My approach to mothering has thus far been somewhat laissez faire – which, for someone who (as my closest friend politely phrases it) habitually likes things to be ‘just so’, has been as much a character change as it has a revelation. Because, try as you may, babies cannot be shoehorned into a one-size-fits-all regime – regardless of what some ‘experts’ try to impress upon us.
While expecting Teddy I diligently studied a stack of pregnancy books, but ‘how to’ parenting guides didn’t factor into my reading list. ‘Baby hasn’t read the books!’ my midwife stressed in the third trimester, when I was becoming slightly anxious that I knew little more than how to swaddle beyond giving birth. ‘Use your cavewoman instinct,’ she said.
And it’s this insight teamed with Mr R’s keep-it-real-love northern temperament that has moulded the way we now parent Teddy.
