Bless your hearts.
All of you - every single person who takes the time to stop by here and read or to subscribe via email or feed reader . . . I am just laid low with the honor of it all. Y'all have responded with such grace and conviction as I have talked through all of my Ezzo issues. Those who agree with my take and those who do not have shared their own stories and experiences and have just made the conversation so much more interesting.
I've put this last post off long enough. Part of it is my Gemini mind which has already spun out in a thousand different directions since I started this series two weeks ago. (two weeks? gah!) But part of it, too, is that this last post is not one I thought I would have the courage to write. It is something that I have known I should write, but I wasn't sure that I would write it.
A few years ago, I serendipitously connected with another blogger through one of those rounds of bloggy giveaways. She's a wonderful, godly woman who is gifted with humor and a lovely way with words. She doesn't blog anymore, but she does still pop by with great insights in response to some of the things I share here. I'm just going to call her J for now, but she can step forward in the comments if she wants to.
Anyway, in the midst of this Ezzo series, J shared some perspectives with me that I needed to hear. She is intimately familiar with the materials offered by Growing Families International and was able to fill in some blanks for me. To begin with, she wrote me to say this:
In my view, the biggest failing of Babywise is that it started out as a mentorship between the Ezzos and other couples at their church, and it doesn't transfer well to a book. These things (and by "these things" I mean caring for infants, raising children, etc) ideally are passed on from mother to daughter, friend to friend, and you take into account their specific circumstances when you give advice. I truly believe that the reason my experience was so positive was because of the group of contact moms in my area. The book was a guide, not a bible, for us and the mentorship of the mothers was so good.
I thought she made a great point about the mentorship aspect - not only in the context of the Ezzos and Babywise, etc., but in parenting in general. First-time parents are desperate for someone to come alongside of them, hold their hands, and tell them how to do this thing. Many of us are missing that sense of community in our lives, and so we turn to books or websites or message boards for guidance.
J wrote this later to me later in the series, and I wanted to share it as well (this is, of course, with her permission):
Years ago, women learned how to take care of babies through their families. It was the norm to have lots of children AND families tended to stay in the communities where they were raised so girls learned young how to care for a baby by caring for younger siblings, nieces and nephews, cousins, etc. When a young woman had her own children there were mothers, grandmothers and sisters to show her how to care for them. Even in the pioneer communities where there weren't extended families, the communities filled in by acting as extended family.
Our current society is fractured by comparison. Mom may live thousands of miles away along with the rest of the family. Or maybe mom isn't really good with babies--she only had one or two so she didn't get much experience, or she's not a baby person so she just got through the first few weeks and then went back to work, or Mom bottle fed and Daughter wants to breast feed. Young women aren't as prepared to take care of babies, and they don't have the support system they once did.
Parenting books fill in the gap -- or attempt to -- and Christian parents tend to want a Christian author. I can't think of another well-known Christian author who has written a book on infant care -- can you? (Note from Megan - well, yes, there is this one author for whom I have a bit of a soft spot. Now, carry on.)
Additionally, the first course (Preparation for Parenting) was an in-depth, Bible-based course which had already started to gain momentum through word of mouth. The Ezzos released Babywise in an attempt to reach unchurched families. (Many families, so I've heard, read Babywise, found a Contact Mom and/or signed up for GKGW and eventually accepted Christ.)
But there were some advantages to Babywise for Christians too: One, it's cheap. Prep was, as I recall, about $40 for the course notebook and tapes, whereas Babywise was about $10. It was cheap enough that you could buy a few copies and give them to your pregnant friends. Two, Babywise is shorter so people are more likely to read it.
The downside to the shortness is all the misunderstandings. A LOT of the objections I see to Babywise are ideas that the Ezzo's never meant to convey (or possibly the text had changed by the time I took the course--mine was not the first edition, and I know they got a lot of feedback and made some alterations as they went)--such as "never feed your baby if it's not a scheduled time". I can't tell you how many times I heard Anne Marie or another leader say, "If your baby is obviously hungry, FEED HIM. The tips we give you help you move toward a schedule but it doesn't happen all at once." I also remember an entire section on growth spurts and how there would be spans of time where we would need to feed more often, but usually after a week or so milk supply would catch up and we could get back to a more predictable routine. I remember reading that the average Prep baby slept through at around 8 weeks, but not all, and that this was by no means a rigid expectation.
All of this to say, I remember all these things because I took a 6 week class, and went to Contact Mom meetings, and became a CM and got supplementary tapes, and met the Ezzo's in person more than once. For me, it worked more like a mentorship so I caught more. In a condensed version, there are fewer examples, fewer exceptions, just the basics--and that's where the trouble starts. Even if they say, "There are exceptions" it's only said once, so the reader may miss it.
