My "Why I'm Not Babywise" Story, Ezzo Week 2011

This is a repost in honor of  Ezzo Week with Tulip Girl

Welcome to the  Why I'm Not Babywise Series

Before reading any further please read my introduction and disclaimer here. This is the second post in the series. Gary Ezzo wrote a book called On Becoming Babywise, and also material and curriculum called Growing Kids God's Way. I have only read On Becoming Babywise 1995 edition. 

You would think someone like me would be a perfect candidate for Babywise. I am very Type A (but being married to a type B has helped me calm down a bit), and I love planning. I hate to not know what my calendar holds or what my day is going to look like. I like to be in charge of my schedule and I love to be on time. I hate being late and I hate canceling appointments. I like predictability, and I am not prone to being flexible.  Oh, and I love sleep. I mean, who doesn't? (Being in the south has really challenged my personality in a lot of these areas. These folks are just overall more laid back).

So of course when I heard about the principles in Babywise when I was in college it sounded great. As a college student, I especially loved sleep. Getting a daily nap in was very important, right? You remember those carefree college days. So when I heard about getting your baby to sleep through the night at a very young age and getting them on a predictable schedule it sounded wonderful! I don't think I knew at the time that these principles came from a book called Babywise, but I am pretty sure they did.
Also in college I was learning more about reformed theology and human depravity. The Bible clearly teaches that we are sinful from conception and are born sinners. Babies are sinners. I remember using this illustration as an analogy several times when I was sharing about sin: "If you have ever been around a newborn baby it is clear to see that we are born sinful. They are so selfish and only want their own way. They cry all the time because they are selfish and sinful and want their needs met." (I now see that although we are all born sinful, a newborn baby's cry is not an expression of that sin. A newborn baby's cry is a reflex and a newborn baby cries to communicate, not to manipulate. )
Then as I graduated and many of my friends started having babies, I started hearing about the principles in Babywise a lot more. It still sounded great to me. One of my close friends was telling me about how her babies would start sleeping through the night around 8 weeks or so. This sounded simply heavenly to me. She also told me about "cry it out" and this sounded fine too. If this cry it out method was helping them sleep through the night at 8 weeks then it couldn't be all bad, could it?There was even another girl we went to college with that posted some stuff on facebook about "crying it out" being bad for babies and we talked about how crazy of an idea this was. How ironic that I go to this girl now for advice, and that people now probably talk about how crazy my ideas are. Hah! How the tables have turned, huh?

Then I got married and a year later conceived a baby. I began researching pregnancy and childbirth options and decided on homebirth.  For that story click here. After entering into the world of homebirth I began to be exposed to a more natural approach to parenting and started hearing terms like "attachment parenting". I was leery of attachment parenting because of common myths I had heard about it. I didn't want to raise a spoiled bratty baby after all.  Towards the beginning of my pregnancy I was convinced that I would read and implement Babywise. I bought this book at a local bookstore early in my pregnancy but didn't read it right away. Instead I began reading birth books that leaned in the more natural direction since I was planning a homebirth. I also took a birthing class and a breastfeeding class along with my husband that leaned towards more of a natural style of parenting. We read a couple of articles on "attachment" but the teaching didn't directly advocate attachment parenting. Still,  I started thinking that there might be a different way then just Babywise.

Then, a friend loaned me a book that changed the course of my parenting.  When she loaned it to me she said that a friend of hers that didn't like Babywise gave it to her. At this point I was still kinda thinking, "Why wouldn't someone like Babywise?" I took it and decided I would read it just to get a different perspective. Why not, right?
After finishing up all my birth books, I picked up this book... The Complete Book of Christian Parenting & Child Care by Dr. Sears. I loved it right away.  What?! A Christian that teaches something other than fear based parenting and crying it out methods? This book totally changed my perspective on babies and parenting. Dr. Sears coined the phrase "attachment parenting", although mothers and fathers have been practicing the principles of attachment parenting for centuries. Needless to say, this started me down the path of thinking that maybe Babywise wasn't the wisest way to parent a baby. At least not as a cut and dry method, or a one size fits all program for every baby.

