When I was pregnant, I went out of my way to avoid the comparison game that many expectant mothers play. For example, I stood backwards on the scale at my doctor’s office so that I wouldn’t see how much weight I gained. If I didn’t know the number, I couldn’t boast or complain about it.
So why can’t I stop comparing myself to other moms? Specifically, I’m feeling down on myself because Levi doesn’t sleep through the night yet. He’s still waking up every couple of hours and usually requires a brief feeding to calm down and fall back to sleep. Just last night, he went to bed at 7:45pm and awoke at 12:40am, 3:40am and 5:20am. I put him back down at 5:40am because I was just not ready to start my day before 6am. I am not an early bird.
When I read about other babies his age (or younger!) who stay asleep for 10-12 hours, I can’t help but judge my own parenting abilities. What are those moms doing that I’m not to help their infants snooze? Did they follow advice in a parenting book that I haven’t read? Are they just innately better at following schedules and routines?
Logically, I know that it’s Levi, not me, who directs his own circadian rhythms and that he will reach this milestone on his own time. Still, I feel somewhat like a failure because I can’t get him to stay asleep from 7pm to 7am, and I know there are 8-week-olds out there who sleep in 8 hour chunks. Of course, these irrational thoughts of mine are probably being exacerbated by the fact that I’m sleep deprived from repeatedly waking up with him.
(I would ask JB to get up and check on Levi in the middle of the night if he wasn’t, you know, deployed and all.)
Rather than asking how many hours at a time your baby sleeps, I want to know if you ever find yourself judging your own parenting abilities. What do you do when you start comparing yourself to other moms?
(image via {johnson journal})
I find myself feeling defensive when people comment on how healthy my friends’ “big” babies are – my guy is little, but he’s healthy, too! Sometimes when I feel that way I begin to question if I should have done something differently in pregnancy, or when he was really young. Then I remind myself that he came out the way he was supposed to, is doing really well, and is who he is: a sweet little guy who seems to be constantly teething/waking up at night, too. It will get better!
I had a whole thing written about sleep, but I’ll summarize. It’s normal. He is still very new. I know it’s hard. My child did not sleep for the first year. You will be ok…it will just take time. And don’t wish for it every night. It makes it worse. Trust me.
My comparison issue (besides sleep) was breastfeeding. It did not go well for us and it was very hard. I hate that I compare myself and our situation to people that could easily breastfeed and their child gained weight appropriately. I would get irrationally upset if they “decided” to stop breastfeeding because I did not get to decide anything; or gained significant amounts of weight while I felt like we fought for every ounce in the beginning. I felt like I did not do something right for my child to help him. Maybe I didn’t hold him soon enough after he was born? Maybe I didn’t eat enough? drink enough fluids? In the end, I fed my kid; he’s still alive and healthy. Breastfeeding just sucked (both literally and figuratively).
For the past few weeks, I got into a big comparing phase. This is why I decided to take a mom activities break for a week. I find that mom breaks are good to “center yourself” and because it can be draining to ear people talk about what their babies do…”but my baby”….”but how come your baby”!
As far as I’m concerned, Alice is my baby and each family is different. It is fine to compare but as soon as it is getting stressful I’m out of there (aka mom activities break).
Take care and you are an awesome mother xox
Thanks, Claudia! I definitely need to schedule some mom breaks!