Parenting: Too Much Advice Spoils the Confidence

Excerpted from
Momfidence!: An Oreo Never Killed Anybody and Other Secrets of Happier Parenting
By Paula Spencer

Had I known chat the thrill of counting newborn fingers and toes would be followed so quickly by jaundice, engorgement, an unhealed umbilical stump, projectile vomiting, and a nightly horror cheerfully described in upbeat magazine spin as "the crankies," I might well have stuffed my beloved newborn into a snake hole, crossed my fingers, and fished him out again eighteen years later.

But I kept thinking, Any day now. Soon I would master motherhood. Instead, astonishing new experiences I'd never heard of before just kept coming at me. I'd no sooner figure out how to swaddle my son without needing Scotch tape or rope to keep him inside the blanket than I'd have to wrassle a so-called collapsible stroller into a car trunk with one hand. Meanwhile my own body leaked startling amounts of blood, milk, and tears.

So I did what any educated, modern mother does. I freaked.

I fired lip the computer, hit the bookstore, cased the newsstand, and grabbed every brochure I could oft the pediatrician's racks. I also quizzed every friend who had procreated before me. Drs. Spock, Sears, Brazelton, Leach, Stern, and all the rest of the hottest media baby does formed a very private practice in a tower of guides at my bedside table.

Then I called my mom.

"Mom! When will these crankies end?"

"Cranky? Try having a beer. It might calm you both down."

"Mom! How many diapers should he be going through a day so I can tell if he's eating enough?"

"Oh, I have no idea. If he's hungry, he'll eat."

"Mom! His head circumference only grew one eighth of an inch-what did mine measure at the four-week checkup?"

"Oh, nobody keeps track of that. Don't worry so much. You're doing fine."

We're talking about the most seismic, enormous event of life! How could she not remember, especially since it had happened to her five times? Granted, almost three decades had passed since she'd last powdered a bottom, back before baby powder became baby cornstarch, back when disposables, which she never used anyway, were still so newfangled they had to be fastened with a pin. Little did I know that the day would soon come when I wouldn't have the foggiest idea when I'd last bathed my child, much less myself, or the day's diaper tally, much less anybody's vital statistics.

But if I was unable to see the wisdom in Mom's answers it was because they sounded overly simple to someone who had been conditioned by nine months of obsessive pregnancy dos and don'ts. Hadn't I diligently panicked over the white-wine sauce atop the mercury-laden fish I happened to eat on the likely day that sperm met egg? Hadn't I fretted over my microwave, nail polish, cell phone, hair dye, favorite sleeping position, high heels, morning coffee, and ten thousand other life essentials that had morphed overnight into mortal threats?

Guilt over an abstract, unseen, unborn creature is one thing. Guilt over a helpless screeching creature who is totally dependent on you to survive in this vast, scary world is enough to make you assume the fetal position yourself.

No wonder I braced for motherhood to be not only longer than pregnancy but even more complicated.

Here, for example, is how my very first day as a mom went:

Daddyo's thrilled words-"It's a boy!"-reach my ears the instant before our slippery, salmon-skinned little guy is placed on my chest. My heart swells with a symphony of new emotions: Awe. Pride. Protectiveness. Fierce, raging love.

And then, exhaustion. I'd been awake for thirty-odd hours, the first half spent going hee-hee-hee-ho and the other half going Oh my God we have a baby!

"Why don't we keep Henry in the nursery so you can sleep, and we'll bring him to you for feedings?" the nurse suggests.

Now I'd picked the hospital in part because it allowed newborns to room in with their mothers. I'd read on a checklist somewhere that this was not merely a cozy option but a necessary feature of successful breast-feeding and mother-infant bonding-nothing less than the cornerstone of our entire future together. I did not yet realize, of course, that this advice was just the first in a lifetime of momfooleries - things that sound important until applied to a real situation involving your real child. When I was reading up on the merits of rooming in, I hadn't stayed up all night being squeezed by the python of labor. Banish him to the nursery so I can do something so pedestrian as sleep?

"Sure," I say.

But sleep won't come. Another strange feeling courses through my newly maternal veins. Should I have kept the baby with we? What if they forget to wake me up? Will he miss me? Feel abandoned from the get-go? What if they feed him a bottle of sugar water? What if his ID bracelet falls off and they bring me some other baby but I can't tell because I forgot what Henry looked like and he winds up raised in a commune full of illiterate tattooed Hells Angels who run a meth lab across town, all localize I can't even recognize my own flesh and blood? What kind of mother am I anyway? We haven't been apart for nine months. Aren't I supposed to be unable to take my eyes off him?

Less than twenty-four hours into the job and I'm a wreck. Henry makes much better use of his time. He sleeps. I still had to learn: Tune out the pesky whispers. Tune in to what's real.

But not vet.

I spend the first year scrutinizing Henry for the developmental milestones described in a popular baby guide: "By the end of this month your baby should be able to respond to a bell... pay attention to a raisin . . . say 'ah goo' . . ." What does a baby need bells and raisins for? To make his poor mother believe he's either a genius or a dunce, obviously.

I get maternal whiplash from the conflicting opinions on how to take care of the boy. Cloth or disposables? Pacifier or no pacifier? Day care or nanny? Sun hat or sunblock? Every hour brings a new multiple-choice exam. I feel as if I'm living that recurring high school dream where you're taking a test on material you've never seen before. Only I never wake up. (Which is ironic considering that in real life, the opposite is true. I never sleep.)

Time-outs or no time-outs? To spank or not to spank? What's the "right" age for computers? Lip gloss? Football? Staying home alone? Who can say?

Everybody!

One prominent pediatrician claims to have never let her children cry. Not ever? I think of colic, tantrums over candy in the check-out lane, and just-don't-want-to-go-to-bed nights. Wow! An equally respected baby doc is famous for letting babies of a certain age "cry it out" to learn to sleep. How could they both be right?

They can the same way that my mom (who fed me Pablum at three weeks), my pediatrician (who put Henry on solids at three months), and the American Academy of Pediatrics (which now recommends holding off the Gerber for half a year) are all right. There are as many ways to raise a baby as there are, well, babies. The AAP isn't "more right" than my own mom just because it's the AAP.

The biggest myth in parenting, perpetuated by the reality of all this ready-made advice, is that if you consume enough information on the subject, you'll find all the answers. There's no calculus that lets a hapless mom ever catch up! Look at me. Ten years (since that first baby was born) divided by four kids @ 3,559 diapers, six dozen tantrums, and ten billion snack servings apiece, multiplied by five parenting book collaborations, 452 magazine articles, and umpteen interviews with MDs and PhDs, plus incalculable hours of girlfriend note-comparing and mother-in-law "suggestions"- and I still don't know what the heck I'm doing half the time.