Advice for new mums is rampant. It’s everywhere. You mention one thing about sleep, teething, or the tummy problems your little one is experiencing and you get bombarded with tips on how best to fix it.
And for every piece of advice given there is a completely opposing point of view that also seems to make just as much sense as the first point of view. We can get lost and confused in the world of Google, blogs, websites, and millions of books all offering “expert” information and advice.
As a new mum I have found this phenomena both overwhelming and somewhat intriguing. I have felt guilty because my bookcase is not full of parenting books and I am not across every single blog out there. The few times I have trawled the internet for answers, I often find a wonderful new idea to try only to find that the next website I come across disagrees totally and I am left more confused and uptight than before I started looking!
Thirty years ago my mother didn’t have the gift and curse of the internet when she had her babies or the plethora of books available today. Yet my sister and I turned out fine! Like every mum she certainly had her fair share of doubts, and when faced with the questions we all ask about sleep, feeding, routine, and discipline she only had three resources: the clinic nurse, her mum, and her instincts. Go back several more generations and mothering wisdom was something passed down from mother to mother with ultimately every mother relying heavily on her natural parenting instincts.
Why are the new generations of mothers looking to external sources of guidance and advice for their babies and not asking their inner mothering wisdom first? Is our obsession with googling at the first sign of a change in our babies taking us away from the present moment and the very ability to take a breath, slow down and look at the situation with perspective and calmness which will inevitably allow our mothering instinct to come forth?
While the information available today has so many positives including people sharing new ways and research surrounding certain aspects of parenting, I can’t help but feel that this overload of information is somewhat reflective of our own inabilities to trust ourselves, trust in our children and believe that we are, in fact, doing a really great job.