Friends and readers - I've so been anticipating being able to share today's post with you! When Laura and I first began sharing our approach to parenting here on the blog, a friend of mine from high school sent an email sharing that he and his wife Jenny (who is also a friend from high school) had gone through very similar experiences in their first year as parents, particularly that feeling of pressure - both implied and explicit- to follow the approach set forth by Babywise and other materials from the Ezzo curriculum as the "right" way for Christians to approach parenthood.
For months, I've been pestering Jason to share his perspective as a Christan father and husband on how making peace with an alternative approach to new parenthood has impacted he and his wife, their marriage, and their children. I think in order to get me to leave him alone about it ;) he has written this to share with you all today. It seems so much of what is written about the first year of parenting focuses exclusively on the experience of new moms, and I am thrilled to have found a husband and father who will give voice to his experience.
So please welcome today my friend Jason as he shares his heart on parenting:
Our road to a more spirit-led approach in parenting is a long and winding one. You see, back when a client at work found out that we were expecting, he loaned us his copy of Babywise and shared that this book had really helped he and his wife with their child. Being eager first time parents, we gave it an honest read. And the eat-awake-sleep routine and advice on helping your child to sleep through the night seemed to make a lot of sense...in theory anyway.
It wasn't until our 9 lb 14.5 oz bundle of joy was born that the theory fell apart in practice. Eli (who, at birth, weighed more than some of our friend's children at three months old) wanted to eat much more often than your typical newborn and really couldn't go the recommended 2 1/2-3 hours between feedings. However, our earnestness in wishing to follow the Babywise recommendations was beginning to take its toll on my wife. The tension between “parent directed feeding” and responding to our son's clear signals that he needed to be fed was causing Jenny a great deal of self-doubt and inner turmoil at an already fragile time in early mommyhood.
Now, the fact that Eli wasn't eating on a good schedule was compounded by the fact that he wasn't sleeping through the night well around eight weeks which, as we all know is the magic time when Babywise says all infants should be able to sleep for 6-8 hours straight. But as many of your readers can probably sympathize, the first question from the mouths of many well-intentioned friends and family members was, “Is he sleeping through the night yet?” I remember that my wife and I would often look at each other and silently wonder who was going to field this one and how were we going to sugarcoat it so we didn't appear to be complete and utter failures at not teaching our child how and when to eat and sleep. Yes, our short lived flirtations with trying let our son “cry it out” were nothing sort of full-fledged disasters that more often than not resulted in everyone being reduced to tears.
Now, I'm not sure how or when the conversation took place, or over what length of time it took to come to the conclusion that we did. My poor wife, who by the way, is an absolutely terrific and wonderful mother, was far too sleep deprived from the whole ordeal at the time and was in no condition to step back and take in the whole situation and make a command decision about the whole thing. But I think I finally had to take the reigns and make the call for the well-being of our family and marriage that we were going to give ourselves permission to nurse our son when and where he needed to be fed.
And so oftentimes, that meant responding to Eli's cries in the middle of the night. And in the best interest of getting Jenny the sleep she so desperately needed, that often meant bringing Eli back to our bed and letting him nurse himself back to sleep, while Jenny would go back to sleep herself. And to be honest, I personally enjoyed having Eli in our bed. Granted, he wasn't the most still sleeper. We'd often wake up with a fist or foot in our nose. But there wasn't much more that I enjoyed than waking up seeing the two of them next to me and getting to steal a little time cuddling with my son. And I'm sure there are some Babywise parents who would be shocked to know that our marriage was not ruined or assigned any less significance when our son slept with us in bed.
And for the first time in our short stint in parenthood, we had a real peace about things. And no, it had nothing to do with our son eating on a predetermined schedule, nor did Eli suddenly start sleeping through the night (that didn't happen until he was almost 13 months old).
But it had everything to do with the fact that we had come to the realization in our hearts that God had purposefully given Eli to us. And with that in mind, no books, and no experts could tell us with more authority on precisely how we were to raise our son in a way which honored him as God's creation and honored his creator back than his own parents who sought after God in making the right decisions about raising the son that He had entrusted to us.
