This thing with my mom is turning into a ridiculously epic power struggle. <\/p>\n
Her problem is that when it comes to T, I get to make the decisions and she’s quite confident that I’m doing it (i.e. everything) wrong.<\/p>\n
So even though I know in my head that I should be over the moon grateful that she’s willing to help out by taking the absolute worst shift with a newborn baby, I end up acting like a sour, angry teenager every time I see her. <\/p>\n
The ridiculous arguments she insists on picking with me don’t make the situation feel any less like junior high. <\/p>\n
For example tonight we got into an argument about whether or not T should have a night light in his room. I say, yes, I mean I think most children in this country have a night light to keep the bogeymen away right? She thinks it’s going to cause childhood insomnia and is the reason that T doesn’t want to fall asleep tonight. (Nevermind that he fell asleep just fine with it every other night). <\/p>\n
Also tonight I informed her that T must be having a growth spurt because from 10am on he ate every 2 hours until 6pm at which time he started feeding every hour. She replied in Chinese, something along the lines of, “That’s unacceptable, what are the grown ups (watching him) supposed to do?”<\/p>\n
Um…deal with it? If the baby is having a growth spurt and hungry, you feed him. It doesn’t matter if it’s every 2 hours, every hour or every 15 minutes. I’m not understanding what her philosophy even is in this situation. Let him be short? <\/p>\n
The Type A personality in me is having a really tough time with this arrangement because I feel like her lack of respect for my mothering choices leads to her kind of winging it and doing it in ways she think are better but that I don’t agree with. I’m not some crazy attachment parent who believes babies should always be held and never, ever cry for a single second, but I also don’t think I want my newborn baby crying it out when all he really wants is to be fed, changed, or held. And yes, I do count his need to be held as a legitimate need and something that I should respond to. But all I hear from my parents (even my dad is in on this part of it) that I’m spoiling him by holding him too much. <\/p>\n
I feel terrible about what a little shit I’m being towards my mom but I can’t spend every night arguing about what I’m doing and what makes sense and why. I just want to be a mom. And I want the person who’s helping me out with that endeavor to go along with what I’ve already decided. Non-judgemental advice is more than welcome but without any obligation to use it. None of that I’m going to get from my mom. <\/p>\n
I have a feeling that before this week is over there will be tears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This thing with my mom is turning into a ridiculously epic power struggle. Her problem is that when it comes to T, I get to make the decisions and she’s quite confident that I’m doing it (i.e. everything) wrong. So even though I know in my head that I should be over the moon grateful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baby-t","category-navel-gazing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}