I know that sometimes I repeat myself more than garlic and I can spend days talking about the same thing (I talk about the arms issue), but it is that for some reason I don't know, several mothers accompanied by their respective mothers are coming to the nursing office lately, the grandmothers, because they seem not to give credit to what recent mothers tell them.
They come to a review, sometimes the 2-month, sometimes the 4, sometimes the 6, enter with the creature's grandmother and tell me something like: "Look Armando, I bring you my mother to tell you about food and arms".
And where I say food and arms I can say about the dream, about sheltering them as much or as little and other topics, although the most common are those two, because they are the ones that most worry those who once took care of us when we were babies, that their grandchildren eat and are well fed and that they don't get too much in their arms, "that they get used to it".
Do I explain such strange things?
So, in those moments, I feel a little weird. If the grandmother has to come to verify that what her daughter says is true, if she has to hear from my mouth what I have already explained to the baby's mother, Isn't it that I say very strange things? Because many times I think that I am explaining, precisely, many things that they already did as young people.
As far as food is concerned, I can understand that telling a mother that she can breastfeed for as long as she wants sounds strange. They can understand about 3 to 6 months, and from 6 months also, but to many, that of having a child who walks asking for chest in the street, the bus or in some enclosure, at seen from others, it seems that they do not feel so good because you already know, "what will they say, such a great child".
Obviously you can not generalize, that most grandmothers do not come to the office because it seems good, or not looking good, they do not get too much into how their daughter (or son) does, but I talk about them, of which They come to listen to me or ask for explanations.
A few years ago we did say things about food that collided a bit: gluten at 8 months, fish at 12, lentils at 18 and all a bit like that, with date and limitations, when they said "well in my time we didn't have so many views and everything was going great. " Science has proved them right and today we know that it is not necessary to restrict ages so much to give food and that after 6 months they can eat practically everything (let's see if one day I talk about it).
If we talk about the dream, or take the children in their arms, then there will be everything. Many grandmothers insist on it, on how bad it is to accustom children to their arms, but interestingly, when they are with babies, there are some who do not leave them for a moment. Imagine the face of a mother who does nothing but repeat that he takes little, so that he does not get used to it, and then who says it takes the opportunity to give all the love that the child demands. Imagine, in addition, if that mother is paying attention and is depriving herself of taking him even when his body yells at him internally not to let him cry. Other grandmothers, on the other hand, catch them and see perfect to catch them, probably because when they were mothers they did the same.
Do I really have to be the one with the last word?
And hey, I don't care. They come, they ask and I give my arguments. I don't try to convince anyone or start a debate or war. Whenever I talk about babies I do trying to put myself in their place and trying to give them a voice, to explain what I think they feel and to tell why I think they do what they do. I can be wrong, sure, but they come to me for my advice and my opinion, and I am delighted.
And I don't speak categorically, but I argue, I explain why I say what I say, the same way I do when I write here on the blog. I do not know if they are convinced, if at least they leave with the doubt or if they go out the door and tell the daughter that I do not say more than chimes, but at least I know that the mother was looking for an ally, that the baby in a certain way mode also needs me and that makes me feel a little at peace.
The only "but" that I have left is to realize that it seems that I have to be the one who dissolves the dispute between mother and daughter, or mother and mother-in-law (or mother and son or mother-in-law and son, although this is unusual). Can't you fix it between them? Can't the baby's mother, as such, thank the grandmother's advice, with the tagline of "but I will do it in the way I consider best and with which we are all most comfortable"?
That they have already done so and they only need a final confirmation: "Look, I only do what they advise me, and I agree. If not, you come one day to the consultation and tell him the same thing you say to me." And there, in the consultation, I am saying very strange things, it seems, about children. Things as weird as It's okay to breastfeed for as long as you want, that it's okay to take the children in arms and give them all our love and that all that It will not make you stupid, badly raised, psychopaths or criminals. I don't know another thing, but that doesn't.
