To want to show this blog post to smug parents of easy babies?

[skipinmyskip]

I find this blog strangely addictive. She is a mum who is very different to me in many ways. She has a girl who is 2 something, and she was always (to me) pretty smug about how easy it all was.

Now she has had number 2 and is eating some humble pie. She now knows it wasn't her great parenting that made her number 1 an easy baby. See here styleberry

My DD was a HARD HARD baby, and I feel like directing all the mums who are smug about their easy babies to it!

You can make an easy baby difficult but you can't make a difficult baby easy.

Nothing would have helped with my first. Delicate tummy and very clingy = bugger all sleep for two years.

The second was as easy as they come. Nevertheless, if you shove a breast in their face at the first sign of disturbance you will train them to wake up throughout the night. I'm aware I did that a bit.

I used to belong to a forum that had baby clubs for each month 'due'.. It did make me laugh how there were some Mums who were so convinced smug that their baby slept/fed 'perfectly' and was due to their insistance on routine following GF

DS1 was a contented easy baby and I always thought it was more good luck. DS2 is very high maintenence

worra

That is the best answer I've ever read

The thing is you get accused of smugness as soon as you say anything remotely positive about your children that it automatically irks when people talk about smugness and easy babies, quite often it isn't.

High needs?

Aren't babies, by virtue of their total dependence on adults for their very survival, all high needs?

Mummy bloggers can be so dull. Stick a nipple in their mouth and get on with it.

Having twins and treating them the same, yet getting utterly different responses, I just smile and nod at the all knowing forst timers.

'He eats anyhting because I...'
'She sleeps through because I...'
'He isn't clingy because I...'
Smile and nod. Smile and nod. They will learn

I get cross when I get told my son is an easy child-because I find parenting bloody hard work. I was lucky in that we avoided colic, but it was hard in other ways, he started teething at 4.5 months & pretty much didn't stop until he had 16. He certainly didn't sleep through from the moment of birth. And don't get me started on feeding.

I don't think there's anything smug about admitting you're lucky if your child sleeps through straight away/feeds easily/is happy & content all the time. It's just the parents who are adamant it's down to their parenting technique that annoy me.

Interesting ... My DD is a terrible sleeper. Always has been (aged 4 now). She just doesn't need a lot of sleep. I did have a few kindly friends suggesting I try x,y,z because it worked easily for their DC which drove me slightly bonkers. One of these has now had her third DC and told me recently she understood what I was dealing with as he won't sleep despite her doing the same as with the other two.

However ... With my friends none of the children are perfect so we avoid smuggery. My DD is lovely during the day won't sleep at night. Another friends child sleeps 7-7 perfectly but runs riot during riot. Am sure neither of us would want to swap

Our 9mo DS is a terrible sleeper, rubbish with solids, and atm just wants me to bf. all the time. He's hard work tbh, especially now I'm back at work, so to make life easier (and possibly catch a few mind sleep myself) we co-sleep.
Now, I certainly don't begrudge those who have an easier time with their DC, I just think "good for you". What I do resent is the implication that we are doing it all wrong and that's why DS is the way he is. I also resent the constant bloody comparisons certain family members keep making "oh so-and-so's DC is younger than yours, sleeps 14 hours a night as eats 5 jars a day", followed by the largely unspoken "so you're obviously doing it all wrong then".
I wish people would accept all DC are different, stop this bloody competitiveness that is frankly stressing me out far more than the lack of sleep, and quit blaming my decision to bf on everything.

I was a teenage mam so my own DM had a huge hand in helping me with my PFB (Ds who is now 8). She helped me start routines, and he slept though from 6 weeks, he breastfed like a master, no problems at all. None. I asked if she did these same routines with me and my DB. Turns out she did, and we were little shits anyway . She often joked she wouldn't know how I'd have coped if I had "a real baby."

Now he's older he's very demanding though, 20 questions, so active, eats like a horse but rather picky, so loud too! Swings and roundabouts.

Sole I think the "people like you comment" was saying "people who have children who have a medical reason etc for sleeping through". I doubt anyone if suggesting you are finding it easier to be a parent as a result of your child being blind. I hope both you and your DC are well.

"Sole I think the "people like you comment" was saying "people who have children who have a medical reason etc for sleeping through". "

That may be a comfort if your child has a diagnosable condition from birth (on the smug/judgement front, i mean).

But for parents who are fighting the system for a diagnosis at an older age, or who have family/people around them that don't believe in SN, then they have a nightmare time made more difficult by these comments.

I had a DD with ADHD who slept 5 hours a night and the woman over the road loved to make a comment daily how she had seen my DD up at midnight and she isn't learning (dyslexia) to read because she is so tired.

I was a SMOO with a girl who first slept through at 4 weeks and by 3 months was sleeping solidly from 7.30 (on the dot, every night) until 9.30am. She'd have her feed at 9.30 and be back down by 10.30 for her morning nap. She'd wake around one and go back down after her feed at about 2.30 until about 5pm. Every day. My DMum used to get pissed off with me when she came to visit (once 3 times in one day) and wouldn't catch DD1 awake.

I got extremely fed up and bored with early motherhood until I realised if I put her down in the pram rather than the moses basket or cot we could go out and about.

When I went back to work when DD1 was almost a year I did mornings in the office and afternoons working from home while she had her afternoon nap (she was down to one nap by then). She slept from 2pm until 6pm every day and was back down after her dinner by 7.30. It meant I got paid to work full time but was at home half the time.

Second baby was shaping up to be like the first until the age of 5 months when she decided sleep was for the weak.

First girl (by now 4) then also decided sleep was for the weak...and now 4 years later we've hardly had an unbroken night. It is a case of musical beds most nights. What goes around comes around as they say.