Bugger the books and stuff the health visitors
Phew… this is a long post. But bear with me…
For the first few weeks of Sam’s life, in that clueless sleep-deprived haze of paranoia that surrounds most first-time mums, Sam couldn’t even sneeze without me frantically looking up ‘sneezing’ in the index of The Bible (aka What To Expect: The First Year). If that didn’t give me a satisfactory answer, I’d tap ‘sneezing baby’ into Google, then finally beg the health visitor for a reason why Sam had got, in my mind at least, a severe case of ‘sneezing baby syndrome’.
Every green poo, every spot, every bit of puke was closely scrutinised. As the months passed, that paranoia manifested itself in Sam’s development, too. If The Bible said Sam ought to be crawling or making ba-ba-ba noises and he wasn’t, I’d panic.
‘Why isn’t he sitting up yet?’ I’d ask M.
‘He will… soon,’ he’d placate me. ‘All babies develop at different rates.’
‘Well it says here that he should be by now. What’s wrong with him? He did another green poo again last night. Do you think he’s ill?’
Of course it didn’t help that the Postnatal group Yummies had babies that did everything on cue… they sat up at six months, crawled by seven, pulled up by eight and said ‘Mummy, you’re the best’ at 10 months (okay, I made that last bit up, but you get the gist.)
Sam, meanwhile, ‘failed’ his eight-month check on the basis that he was a) too skinny, b) wasn’t making ba-ba noises and c) didn’t respond when I called his name.
Gloom and doom. Depression and angst. I was a bad bad mother. I was doing something wrong. I was failing my baby. The books said so. Was it because I didn’t bake my own organic bread for him or take him to Sing ‘n’ Sign? Maybe I was giving Sam too much attention… or too little?
More avid reading and Google searching ensued. I posted on babycentre and ivillage forums. I went back and forth to the health visitor, like a demented yo-yo.
The answer finally came from a member of staff at Sam’s nursery. ‘He’s a real little character,’ she said, chuckling. ‘He definitely knows his own mind.’
‘Yes,’ I smiled. ‘Yes, he does.’
Back home, I ditched The Bible and I haven’t been back to the health visitor since. Sam never did learn to crawl – he bum shuffles everywhere. The reason he doesn’t respond when I call his name is because he’s already learnt to ignore the inane wafflings of his mum. He’s skinny because, well, that’s just the way he’s built. And he ba-bas and ga-gas, but only when he feels like it. He’s different. Every baby is different.
Now I do what I feel’s right for both me and for Sam – I’ve stopped sterilising those flipping bottles, I laugh whenever Sam does something naughty, I give him a drink if he wakes in the night, I bring him into bed with us, I feed him full-salt, full-sugar Baked Beans (likewise bits of pizza, sips of my tea, soups made with stock, undiluted juice, sausages and – oh gosh – food that isn’t organic!), I let him sample cat food (he prefers it to Annabel Karmel’s creations) and I allow him to play freely without me meddling or interrupting to build towers for him every five seconds.
As a result, we’re more relaxed (well, most of the time anyway). So the moral of this story is that baby books – Gina Ford, The Baby Whisperer, What To Expect, Annabel blinkin’ Karmel — are the devil’s work. They feed on the paranoia of first-time mums everywhere. That’s how they make money. Don’t buy them — unless you fancy living your life in a perpetual state of worry. Take it from me, green poo, sneezing and bum shuffling are all totally normal.
