Kathryn Mewes: The supernanny who is now a struggling mum

[MummRaaa]

This is quite a sad article, though part of me does want to say, "so it's not as easy as it looks then, love?!"

www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/11977203/Kathryn-Mewes-The-supernanny-who-is-now-a-struggling-mum.html

Boils down, even.

I would never take the advice of a childless supernanny. I just don't think they have the maternal emotion or understand the guilt parents go through. In the early months of having my first baby, when I felt clueless and zombie like, I got so much information and support from parents on forums like this!

Is she okay? She still sounds a bit detached/in shock.

The sleep thing is just weird. I always say ds3 slept through from 6 weeks old after we bought an amby hammock but he was still feeding at midnight & 5.30am (my definition of sleeping through). And there were certainly no painted nails or scrubbed floors.

Absolutely no sympathy for her or any of these judgemental 'supernannies'. 'Women judge themselves too harshly, ' do they? I wonder why? Anything to do with women like her making money out of telling mothers that if their babies don't fit into their rigid way of thinking that they are failures, by any chance? She's just added one set of judgements to her ones she already had. I enjoyed giving birth, I felt like a bloody superhero. Early motherhood, on the other hand, I found unbelievably difficult. There is almost nothing good I remember about it. Partly because I read too much Gina Ford and whatever other moneymaking guilt tripping shite was published at the time.

I think long term that she would be better off working on her need for control. My DD slept through from 7-7 at about that age, but then the four month sleep regression hit and she still wakes in the night at 3yrs. I also remember 11 weeks being quite "easy" - Dd fed about every 3hrs, was easily entertained and generally made very little impact on my life. But it didn't last. Soon she was a tantruming toddler and now a preschooler with her own opinion on everything. DS has been making his presence known since the day he was born. And these are still relatively early days...

I'd be very wary of anyone assuming they have a good understanding of parenting with one ten/eleven week old baby.

Sleepinf the whole night at two weeks! That can't be right. A 2 week old baby shouldn't be going the whole night without a feed!!

Marking to read later.

The thing is, she goes to help families with older children who have specific issues, and i often agree with her approaches. Having a newborn, and it being your own, is very different!

Poor little baby.

She sounds awful.

The mum sounds awful; not the baby

God help that poor baby when the teeth start coming through. She can't rely on Mummy to come and comfort her if she dares to wake up in the night.

It's desperate, really. Surely she was not trained to think babies need to be independent as soon as possible? Has she not even heard of normal newborn needs? Elsewhere she has written about how she had to stop breastfeeding as she did not have enough milk....but of course she would not, if the baby was being sleep trained from two weeks and she was ignoring her baby's cries and feeding to a schedule :(

People can parent their babies how they want. It's not illegal to sleep train a tiny newborn. But it is astonishing that someone who has learnt about infant and child development and family relationships could think it is a good idea.

I too suspect there is some puffery of the brand here, alongside the night nanny.

Goodluck to her i reckon cause if she can't cope with a new born just wait till baby becomes a toddler! she comes across as very judgmental, then again that may have been the way the article was written.

Yeah, isn't she a Norland nanny? I'm not sure it's helping Norland's brand much to be turning out graduates who think that your conscience is an irrelevant distraction you need to learn to ignore.

Pah!

Advertising. She is returning to work soon. She is just basically saying that even SHE needed a woman like herself to deal with her newborn....
The conclusion is that even the most capable mum need another woman to deal with her child.

And hey presto, her book... For those who cant afford supernanny!

How strange, what is the point in having a baby if you aren't going to comfort and cuddle them. Just treating them like a vessel doing the basics but none of the love. She doesn't sound bonded to me, not being willing to respond at night 2 weeks in is way too harsh. Poor baby.

To be honest apart from the two week old being trained to sleep I thought it was a good article.

Certainly I recognised those feelings of exhaustion (as do we all) and that emotional attachment which means you end up doing stuff even when your logic says "don't be ridiculous."

Hence me feeding a screeching DS when every fibre of my being was screaming "for gods sake woman he's got wind/colic, the last thing he needs is more food."

But yes am sure the article is timed for her book.

I am annoyed by the fact that, when confronted with the difficulty of following her own advice for child rearing, instead of reassessing her shit advice she simply hired someone else to do it for her. IIRC Tanya Byron did a similar thing with her newborn.

Perhaps giving advice that a two week old baby should learn to be independent is what needs to change

Some amazingly judgemental attitudes on this thread. Imagine some new mum opens this thread thinking 'yes I identified a lot with that article' only to find people calling her a selfish cow and a psychopath.

Everyone's experience is different. OK we don't all get pieces in The Telegraph that's what mummy blogs are for but I think some of the venom on this thread shows a real intolerance towards people who are honest about not bowing to the ideology of total motherhood.

She had already sleep trained her 10week old!

Whats wrong with people?

The thing is though, it DIDN'T make her think again about what she had been peddling to other mothers.

As for the feeling disconnected and leaving the baby to cry, I certainly don't judge that. It sounds like she was verging on PND to me. And WTAF with her husband buggering off to work the next day?

The article and so close to her being human and holding her hands up at saying "christ, it's not that easy is it? Maybe I was wrong about some stuff"... and then she just paid someone else to do the stuff she might have to admit was a bad idea in the first place!! Anyone know if this hattie woman has kids if her own, or is she another expert that hadn't been through it herself?

I think the article is terrible for new mums - if you don't have everything under control within a few weeks of giving birth then you've failed and you need to hire a professional - not very supportive is it.

Also there's miles of middle ground between "total motherhood" and leaving a newborn to cry so it learns to self-settle.

Thank you hugemanatee, I certainly identified with it and this thread is making me feel like some sort of fucking mutant.

Look, I found the first days exhausting and crap. I remember nothing about them fondly..... for my first. For the second, I was emotionally prepared (because I'd, like, done it) and so actually enjoyed small parts of the first months. Overall I just bloody hated it though. Either I've had PND twice and been missed twice or my reaction is within the spectrum of normal.

And I did resent DS1 bitterly in the first weeks. I rationally knew he was helpless etc but that didn't make me like him. If anything it made me dislike him more for putting me under so much pressure (albeit unknowingly) to appear loving when really I just wanted to close the door and leave him to it. I didn't, but God I wanted to.

I much prefer my kids now - they are still constantly demanding but I get so much more from them now. Conversation, hugs, love. I felt none of that from or with my newborn. It took me months to start liking him.