Nighty-Night

With two new babies in the family (my sis has recently moved into the grandmotherhood as well), there's an awful lot of discussion about sleep (or the lack thereof). And that discussion does not end at the dinner table. Sympathetic friends, concerned relatives, and "helpful" strangers are always eager to volunteer book titles, websites, blogs, and good old unsolicited advice (yes, I'm speaking to you lady in the Target checkout line) as the ultimate authority any time either my daughter or her cousin dares to make a comment on social media or anywhere else.

Everyone has an opinion. Everyone wants to share what worked for them. Tidbits like "My little Eddie was sleeping through the night when he was seventeen days old because we always put him in his crib awake" or "Make sure you feed him some cereal right before he goes to bed" or "It's perfectly okay to slip him a drop of Jack Daniels in his night-time bottle" may make the advice-giver feel superior but it doesn't do a whole lot for the sleep-deprived listener who is this close to hauling off and punching said advice-giver in the mouth (or in the case of social media, WRITE LIKE THIS).

Let's face it. Questions like:  "Why did he take a two hour nap yesterday but refuses to sleep longer than ten minutes today?" or "How can I get him to stop thinking of three a.m. as playtime?" or "Do I have to give him a hamburger to get him to sleep through the night?" are queries that have no right or wrong answer (except maybe that Jack Daniels tip) and trying to implement the laundry list of possible solutions could drive any new mom to reach for that bottle of Jack.

All of this guilt-inducing, "you're doing it wrong" helpfulness is just another reason I'm grateful to have been doing this whole mothering thing before we entered Facebookland or Twitterville. I had a dog-eared copy of Dr. Spock and my mom. That's it. Oh, I may have asked a couple of my closest friends what worked for them every now and then but I never had to suffer through the barrage of unwanted advice that new moms are currently being subjected to. If I had, I'd probably be handing over a boatload of money to the nearest psychiatrist instead of stashing it away for my next trip to Italy.

Like I said. Grateful.