Reply to Fitting the baby into your life, not the other way around

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Reply to "Fitting the baby into your life, not the other way around"

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[quote=Anonymous]I had one of those easy babies from the start. We had no feeding issues, no sleep issues, no colic. She was content to sleep in a sling, in a carseat, in a stroller. She was content to be swaddled and held in arms at dinner, at brunch, at happy hour, wherever.

So we took her everywhere with us. Honestly, it was WONDERFUL for me. I was the first in my group of friends to have kids. Having it be possible to maintain more or less the same lifestyle I'd had previously made the transition a lot easier for me. Maybe it was selfish to be relieved about that, but it was really nice not to lose all my friends overnight because of a baby's nap schedule.

Her temperament plays the biggest role, but I think that the more we took her around with us, the more I continued to travel, the more I worked her needs into the existing structure of our lives, rather than totally restructuring (which, again, was only possible because of her overall personality being so easy), the easier it became to continue as we'd begun. You know how they say "sleep begets sleep"? I found it was sort of like that with a dynamic, not totally kid-centric lifestyle as well. The more you travel with a child, the easier it becomes to travel with a child. The more brunch parties you take a child to, the more that child is accustomed to going to such parties and the easier they tolerate them.

I will say that as she has gotten older, there have been times when I've had to scale things back a lot. There was a period for a couple months before she turned 3 when she just didn't like going to restaurants and no combination of kid's menu and crayons or special restaurant food treats or whatever could persuade her that she shouldn't throw things on the floor and whine. We stopped going out for a while, because I was in no way interested in being that family in a restaurant with the kid who clearly should not be where she is simply for the sake of me wanting to have a bloody mary and an omelette made by someone else. Fortunately for us, these things are often phases that pass quickly.

Anyway, I think that for the most part, every family figures out what works for it and does those things. For some families, that's adhering to an unshakeable nap in crib schedule for a couple years. For some families, it's napping on the go and going nonstop. Neither is inherently better or worse of an idea than the other, provided that the chosen routine is what works best for everyone - child, parents, strangers in the same physical space. If you have a child who melts down a lot and who clearly would rather go home and be in that space, it's unfair to everyone (including you) to keep that child out. If you have a kid who loves being around people and can mellow out and sleep anywhere, why keep them home?[/quote]

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