*"My three year old at the time would sob her heart out listening to that baby's cries. She would ask me why his mother wasn't responding- whet kind of parent could ignore his cries. I didn't have an answer.
My babies didn't cry because they didn't need to. Crying is a last resort.
When my baby cries every fibre of my body tells me to comfort and cuddle, to soothe and ease distress. So that's what I do.
Leaving my baby for 5 minutes crying is 5 minutes too long for me.
But deliberately leaving my baby to cry is not something I would ever be prepared to do , HV or No HV- I would tell her where to stick her suggestion.
Someone has to speak up for all those poor babies crying and being ignored. That's not being insensitive. Their own mothers are even ignoring their cries- no-one is listening to their pleas for comfort.
That's why I speak out for those infants.
I was tandem breastfeeding, a new baby feeding hourly through the night and an older baby too. I also cared for my disabled mother and worked 30 hours a week- we all have stresses.
I co slept to protect our sleep- not everyone's cup of tea but far more preferable to allowing my children to cry.
I look back to those days nurturing and comforting my babies in the moonlight- one of the most special memories I have and it feels so right to have done things this way.
Not that I had any real choice- when my babies cried I comforted them- wild horses wouldn't have stopped me from responding to their cries
to me it would feel very alien and quite wrong to leave a baby to cry deliberately- for any length of time.
It breaks my heart to think of babies being deliberately ignored like this."*
Come on. This melodramatic ME-ME-ME stuff isn't about helping anybody. It's about presenting yourself as super maternal and better than other mothers who might not feel/behave in exactly the same way as you. As I say, grim.