Never Will I Ever

Prior to becoming a parent, I had all sorts of notions about how parenting would go. I felt pretty confident about the decision I would make and just knew I'd stick to my guns.

Oh how things changed when baby came along.

All of those ideas seemed great in theory, but then reality hits and plans have to change. I found that some things just aren't realistic, while others just take way too much energy, which I currently don't have. Here are a few examples:

Never will I ever...be one of those mothers who is checking Facebook while nursing baby.

I totally thought I'd be the type to use each nursing session as a chance to pray or just gaze at my precious child. Soak in those sacred moments. But in those early days, when not sleeping, I was basically nursing all of the time. I think I lasted all of 2 days before I gave in and started to check Facebook and Buzzfeed and anything else that reminded me that something else was happening in the world besides not sleeping and sore nipples.

Never will I ever...co-sleep.

It's dangerous! the books said. Your baby will die! the internet forums told me. So I thought I would never bring baby into our bed to sleep through the night. During that first week home when I was trying to make up for lost contact in the hospital, I was basically giving baby skin-to-skin contact for 24 hours a day. My husband was (willingly) sleeping on the couch at the point, so I didn't fear him rolling over on her. And I was hypervigilant that there was a baby next time me, so I only really half slept to make sure I didn't crush her. Later on there were nights when it was just easier to bring baby into the bed, rather than deal with the very frequent wakeups. This practice has since stopped since we sleep trained her. Which brings us to...

Never will I ever...let my baby cry it out.

I plan to devote a whole post to this topic later this month, but for now I will say that this was one of the most surprising changes in attitude that I have had. Before baby came, I thought there was no way I could let her cry it out. I'd heard it could scar her for life. But then I did some reading. And I realized what we had been doing (nursing/rocking her to sleep and putting her in her crib super gently, only to have wake up balling the moment her head touched the mattress) was not working. She was exhausted from the sleep struggles and I was getting super frustrated with the process. So we spent a week "Ferberizing" our child and have had (mostly) awesome nights of sleep ever since.

Never will I ever...fill my daughter's world with pink.

I don't want to gender her before she's able to form her own identity, I thought. But then I realized pink is a really great color. I even painted a wall in her room a rosy pink because it looks so nice with a quilt my mom made. Now I'm much more open to pink and lace and frilly dresses. It's not that I want to force her to be "girly" it's that I want her to know she looks awesome when she wears frilly pink things and when she wears more masculine things. I hate that our society labels all things "girly" as inferior or weak or stupid. Why is it cool when we dress our girls up as Darth Vadar or Batman, but it's considered child abuse to dress our boys up as Princesses? I want our daughter to know she can feel comfortable with the choices she makes regarding gendered decisions.


Motherhood has certainly thrown me through a loop in terms of values and ideals. Before baby came along, I had a lot more control over my world and the decisions I made. Now, with baby, there are so many things out of my control, I have to change plans frequently to accommodate her needs. All this is to say, I've changed my mind on a lot of things, which makes me very thankful I have an understanding husband who partners with me on all of these things. Except the pink thing. I don't think he cares, nor does he even pays attention to what he dresses her in. As evidenced by the clashing pink top with orange bottoms she was wearing the other day.