current parenting conventions dictate that...

swaddling is now the recommended method of soothing your newborn. tightly wrap that little smusher up like one of those pregnant burritos, make shushing noises into their ear, and gently sway them until placated. the whole idea being to simulate the conditions they had back in the womb: confined, in motion, and surprisingly loud.

and then there’s the coup de grace: sucking is ok. they’re saying that the first three months are really like the fetus’ “fourth trimester”, so anything you do to calm them is both ok and not detrimental. because you can’t spoil a fetus. i think there’s a joke in there somewhere, but it’s probably tasteless.

all i know is that on that second night, when she was crying and crying and crying, i not only sat there and let her suck on my pinky for hours, but i finally threw in the towel and got a pacifier from the nurse and let her go at that. all i could think of was, “it hasn’t even been two days, and i’ve already resorted to maggie simpson-izing her!”

the thing is, who knows if this any of this is really the best method? every era has its ideas about ideal parenting. breastfeeding is good. no, breastfeeding is bad, let’s let science bulk up our kids— everyone should use formula! i hear that back in the 50’s they actually recommended that pregant ladies SMOKE in order to reduce birth weight, making labor easier. yikes.

thirty years from now they’ll look back in horror at the medieval practices we put our kids through. “you swaddled them? my lord, how barbaric! everyone knows that the best thing is to hang them by their ankles.”

i just hope we don’t raise a generation of bondage queens with oral fixations.

Posted at September 11, 2007 11:01 PM | TrackBack