Taking Advice

Some parents complain that children don't come with an instruction manual. I disagree. Right from the moment that you decide to conceive, you can lay your hands on dozens of different books that will tell you all sorts of different ways to raise your child. Add onto that the amount of information and advice you're given by various midwives, nurses doctors and health visitors and your own family and friends and you start to suffer from information overload.

I think part of the preconception of stressed out and over protective first time parents is partly because it's a whole new ball game, but it's partly due to the stress of wanting to do the best for your child but not knowing what that best entails. For example, take the issue of sleep training. Our book says that you can't start it realistically before he gets to six months or so and you should help him to sleep if he's upset. Our local health centre midwives reckon to get him used to falling asleep by himself to make our lives easier later on. Family members from both sides suggest making sure that he gets enough sleep and worry about sleep training when he's ready. The stress for me comes not from the fear of making a bad decision, but the fear of not making the best one.

In the end, though, I think you have to make your own mind up. Both sets of grandparents have now been to visit, and I'm sure that there have been things that we've said or done in their presence to do with Jake that have made them wince internally. However, they have all had the right attitude, as far as Kelsey and I are concerned, which is to let us make our mistakes and offer advice only where appropriate. I think what this allows us to do as Jake's parents to find the advice that works best for us. There are dozens of different ways of raising your child and Jake is his own person. It's not about following one particular approach rigidly (we would have already failed the breastfeeding route!), instead it's about picking out the advice that helps us in our situation, or the advice that seems to make the most intuitive sense to us. I'm sure we'll make mistakes along the way, but Jake will be none the worse off for it.

More pictures and a weekly Jake update tomorrow (if I can find time...busy day planned!)