MISTAKES I'VE MADE AS A MUM

When you start out as a new parent, it's really hard to find what works for you. Everyone can recommend you parenting methods or products, you can even read books on how to train your baby into behaving certain ways, but truthfully, every single baby is completely different and whilst you're trying to figure out who your baby is in this world - you make mistakes. Or at least I certainly did. Being a Mum second time around didn't make things much different, I learned from previous mistakes but there are always new ones to be made. It's easy to highlight everything that is going well for you, but I think it's important to talk about this topic too as I'm sure I wont be alone or it could help someone else out. Although it is quite exposing and opening myself up to be judged, I always made decisions with the best intentions - even if they didn't work out so well.

Weaning with Fruit
I can tell you right now, this is a road to sweetness and do not do it. I wasn't all clued up back when I weaned Noah so when I naively saw fruit purees as first foods aimed at 4+ (that was the guideline then not 6) I assumed I was meant to do that first, which of course you can anyway. So I began, Noah tried apples, peaches, bananas, the lot and I felt really proud that he seemed to seriously love his fruit. Then I thought it was vegetable time but Noah thought otherwise, it had only been maybe 2 or 3 weeks with fruit but that boy had developed a sweet tooth (gum). It took quite some time to get Noah around to gobbling his vegetables and I knew it was down to what I had done, it wasn't the end of the world though as by the time he was 10 months he would eat anything and everything, he still does. With Patrick I learned from this and fruit puree is more of a pudding for him or to mix a little bit into his breakfast porridge, not only does it teach him that fruit is a lovely treat as opposed to sweets, it makes sure he learns to enjoy veggies first.

Rocking to sleep.
Something we got into the habit of doing with Noah, would be holding him in our arms to let him sleep. For the first few months it would be 'enjoying the newborn cuddles', and him just accidentally falling asleep on us when we held him. Slowly but surely that boy began to rely on having our arms wrapped firmly around him to fall asleep, then after some more time even that wasn't enough and we would have to rock him or bounce on a birthing ball with him in our arms. I remember doing this even still when he was 8 months, and if you imagine Noah was born a couple of ounces short of 10lb, you can only imagine how much this ached our arms and backs. Thankfully though we 
persevered and he grew out of it, I know you can use control crying methods but I just didn't fancy that at all. It was our fault completely and yet again we somehow got into the same mistake with Patrick. After having a baby that slept so well for six months it all changed and thanks to controlled crying we now have our sleeping son back.

Silence at nap times.
With Patrick this kind of happened accidentally. For a few days in the week Noah is at Nursery or with my Nan / Mum, so the house is just me and Patrick. It's nice because I get to spend 1 to 1 time with him just as I did Noah and it means Noah isn't constantly being fobbed off with one minute I'm feeding the baby but it also means when Patrick naps, there really isn't much noise around. I may have the TV on or I may be off doing bits around the house. You would think this is ideal but it isn't. On the days then when Noah is home, if he drops a car, presses a noisy toy, that's Patrick awake. It can be frustrating but there isn't really much I can do to combat it. White noise definitely helps though.

Juice over Water
A pretty stupid mistake to make but nonetheless I did it. There was a reason behind this however. When Noah was 7/8 months, we took a trip to Tunisia (think back before it was pretty war-torn) and it was lovely, however it was also searingly hot. This didn't matter too much as Noah has my colouring and can cope with both the heat and sun very well, we'd weaned him early as recommended at that time and he was pretty good, eating a wide variety of adult food at that stage. Water however, another story, he just didn't want it, he'd rather go without. We knew this couldn't happen so we did take some squash with us, popping just a couple of drops into his water to get him to drink some - this worked wonderfully and our boy stayed hydrated. He also stayed pretty accustomed to this and expected it to continue at home. Thankfully when he began nursery a couple of months later, where the choice is milk or water, he soon changed his tune and guzzled it down like no-ones business. This is a mistake I am not making with P, he already thoroughly enjoys water at 8 months and is happy taking 5oz daily.

Dressing him up.
With Noah I look back on some photos and I truly want to slap myself. I see a 2 week old Noah in some horrendous elasticated waste jeans (that were 3-6m sizing and huge) on him with some form of shirty bodysuit. It looked horrendous but I couldn't see it. I thought it was 'cute' that my son was all dressed up. Which maybe it was at the time but he has the whole world to grow in, he's now 3 and wearing big boy clothes all the time - why did I push it on him so young? Why was I so desperate to see him in clothes that looked ridiculous? Don't get me wrong, jeans and tee's are adorable, but they weren't on my two week old especially when they were ridiculously big. With Patrick if we're home then he's in a sleepsuit without a shadow of a doubt. To me a sleepsuit signals baby and I know I'll look back in a year when I see one of his and squeal at the thought of him as he is now. I'm trying to take in every single moment and learn from my mistake of dressing Noah up to be older than he was.
So as you can see, I haven't always made the best choices, as I'm sure a lot of us don't at some point in time. It's nice to know that even though at times some of these things seemed like the end of the world and would worry me no end, they all ceased either when or before he reached one year old. Babies go through phases and you might have a veggie loving water hater one minute, and the next day they can wake up yearning for fruit and water. You just never know!