Twelve Kids in…

BYthe time you have your 12th child, people assume you know a thing or two about babies. Ha! I’m here to tell you the opposite: By the time you’ve had 12 children, you know too much. Which is to say, you know nothing.

When my first baby was born, when I was at the ripe old age of 22, I was ready. Oh boy, was I ready. I had read all the books. I had charts. I knew when to swaddle and when to unswaddle. I knew the precise minutes between feedings and the exact optimal angle to hold her at after burping to prevent colic. “We need to put her on a schedule,” I told my poor husband. “Babies need structure!” So we ran our lives like a boot camp. She napped at 9 a.m., whether she was tired or not. She ate at 11:30 sharp, hungry or not. There were rules!

By baby number three, I had learned something new: that everything I thought I knew was wrong. According to the newer, better books — published in the four years since my first child was born — I was practically abusing my children.

Schedules? Rigid!

Swaddling? Barbaric! Babies need their mothers on demand. You can’t spoil an infant; you can only scar her by denying her what she needs when she needs it. So out went the charts and the timers and in came a new philosophy. “Attachment parenting,” I told my husband, as I strapped the baby to my chest. “The body knows what it’s doing. Just listen to the baby.”