Motherhood by The Books

Can Any Book Beat A Mother's Intuition?

By Kristin Stitz

When I got pregnant for the first time I was an over-educated professional, a veteran of corporate middle management, and president of my own small consulting company. I'd spent the past fifteen years of my life studying and working to get ahead, and I attacked this unknown in the only way I knew how - by gathering facts, synthesizing data, developing theories.

I combed the Internet for information and read all the books on pregnancy and childbirth. I prepared for birth as if I were getting ready for a major presentation to a client, dedicating myself to kegels and relaxation exercises. Then one day I looked in the mirror at my bulging belly, and it occurred to me that soon a living, breathing thing was going to burst forth and demand to have its every need met by me and only me. What did I know about taking care of a baby? In a panic, I turned my attention to books on childcare.

Fortunately, or unfortunately as it turned out, there is no shortage of such books. It seems that anyone who has had, known, or been a child can call themself a baby care expert these days. A search on Amazon.com using the keywords "child care" turned up 5717 results. Even discounting for multiple versions of the same title (hardback, paperback, audio, and video), that's still a lot of books. A trip to Barnes and Noble wasn't much better - there were over 500 titles on the shelf. There are books written by doctors and psychologists, and published by impressive institutions like the American Academy of Pediatrics and The Mayo Clinic. For those more commercially-inclined, there are offerings from Johnson & Johnson and Disney. There's Secrets of the Baby Whisperer for the new-age parent, and for the star-struck, there's even a book written by the star of a popular nighttime soap opera.

The Baby Book sounded promising. That's what I was planning to have, after all, but maybe it would be better to specialize. Was I planning to have a fussy baby or a challenging child? An explosive, difficult or defiant child? Since I was sure mine would be none of these things, I passed on those titles, but made the happy discovery that if only I read the right book, I could determine the type of child mine would be. Did I want a happy child? An emotionally intelligent child? Or a child who was simply good enough? All I had to do was fork over $25, and the choice was mine.

As I continued to gather information a couple of names cropped up over and over, and I deduced that Sears, Brazelton, Leach, and Eisenberg are today's equivalent of Dr. Spock (who doesn't even rate a place in the end-display at the bookstore these days). Armed with this short list, I headed back to the store. To my surprise I found that while there is consensus among the experts on a few topics, there are many others on which they don't agree. Unsure whether to give your baby a pacifier? One book warns that in the early weeks this will cause nipple confusion and impair his ability to nurse. Instead, the author suggests helping your baby to find his fist or thumb to suck. Another expert suggests giving baby a pacifier as often as possible in the early months precisely because it will keep him from sucking his thumb. While one expert suggest hanging lots of interesting things above your baby to give her something to look at and touch, another urges limiting the use of the mobile that you "inevitably" received at your baby shower. "How would you feel trying to sleep with a rotating disco ball suspended two feet above your face?" the authors scold.

"How am I supposed to know what to do?" I wailed to my childbirth instructor.

"You haven't even gotten to the best part," she said. "Just wait until you start talking about Ferberizing with your friends at the playground."

Richard Ferber is one of a whole crew of experts who focus exclusively on children's sleep habits. The verb Ferberize has even entered the parenting lexicon as the process of letting your child cry for progressively longer periods of time until she finally learns to fall asleep on her own. Whether or not to let baby "cry it out" seems to be the most controversial of all childcare topics. One expert claims this is an act of love - you are teaching your child a lifelong habit of good sleep patterns - while another claims that my baby will feel abandoned and suffer terribly if I ignore his cries. These books were enough to keep me up at night before my baby was born, praying that he would miraculously learn to sleep through the night on his own.

It seems to me that each of these experts relies on a heavy dose of personal interpretation as to what a baby needs and wants. One advises holding or carrying your infant as much as possible, so that she doesn't flail her arms about and waste a lot of energy on unnecessary motion. Another says to give your baby plenty of time on the floor so he can learn about this body in space. So which is it? Is my baby flailing his arms and wasting energy or learning about his body in space? When the time came I asked my baby, but he wasn't telling.

Now that I'm a mother and I've put the information in the books piled on my nightstand to the test, I've learned to pick and choose the advice that makes the most sense to me. The books I like best are the ones that support my own personal philosophy of childcare. This is probably the single most important thing I've learned through all my research. I have a personal philosophy of childcare!

Experts with their books are all well and good, but when it comes right down to it I rely on my mother's intuition for how to handle everything from diaper rash to pacifiers. The best thing about so many books is that I can find just the one to tell me I'm right.

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Copyright 2004 Kristin Stitz

Kristin Stitz is a writer who lives with her husband and two-year-old son outside of Philadelphia. Her essays on pregnancy and motherhood have appeared in Pregnancy and ePregnancy Magazines, and her short fiction has appeared in several literary journals. She is looking forward to lots of new material with the birth of her second child, due in October.