Survival technique (Tips on Coping)

Member Name: zerub

Product:	Tips on Coping
Date:	29/03/09 (103 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's more relaxing

Disadvantages: Grandma will tell you that you're making a rod for your own back

My top tip for coping during the first year of your child's life, is to write the following out in large letters and hang it on the nursery wall:

And this, too, shall pass

Or, if you prefer:

It's just a phase

Either would work. You see, with my first baby, I spent my whole time trying to "fix" her. She would do things that weren't the way I wanted her to do things, and I'd try to work out ways to get her to change. She wouldn't sleep through the night (or even for more than two hours at a stretch), she wanted to feed all the time, she cried if she was put down, she would only nap in my arms or a moving pram. As she got older, she wouldn't eat the foods I wanted, she wouldn't nap for long enough, she still wouldn't sleep through the night. I stressed about a lot of these things and devised lots of action plans for how I was going to do things that would cause her to behave how I wanted. I had the echo in my ears of various people saying things like "ooh, you're making a rod for your own back". It is difficult, when you are a new parent, to know what to do with all the conflicting advice.

When I had my second child, I didn't have the energy to "fix" him, I just had to go with the flow. By the time I had my third, I'd realised just how very fleeting it all is. It goes so fast. So when he did things that didn't suit me, I tried to remember that it was just a phase, and would last a couple of months at the utmost, and possibly only a couple of days. Although a few days can feel like an eternity with a small baby!

So instead of planning a way to make him change, I would plan a way for me to survive those few months or weeks, until he changed by himself. Because they do. Most of these things that babies do that are so difficult for us, are things that they grow out of. Son number 2 used to scream hysterically while I was cooking tea every night. I realised that this would only last for a while, so, for that while, I prepared meals after the children had gone to bed, stuck them in the fridge, and put them in the slo-cooker the next morning. At tea-time, I had minimal work to do - and so minimal time for him to scream. Eating slo-cooked meals every night is a little wearing, but in a month or so, my son worked out how to sit up a little, and use his hands a little, and was happy to sit in his bouncy chair and chew a toy while I cooked.

They change so fast, a problem that seems overwhelming one week is history the next.

So my tip is to work out how to get through it, rather than to obsess about teaching them to behave differently. They're babies, you can just wait for them to change.

Baby number 3 was so much less stressful!

Summary: Tip number 2 - enjoy them, it doesn't last for ever.