My baby is not like your baby. Oh, but I wish he would do that thing your baby does. Why won't he? What are we missing here? What is the magic combo? Why is he so different from other babies I see?!
Hello, and welcome to my anxious, tired thoughts that creep in right when I'm at my lowest every day.
My anxious mom brain is hilariously self centered. She is absolutely certain that she is the only one experiencing any hardship whatsoever with her newborn. She is positive that she is alone, that she is being judged, and that if she voices a single complaint, she won't be accepted.
She looks at how her friends' babies are doing (through the life-is-just-peachy filter of social media) and she thinks "Ohhh myyyy gooood my baby is BROKEN, we're doing everything WRONG, and this is going to have MASSIVE REPERCUSSIONS for his WHOLE LIFE".
My greatest source of anxiety is around baby's sleep. There are whole industries built around baby sleep and booooy howdy can they make you feel like a failure when you do everything they say and then your baby breaks their perfect equation by being just a little different. I went into motherhood believing baby would fit the mold. He would sleep on his back in his bassinet swaddled and secure. He would progressively sleep longer at night because we would ramp up his calories during the day. His naps would happen in his crib. Everything would be soooo easy. He would be sooo predictable.
You know what baby doesn't do? Any of that. He doesn't care that I did the perfect nap routine, that I'm using the latest and greatest swaddle, that I caught his first sleep cue, that the room is dark and the white noise machine is running. He doesn't care that I have read a thousand articles and religiously implemented all the fail-proof, tested techniques. He is not that baby and he has been trying to tell me that for WEEKS while I have been making a futile attempt at shoving him into one of those pediatrician-backed sleep equations because the world has said that implementing one of those products is best for baby and anything else is going to cause some sort of harm.
Welp, sorry world, this baby isn't buying it. And I need to stop buying it, too.
You know where baby sleeps? On me. On dad. Every time. And that is okay. In a wrap, in the rocker, on the couch. It's okay. He's not ready to do anything else. He can't jive with being alone yet. He hates the whole idea of being on his back even with all the "right" tools and transitions.
We'll keep offering him opportunities to try. He'll do it when he's ready.
And. That's. Okay.
But try telling that to anxious mom brain when she's tired and would love to put him down so she can eat or clean without a barnacle attached to her front and putting strain on her back. Or pump without having to brace herself for when he gets really upset while he lays next to her rather than on her.
This is where the judgy voices come in. They say "Well, you're just not trying hard enough to get him to sleep by himself so any frustration you feel is your own doing". Or, my personal favorite, "How dare you feel like you're being held hostage by your baby sleeping on you. Your feelings are a PROBLEM, you ungrateful whiner."
And then that same anxious mom sees a friend post about how her baby of the same-ish developmental age is a sleeping champ and that is where comparison sucks all the joy out of the journey.
Comparison can throw me into a panic. "What are THEY doing that I'M not?! Why is THEIR experience SO DIFFERENT?! I am messing up my baby!! I'M SO FREAKIN ANNOYED."
Yep. I get legitimately annoyed that another mom, one that I likely care about as a human, is having a good experience. Charming, right? So charming. That's the ugliest side of anxiety, in my experience. It slides into "misery loves company" or "I'm alone in this and no one understands it" very quickly. And that's so not ME. Who IS that girl? She's insufferable! A terrible roommate in my brain. Just the worst. She's on the lease, though, so I have to deal with her even when I don't want to.
Currently, dealing with her means:
1) Telling Hunter when I'm headed into a spiral of poopy thoughts so he can counteract the "I'm alone in this" narrative.
2) Remembering that the newborn stage is a huge learning curve for everyone no matter what social media says. If someone isn't struggling with baby's sleep, they are struggling with something else and we're all on the same team.
3) Practicing acceptance that baby is who he is and nothing is "wrong" with him even though the sleep industry says something is and wants to sell me something for it.
4) Telling myself that there is nothing wrong with how we do things because it's how WE do things.
5) Forgiving myself for getting frustrated because I'm just a human doing something inarguably difficult.
6) Separating myself, the person I know I truly am, from the anxious wreck who is lashing out in my head and forgiving her, too.
7) Lastly, and only after all the other steps have been successful or else this one can backfire into mom guilt, I remember that a baby who wants to sleep on his mom is gonna grow up into a little boy who is so excited about his big boy bed and can't wait to experience that independence.
Then I take a deep breath and soak in the hot-potato sighing in his sleep on my chest. Cuz at the end of the day, he's happy on his momma and I can work with that.