Ruminations

There is a reason Terry once bought me this book.

While in the throes of trying to implement the Baby Whisperer approach to sleep training, I found myself feeling like the king of the golems in Pratchett's book Feet of Clay. This analogy probably only makes sense if you've read the book... but suffice to say, I felt like my head was full of words of command, all conflicting with each other and driving me insane. "Cry it out!" "Don't even think of crying it out!" "Pick up/put down!" "Co-sleep as long as possible!" "Put baby to sleep in a crib!" etc.

Terry thought for a minute, then said "the principles they all boil down to are comfort and discipline. Not discipline like punishing, but discipline like structure and teaching." He asked me, "what do your instincts say you should do?"

Hence my mantra, and the moment of Zen mentioned in that post. Or, as my therapist put it, I need to find my rhythm, and tune in to her rhythm. That has been a really helpful piece of advice as we've moved away from being die-hard baby whisperers, towards finding our own way that works for us and our baby.

Comfort and discipline, the free play within structure. Some people make it look so easy! I guess everything looks different from the inside.