Parenting Intentions

On New Year’s Day we went over to a close friend’s house for dinner. With two pregnant women and me with Ian in attendance, the conversation naturally turned to babies and parenting. One of the men said something that I have often found myself saying or thinking in the past months. We can say what we will do all we want, but when we are actually there, it might be very different.

Parenting is such a strange adventure. You plan, research, and talk to other parents and each other trying to figure out what kind of parent you want to be. Maybe you have a lot of baby and child experience or maybe you have almost none, but before the baby is born, you probably have developed a tentative parenting philosophy with ideas of what you will do on a range of topics from breastfeeding to sleeping arrangements, diapering to discipline.

And then the baby is born, and it’s everything you imagined and nothing like what you imagined. And situation after situation begins to test your parenting philosophy. And you say to yourself, “Is this really working?” “Do I really feel strongly about this now?” It’s those moments of frustration and sleep deprivation where the research meets your intuition that parents are made.

Every baby is different, and every family is different. Though guidelines are helpful, their one-size-fits-all nature makes them sometimes difficult to fit into your parenting reality. Suddenly you realize what is truly important to you and what needs to be reassessed.

For me, many of these decisions on the go were a combination of research and gut feelings. Some have gone against recommendations and guidelines, which for me was difficult to do having been steeped in the public health mindset for the past years. In the end, my parenting so far has been shaped by trusting my gut more than by official guidelines. That is not what I expected. I have still looked for quality research whenever possible when going against recommendations or widely held parenting opinions. As a result, I have found some great resources that have reminded me of the politics that go into guidelines and that there is sometimes a very valid “other side” to controversial issues.