So I’m sure everyone understands, even those who aren’t parents, that there is just so much conflicting information and advice out there about this whole baby-rearing business. Feed on demand. Get them into a routine. Picking them up will spoil them. Letting them cry will psychologically damage them. Et cetera! It’s worse for information junkies like me, who try to read up about everything and end up getting all confused :-S But in my reading recently I’ve noticed a definite trend. And that trend is regression.
Bear with me!
So we’ve gotten all technologically advanced with all our baby whatsits, especially over the last 70 or so years. Disposable nappies are ever so clever, with lots of wonderful chemicals that hold heaps and heaps of pee and don’t feel the teensiest bit wet, lovely soft comfy paper and tabs that re-stick if you put them in the wrong place (yes I do remember the ones that didn’t, if you mis-aligned the sticky bit it used to be you were stuck with it – pardon the pun – or had to completely start again with a new nappy, how wasteful). There are some seriously clever baby buggies out there that go over all sorts of terrain without a hitch. There are motorised baby swings to rock your baby to sleep. It’s not strictly a baby thing but I know several mothers who swear by their Magic Bullets for practically instant pureed baby food. However! Trendy parenting these days is all about back to basics.
Take nappies for instance. In Western society, babies started being swaddled with some sort of nappy equivalent in the Middle Ages. In Elizabethan times, babies had a “buttock cloth” that was changed once every 4 days (ewwww!) – lucky royal babies had a new one every day, how luxurious. After the industrial revolution, the traditional flat flannel square nappies (and more frequent changing, thank goodness!) became the norm. Soon afterwards disposable nappies arrived on the scene and rapidly increased in usage to become the norm. I don’t have any figures on that, but it seems there has been a massive shift as most of my generation wore flat cloth nappies, with disposables for when we were out and about, and maybe because disposables have gotten cheaper and our culture is all about convenience these days, seems like most people use disposables all the time now. MCNs are a new addition on the scene, there really are some lovely and quite ingenious designs out there, even if they do seem so simple.
There’s some big guilting going on in mummy circles at the moment, it’s much trendier to use MCNs than disposables. So that’s regression kinda, away from disposables and back towards cloth. I try not to flaunt my MCN use when around other mums with babies the same age because you really are so time-poor with a new bubba that you have to decide your priorities for yourself as to what you can spend your time doing and what you can’t manage. There's even a bit of a mini-movement among cloth afficionados away from synthetic fibres and back to natural materials (like the merino covers from Designerbums JJ's been wearing).
BUT it seems the Next Big Thing in terms of nappies will be none. You read me right. If you have the time and the inclination then Natural Infant Hygiene (also known as Elimination Communication) is the way to go. It’s how we all used to do it, it’s how mothers in most Third World countries do it, you don’t see poo stains down their fronts and their babies often aren’t wearing anything, let alone nappies! The story is you can tell by tuning in to baby’s body language (and your own intuition – apparently after a little while of doing it you ‘just know’) when baby needs to ‘go’, and then you just hold them in an appropriate place, cue them with a little sound and off they go. I’ve been reading a bit about it but haven’t attempted to implement it. Just seems like you need to pay SOOO much attention and I’m inherently lazy! But I think it might speed up that whole messy toilet training process to incorporate some of the principles, so Watch This Space.
Next up is baby transportation. There are some very very funky strollers out there. I like the look of the Phil & Ted’s Sport Buggy – goes anywhere, so cool that you can easily convert it to having an extra toddler seat if you happen to have two wee ones, you don’t need a special license (or warning beeps!) to manoeuvre it around :-P and it doesn’t take up any more space in the boot than a single stroller or a whole shopping aisle when out and about. Plus it’s sooo purdy. We don’t exactly have a spare $700 or so though!
BUT if you are a trendy hippie mama then the Best Thing is Baby Wearing. Just like mothers in Olden Days or the Third World (sensing a pattern, here?). I’ve already blogged about how much I love my sling and my Moby Wrap. Yep, my finger accidentally slipped onto a ‘Buy Now’ button for the Moby, but I don’t regret it for a second, I Love Love Love it and get all sorts of comments when I’m out and about as to how cool it is eg from random mothers at the zoo and Plunket. All the mums in my Plunket group want to try the Moby at our next meeting – they couldn’t today because my little angel was asleep in it. I confess that I don’t try so hard not to be smug about Baby Wearing, it just makes lots of sense (and is heaps cheaper). Sorry about the double negative there. I suspect I will be less smug about it when Jeremy is heavier. Again, Watch This Space!
