One reason I haven’t posted in the last day-and-a-half:
You may remember where this sweater was a while back:
I’d finished the hood before the boy arrived, but sleeves and button placket seemed an utter impossibility. Between the sheer effort of being present for all the boy’s needs, and my eff’d up wrists… but my wrists have been improving, and on Sunday, the Super Bowl and my loving husband conspired to give me free time. While Jonah slept on Scott for pretty much the entire game, I got back into knitting.
Look at that photo above again. See? SLEEEEEEVE!
I didn’t think to worry about the soon to be added buttons being a choking hazard until one of my swim-class-mom friends brought it up. Am now considering trying to put a zipper on instead. But maybe that’s a little extreme — and most likely beyond my skill level. (This is the first garment I’ve ever knitted that wasn’t a hat or a scarf, and I don’t sew.)
Speaking of stuff I’d rather not worry about… Took Jonah to a new cranial-sacral person (the last guy, I didn’t really like). This woman did good work. That is to say, I was pleased with what she did to help his digestion — she also does “visceral manipulation” and claims that he doesn’t have to be spitting up, with her help — and to release tension leftover from his vacuum-birth, but what she told me a propos of nothing — feh!
I mean, if there was something wrong with Jonah’s hips, fine, warn me that Bjorns and Ergos and Mobys worn in the similar split-legs style are, in her opinion, the devil’s carrying implement.
He’s not having hip problems. He could be? She is on a crusade apparently, against seated carriers, as well as bouncers, exersaucers, don’t even get her started on the infant car seat, and anything else that has a baby sitting up before he can do so on his own. She says the baby’s hip bones are not fused yet or floating or something and that these items compress the hip.
Okay, really, enough already. The Bjorn is the BEST way to get my baby from the front door, down 36 steep stairs, to the car, and both Bjorn and Moby do a mighty fine job when it comes to bouncing the boy for daytime naps, keeping him close while I putter around the house, taking walks, etc. I suppose I could get a sling. But, sheeeeeeesh! I’m too tired for this.
Where’s the research proving the idea about hips and the Bjorn? How does this person come up with her ideas? How does she know any of this is true?
If my Western medicine doctor pronounced on matters such as these I would ask to see the research. The downside about pursuing alternative treatments: there is not a lot of research into results, and people can just come up with ideas and implement them with no accountability.
Why is this person an authority? Why is cranio-sacral treatment an authority on all matters such as baby carriers? Just because the person has skills in manipulation of body parts and other types of healing does not make her an authority on everything. She has ideas she believes in. Whether these ideas are based on anything but fantasy is open to question.
We can see in the case of Baby Wise that a man has an idea about infant care, publishes a book proclaiming his idea, and parents harm their babies by trying to implement the idea to the max. Let the parent beware of pronouncements by experts, whoever they are. I mean, just because the expert keeps a Buddha altar in her office and wears organic cotton doesn’t mean that she is any less dogmatic or deluded than the Christian right-winger scribbling parenting books concocted from his fears and projections.
Trust your instincts and then let go of worrying about it.
You go Leila!
Funny that you’d mention slings, I just ranted about them in my blog. They’re not all they’re cracked up to be imo. I think they work better when the baby can sit up in them. Some people have a lot of success with them though, so maybe my situation is unusual(?)
Athena’s last blog post..Things ‘they’ don’t tell you about baby products