Myths of Motherhood

My vast motherhood experience has led me to come to a conclusion...there are a number of "myths" to this motherhood business, and it's about time that someone expose them!

- Clothes labeled "0-3 months" actually fit babies that are 0-3 months. Hogwash! My daughter was born at 8 pounds, 1 ounce, and our fancy going-home-from-the-hospital outfit said "5-7 pounds." She swam in that thing!

You can't tell in the picture to the right, but trust me.

- Breast is best! OK, that may actually be true, but this "breast is best" campaign really leads you to believe that not only is it the best, but it's easy too. Hogwash! I just read a book by a well-known author, "Little Earthquakes" about new mothers. Each mother in this book has breastfeeding emergencies or difficulties. That is real life, people.

- Babies sleep "like babies." Maybe that's not so much a myth as an extremely inaccurate colloquial saying. Annika is the dearest, most precious thing in the world, but her sleep patterns are maddening and most of the time, she doesn't sleep longer than a half-hour. And, she also has a tendency to get woken up by clinging plates and eating utensils. So yeah, we rarely eat without a shift system.

- Cribs are "baby jail." Annika happens to like her baby jail - and that jail cost us a lot of money; so it better be a myth.

- Once babies get to sleep with their parents, they'll never want to leave. It may be that we smell bad, that she's only 6 weeks old and still has no idea who we are, or that our room doesn't have a cool mural - but Annika has no interest in sleeping with us. There have been quite a few nights when we've been happy to give up on our anti-family bed sentiment just to get her and us some rest, but no dice.

I'm pretty sure I have more of these...but Chris needs to be entertained while Annika sleeps for the next four minutes. Later!