decisions decisions

so vanessa, mr dawn and vanessa's godma came to visit last nite (thanks again guys!). basically her godma reinforced the point that kale and i have to decide for ourselves which parenting style we want to adopt - be it the attachment parenting type or the baby whisperer/gina ford sort.

i have the baby whisperer book which fran bought for us and have read that, i've also read some synopses online of the gina ford sleep book and the dr. sears sleep book. you can sorta say that it's a little bit of info overload. my mom may be right when she says that i need to start looking at and reading non-baby-related stuff to give myself a break. hmm.

if i sit down and have a honest chat with myself, i think i lean towards being an attachment parenting sort of person. which is surprising given my love of routines and my need for certainty. i'm definitely a type A personality and i think that's what's been wearing me down with this whole parenting thing - the not knowing how the night is going to turn out, nor how the next day is. and not knowing if when i make plans to meet someone at 11am (with the baby that is), that i'm actually going to be able to get there at 11am cos she may well need a feed or diaper change which will throw me off schedule. but the thing is, i actually feel she was happier the weeks when i was letting her nurse when she wanted to, rather than stretching it out till 2-3hours. of course, one could always say that she didn't really NEED to nurse for food, she just wanted to nurse for comfort and that i'm "dumbing her down" by allowing her to each time she cries. my difficulty to this day is not knowing when she's crying for food and when's she's crying for something else.

i wonder how much of my leaning towards AP is cos it's the "easier" of the 2 options. there's no need to instil routines, there's no need to feel like you've failed if you don't manage to get your baby on a routine, there's no need to fight with your child and listen to the crying. so in a way, i wonder if this is my way of copping out, whether i'm projecting onto her that she was "happier" with the frequent nursings.

so anyhow, i guess i need to sit down with the hubby to talk this out... van's godma did say that it's a little premature to be trying to put meredith onto a routine at this age.. it works better after 3 months and definitely after 6 months. "crying out"-type of techniques work better with older babies who understand it. and then there are the babies who won't take to routines anyhow. she's also really colicky now so the evenings are really fussy and erratic so routines are kinda difficult to instil at this point. but again, i'm wondering how much of this is me justifying my not biting the bullet and putting meredith on a routine. sigh.

ultimately, i guess it boils down to what feels comfortable for the child and for me/hubby. thankfully the hubby is far more level-headed than i am. while i'm definitely an engineer at heart (puhleez give me a manual with steps a-e to follow if that'll get me to the end goal), i'm also much more of a feeler than a thinker. meaning i give into my emotions too much. so kale at least balances decisions out and injects some logic into the madness. so we'll see.

damn, this parenting thing is hard. i don't want to imagine what it's going to be like once we actually have to start disciplining our children! eeps. mommy's a softie....