There are no silly questions

As a new mum, I want to ask a thousand questions every day. But what if they’re not about the usual parenting challenges, like how to grab some all important ‘mummy time’ when your baby feeds every two hours, how you’ll string a coherent sentence together when you’ve been up nursing at all hours of the night, or how to get your baby to sleep without rocking and singing to her until she nods off?

What if you have a baby who has given her mum at least four hours between feeds since birth? A baby who started sleeping seven hours during the night when she was two months old, and who before that would wake up to feed only once during the nocturnal hours since six weeks of age? A baby who has been self-soothing since she was two-and-a-half months old?

And what if you’re also one of those lucky mums who have a very hands-on husband, a husband who dearly loves his little girl and wants to be as involved as possible? Who encourages you to go have a pedicure and get your hair done while he looks after his daughter, and tries to assuage your feelings of guilt about needing to have some time without your little one attached to you?

As one of these mums, I’m finding it tricky to talk to friends, family and even healthcare professionals about the ups and downs and steep learning curve of being a new parent. When I start to say, ‘My ten-week-old daughter was sleeping for seven hours at night, but lately she’s been waking again at 4 am. She goes back to sleep after a nappy change, but I’m so tired! What can I do?’ it sounds thin to my ears ­— I’d hate to think what it sounds like to others whose early parenting experiences weren’t as smooth as mine. I imagine it’d be something like, ‘What’s she complaining about? She doesn’t realise how easy she’s got it!’ As a couple of well-meaning nurses have said, ‘Don’t mention to the other mums in your mothers group that your baby is sleeping through — most of them will have concerns about getting their baby to sleep in the first place!’

Establishing a sleep routine was a big challenge for us — it took consultation of many resources, much self-doubt, a lot of forward planning and timing, and many tears (from mum) to get to where we are today. To my husband and me it felt like hard work, and on those days when the routine fell apart despite lining feeds, sleeps and play time up perfectly, I felt defeated and the goal seemed impossible. But was it realistic to expect to find guidance, let alone a sympathetic ear, when it took her a mere eight weeks to learn to consistently sleep through the night?

One of my husband’s colleagues and his wife had their first baby a few weeks after we did. His wife and I had similar pregnancies, and I was looking forward to sharing information with her when we both had our little ones. Then my husband came home with the news that their daughter wakes and feeds every two hours. Not wanting to be seen as rubbing my good fortune in her face, I haven’t yet struck up the courage to ask her if my little one’s newest development is something she’s familiar with. (I must admit that we never asked her if she was happy to get up to her little one as much as she is, as I know many mums are. I just assumed she wouldn’t want to hear about me and mine.)

I didn’t think too much about how to parent and teach a newborn until my little bundle of joy arrived. Then, someone asked me if I’d started establishing a routine. Realising I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, I absorbed as much information as I could get my hands on, from midwives and doctors, from friends and family, and from websites such as Baby Centre and the Australian Breastfeeding Association. Interestingly, our daughter has responded on cue to what is suggested for the usual concerns, and in some instances appears to have skipped a month or so of learning and exploration and gone straight to the next milestone. While this has obvious benefits, it also means a bit of confusion, like should we consult the one-to-three-months developmental information, or start to look at what is written for three to six months?

Cases in point: our beautiful daughter’s neck muscles have always been strong (I swear she was holding her head up in the hospital). She began focusing early — we have a great photo of her intently examining her grandma’s face when she was just two weeks old. At three months of age she grabs objects in front of her and puts them in her mouth. As a result, she prefers looking at the world around her and being in the midst of the action to sitting and sleeping in her pram. While I am so proud of her development, there are times such as when I’m carrying her in one arm while negotiating her pram up an escalator in a crowded shopping centre with the other that I can’t help but lament, ‘How do you get a baby who is beyond her months to sit happily in her pram for more than five minutes?’

The best advice about parenting that I’ve been given so far is to trust my instincts. Even so, when everything is new and you’re in the middle of it all, you have doubts and questions. Because our little one sleeps so well, she has hardly ever fed more than six times in a 24-hour period (including during growth spurts), and as she’s gotten older there are days when she’ll want as little as four feeds. Even though she is happy, healthy, strong and, most importantly, gaining weight, we wondered if she was getting enough to eat, especially as everything we read says little babies generally feed between eight and 12 times a day. To add confusion, we were told that she needed to feed at least six times a day, and that we could wake her up to get more feeds in (a big ‘no’ in some schools of thought). All this accomplished was a grumpy, tired baby who refused to feed because she wasn’t hungry. Eventually my husband and I decided to let her do what she wanted to do, confident (from experience) that she’d tell us if she wanted more to eat.

New mums are encouraged to talk about their experiences and ask questions. There’s a lot of information out there for us, and a lot of people we can ask questions of. The not-so-easy part is finding the best resource for each question, especially when the question is along the lines of, ‘Would it work if we started teaching our three-month-old to sleep from 7 at night to 7 in the morning?’ (to her credit, our Baby Clinic nurse kept a straight face when she answered that one). Sometimes our friends and family didn’t have the same experience, and the books and websites we know about don’t have the answers. Sometimes trusted sources give conflicting advice. And sometimes we just want to be sensitive to other mums’ experiences.

For the first three months I oscillated between being too embarrassed to ask questions, and confused by the answers I got when I did. I’ve now learnt to take bits of advice and information from a few sources and mash them together into something that works for me. I’ve learnt to listen to my little girl — is she happy, healthy, learning and growing? Then she’s fine. And I’ve learnt to be brave and keep asking the questions, no matter how insane they sound, because someone else must have experienced the same thing too!