The parenting gig does not come with an instruction manual (Even if it did, who in their right minds will ever read an instruction manual anyway?). Raising a child is all about hit and trial, especially when you are new at this. And boy, have we made mistakes with sonny? If we honestly start counting, I am sure we’ll add newer and newer experiments and experiences each month to our list of epic parenting fails.
But instead, we just shrug our shoulders and move on. We laugh and learn from them, because thankfully, not all parenting mistakes are big enough to doom kids to therapy for life. And thankfully, kids don’t even remember the rookie mistakes we make in the first year (and hopefully in the second year too!) when the parental learning curve is steep and the challenges are far too many to avoid bumping into once in a while.
So without further ado, here’s our list of 10 rookie parenting mistakes we made in sonny’s first year. I hope new and would-be parents out there will get to learn from our fails. And seasoned parents will enjoy a good laugh over them 🙂
1. Bugging The Pediatrician
If there is one thing that distinguishes pediatricians from other doctors in the world is perhaps their ability to keep a straight face when asked the funniest of questions and having the patience to answer them all without sounding condescending.
From nursing questions to the disgusting poop questions, we have done it all. And I am going to bet that most parents reading this post have been in the same boat too!
We have visited sonny’s pediatrician on the flimsiest of pretexts, 3-4 days in a row, just because we wanted expert reassurance on sonny’s day-to-day activities.
We have asked poop frequency and quality questions, nursing frequency questions, weight gain questions and what not. You name it and chances are we have gone to the pediatrician and asked him about it.
And yes, we have shown him photos (yes, multiple) of sonny’s poop too, because it did not seem quite right !
We finally stopped bugging him when one fine day he just lost it (eventually!) and told us not to come to him until and unless sonny was pooping more than 17 times a day or was not pooping at all for more than 7 days in a row. Anything else was normal and did not need his attention! That day, we got the message.
Continue reading the post at FertileBrains.
