I remember my first night with my daughter. There we were all alone in the hospital room together. I barely noticed the surroundings, I was so enraptured by her face, her tiny fingers, her sweet scent, her sighs. She slept an hour or two in the little plastic warmer beside my bed. But I could not resist the urge to hold her, to let her feel my warmth and soothe her with the rhythm of my heartbeat. So I held her at my breast all night long waking every hour watching the clock tick away the night. Our first night at home was a mixture of tears and worry and fear. There was wailing and crying and worrying and then I finally realized all I had to do was soothe her at my breast -- for as long as she wanted. The pediatrician who visited my room in the hospital had told me, "Don't let her use you as a pacifier -- nurse every 2 hours -- but don't let her stay at your breast constantly." Those words kept running through my head over and over again. "Am I doing this wrong?" I kept asking myself. Allowing her to nurse whenever she needed to was my first decision to go against the grain. I realized that my heart and my instincts were a more reliable source than any physician or pediatric nurse, or mother-in-law, for that matter. So for the next several nights I would stay awake most of the night nursing the baby in every imaginable position in a rocking chair in her nursery.
I had read in several magazines and books that nursing your baby to sleep is a terrible mistake -- allowing the baby to become dependent on you to be soothed and comforted to sleep every night (what an absurd notion -- for a parent to comfort an
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