I was a typical first time mom, expecting my first son in the spring of 2010. I walked around, rubbing my belly, ignoring all the advice I was getting from experienced parents I knew, because obviously I had my ideas and my expectations of how parenting was going to go and I knew best!
I knew exactly what I would and wouldn’t do with MY baby. I had planned out where the baby would sleep, what kind of products I would use, the type of discipline I would use, and I scrolled through images online and read tons of mommy blogs so I had my “parenting philosophy” all figured out.
And then, I had a baby and learned the true meaning of the phrase “never say never”!
It only took a few days to realize that the baby that I had just given birth to might not want or need all the things that I had planned for him.
One of my NEVERs was that I would never give my baby a pacifier. I had a strange aversion to them and had seen too many children that I deemed “too old” for a pacifier playing at the park, or taking them out to talk. I was VERY judgmental about parents who used them. But one night, when my son was about 3 weeks old and nothing, not even constant breastfeeding, would get him to stop crying my mother said “try the pacifier!”. I had gotten one at my baby shower, so I popped it into his mouth and suddenly….silence. He wasn’t crying anymore, I wasn’t stressing anymore and we could all relax for a few minutes.
Both my sons had pacifiers for the first 2 years of their lives and I wouldn’t go back and do it differently if I could. Sure, it wasn’t part of my parenting plan. Yes, I probably spent about $200 on them over the course of those 4 years and sometimes, in the night when they’d drop one down the side of the crib and I’d be on my hands and knees in the dark looking for it I would silently curse the pacifier. But, ultimately, it made my parenting life so much easier.
What’s a parenting NEVER that you have or held onto and then found that letting it go made your life so much easier?
