Like many other moms, my first night home with my baby was a nightmare. He cried, I cried, and my husband cried. I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing when it came to anything, and the only way he’d drift off to sleep was if I fed him.
At his one-week checkup, my pediatrician asked me about our routine. When I got to the part about him only sleeping if he was being nursed, he told me to stop doing that immediately: “He needs to self-soothe, so you should be putting him in his crib when he’s awake.”
This was code for “let him cry it out, or you are going to spoil and ruin your child.” While he didn’t say those exact words, that's how I felt leaving that visit. As a new mom, I was vulnerable, full of hormones, and wanted to do everything in my power to give him the best life I could. I left feeling ashamed and like I was doing everything wrong.
That night, I put him to bed awake in his crib even though he’d never slept there before. Then, I listened to him cry for two hours straight. It was horrible and everything in me felt like it was the wrong thing to do. Yes, I was a new mom, but my intuition has never steered me wrong. And when I ignore it, like I did that night and in the coming month, it shakes me to the core.
I continued trying to do what my pediatrician told me to do. I read books about sleep. I tried to be strong and not get upset when my child would lie in his crib for hours and cry. But after a month of trying to follow through with this plan during naptime and bedtime, he never fell asleep on his own. Not once. He’d cry for over an hour, then I’d go up and nurse him and put him in bed with me, and we’d both sleep great.
At his next appointment, I lied to his pediatrician because I didn’t want to admit what we were doing at home. When I left, I felt silly and realized I could change pediatricians and continue to get my child to sleep the way I wanted to. Which is what I did.
Those first few weeks were tough though. I stressed myself out so much trying to fight my intuition that I made myself sick.
Now my three kids are teenagers, and I’ve taken that lesson with me on this parenting journey now. I will tell you, from a mom who has been there and done that, listen to your gut when it comes to parenting and caring for your children. I don’t care if they are 2 days old or 2 years old. When you do something you aren’t comfortable with, no one wins.
You know your child and yourself better than anyone. If someone gives you advice you don’t like, or you try something and it doesn’t work (even if everyone else is doing it), you don’t have to do it.
Trust me, your whole family will be so much happier if you stick to what feels right and forget all the rest.
