As I Mean To Go On

As a responsible parent-to-be, I read up on life with newborns prior to Talia's arrival. As a fundamentally opinionated and lazy person, I stopped reading when I found an author who agreed with everything I already thought about life with newborns. The Baby Whisperer by Tracey Hogg is a good read with a lovely tone of voice about it that makes it feel possible to do have a happy, contented baby who eats and sleeps well and grows up to bring peace to the Middle East. And of course, she agrees with me. Kids like routines, parents matter, sleep is good and a child can learn to do it my way. Well, that last one might not be verbatim, but I think it's what she meant.

One of her standard lines is "Start as you mean to go on". I think she means that you do at the beginning the things you hope to be doing later, be consistent. There is some wisdom in that certainly, and it is probably good advice.

However, I somehow took that to mean "Start by doing it right from the beginning so that you never do it wrong and your child is always fine because you're always doing it right." This would be a less healthy interpretation. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that until yesterday. The first 6 weeks of sweet Talia's life have been an exercise in failure for me against that standard of doing it right from the beginning, every time.

And then yesterday it occurred to me that I might want to give some thought to "how I want to go on" and then evaluate our parenting from that point of view. What good news that was! Because were I well-rested and well-fed and sipping cold white wine with a friend outside in the yard, and she asked me how I meant to go on in parenting, I would say something like this:

"I want to be open-handed with my child and myself and my husband, not holding too tightly to any thing, person or idea. I want to be a learner and be adaptable. I want to be gracious with my children and my husband when they make mistakes so that they can be wholly themselves with me. I want to be wholly me with them and I hope they will have grace for my mistakes. I want to be faith-full and Jesus-y-ish and see God better through my family. I want to get better at it, and I want to enjoy it, enjoy them. I want to be thankful."

And that would be true. There are however, dark parts of my heart that would rather be perfect at parenting and I was living in those dark parts for a bit there. I will probably visit them every once and again. But my whole heart isn't that way. Thank goodness.

So right now, I am less committed to a perfect going-to-sleep situation. In the practical sense, how I mean to go on with sleeping is to figure out a way to help her sleep in whatever situation she's in. She won't always get to sleep in her own bed, and I won't always sing the same song, or any song for that matter. Sometimes it will be Scott putting her to sleep and sometimes it will be Grandma and sometimes God love her, she'll be on her own. And that may mean that sometimes, I have a daughter who doesn't sleep well but that's how I mean to go on. Imperfectly, making it up as I go and wishing that it was the way that worked best.

Oh well. I feel better at least.