NanaKim

I am now a grandparent. I can remember bringing my daughter, my first baby, home from hospital and being very nervous about the responsibility of caring for this small person I loved so much. My daughter and her husband are now parents. I recognize how their new baby will upend their lives and I am familiar with the shock of being home with a newborn.

I feel so lucky to live only thirty minutes’ drive from their house and therefore able to help out, BUT I need to stop and think carefully first. What are my boundaries so that I can take care of myself? Where are their boundaries that I need to respect? I have raised three children, taught preschool and coached early childhood programs. It could be said that “I know a lot about babies” but so do the new parents. My daughter was raised to be confident, independent and world beating. She left home twelve years ago and has built a successful career. The new parents are very capable, organized and thoughtful adults who have been studying up on having a baby and then looking after the newborn. It is vitally important that I follow their lead as parents. They are in charge of how things will go with their baby just as I took the lead with my own infants. I was informed by new understanding of child development and infant needs at that time. I certainly made some different choices from my own mother such as co-sleeping, but I also did follow her example with breastfeeding and using terry cloth diapers.

My priority, my job, is to support the new generation of parents in whatever they decide. If and when they ask for my input, I will definitely have a lot to say, but I’m not going to impose my opinions on them. I say this because I know of many adults who want their children to parent as they did. Any deviation from that is taken as criticism of their own parenting. Feelings get hurt, arguments ensue and relationships suffer. Instead of celebrating and taking credit for their child, the new parent, the one who just made dreams of having grandchildren come true, they let ego get in the way. For reasons that are beyond me, grandparents can have very strong feelings to the point of creating conflict about topics such as the sleeping position of infants. The data tells us that there are fewer infant deaths when infants are placed on their backs to sleep. However, maybe in Grandma’s day, people were being told to put the baby to sleep on their stomach or on their side wedged with a rolled up blanket and those particular babies grew up just fine. That was then, this is now. Your child is following the data and their pediatrician’s advice so it shouldn’t be the cause of an argument or even resentment. Maybe grandparents also followed the advice of their pediatrician in contradiction of their own mothers when they first became parents. Every generation brings new learning and new ideas to parenting.

Whatever is new to me, I will learn. I have seen a lot of changes in our understanding of how best to keep children safe and support healthy development. Nobody is criticizing what was done in the past because we were all doing the best we knew based on the knowledge available. Your children, as parents are also doing their best based on the current knowledge available. I am delighted that we have the support of experts and a body of research to help us help babies thrive. We have moved on from many things that were done in the past, but we have also reinforced the wisdom of many practices that we carry with us in the present.

My role isn’t primarily parent any more although I still enjoy being a mother. I will always be their mother, but I am not the mother of my grandchild. It’s time to recognize my daughter and her husband as Mama and Papa. I can however, be on the team of parents and grandparents coming together under the leadership of the new parents to love and care for the new baby in our family.

With all that in mind, in my case, I offered to be with the new family afternoons Monday through Friday. They accepted my offer. I know how much hard work, physical, mental and emotional, goes into looking after a newborn. The brunt is born by the mother, but the father is also worn out with sleepless nights and anxiety over this fragile and precious being. Sometimes I do laundry, sometimes it’s about making tea and snacks, and sometimes it’s about holding my granddaughter and feeding her a bottle of breast milk. As I hold her, I start singing, without thinking, as all the nursery songs gradually come back to me. I’m also singing that special song just for her that I chose. I’m so grateful to be NanaKim. I love my daughter and her husband very much and I love the gift of a grandchild.