I’ve discovered a good motto that helps me relax when it comes to parenting. And I certainly am one who tends to easily stress out over matter concerning my child. :)

The motto is: Let it happen naturally.

I’ve applied this motto to the most stressful aspects of baby rearing in the first year (for me, at least) … sleep & eating.

I didn’t stress about getting Little Bug to sleep through the night by X months. I figured she would sleep through the night when she was capable. Certainly, I would do certain things to help her be able to sleep longer chucks of time during the night (like making sure she was getting an adequate number of daytime feedings and giving her a dreamfeed), but if she was 4 months old and still needing a wee hours of the morning feeding, I wasn’t going to stress over it.

As it turns out Little Bug was getting a wee hours of the morning (4-6am) feeding at around 4 months (I think! It is actually hard to remember, now!) And eventually, when she started not wanting her breakfast bottle I knew she naturally was getting ready to drop that feeding. She did (at around 5-6 months, I think :) ) and has been sleeping through the night ever since.

My point here is we (mothers) so cannot rely on books to tell us what to do with our babies! They are most certainly a wonderful resource to reference (especially for a first time mom) but if your baby isn’t doing something when the book says he/she should, it is okay!

Let it happen naturally, in it’s own time.

Same goes for me letting Little Bug cry it out. My “plan” before I actually had a baby was to start sleep training at around 4-5 months.

Little Bug was just over 3 months when I started sleep training her.

So, why did I start before I had intended to?

At 3 months old, Little Bug started to need her paci to stay asleep for naptime. I knew I had two choices: 1) Pop the paci back in her mouth numerous times during naptime and consequentially train her to need the paci to stay asleep or 2) Start sleep training so she wouldn’t need that paci to stay asleep.

To me it seemed silly to “teach” Little Bug to need a paci to sleep when, in just a couple of months I was planning to sleep train her.

And so the natural time for me to start sleep training Little Bug was at 3 months old.

I can give you a feeding example too.

Little Bug started acting interested in solids at 5.5 months old. I wanted to wait until 6 months before introducing solids. I went ahead and introduced rice cereal and sweet potatoes around 5.5 months. Little Bug wasn’t ready. She hated rice cereal and she didn’t quite know what to do with solids. So I stopped solids to give her some more time.

We tried again at around 7 months. This time she was more interested in solids however, she only wanted anywhere from 3-6 spoonfuls per meal! So be it! I figured when she is ready to eat a whole jar of baby food, she will.

When Little Bug turned 10 months old she really started getting an appetite for solids. She would finally eat one whole jar of baby food per meal and she would actually protest some at me when I was getting her baby food ready because I wasn’t going fast enough and she wanted to eat!

It all happened in it’s natural time.

I know this motto has given me much relief over many parenting matters over the past year (although I really just started putting this motto to practice recently). I hope to apply this motto to upcoming milestones such as potty training and transitioning from crib to big girl bed.

Both will happen in their natural time – there is no need for me to stress over it or push it to happen just because the books say this is when it should happen!

Parenting is already stressful enough without putting added pressure on yourself to have your baby do this and that by a certain age!

Amen?

- Elaine