Raising Babies

I just read my daughter's blog and she's sadly reminiscing about how many mistakes she made raising her two sons. She's thankful they still love her.

I gave birth to my first daughter when I was still 17 years old. Poor baby (and I'm referring to both of us). Kim weighed 9 lbs. 8 oz. (ouch) and came home with a teenage mother who had read somewhere you should feed a baby every 4 hours. Mothers of today who feed on demand will wince at that but how was I to know differently? I never thought to ask my own mother or grandmother so they thought I knew what I was doing. Poor baby (yeh, both of us).

I was 19 when baby girl number two came along. I was a little better prepared for Cindy because I'd had Kim to practice on for 18 months. The problem was that I needed a D&C for 3 months after she was born but didn't know it. In those days we didn't have a government health insurance plan so I couldn't afford to see a doctor about my weakness and fainting spells. Both Kim and Cindy were seldom held by me for those months because I was too weak to lift them. Today I understand that we missed out on some very important bonding.

Dennis and I behaved ourselves and Shelley wasn't born til 4 1/2 years later. I was 23 1/2 and Dennis was almost 27 so we were at the top of our game as far as raising babies by that time. Either Shelley was a perfect baby or we had learned how to appreciate the little life we'd created. Either way, she was the easiest of all to raise.

As in every life and marriage, circumstances control the outcome no matter how good your intentions are. We made mistakes but we did the best we could. Neither one of us had very good role models to show us the way so we had to improvise. Our girls grew into wonderful women who never failed to make us proud of them. Secretly, we were never sure how they managed to survive our parenting.