(This is Part 2 of what I’m learning as a new mom. You can check out Part 1 here.)
My father in law joked, “What’s that saying? Madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?” Welp, I’m learning madness is a core competency of parenting.
In the early days of mom-ing I would lament over every thing she refused.
“She doesn’t like that swaddle.”
“She hates the swing, why did we get it.”
“She’s never going to like the baby carrier.”
Until the random day she’d do a complete 180 on whatever she refused before.
The swaddle she hated for the first couple weeks became her favorite for almost two months.
The swing we couldn’t put her in for a week, she still naps in every day (blah blah blah sleep training, I’m single parenting over here while my husband’s deployed I do what I must.)
The baby carriers, of which I bought three different kinds, she will sleep like a baby in under the right circumstances.
My mom gave me the mantra I’ve lived off of since Lucy’s first month: “She doesn’t know what she wants any better than you do, you’ll figure it out together.”
We go for an hour walk every morning with our dog, mainly because it keeps our endless-energy dog sane and I get a chance to listen to my audiobooks. I also firmly believe the day we stop walking the dog will be the day she starts resenting Lucy. Right now, Lucy sleeps almost the entire walk. It took us nearly three months to get to that point - we iterated on everything from how to dress her for walks, blanket or no blanket, fan or no fan, noise machine or no noise machine, sun shade or no sun shade, sidewalk or street. I’ve been doing marketing for 12 years and I’ve never split tested as much as I have with this baby.
What I’ve learned, that I didn’t read in any baby books, is that babies are finicky, ADHD little creatures that change their mind by the minute. Wouldn’t you if you were literally encountering EVERYTHING for the first time? If you had to choose between books or teething toys or walks or naps or the boob or watching the dog’s tail wag or playing with sunlight in your hands in this brand new world you’ve been dumped (or in Lucy’s case surgically removed) into? I have a hard time finishing a 60 second video on instagram, and I expect this baby to make up her mind about what she likes in her first month of life?
At first, Lucy’s change of heart on nearly everything all the time made me so frustrated. I wanted walks to put her to sleep every time or I wanted her to giggle at the Roku screensaver every time, but alas, her synapses are changing faster than her diapers. When I started looking at this as a pretty amazing thing, I started giving her (a little) more grace. I began noticing how her development was affecting her changes in preferences and it makes everything a little more magical. It also helped me to not write things off quickly, just because she won’t let you put that drool bib on her today doesn’t mean tomorrow she won’t wear it and spew on it like its her proudest accomplishment.
A very frustrating thing about babies is they are constantly changing their mind. A very wonderful thing about babies is that they are constantly changing their mind. No matter how futile an effort may seem, if it’s important to you, or good for your baby, keep at it. One day they’ll surprise you.