I Am The Expert On Him

As a new parent I've been given all kinds of advice and told all sorts of things. I take each piece of experienced wisdom that is given to me to heart and I listen to it. What I have learned fairly quickly (which is funny because usually it takes lots of mistakes plus space or time away from a situation for my own wisdom to appear) is that every child is different; every parent is different; there are various solutions to one problem; what may work for one child may not work for another; and what may work today may not work tomorrow! Babies are inconsistent or maybe parents are inconsistent? I don't know. (See, that is an example of my head being so "in it" with not enough space to step back and see the situation clearly that I don't know how to make sense of it.) Making those graphs on his sleeps really helps me to see things more clearly but sometimes I feel like I need to stop looking at the clock and go more with my instincts. It's a fine balance. Now I feel like I'm just yammering on and on with no particular goal in sight. Anyhoo. I came upon this article and it was like she was writing it for me. Thank you Not Just Cute dot com! I read so much on different things like, sleep or solid foods, or what to do for cradle cap or congestion, etc.  or am given advice like, "Feed him solids, that'll make him sleep through the night." or "Let him cry it out it won't hurt him." that it can become overwhelming. Here's a snippet from the article:

"My husband, who has a tendency to give sage advice, said, “At some point you just have to close the books and listen to yourself.  You are his mom.  That makes you the expert on him.”  From that perspective I was finally able to take the information that I had read, sift out the principles, and apply them in a way that felt right to me and worked best within our family." - Not Just Cute dot com

I wish someone had told me something like that in grad school! I listened to what everyone else said, bad and good critiques and rarely listened to my voice. I am a bad taker-of-critiques. Even if they were good critiques say, like, "That is such a beautiful idea you should do this and this and that and this!" I would then do what they told me rather than continue on in the direction I originally had planned. Or if it was bad say, like, "That looks like you are cutting off women's body parts."  I would toss the idea out completely instead of working with it constructively. I learned after grad school what I had done to hinder my artwork and production of it. No wonder it was a frustrating 3 years! I refuse to be frustrated for the next eternity when it comes to parenting the Bear and choose instead to give my instincts the credit that they deserve while still taking to heart the sage wisdom from friends, the expertise from within the books I've read and what knowledge the pediatrician grants me.