Being a new mother brings a lot of lovely things into our lives, but it also can bring a lot of stress and anxiety depending on the type of child that we have and how they react to their surroundings.
As a new mother, you are often clueless as to how to navigate this new unknown world that is a life with a small child and so you start to look for those resources that will give you the answers that will ease your anxieties and perhaps solve all those little problems that may have cropped up with feedings, sleep and behavior when it comes to your little bundle of joy.
When my first child was born, the resource that helped me navigate the unknown world of newborns and the first year of my child’s life was not What to Expect in the First Year, which primarily focuses on milestones, it was Tracy Hogg’s Baby Whisperer series.
What I loved about these books was that they offered profiles of different types of babies, acknowledging that each child is in fact different, meaning that the approach that you may use for one child may not work for another.
In the Baby Whisperer series, she gives different personalities a name and then explains that type of baby to you in more detail, allowing you some additional insight into your child for when you have to troubleshoot their needs.
The other aspect of Tracy Hogg’s approach to parenting that we implemented was her EASY routine:
E – Eat
A – Activity
S – Sleep
Y – Your time
It wasn’t a rigid schedule but merely a general order of the day that was determined by your individual child. Each of those steps in the routine would vary in time based on age. Tracy offered general guidelines for what those time periods might look like, but also encouraged you to follow your child’s lead.
The important part to note is that your child, in those first months, was sleeping regularly and you were having time for yourself with those sleep periods which I found to be one my most anticipated parts of the schedule. When they tell you to “sleep when the baby sleeps”, this is what they are talking about.
The final element of the books that I loved was Tracy’s ability to help you troubleshoot problems when you started on a path to what she called “accidental parenting”. It’s when you start developing a bad habit within your child unintentionally through your actions and then need to break it.
By reading about this in the book, I made a more conscious effort when making decisions. I kept in mind the long term habits being formed so I might not foster bad behaviors leaving me in need of breaking those habits.
Overall this series was very helpful and one of my favorites to date – three kids later. It’s not to say there aren’t things that were disagreeable in the book, but if you can focus in on the portions that work for you, there is a lot of valuable insight to be gained about your child, and the routine you set with your child through the Baby Whisperer series is an invaluable tool to have in place.
Have you read the Baby Whisperer series of books? What is your go-to parenting book series?
Image: Amazon
