Saturday, June 26, 2010

SAHM Wise: Baby Schedules

Pin It Now! SAHM Wise {Stay-at-home-mom Wise}

I've been wanting to start this series for some time now. Ever since my oldest turned 10. Which was last August.

Seriously, I think any mother who's reached the decade mark deserves an award! Mothering is indescribably wonderful but TOUGH, too! I think after 10 years of being a mom, I have learned a thing or two, and my desire is to share and hopefully encourage other moms trying to get through the "little kid" stage. (Yikes, right now I am entering the "tween" phase, and each day is a brand new challenge!)

My ways are certainly not the only ways, and I hope I never convey such an attitude. Nobody has to answer to me, so please know that I will never purposely try to offend anyone. Your comments will be much appreciated, and I would love to know your personal, mothering triumphs and trials. And just remember nobody is the perfect parent and nobody has the perfect child.

( I don't know how to make a cute, little button yet for my series, so I will just enjoy posting new pics of my kids when they were babies!!)

Okay, so here we go with my first SAHM Wise post: Baby Schedules



While I was pregnant with my first, I was so glad to have been introduced to the book, On Becoming Baby Wise by Gary Ezzo and Robert Bucknam. I wouldn't recommend this book to everyone because not everyone is a schedule freak like I am. I wanted to have my baby on a schedule because I knew it would work best for me.

And that is the super-cool thing about being the MOM--you get to decide how you want to do things. One way isn't necessarily better than another. I think it's easy to feel intimidated by other moms, parents, grandparents, or goodness, maybe even by people who don't have kids but sure know what's best for us.

There is nothing wrong with taking advice or asking other moms what has worked for them. I think that is a GREAT way to find out what might be the perfect thing for you. But I think, as moms, we need to be confident in our final decisions concerning our own families.

I got a lot of great ideas from the Baby Wise book on how to actually put what I knew I wanted to do into practice. I didn't do or agree with everything in the book, but it gave me a starting point.

I did put my baby on an eat, sleep and wake schedule. And it worked for me. I wanted to know when my baby would need to eat since I knew I wasn't going to be a public nurser. This worked out great for me b/c I knew when I'd be able to get my errands done. At first this was a bit difficult b/c my newborn wanted eat about every 2 hours, but we slowly got into a better schedule. With breast feeding, though, we never got to the 4 hour schedule. At least not until we were heavy into solid foods.

I loved having a nap schedule, too. Made life so much easier on me. This was my quiet time, too, or getting-things-done time. I am the type of person who needs a break from noise. Nap time for baby equaled rejuvenation time for me!!!

Now, being so scheduled was a bit of a problem when "our ordinary" was out! Like napping at another person's house--yikes. Didn't always work out very well, but then again 99% of the time we were at home. So, having a strict schedule was still overall better for us.

So, how about you? Do you like schedules, or do you just like to go with the flow? Anyone else ever try desperately to keep baby awake until that magical hour?

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