As for sleeping, turns out despite SIDS guidelines that trendy hippie mamas co-sleep – that is, they share their bed with baby (just like you would have in the Olden Days/Third World). I can see the advantages, anyone who’s had a baby drift off to sleep on them will know baby goes off to sleep with much less fuss when they’re not in their own bed, and if they wake up hungry in the middle of the night you don’t even have to sit up. The cutest story I’ve heard so far is of a friend who co-slept with her little girl and once woke up with a start in the middle of the night to discover her 6 month old had lifted up Mum’s pyjama top and was serving herself :-) Needless to say in this regard I am not a trendy hippie mama. In fact, by having JJ in his own room already we’re not exactly following SIDS best practice guidelines, but what can I say, we like our sleep, and he does sleep heaps better when he’s not exposed to the tempting aroma of mum’s milk in the same room.
Most radically, the latest trendy hippie thing is to do with introducing solids. Do you think mothers in the Third World puree everything for their babies? No sir. In line with WHO guidelines and some pretty sound scientific thinking, I’m considering doing Baby Led Weaning with JJ which means waiting a little later to introduce solids (lucky I have plenty of breast milk) and letting them handle food themselves. The theory is, if they’re developed enough to grab it and hold onto it, they’re developed enough to eat it. So you give them things they can hold onto (like broccoli florets, or potato wedges), and introduce other food later on. When they’ve developed the pincer grip, they can eat smaller foods without choking. It makes so much sense and sounds so much easier than all that mashing, pureeing, freezing etc. Did I mention I’m lazy?
There are a lot of books out there (such as Contented Little Baby) regarding getting baby into a routine, and training baby to sleep. There are even schedules that your baby is supposed to keep to, which means you’re supposed to wake the baby up for a feed at specific times if they’re still sleeping. Now waking a sleeping baby goes completely against the grain for me! I take the peace when I get it! Trendy hippie mamas pay no attention to routines or schedules but demand feed all the time. So happens I do demand feed (too lazy!), but I’m lucky because JJ seems to like having a routine and has sorted it out that way himself.
Photo of the day: we spent Labour Weekend down at Nan & Pop’s bach at Orere Point, along with Andrew, Anna, Alex and Jack. The boys were pleased to get out fishing even if they did come back looking like drowned rats. Here's Alex with Jack and Jeremy on Pop's lap. Can you see any family resemblance?
Bear with me!
So we’ve gotten all technologically advanced with all our baby whatsits, especially over the last 70 or so years. Disposable nappies are ever so clever, with lots of wonderful chemicals that hold heaps and heaps of pee and don’t feel the teensiest bit wet, lovely soft comfy paper and tabs that re-stick if you put them in the wrong place (yes I do remember the ones that didn’t, if you mis-aligned the sticky bit it used to be you were stuck with it – pardon the pun – or had to completely start again with a new nappy, how wasteful). There are some seriously clever baby buggies out there that go over all sorts of terrain without a hitch. There are motorised baby swings to rock your baby to sleep. It’s not strictly a baby thing but I know several mothers who swear by their Magic Bullets for practically instant pureed baby food. However! Trendy parenting these days is all about back to basics.
Take nappies for instance. In Western society, babies started being swaddled with some sort of nappy equivalent in the Middle Ages. In Elizabethan times, babies had a “buttock cloth” that was changed once every 4 days (ewwww!) – lucky royal babies had a new one every day, how luxurious. After the industrial revolution, the traditional flat flannel square nappies (and more frequent changing, thank goodness!) became the norm. Soon afterwards disposable nappies arrived on the scene and rapidly increased in usage to become the norm. I don’t have any figures on that, but it seems there has been a massive shift as most of my generation wore flat cloth nappies, with disposables for when we were out and about, and maybe because disposables have gotten cheaper and our culture is all about convenience these days, seems like most people use disposables all the time now. MCNs are a new addition on the scene, there really are some lovely and quite ingenious designs out there, even if they do seem so simple.
There’s some big guilting going on in mummy circles at the moment, it’s much trendier to use MCNs than disposables. So that’s regression kinda, away from disposables and back towards cloth. I try not to flaunt my MCN use when around other mums with babies the same age because you really are so time-poor with a new bubba that you have to decide your priorities for yourself as to what you can spend your time doing and what you can’t manage. There's even a bit of a mini-movement among cloth afficionados away from synthetic fibres and back to natural materials (like the merino covers from Designerbums JJ's been wearing).
