.
with my son, it was and is completely different. we were a lot more laxed with him. he wasnt rocked to sleep like dd was for 8 months, ds was just put to bed awake after a couple months. we arent pushing potty training, or reading or talking. we did all of that with our daughter. our son is at a completely different pace than our daughter was. its hard not to compare the 2.
i guess id just say, dont worry so much...like ive said before, what you are doing is right for you. it may not be right for someone else, but its right for you. dont second guess yourself. you are doing a great job

[Nance]

I'd have worried less about the mistakes I was making, and enjoyed my kid more. :-)

Honestly, I've made mistakes in my 4.5 years as a parent, but somehow, I've still managed to raise a sweet, intelligent, funny little girl who sleeps well, eats reasonably well, and is (most of the time) a joy to be around.

Don't sweat the small stuff T. Zoe was nursed to sleep for the first year of her life, and seems none the worse for it, and my 7 month old son has been the same - I'm just now starting to put him down when he's sleepy, but still awake.

Each baby is different, and each family is different, and you just need to find the rhythm that works for you and your family - it may be entirely different from what worked for me and mine.

[Kristine]

I wish I'd worked less and played more. That about sums it up!

I remember those bone-crushing days of tiredness when I only had one; now I have three (ages 14, 6 and nearly 4) and I still don't play enough. This is a good reminder to do that . Play.

[Beth]

As long as you always follow your heart, you should have no regrets.

[amy in bc]

With son # 1 my biggest regret is not helping him learn to sleep on his own.
Other than that I have no regrets :)

[ellen]

The thing I wish I could change with my twins is just what you said...worrying about every little thing I did, or did not, do. The great thing about having another baby has been that I have actually been able to enjoy her...not just because she arrived solo, but because I am so much more at ease.

I let her fall asleep in my arms till she was 3 months old. Loved it. And no harm done, she goes to bed now at age 1 every night after a raucous game of tag with her dad. Sick, or awake for no reason? Into the bed with us she comes. And so forth.

It took me a couple of years of mothering my twins to get to this point. So, yes, I only wish I had no been such a hardass with myself...after all, our parents had no parenting books or theories, and we all turned out ... okay.

[Rachelle]

Here's the thing: if we were armed with all the perfect information about what absolutely worked best, perhaps we would - for example - breastfeed our babies, put them to sleep awake and happy and never give them sleep associations, feed them on demand but still within a schedule, etc etc. But, babies are not cardboard cutouts. You might have something in your head that you want to do, but then your baby comes along, and doesn't respond to that. And you don't have the patience/ energy to do what you're meant to do anyway. So you do what you can do to get through the next few hours, and that's the best decision you can make.

Of course, within that, mistakes will be made. But that's part of it. Do you look back on the mistakes you've made in the rest of your life and think, "Gee, I wish I had lived life perfectly?" No, because mistakes inform us, educate us, make us who we are. And if you are perfect all the time, your children can't learn from that, either.

Your initial post suggests that if you rock/ don't rock, pat/ don't pat etc - you could be making a "terrible mistake". These kinds of mistakes aren't terrible. Perhaps you'd do things differently in retrospect, sure. But a "terrible mistake" is leaving your baby unharnassed in a rocker, and having him fall out when you're not looking. A "terrible mistake" is deciding to drink hot tea while you're breastfeeding, only to accidentally spill it on your baby. The mistakes you're talking about are very small scale, and I believe they're necessary for you to make in order that you grow as a mother.

And, also consider this: when you wrote a tribute to your own mother, it was all about how she empathised with you. How she took the time to read books about infertility. About how she let you cry when you were raw. About how she loved you unconditionally. I don't remember you writing, "And, when I was a baby, you pat me until I was relaxed and then let me fall asleep on my own." :)

[Rachelle]

With my above post, I didn't mean to suggest that people who leave their babies unharnassed, etc are making "terrible mistakes". I'm just saying that if you do something that endangers your child, and he turns out to in fact be horribly injured by that mistake, THEN it is a "terrible mistake" in retrospect. I just didn't want to put any worse examples in there for fear of making everyone paranoid!

[Shylah]

I wish I had not let my instincts be overridden. I didn't breastfeed for long at all, because I felt like it made my mother uncomfortable and made her feel left out. I didn't co-sleep as long as I wanted to because I let my mom and my pediatrician convince me that it was dangerous and a bad idea.

Your instincts will tell you what's right for you and your babies. Don't let anyone pressure you into going against them.

[Scully]

I lost custody of my son when he was 7 months old to his father. It was for legal reasons and had nothing to do with the care I provided.

I've spent the last 15 years doing everything in my power to see my son. To have time with him, to teach him the morals and beliefs I believe in. I gave up everything to make this happen.

In December, 2 days before his 15th birthday, we had a fight. A nothing fight about nothing, but clearly something snapped.

He packed up all his belongings, told me he never wanted to see me again and went home to his father's house.

I haven't spoken to him since then.

Do I look back and regret everything I've done for him? Everything I gave up and did to make sure I was in his life?

Nope. I did the best I could.

I think that's what many of us can say. We do our best.