Unrealistic Expectations Of Little Babies

New parents have such high expectations of their babies. Baby will be beautiful and perfect. Baby will cry only when it is hungry, cold or has wind. Baby will know its place in the family and will not be overly demanding of its parents. Baby will require food every three hours. Baby will give its parents an uninterrupted night's sleep from 6 months. Baby will quickly become independent and will allow its mother to resume her solo social engagements. The list goes on.

The people we talk to, the books we read and the television programmes we watch all reinforce these expectations. It is when a baby does not match up to these high expectations that we demand solutions: dummies to silence crying babies; hungry baby formula for babies who insist on eating too frequently; controlled crying for babies who refuse to sleep alone through the night. Again, the list goes on.

Yesterday morning, I became all too aware of the clash between expectations and reality. I am usually wary of recounting tales of people I know because their lives are private, but in this case I hope the mother in question will not mind, because she struggles to change society's attitude to babies just as I do. This woman is the mother of quite a difficult baby, much more demanding than my daughter, and like me she has become an attachment parent without really planning to. While I am fairly happy to follow a slightly different path to most of the mothers around me, she is very conscious that she is not following the "normal" rules of parenting. I sense that she struggles to reconcile her motherly instincts, which tell her to keep her baby by her side all day and night, with her expectations of how a mother "should" interact with her baby.

So, back to yesterday morning. My friend has worried before that her ten month old baby "should" be independent enough to spend a few hours away from his mother. A quick aside to this topic: I have read in a mainstream parenting magazine that it is "unhealthy" for the mother of a nine month old not to have left her baby with babysitters at some time. Well, call me unhealthy. I am downright sick. The longest I have left Cave Baby was for an hour and a half, with her grandma, while I had my hair cut. Look at me, I'm a bad mother, I'm giving my baby far too much attention, I'm making a rod for my own back!

Right, finally, yesterday morning. I was attending a meeting with my friend; we both had the option to put our babies in a creche or keep them with us. I do not think my daughter is ready for a creche but, with the weight of society's and her own expectations, my friend decided to try her son in it. Around five minutes into the meeting, I needed to pop into the room where the creche was being held. There I saw my friend's son, distraught, crying his eyes out for the simple want of his mother. The creche supervisors were doing as they had been told, trying to comfort him but not taking him through to his mum. I could have wept. I could have scooped him up into my arms and nursed him right there. I felt my breasts tingling with the need to suckle him as I did my best to turn my back and get out of the room as quickly as possible. I just could not be there. The physical need I felt to comfort that baby was unlike anything I have ever felt for any child but my own; a feeling that I had never felt before I became a mother. I was bursting to tell my friend, "Go through and get your baby. He really needs you. He doesn't need to learn to be without you; he'll get there by himself. At the moment he just needs your love. Please help him."

But what did I actually do? I sat down, lips sealed, behaving as I was expected to, disregarding an infant's needs in favour of those of a adult. Thankfully the poor child was brought into the meeting twenty minutes later, still screaming, with swollen red eyes. He calmed down on the breast but sobbed quietly for another half hour.

Too many of our expectations are not baby friendly. Just imagine if you could be stripped of those unrealistic Victorian expectations of children. Would you think that it was desirable to leave a ten month old to cry in a room full of strangers? I certainly would not. And to my friend: if you read this, I hope you do not mind me telling this story. You are a great, long suffering mother and I know that you have turned your life upside down to do the best for your child. I hope your story can help other people to feel that it is OK for their babies not to fit the standard model.

I am off on holiday for a fortnight now so thanks for reading and I'll be back soon!