Parenting choices

When you get pregnant for the first time you suddenly become aware of a whole new set of conversation topics that are hot topics and points for debate among the members of society who have children. These topics all center around parenting and how people choose to parent. Should I circumcise my son? Should I give him a pacifier? Should I use breastmilk or formula? Should I let him sleep in my bed or in a bassinet or crib? Cloth diapers or disposable? How long should he keep his pacifier/bottle? The list of parenting choices goes on and on, and the debates on what is the right choice are usually quite heated. Truth of the matter is, do whatever you feel is best for your child. And for you for that matter.

We made different decisions on parenting after much discussion, or after a good deal of research on my side of things. But some things I attribute to dumb luck. Like co-sleeping, letting Davy sleep in our bed with us was never really an option. Why? Because the dogs sleep with us and they tend to get in our way and mess up our backs at night and I had no doubt that they might accidentally hurt the baby if we had the baby in bed with us. So no baby in bed with us. Which turned out perfect for us because now when I hear about other people who can't figure out how to get their toddler to sleep in their own bed I am happy that Davy never got into the habit of sleeping with Mommy and Daddy. And bedtimes are pretty much perfect now.

Another thing is bottles and pacifiers. We let Davy have bottles and pacifiers, but we never let him have a bottle at night, mostly because I had fear of SIDS from it. Well now when I hear about other parents who can't figure out how to get their toddler to give up the night time bottle I am glad we never started that tradition. And pacifiers, like I said we let Davy have pacifiers, he took them to bed with him too. But around 14 - 16 months we lost his pacifier, he did pretty well without it and once we found the paci again we just started to phase it out. We took the paci from an all the time thing to a night time thing, and then we just kind of got rid of it all together. Now when he sees a pacifier he doesn't think of it as something he needs. He even knows that pacifiers go to babies and when he finds one with a baby around he will give it to the baby.

Did we intend to make choices that would work best for us in those regards? Not really, we were first time parents with no knowledge of how everything would work out for us. But I am pretty glad that some of our choices worked out so good for us. Not that the choices of others aren't the best choices for them, but for us our choices have worked pretty good so far.