You Are An Amazing Parent…

No one can prepare you for being a parent. Before the first baby arrives, whether calming or overwhelming, you find yourself inundated with information, advice, opinions. So much so that one of the most popular pieces of advice one now receives is to not listen to too much advice. Funny right?

It is now accepted, however, that each pregnancy is different and you cannot attach the same rules to other people. Somehow we have learnt this over the millennia and, as such, pregnancy has become this beautifully personal, honoured experience. As the mom, our feelings are not only listened to, but valued. For the most part at least.

The birth process brings with it a whole other set of controversies, but I’m not going to get into that now.

My point is that it is interesting that pregnancy has been accepted as being a unique experience for not only each person, but also each pregnancy, but somehow parenting still comes with an enormous amount of rules, most of which contradict each other.

I was blessed with a baby girl who did not sleep very well. I read so much, listened to so many and cried myself to sleep at feeling like such a failure. Why on earth can all these other moms get it right, while I am so freaking useless?

Now that we are past the cloudiness that comes from extreme exhaustion, clarity has emerged.

I was not trying to get anyone else’s baby to sleep. I was trying to get MY baby to sleep.

As we grow older, we are taught that being unique, a one of a kind, is something as true to life as the need to breathe. Yet our babies are lumped into a category, implying that their individuality is something they are taught with age and not something they are born with. I find this bizarre.

I wholeheartedly believe that my baby girl, Maya, was born an individual and for this reason I need to treat her as one.

I blamed myself so much for the fact that I couldn’t get her to sleep for longer than an hour or 2 at a time – I nursed her too often, I didn’t put her down awake, I let her fall asleep in others’ arms, I kept her in our bed, I didn’t let her cry…on and on and on. I felt like such a bad mom; a feeling that only ballooned in energy each time I mistakenly compared myself to another “getting-it-right” mom.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that there are methods that certainly help one get through milestones and the rapid growth rate that our little ones go through. I also understand and have enormous respect for the wisdom that has and is being passed down by those who have struggled and learnt before us. I am so grateful that, at any moment in time, I can call on moms of present and past to help guide me and show me a path.

What I am referring to is the unwarranted feelings of guilt, failure and disheartening comparisons that come with the information we are provided.

I have made mistakes as a mom, and I will continue to do so, I’m sure, for as long as I am blessed to be guiding my children. But running parallel to the mistakes is one fact that we all need to come back to…

We are amazing parents!

No one is raising OUR children. No one has spent as much energy, time and love devoted to learning who they are, what they need and how to best be there for them. In the middle of the night, when we hear our vulnerable, precious, perfect angels cry, no one will ever know what they truly need, besides us. There is a reason why parenting comes with such passion, such unbridled emotion. It is because, with this passion and unbridled love comes an unavoidable awareness and understanding of our children that no one else can begin to mimic.

You know your child best and, instinctively, will do what you know to be the best thing for them. Trust this above everything else and remind yourself every single day, during every embarrassing public tantrum, during every meal-time fail, every rash, fever and tummy ache, remind yourself every time you lose your temper, get over run with guilt or secretly cry in the bathroom, that you…

ARE AN AMAZING MOM!

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Why Is Your 1 Year Old Throwing Tantrums? And how to handle it…

The Bests and Worsts of Being a Stay-At-Home Mom