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Part 5. Parenting’s Pendulum Vibe*

Two things I’ve noticed about parenting:

1. Every parent has his or her own way of doing things.
2. Every parent is sure that their way is the right way.

Even the most laid back, open-minded folks get downright self-righteous when they are confronted with another view or a different approach to parenting.  Now I’m not going to sit here and say that I don’t have preferences or things I find straight up ridiculous ( I practically laughed in a woman’s face when she suggested that I give my four month old some orange juice diluted with water and sugar) but most times I find it wise to do research, choose a positon and stay flexible.

Two examples? 

Pacifiers and vaccinations.

Dominique and I discussed pacifiers briefly before Serene was born.  Our verdict?

“No.”

We had spent the last eight months in Namibia with brief stints in Zambia , Zimbabwe , and Mozambique .  Neither of us remembered seeing children with pacifiers.  None of our friends' children used them and I’d never seen a picture of myself with one.

“Why shut your kid up?  He or she must be crying for a reason.”  I said.

“Exactly.”  My husband said.

Then Serene was born. Let’s just say that for the first month of her life, it seemed that if she wasn’t sleeping or eating, she was crying.  Now Serene never did any of that cute, barely audible baby stuff, she bawled—tiny fists flying, little legs thrashing.  She was all sound and fire.  We had no clue what to do.

One evening I was eating dinner in the usual sleep-deprived haze.  Dominique came to the dining room and said, “Come look at your baby.”

She had started crying right as I’d left for dinner, so I was braced to see a red faced, howling wreck of an angel.  As we walked to the bedroom I wondered what type of comfort she would need.  Was she getting enough milk?  Did she need to go to a hospital?  Instead of sound and fury, I found my child quiet, chilling, sucking happily on a pacifier.  Huh?

What we didn’t know is that in some babies the sucking reflex is very strong.  As opposed to using pacifiers as a way to shut a child up, it is meant to calm the baby by satisfying the sucking reflex.

Hey, some women might not mind being human pacifiers, but I am not one of them.  My advice?  If you’re a breastfeeding mom and your baby sucks like a Hoover vacuum cleaner (sucks, not eats) and you are thinking of giving a pacifier, wait until s/he is at least one month old.  You can avoid—and I love this term, I can picture some depraved cat on Jerry Springer using it to explain why he cheated on his girlfriend— “nipple confusion” by delaying your baby’s intro to any artificial nipples.  (Baby’s use different muscles to breastfeed than they do to suck on pacifiers so the baby needs to get his/her eating technique down first.)

Thanks Dominique, for giving Serene and I a little more peace by being flexible.

Next up? Vaccination. 

I’ve got friends on both sides of this fence and they are not budging when it comes to their stances.  I know folks who wouldn’t let a vaccine within 12 yards of their babies and I know people who don’t give a second thought to starting the vaccination process.

We weren’t sure where we stood on the issue.  We’d been vaccinated and we were fine

 But with all the new research being done about side effects, reactions and permanent damage after vaccinations, we weren’t about to hand Serene over to anyone with a needle until we’d done some research of our own.

The first thing we decided was that we weren’t down with letting our two-month old get vaccinated.  In Belgium they start with a cocktail containing six vaccines at two-months.  A bit much, we thought.

I talked to two midwives, three doctors, two nurses and four mothers.  I scoured my already well-worn books. I found that some of the vaccinations that exist now are for non-life threatening diseases, and I agreed with the idea of letting Serene’s immune system get strong by itself when it came to those.  There are other diseases, however, that I am not willing to take chances with.  In the end, we decided to have Serene vaccinated against polio at six months, tetanus when she starts crawling or walking outside and rubella when she gets to be an adolescent.  If we travel to countries where other vaccinations are necessary, then we will reevalutae the situation.

While I was doing my research, I had a nurse insinuate that if I wanted to be a good mother, I would have Serene vaccinated according to the schedule. 

My response? “Of course I want to be a good mother, that’s why I’m asking these questions.”

Whether you decide to have your child start receiving all the recommended vaccinations at two months or you threaten to cut any medical personnel who even mouth the word “vaccination,” if you have done the research, made informed decisions, and acted out of intuition and love (not fear) you are doing exactly what needs to be done.  Don’t let anyone make you feel foolish, irresponsible or inadequate about your choices.  And do me a favour, don’t try to make anyone else feel like a do-do bird either.  We are all doing the best we can out here to negotiate this wild terrain called parenthood.

*The Pendulum Vibe is the fierce Joi’s, first album. No, it has nothing to do with parenting.

For comments and suggestions you can also contact me by email: etallie@yahoo.com

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