An Introduction to an Everyday Mom

I’ve been asked to write regularly on The BABS Blog and so I’d thought that my first post would be about me, my parenting style, and my journey to parenthood.

First off, I should say that it took a long time for me to figure out that I wanted to be a parent. I had a lot of emotional scars that I had to deal with first before even considering the thought of trying to raise another human being. So, when I began the journey through pregnancy and parenthood, I researched and did a lot of careful reading before making what I considered to be major decisions. I’ve found that there is a lot of information out there, sometimes good, sometimes overwhelming, and sometimes not helpful.

Some things that just made sense for me from the beginning, like:

• Breastfeeding my child until 2 the minimum recommended by the World Health Organization
• Holding my baby before he got fussy responding to his needs
• Returning to full time work to take care of myself as a person
• Not having my son circumcised there is no medical need
• Babywearing to help me get out of the house and still keep my baby close
• Not Spanking based on my own experiences and research
• Cloth diapering I’m cheap and my research led me to choose cloth over disposable
  

And other things we changed our minds during the process of learning how to parent:

• Co-Sleeping helped keep me sane and get more sleep
• Breastfeeding beyond 2 years old Hey, my child still needs me and I love being close to him, we’ll stop when he’s ready
• Length of Time Outs sometimes just a quick 10 second time out works
• Parent Time Outs when you need to hand off the baby to someone else and be alone
• Not worrying about not being perfect we all slip up sometimes in parenting; your house doesn’t have to be spotless all the time

So, you could say that I’m a working outside the home, babywearing, cloth diapering, co-sleeping hippy mama that doesn’t consider herself a hippy mama.

A few of the books that I keep as a reference around and reread from time to time that helped me deal with a baby and now a toddler.

William Sears, M.D. and Martha Sears, R.N.
The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age Two

Harvey Karp, M.D.
The Happiest Toddler on the Block: How to Eliminate Tantrums and Raise a Patient, Respectful, and Cooperative One- to Four-Year-Old: Revised Edition