month two

In a couple days the baby will be 8 weeks old. I assume some day I will stop thinking about his age in weeks? It might be a while. 

The only thing he really cares about is food, so that's no change from last month. A big, big change is that he no longer sleeps during the day unless I force him to by putting him in his crib and swaddling him. Until about midway through week 6 he slept most of the day anywhere I put him—his swing, the stroller, his pack and play, my arms—but now he will stay awake indefinitely until he ends up screaming bloody murder. And it turns out, if babies don't sleep during the day they don't sleep at night, either. It took a couple days for me to figure out he had stopped napping, and then it took a couple days for him to figure out how to nap, and that week was pretty brutal. Very little sleep was had by all. 

During this week I broke down and bought a couple advice books on babies and sleeping—I thought that a nap schedule would emerge organically when he was like 3 months old, I didn't realize that he would suddenly go on a sleep strike at six weeks and make himself (and me) inconsolable. I read these books, and on the margins they were helpful. (It would never have occurred to me to put the baby down for a nap an hour or so after he woke up, or to put him to bed at 5:30pm, for example.) On the whole, though, I read 300+ pages and all the useful useful stuff could have been relayed to me in about 10. 

We're doing somewhat better now with the napping, but my position on advice remains unchanged: I don't like it. I particularly dislike advice books. The authors are all so certain and they contradict each other constantly. And they all go too far—instead of just validating the problem (that yes, you are not crazy, babies don't sleep automatically during the day and you have to help them) and giving you a few tips on what to do, they all promise you a solution. To a woman who is very sleep deprived, it is cruel to promise that your baby will sleep for 8 hours at a stretch if you just follow this specific program in minute, painstaking detail. Life is not that simple. And you will not be able to follow any specific program in detail because every baby (and perhaps more importantly, every parent) is different. Ultimately, you're really just going to have to use your best judgment. 

But no one would pay money for a book that just told you to use your best judgment, so here we are. I've been thinking a lot about Agnes Callard through this experience, because she writes all the time about how much she hates advice. I couldn't find the specific article but I'm pretty sure that somewhere she says she finds unsolicited advice to be a kind of aggression. I wouldn't go quite that far, since sometimes people really do know more than you and can help. My philosophy is better summed up by this quote: I don't think anyone can, or should want, to be told how to live. I have previously succumbed to the desire to be told how to live and I have deeply regretted it every single time. 

Someone giving you advice on how to get a baby to sleep is hardly advice on how to live, of course, but I do think that once you start organizing your life according to someone else's experience you're on a slippery slope. Being totally inflexible when someone is trying to help you is also no good, of course. It's a fine line. And I guess I'll have lots of chances to practice walking this line, since there is endless advice on parenting and I know nothing about being a parent. I will probably break down once again and buy more advice books when we reach the next stage of inconsolable crying, but until then I'll try and remember to just use my best judgment. It's free, at least.