Learning the Ropes...Sort Of

One thing I'm learning about parenting is that no book can truly tell you how to handle your child. Oh, sure, you can get some ideas, but the bottom line is that your child is an individual whose feelings and preferences are changing constantly, and the only thing you can do is try and figure them out and just roll with it.

Case in point: sleeping. Sometimes Megan likes to suck on a pacifier to go to sleep and sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes I lay her down and she screams, but if I pick her up and hold her for a minute, I can lay her right back down again and she is fine. Or sometimes not. Sometimes she can sleep while I walk her around in the Baby Bjorn, and sometimes she screams--or sleeps, screams, then sleeps again. And sometimes she wants to nap in my lap, rejecting the swing or crib, but sometimes she'll reject the swing or crib, then lay in my lap for a few minutes, then I can easily put her in the swing or crib. Or not!

I don't think I could teach anyone the "definitive" way to get Megan to sleep, because there isn't one. It's just a matter of having lots of tricks in the arsenal and using each of them until she goes down for the count. And sometimes it's frustrating, but it's never boring, that's for sure!

So while there are lots of books about raising babies, as my pediatrician says, you baby is its own book, and sometimes you have to read very carefully to figure out each chapter.