BUT it seems the Next Big Thing in terms of nappies will be none. You read me right. If you have the time and the inclination then Natural Infant Hygiene (also known as Elimination Communication) is the way to go. It’s how we all used to do it, it’s how mothers in most Third World countries do it, you don’t see poo stains down their fronts and their babies often aren’t wearing anything, let alone nappies! The story is you can tell by tuning in to baby’s body language (and your own intuition – apparently after a little while of doing it you ‘just know’) when baby needs to ‘go’, and then you just hold them in an appropriate place, cue them with a little sound and off they go. I’ve been reading a bit about it but haven’t attempted to implement it. Just seems like you need to pay SOOO much attention and I’m inherently lazy! But I think it might speed up that whole messy toilet training process to incorporate some of the principles, so Watch This Space.
Next up is baby transportation. There are some very very funky strollers out there. I like the look of the Phil & Ted’s Sport Buggy – goes anywhere, so cool that you can easily convert it to having an extra toddler seat if you happen to have two wee ones, you don’t need a special license (or warning beeps!) to manoeuvre it around :-P and it doesn’t take up any more space in the boot than a single stroller or a whole shopping aisle when out and about. Plus it’s sooo purdy. We don’t exactly have a spare $700 or so though!
BUT if you are a trendy hippie mama then the Best Thing is Baby Wearing. Just like mothers in Olden Days or the Third World (sensing a pattern, here?). I’ve already blogged about how much I love my sling and my Moby Wrap. Yep, my finger accidentally slipped onto a ‘Buy Now’ button for the Moby, but I don’t regret it for a second, I Love Love Love it and get all sorts of comments when I’m out and about as to how cool it is eg from random mothers at the zoo and Plunket. All the mums in my Plunket group want to try the Moby at our next meeting – they couldn’t today because my little angel was asleep in it. I confess that I don’t try so hard not to be smug about Baby Wearing, it just makes lots of sense (and is heaps cheaper). Sorry about the double negative there. I suspect I will be less smug about it when Jeremy is heavier. Again, Watch This Space!
As for sleeping, turns out despite SIDS guidelines that trendy hippie mamas co-sleep – that is, they share their bed with baby (just like you would have in the Olden Days/Third World). I can see the advantages, anyone who’s had a baby drift off to sleep on them will know baby goes off to sleep with much less fuss when they’re not in their own bed, and if they wake up hungry in the middle of the night you don’t even have to sit up. The cutest story I’ve heard so far is of a friend who co-slept with her little girl and once woke up with a start in the middle of the night to discover her 6 month old had lifted up Mum’s pyjama top and was serving herself :-) Needless to say in this regard I am not a trendy hippie mama. In fact, by having JJ in his own room already we’re not exactly following SIDS best practice guidelines, but what can I say, we like our sleep, and he does sleep heaps better when he’s not exposed to the tempting aroma of mum’s milk in the same room.
Most radically, the latest trendy hippie thing is to do with introducing solids. Do you think mothers in the Third World puree everything for their babies? No sir. In line with WHO guidelines and some pretty sound scientific thinking, I’m considering doing Baby Led Weaning with JJ which means waiting a little later to introduce solids (lucky I have plenty of breast milk) and letting them handle food themselves. The theory is, if they’re developed enough to grab it and hold onto it, they’re developed enough to eat it. So you give them things they can hold onto (like broccoli florets, or potato wedges), and introduce other food later on. When they’ve developed the pincer grip, they can eat smaller foods without choking. It makes so much sense and sounds so much easier than all that mashing, pureeing, freezing etc. Did I mention I’m lazy?
There are a lot of books out there (such as Contented Little Baby) regarding getting baby into a routine, and training baby to sleep. There are even schedules that your baby is supposed to keep to, which means you’re supposed to wake the baby up for a feed at specific times if they’re still sleeping. Now waking a sleeping baby goes completely against the grain for me! I take the peace when I get it! Trendy hippie mamas pay no attention to routines or schedules but demand feed all the time. So happens I do demand feed (too lazy!), but I’m lucky because JJ seems to like having a routine and has sorted it out that way himself.
Photo of the day: we spent Labour Weekend down at Nan & Pop’s bach at Orere Point, along with Andrew, Anna, Alex and Jack. The boys were pleased to get out fishing even if they did come back looking like drowned rats. Here's Alex with Jack and Jeremy on Pop's lap. Can you see any family resemblance?
2 comments:
Goodness, that was quite the tour de force of babyology
My brain hurts.... but thanks, all really interesting stuff. But doesn't change my mind about the whole baby thing - it just seems like so much WORK! I am still way too selfish...
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