To want this mum to get her comeupance

[Tryingtobenice]

Ok so IABU and I don't really want there to be any impact as that would mean her baby is unhappy but...

WIBU to want to stamp my foot a bit and tantrum 'it's not fair!'?

I have ebf on demand, very much baby driven parenting, carrying her everywhere because she doesn't much like being put down (screams if you try). She is in a side of bed cot or our bed each night. I've done all I can to meet her needs so she doesn't scream the house down is happy and secure.

My friend has instilled a routine at 2 weeks, night weaned/ sleep trained from 8 weeks and has had her in her own room from 12 weeks.

The outcome just seems so unfair.

My baby is lovely, very alert and lively and is happy most of the time, but we still have to keep her entertained fairly labour intensively and she hasn't slept for more than 3 hours at a stretch in 5 months.

Friend's baby could be an advert for Gina Ford. Content, calm, sleeps through. She wakes up at 5am but "we just leave her to chat to herself until 7"!

If i left my DD for more than 10 mins we would be at defcon 1, full screaming, real tears, purple face.

2 different parents, 2 different babies, 2 different approaches and 2 different outcomes.

What if i listened to the wrong advice? What if I have 'made a rod for my own back'?

AIBU to even just a little bit hope that friend's DD is a really badly behaved, insecure nuisance as a todler?

dd, was a screamer, not sleeper only on mummy, bf (not exclusive)

"rod for own back," "will have to do controlled crying at some point" were heard very often. well we did not do controlled crying, she leant to sleep on her own, and is a fantastic sleeper now and has been for about 4 years!

you just have a baby who has a different personality. you have a different personality to your friend. you have to do what you have to do.

organised, routine liking parents have pobably passed on their organised routine loving genes onto their children and also "parent" best like this. the go with the flow parents not too botherred about mess parents probably passed on those genes to their child and probably parent best by going with the flow.

Oh this is daft.

Babies are all different. Parents are all different. It really is as simple as that. It sounds like you're worried you were wrong about how to raise your child - well I doubt it.

I don't think you have done anything wrong. I had the same approach, breast fed on demand (till 4 1/2), co slept every night, and always went to my child when he stirred - he didn't have to cry.
He cried TWICE in the 6 months after he was born. literally twice, both times I was with him, holding, him, doing everything you do but he obviously had some kind of pain or colic or something so he cried for what, 20-30 minutes.

The rest of the time he was peasy. Mind you he still co sleeps at 5 but he sleeps very well.

So it isn't about how you do it - a lot of it is sheer dumb luck.

Try to get over it - the bad things you can get with a routine are normally concurrent, I think, like having to do CC or constantly fighting to keep within the structure you have set up which is pretty artificial.

There will be problems in their circumstances too, but they might well be very happy with their choice. And you wouldn't be happy to do that with your own baby.

So stop stressing it and get over it...parenthood is universally difficult at some point. No one is the enemy here.

OP, I understand. It's tough when you give SO MUCH of yourself, but don't get immediate "results" (can't think of a better word), esp in a culture of instant gratification.

Things that help me feel good about my beautiful, high needs pickle of a DD:

• Remembering "if you meet the need it will go away, if you ignore the need it will still be there later"
• AP groups www.attachmentparenting.org/groups/groups.php
• and facebook group www.facebook.com/attachmentparentinguk
• and blog! attachmentparenting.org/blog/
• Good old Dr Sears & his high needs "Fussy Baby" book
• I like to tell myself that fusspot babies will be v. intelligent when older - they ask for demand so much stimulation

I don't think this is particularly about the other mum is it? More that nagging worry that you're doing all this for nothing? - and you aren't, you're doing so well!

Do your DH/family support the way you parent? That can make it MUCH harder to cope, if you have others around you telling you that it's all for nothing.

Hugs and

God poor OP - seriously it was a slightly misguided tongue in cheek post but some of the nastiness towards her is just horrid.

Fwiw i think some pp have been very harsh.
You will get there op, things will get easier x

x posts as that took me so long!

I don't think badly of you at all. I'm trying to see past the 'jealous' thing and I took your tone as lighthearted, but I can see how it got misconstrued.

Aibu can be a dangerous place.

I was your "smug" friend with both ds1 and ds2. Oh how it came back to bite me on the bum with ds3 who never slept through until 15 months.

Your parenting style is so different from your friends, you chose to parent hat way, stop being such a miser!

I apologise if I was harsh but I have been there and done that with an incredibly difficult to pacify baby who turned into a nightmare toddler. He screamed for 2 years with little break - I was on the point of a breakdown when he started preschool and I would never, ever wish it on anyone, tongue in cheek or not.

I actually think most of the posts have been really hard on the OP.

Not all babies can fit into a neat little routine, especially not EBF ones. I was feeding my DS1 every 2 hours for about the first 3 months of his life, he didn't sleep through til he was nearly 18 months old. Some babies don't. My DS screamed til he was sick if he was left for more than 5 minutes on his own after he woke up. There is no way I could have tried sleep training him.

Babies are hard work, and I lost count of the number of 'is he STILL not sleeping through the night's [faux concerned head tilt] I got when he was little. It's hard when you do what you feel is right and you don't seem to get any reward...I know I've been there.

OP, have some chocolate, don't be too hard on yourself and just remember the sleepless stuff won't last forever :)

Nah, she was just lucky with her baby.

My dd1 was the same as yours, and didn't sleep though, a general hard baby.........dd2 arrives, no routine, but OMG, she sleeps, eats, is happy, and a complete opposite to dd1.