Another example--in all the courses I took, Gary addressed in the beginning how we should resist the urge to push it on other parents. "You're not the parenting police!" he said. He encouraged us to share the material only if people asked, and he and Anne Marie both talked about living in humility with others. Still, people who use this method have gotten a reputation for being pushy and dogmatic, when really that's just a really common thing among parents.
Part of my email reply back to J said, "What I think is interesting about your insight is that clearly if you were working through this material as a class/community, there would be opportunity for someone (leader or class participant) to say, "Oh, hey, you know my cousin feeds her babies on demand and they are truly Christ-centered and have a solid marriage blah blah blah" so that there isn't this FEAR FACTOR of what MIGHT or WILL happen if you don't follow the Ezzo's advice." J agreed and shared that even as a Contact Mom, she had counseled a mother to switch to demand feeding her baby because the scheduling factor was creating a lack of peace in their home.
Something that many of you all have said over and over in the comments is that we must remember that there is no perfect system that will work perfectly for every family, and that even within the same family, babies and children can vary wildly in their needs. And for those of us who are believers, I think we can all agree that the only perfect book we can look to for guidance is the Bible.
To that end, I loved what Ali (Blessed Treehouse) said at the end of her comment on the Part 4 post: "But God does not command us to let our babies cry it out nor does He command us to rock our babies to sleep. Those are the issues that we must approach prayerfully, and I have faith that the good Lord will guide us." Yep. Laura and I have written a bit on that idea as well.
So. Speaking of the Bible and prayer.
* * * * *
As I've thought and talked and thought some more and talked some more as this series unfolded, God kept calling me to quiet. You'll notice I did reply to some comments in this series, but I held back a lot, too. One night, I was sketching out some notes, and I noticed how when the topic of Gary Ezzo and Babywise comes up, I can just go off. I mean really. Go off. I felt God kind of kept pinning me down with some big "Why?" stuff. Why so angry? Why so bitter? Why so impassioned?
After no small amount of squirming, I recognized that a lot of my bitterness stems from my perception that Gary Ezzo robbed me of some precious time in Dacey's earliest days and weeks. I could have been snuggling that round little spitfire of a baby, counting her Michelin Man rolls instead of filling out detailed sleep journals and waking up every morning preparing for battle. I was really mad because I felt like in the pages of Babywise, Gary Ezzo promised me peace and my inaugural months of motherhood were anything but peaceful.
God asked me in my heart of hearts, "Whose Word is infalliable? Who is full of grace and full of truth? Who is your Prince of Peace?" Not Gary Ezzo. Nowhere at any time has he claimed to be any of those things. Only my Lord Jesus. Is it Gary Ezzo's fault I was cast my anxieties onto the pages of Babywise instead of at the feet of my Lord? No. Just . . . no.
You know, I am still not a big fan of the way Babywise is written. The insights J offered to me softened my heart towards some of the things I thought I knew to be true about this whole topic. Once my heart was tendered, He breathed His Word into my heart and I heard the truth in Hebrews 12:15
See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. (NIV)
I've been letting a bitter root grow for a long time towards all things Ezzo. I've tried pruning it back some, but I certainly have not seen to it that I offered him grace. Gary Ezzo is a believer, and even if I disagree with him (at times vehemently), I am still called to love him and forgive him and extend grace to him.
Grace.
The other person who was having grace withheld from her was that Shiny Brand New Mama. Couldn't I extend some grace to her as well? It is impossible for me to go back in time to recapture and relive those first days with Dacey. If I could, I would whisper to my first-time mom self: be gentle with yourself, mama. You are doing just fine. Everything is going to be okay. You just love that baby now, okay? Just love that baby. I know it doesn't feel like it right now, but you are gonna just blink and the next thing you know, you're buying school supplies and going to Meet The Teacher Day. So just breathe. Just rock. Just pray. It really will be okay. I promise.
I cannot go back and time and speak that truth over her as she worries with each creak of the rocking chair, but what I can do is take her story and lay it on top of my copy of Babywise and wrap it all up in a brown paper package, get out my trusty black Sharpie, and on top of it all write this word:
Redeemed.
What I love about God's Word and His truth is that it is a story of redemption from beginning to end. God is redeeming my early struggles as a new mom in ways I never could have dreamed He would. Because of those hard days, I had a story in common with my dear, amazing friend Laura. From our similar stories grew a shared dream and perfectly paired passion: to minister to other new moms with a new message of motherhood. Laura and I truly feel called to this message, and how could we have been called to it without walking through some hard stuff at the beginning of our own journeys in mothering?
* * * * *
This series, this whole process, has been extremely cathartic for me. Thanks for bearing with me, for enduring, for speaking up and speaking out and participating. Thank you for listening and responding. Thank you again, Tulip Girl, for the inspiration, encouragement, and courageous example.
If you have come here for the first time through this series, I assure you I don't normally publish 2000 words posts. Really, I don't.
Thank you for stopping by and for sharing your hearts with me and allowing me to share myself with you.
image courtesy of CarbonNYC
