My Biggest Parenting Fail…and Why I’m Glad I Experienced It!

My Biggest Parenting Fail…and Why I’m Glad I Experienced It!

 

With the knowledge and experience I have now, after working with 1000’s of families as a midwife and maternal & child health nurse as well as raising my own 4 children it is good for me to remember what it was like for me when I was a new mother.

You see my biggest parenting fail is the fact that I could not get my first baby to sleep in her cot for more than 20 minutes, she cried a lot of the time and so did I. I didn’t even know what tired signs were, let alone recognise them.

I loved babies and children and knew I wanted to be a mum. In fact, we were both sure we wanted a larger than average family, even joking to friends that we would have 7 children (only made it to 4)!

When we started our family and most of our friends were not up to that stage yet, we only knew one couple who had a baby. If I was holding a baby and it cried, I would give it back to the Mum. That was the sum of my settling experience, I had no strategies at all.

However, when I became a Mum, I couldn’t hand the baby back to anyone and this was a shocking reality that I found myself in. She would fall asleep whilst breastfeeding or after pacing up and down the hallway with her. I would ever so carefully put her into her cot and within 10 -20 minutes she would wake screaming.

I was told to BF on demand and that when she cried she was hungry…however that is what I did almost every time she cried and it worked for a short time only and then she would be crying again.

Growth wise she was thriving and at one point gained a pound in 1 week, she had multiple rolls between her elbow and her hand and rubber band wrists. My maternal & child health nurse (MCH Nurse) was impressed with her weight gain but could see that I was struggling with lack of sleep and my own wellbeing.

By around 6 weeks of age my MCH Nurse referred me to a Day Stay program to get help with feeding as my baby was very fussy by dinner time every night. What I learnt was that she was so exhausted by this time that she was unable to have a good breastfeed. She was on and off, crying, arching her back and unable to settle no matter what.

At the Day Stay program, they taught me all about baby sleep science, how babies sleep, tired signs to look for, how to swaddle her well to contain her and how to gently put her into her cot and leave her to fall asleep by herself. She did this beautifully and then went on to sleep for 3 hours, something she hadn’t done since birth!

As it turned out, I had never heard about tired signs and when my baby was displaying them, I tried to pacify her with songs and distractions rather than wrapping her up and putting her into her cot. The thought of putting her into her cot awake had never occurred to me, I am still not sure why.

I often look back at this experience and remember how hard those early weeks were. How every sleeping photo of our baby is in our arms and how tired we both look. I wonder if we would have ever had any more babies if it weren’t for my MCH Nurse and the amazing Day Stay program.

I see clients who are in the same or a similar predicament and I remember how I felt and feel truly honoured to be able to offer support, knowledge, and options to them. Watching them find their own path to parenthood by supporting them to, work their way through these and other challenges. That is what I am passionate about and why I became a midwife and MCH Nurse myself.

 

Ultimately experiences like this and the excellent support and education I received from my own MCH Nurse is what paved my own career path to be an MCH Nurse. My passion for supporting new parents with these challenges is why I wrote my book ‘Survive and Enjoy Your Baby’. I wanted to get this evidence-based information and options out to more new parents- it is the book I wish I had when I had my first baby.

‘Survive and Enjoy Your Baby’ has all the information you need for your baby’s first year of life and covers sleep and settling, breastfeeding, bottle feeding, introducing solid foods, play & development, parents well-being, returning to work, essential baby equipment and so much more. It is available from all good bookstores and on my website.