On the Coast – Families Issue 94 I June/July 2018 | Página 44

Expectations
We all have them
by Nikki Smith
D
o your expectations as an
adult meet up with your
expectations that YOU have for
your infant or child?
Expectations as an adult tend to go a little
like this…To be loved. To be respected To
be acknowledged and also nurtured.
Why then do we not feel that our
infant or child would not also have these
same expectations?
I ask this because I feel that some of
us are still on the same ‘old school’ page
of crying it out, punishment instead of
teaching and expecting that our children
should ‘respect our authority’ then we
will return the favour and ‘respect them!’
I know that this might jostle a few
feathers and I am ok with that, because
if it does, then I am SO pleased that you
are here.
The French Psychologist Jean Piaget
was one who insisted that infants and
children should be treated according to
their appropriate stage of development.
Not as if they were capable of
understanding what adults wanted
precisely when adults wanted it (taken
from Don and Patricia Edgars book “The
new child, in search of smarter grown-ups”).
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KI DZ O N T H E C OA S T
Babies enter our world emerged
through their senses, touch, sight,
hearing and the effect of its physical
actions of the world around them. For
this very reason why do we feel that it is
ok to have our infants crying themselves
to sleep, screaming incessantly because
no one will come to them? I did this. I
do understand the frustration and the
relentless exhaustion when your infant
won’t sleep. I also empathise immensely
with the guilt in not being the parent
who has an ‘easy’ baby, one who sleeps,
eats and plays as society expects your
baby to.
The guilt in not having the ‘good’ baby
which inevitably makes you feel like the
‘bad’ mum. I was that mum. I let our first
daughter cry it out. I thought that I could
‘train’ her to sleep like the midwife had
taught me to. Even when every fibre of
my being ached to pick her up…I didn’t.
I needed to be the mum with the ‘good’
baby. I needed society to think I had it
all under control. My society was well
meaning family members who thought
that her vomiting all the time was me
‘overfeeding’ her. They told me that I was
creating sleep associations in holding her
all the time, I needed to put her down
to sleep. I was overfeeding her (there’s
that term again)! “Back when we had our
babies I used to ‘time’ their feeds, they
fed every 3 hours and slept like a dream,
she’s not sleeping because she has a
‘tummy ache’.
I took ALL of this in. I cried so much
because I truly thought that I was ‘doing
it ALL wrong.’ My expectations changed
again and I couldn’t cope.
I decided that my only option was to
stop holding her all the time, stop feeding
her on demand and try crying it out.
This is what I HAVE to do if I want her
to sleep longer then 2–3 hours. She was
only 6 weeks old. I did it.
I had her cry herself to sleep on
numerous occasions with me pacing
the house waiting for 2 minutes then
3 minutes. Just like the midwife
showed me.
Fast forward a couple of weeks later
and I ended up at Tresillian with her to
“train her” to sleep. Six hours later and I
was told she wasn’t “trainable” she was
sick. Oh my. I cannot even explain the
ache in my heart. My soul completely
torn apart.
I later found out that my baby girl had
severe reflux. She was sick.