Don't compare babies as, she'll have another, and it will be a nightmare

Aw, I know the feeling, and sure it's pure frustration that makes you express it like that and you'd never say a thing to friend or really wish her ill. Or really wish you parented that way. Yes you can probably train babies to be more independent, but do you really want to? You've got the rest of your life to do stuff without your babies.

At the end of the day, I didn't really listen to advice, I listened to instinct and then found advice to back it up/ check it wasn't harmful to my baby. Because if you start down the avenue of going against your own instincts, where do you stop?
I find it interesting that my friend's perfectly contented "independent" GF baby turns out to cry every time she's dropped off at nursery; my AP "clingy" baby trots in happily. Not so much that she's crying, but that friend never mentioned it and always just said she loves nursery. I wonder how much other crying goes on that just slips under her radar and doesn't get mentioned as "just the way she is".

loads of mean people today
babies are weird :)
looking after them is DIFFICULT sometimes
most of it is down to luck
do what you want/need
it will be fine

YANBU to consider how things are going for you and make any changes if they're necessary.

YABU to feel bitter and make it into a competition between you and someone else. Their life really isn't relevant to your own decisions.

I vote for Julia's as the most sensible post.

It is perfectly normal to have these feelings - some of you clearly have a very short memory or are liars.

Some really vile posting on this thread.

Don't go OP. I also thought your post was slightly tongue in cheek, and actually I have some sympathy.

I think everyone is at sea when they have a achild, and some compensate for it (like me) by over thinking everything. I have a friend, who had her DS two days before i had mine. She apparently has just sailed through everything. She lost her babyweight in doublequick time. (I still have people asking when the baby is due). Her DS was the first to do it all, sleep through, talk (he has multiple word sentences, my DS does not even say 'mummy' - really. He is 2); her DS kicks balls, climbs slides, my DS is terrified of heights. Her ds points at things, mine just observes. Every time I go out with them, I come back and say to DH that i really think DS is behind, and there has been more than once occasion where i have collapsed because i thought I am so clearly crap at being a parent. I really compared myself with her, and I always came out feeling quite bad about myself.

Last week, my DFriend has started counselling. I saw her DH by chance in the street. He said that she has been trying so hard for so long to put up the perfect mummy front, that she has fallen apart. I was so astonished and said that I thought everything was fine. Everything was NOT fine- she has felt under so much pressure and has not really enjoyed anything. I was quite horrified, because I was interpreting her (slight) boasting as being so sure f herself and being a little smug. I was feeling utterly inadequate, yet actually, she was going through all of the fears, the doubts that I was. It was a bit of a lesson for me.

The real point to my wittering is that every child is different, and parenting is so hard. It is not a competition, and anyone who tries to make it so is a bit insecure in their choices, I think. I really echo what everyone says- you have to do what suits you, and your baby and your family, not what suits anyone else. It sounds like you are doing a bloody amazing job. A healthy, happy baby is the dream, and the marker of success.

I shall stop babbling now. But hugs for your feelings. You are only human. But your friend is probably not having the dream time you think she is, from the outside.

You also forget to factor the different personalities babies are born with and your personality type as a mother. Both makes a huge contribution.

We quickly fell into Gina routines with DS1 (except for breast feeding which was baby led). DS1 fell out of my womb calm to the point of being horizontal. He would have been laid back what ever parenting route I took though. DH is ultra relaxed to the extreme and DS1 is very much like him. Parenting DS1 was a piece of cake and at one point I even wondered if DS1 had SEN as things seemed just too calm. DS1 now aged 10 is still horizontal, in the top set at school and seems to take life in his stride.

DS2 used to sick up quite a bit, that combined with a house move meant life was slightly more stressful in the first year. I changed my parenting style too and for some time continually questioned the things I was doing (baby wearing,co-sleeping, baby led weaning etc...) as my DS2 seemed to have a high level of need. Also as a toddler he required so much more from me and I must admit it wasn't an easy ride at times. Aged 4 he is really blossoming now though. It's amazing! DS2 actually looks totally different to DS1 and is clearly from a slightly different gene pool. He is clearly like his uncle in personality and looks. His uncle is rather whizzy, ultra bright and emotionally tuned in too. DS2 is also very creative, extra cuddly, witty and verbally eloquent.

DS3 oddly looks much like DS1 and happens to be an even more extremely calm version of of DS1 too. We did baby wearing, baby led weaning, co-sleeping etc and people can't believe how laid back he is.

One thing I wanted to add is that things are not always as they seem. Sometimes there is a pressure to give the impression that things are fine. Yes this might be the case but more often then not, there might be one or two unspoken issues.

There have been some mean and nasty posters on here today. The OP posts a lighthearted thread (well, that's how I read it) and she's been called a bitch, a cunt, a twat and generally ripped apart.

Why don't some of you look at your responses and see if perhaps they were a tiny bit disproportionate to the post?

Here here msvestibule!

You've brought this on yourself.
Don't be jealous!

Give the OP a break FGS, I think some of the answers here are far bitchier than the first post.

It seemed like a light hearted thread to me. And yes I'd agree the outcome probably does seem a bit unfair!

Tryingtobenice - as others have said all babies are different. If you'd parented like your friend chances are your dd would be just the same. Don't worry about it, trust your instincts when you're parenting. Even if it doesn't work out at least you know that you did what you felt was right for your family. I don't think you have made a rod for your own back at all, plenty of babies that are parented like this will sleep through, etc.

So the people on here castigating the OP think it's just to call her a bitch and a cunt? What the hell is wrong with you? It was clear from her post that it was tongue in cheek. Whatever you think of her, calling her those awful names makes you a thousand times worse.

OP, I have a 'high need' baby too, but I've learned just to work with the child I've got and I'm very happy that she seems to be content. Some of my friends do appear to have very 'easy' babies comparatively but hey ho.