Accidental Parenting?

Have you ever tried typing with one hand? Well I have become fairly good at it lately due to a nursing or sleeping baby in the other arm. Like right now I have a sleeping babe in my left arm because she wouldn't fall asleep for her morning nap so I nursed her, she fell asleep, and now I don't want to put her down because she will most likely wake up. Which brings me to my post title, "accidental parenting."

In an effort to get Bethany on a day time schedule I borrowed some books from my friend Erin ( to whom I am grateful). A couple of these books were  written by the "Baby Whisperer" and she introduced me to a new phrase: Accidental Parenting, to which apparently I am guilty of many times over. Accidental parenting is when a parent does something "wrong" because it gets the baby to go to sleep or to do some other desired behavior. "Wrong" things include but are not limited to:
Nursing the baby to sleep
Rocking to sleep
Taking the baby for a walk in the stroller to fall asleep
but the worst of them all . . . letting the baby cry it out!

So according to this author I am the worst form of an accidental parent because I have committed all the "accidents." Including, I'm sure, some that are not even mentioned like letting Bethany take her entire nap in the moby wrap.

Before reading the book we had started letting Bethany cry it out when we put her to bed at night. The first night she cried for 45 minutes straight and then on and off for another hour and a half before she finally fell asleep for the rest of the night and woke up at 6:30 the next morning. The next day I started reading the book, it said never to let your baby cry it out because she will "feel abandoned by you . . . and lose her trust in you." Talk about guilt trip! So what is the correct way to get your baby to sleep you ask? Well, let me explain it to you according to the Baby Whisperer; you put the baby in her crib when she is drowsy, if she starts to cry you pick her back up, hold her only until she has stopped crying and then put her back down. If she starts crying again you repeat the process, oh wait, before picking the baby up you are first supposed to put your hand on her tummy to see if that will calm her. The author states that this process usually won't last more than 20 minutes until the baby falls asleep. She goes on to say though that she has personally picked up/put down a baby around 150 times in one sitting. "But isn't it worth it so your baby doesn't feel abandoned?" she says.

As a result of reading this I was feeling pretty bad and helpless because, lets face it Bethany would be more like 300 times. Add in the fact that picking her up does not necessarily calm her. I can literally pick her up and she won't stop crying for 10-20 minutes, then put her down and have to start the whole process over again.

After having some time to process this information and talking to other people these are my conclusions:

• I know my parent's let me cry it out, and I have no conscious memories of ever feeling abandoned by my parents.
• Even though we don't have a daily routine, I am so grateful Bethany sleeps well at night.
• It really doesn't bother me that sometimes Bethany has to take her nap in the moby wrap, or that sometimes I nurse her to sleep.

and finally

• Until relatively recently in history, wasn't everybody an accidental parent? I highly doubt our great-grandmothers were reading books on parenting. I figure as long as I am seeking God's wisdom and lifting Bethany up in prayer daily, she is going to be okay.

Don't worry though, this does not mean that I am not open to advice or that I will never read another parenting book. It just means I am taking everything with a grain of salt. :)