Due to the lack of support I received once T was born I decided to follow my instincts and it's not let me down yet, here's some advice that got me through from pregnancy to now!
If in doubt google it: The amount of questions a paranoid pregnant woman/first time mother comes up with is insane, every pain, tingle, cough sneeze is cause for worry. I would have gone crazy with stress if i didnt have google. I googled EVERYTHING, and you know what, everything I googled came back with thousands of posts from similiar people querying the 'silly' things. Reading them make you realise you're not alone, not crazy and there's people who are in the same boat. How mothers 10 years ago coped is beyond me, I would have been at the drop in clinic every day if I with a list of questions as long as my arm!
Do what's best for you: The amount of conflicting advice you receive is RIDICULOUS! You've already got baby brain, the last thing you need is it baffling! Breast v Bottle, Front v Back, Co-Sleeping...so on and so forth. Take on board all the advice you receive, try what you want and stick with it from there. Below is my experiences with those 3 things!
Breast v Bottle: You get bombarded with 'breast is best' from the day you find out you're pregnant, but what about those that can't?! Where's the support for them? It riles me! I breast-fed for 6 weeks, and I'm proud. But only one Dr out of all the people I saw congratulated me for sticking with it for that long, everyone else tutted and said you should have carried on for 3 months. I got no support, no one showed me how to do it, or deal with any problems that arose, so I managed to breastfeed him for 6 weeks then get him onto bottles with just the help of my other half.
Front v Back: This is in regards to how the baby sleeps. Midwives and health visitors HAVE to tell you to get the baby to sleep on his back because of the results of all the cot death studies, and thats fine. BUT, only 20 or so years ago, it was advised that babies slept on their fronts, as it reduced the risk of choking if the baby was sick in their sleep. That, to me, is a much more logical arguement, there has been no actual proof of what causes cot death, just factors that may increase it. I don't understand how you fix something when you dont know what the cause is. I put T down to sleep on his front after about 3 weeks, mainly because he suffers from reflux and I was more worried about him choking, also reflux is like adult heartburn so when you laid him on his back it caused him pain, which at the beginning led to the next problem....
Co-Sleeping: There are logical arguements for and against this, logic says dont do it because you heighten the risk of smothering the baby when you fall asleep. But if you're baby screams in pain when in his cot on his back, he's not allowed to sleep on his front, what's a sleep deprived mother to do when her boy happily sleeps soundly on her chest? So I tried it after lots and lots of researching on the internet, and I had a few wonderful nights of sleep, before his reflux was diagnosed and I made my decision to sleep him in on his front. The research brought up lots of arguements for co-sleeping; Britains one of only a very few countries that is strongly against co-sleeping, I think the rest of Europe it's very commonplace. What sold me on it's benefits was a report I found that showed the biological benefits of co-sleeping; If the baby gets confused with his breathing, he listens to your breathing and makes his the same, If baby gets too hot, mums body cools itself and vice versa. This amazed me, Scientists arguing with nature!
However...!
I did do co-sleeping for a few nights, but after the first two nights I got too comfortable with it, and I would roll over in my sleep, your instincts kick in and he was always placed in a safe position where he could breathe, but I got a bit unnerved that my brain was the reliable whilst I was asleep, admittedly it hadn't let me down but still. Also baby then gets used to falling asleep on mummy which makes getting them in their own cot even harder. So I stopped.
There ends my advice for today, I'm not saying what I have done was right, but it was right for me and my baby, and that's how it should be. Take on board other peoples advice, then make your own decisions. At the end of the day the saying 'mummy knows best' had to come from somewhere!
If you want to sound off using other mums, go to http://www.netmums.com/, great web-site for advice!
Don't be afraid to ask questions, no matter how silly you think they are!!! If it helps you destress then it's good for the baby.
That's all for now.
Some places i found my info:
http://www.breastfeeding.com/reading_room/co_slepping.html
http://kidshealth.org/parent/general/sleep/cosleeping.html
http://www.netmums.com/
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