Don't Sweat the Small Things

I'm still pretty new to all this parenting gubbins. Five weeks isn't a long time. Not even a full summer holiday's worth of experience under my belt.

I wrote a post earlier this week about dummies. Perhaps you read it. Perhaps you were one of the many people who were kind enough to leave me a comment which would reassure me that, actually, I shouldn't worry about giving The Creature a dummy/soother/pacifier/gobstopper. If you were, I thank you. You made me feel better about the choice I'd made and I'm grateful for that.

A few people expressed the sentiment that is the title of this post. They're right. The one I took particular notice of was @tricky_customer. She has a blog which you should read: http://trickycustomer.wordpress.com/.

She doesn't sweat the small stuff, because she's got too much of the big stuff going on. I won't try to re-tell her story here, go and see it for yourself. Needless to say, theirs is an inspiring family.

It's a great piece of advice for a new parent, along with number eleven on @SAHDandproud's list over here. I am the first to admit I've found it difficult to not be drawn into the swirling melee (how can I put the correct accent on that? I can't be bothered to look it up just now) of conflicting advice and evidence surrounding parenting. It's fucking confusing.

So when your new baby, your first baby, the baby you waited what seemed like forever for, does something a bit confounding, it's easy to panic. To run through EVERY option for calming a baby down in the space of fifteen minutes. When none of it works, it's equally easy to panic again and assume there's something wrong.

There's nothing wrong. It's just that he's a baby. Babies cry. A LOT. But it's just crying. Just a small thing. So don't sweat the small things.

It's going to be my mantra for parenting from now on, because if it's not I might go actually mental.

We're getting there I think. This evening we didn't sit in, in front of some random televised shite. We tried to feel like real people for a bit, took a little walk down to the pub we used to visit every week to do a quiz. We both had a drink. A sit down and a chill out for an hour. Mrs L was wearing the baby in a wrap and he behaved beautifully. For a minute we even forgot he was there at all.

Does that make us sound awful? No, I don't think it does, but there I go again, worrying. Don't worry, I've stopped now.