Preparing for Parenting
If you are like most new parents you pour your energy into the pregnancy. You write a birth plan. You have assembled a team of wonderful providers. The baby comes, and now… what? Does that sound familiar?
Worse yet, doctors come at you in the first hours after baby is born with a list of things they want you to do. They position it in dramatic terms, and you don’t feel qualified to say “No.” So what do you do?
The first step is to stay out of that defensive position. Be proactive. My intake form asks the same questions to every pregnant patient in my office. I want them to think about the big picture items, so I find out if any of their birth providers have talked with them about:
- Breastfeeding
- Circumcision
- Vaccination
- Co-Sleeping
- Baby wearing
- Car Seat Installation
I like to open conversation doors. As a physician, I don’t dictate what someone should or shouldn’t do. I ask my patients to make decisions based on their values and share with them the places that have informed my reference points. Below are a few of them.
- Let Nature be your Guide
- Value Autonomy, even your child’s
- The Innate Intelligence in your baby put all those cells together, it must know what it’s doing
- Don’t Leash the Puppy
Resources
- Check out this podcast, Happy Births, Happy Babies: Hosted by Dr. Jay Warren
- Read these Ina May Gaskin Quotes
- Read One Conscious Path In Parenting by Dr. Jeanne Ohm
- The Circumcision Decision, the article that shifted my mind on the topic