I decided I still wanted to read Babywise so I could see what all the hype was about and understand where my friends were coming from and what they were being taught by this Gary Ezzo guy. I read it from cover to cover. I will admit there are some worthwhile things to learn about in this book, but several other more helpful baby friendly books talk about routine and breastfeeding much more thoroughly and sensitively. Most of this book, and the general attitude of Gary Ezzo, rubbed me the wrong way. There are several things in this book that I disagree with that I will address in later posts.

After reading Babywise I was even more convinced that I did not want to do things this way. I wanted to follow my God-given mothering insticts and I wanted to depend on the Spirit to parent my baby, not rules and methods laid out by a man. I wanted to model the servant-leadership of Christ to my baby. I wanted to seek to put her first as Philippians 2 teaches. If I want my baby to see Christ through me and to see what kind of Father God is I have to model that to her. I found many of the principles in Babywise to be unbiblical. I also found that many issues that are non-biblical Ezzo turned into commands and musts that God never intended or laid out in His word.

I am so glad that I came across this different way of parenting, this natural, instinctive way of parenting, this attached, bonded style of parenting, this family-centered style of parenting, this gentle, baby sensitive style of parenting.

I am so glad that the Lord showed me that He is the only One who can show us how to raise kids God's way. He is the ultimate authority on parenting, and it is on He that I depend on every day to lead me and guide me as I parent my baby girl. He created each baby in his/her mother's womb with different temperaments and unique needs, and He is the expert on parenting each baby. It is on Him that we should lean on.

For more on my views of parenting you can check out this post.

Please stay with me as I go through specific methods and principles that Gary Ezzo teaches that I believe to be medically and biblically inaccurate, and most of all why they didn't/wouldn't have worked for us. The rest of the posts I hope to keep much shorter. I know I 'm long winded. Thanks for reading to the end!
Please remember as you post comments not to attack one another as mothers but to critique the principles of Babywise, not those that implement various principles he teaches. Please give one another grace as we all seek to parent our babies the best way we know how. 


Well, what about you? What is your story in Why You're Not Babywise, or Why You are Babywise?

My Story. Part 1: Life before I met Christ

Childhood:
I am from Southern IL near Saint Louis and grew up with my parents and two little brothers, along with a really tight-knit extended family. My grandparents were and still are devout Catholics but my family just went occasionally. I grew up believing in God and enjoying going to church but I had no concept of what it meant to follow Jesus and live for Him. I never heard the gospel growing up. I thought if I was good and didn’t do anything awful like murder someone I would go to heaven.  For the most part I was a goody goody and really wanted to please my parents, make good grades, etc. I spent most of my time doing ballet and reading and doing school work. I thought a lot about God and heaven when one of my great uncles died and then my dog the year later, but I still had no concept of being a Christian.
Junior High/High School:
I still thought about God every so often and went to mass occasionally but I more cared about extra-curriculars and being popular. I was finally part of the popular crowd in 8th grade and didn’t care as much about being a goody goody. My freshman year I got drunk once just spending the night at a friends house and it was awful and I never had any desire to do so again. My girl friends and I hung out with the cool high school guys and dated guys that liked to party and be rebellious and we thought it was pretty cool. I started putting so much significance in guys and what they thought of me, and I always wanted to make sure I had a boyfriend. I was desperately searching for significance and purpose. I went through some very low times where I wondered what the point of living was. I just didn't have any inner joy. My happiness was based on my circumstances. During this same time I was in choir and making friends there. There were several Christians in there that were befriending me and inviting me to church so I went occasionally to youth group with them. For a few months I was really interested in learning more about God, but when summer came along I was busy with the dance team and hung out with those girls and their boyfriends. For the first half of my sophomore year I didn’t really go to youth group and went through a time where I just decided I needed to be good and spiritual on my own so I tried to figure that out. I tried to be moral and good on my own. I even bought a "true love waits" ring and a "what would Jesus do" bracelet. I was trying to slowly become a Christian externally, but it was not working. My friends kept inviting me to youth events and invited me to Disciple Now and I agreed to go. Leading up to that weekend I remember thinking that I really needed Jesus but I just didn’t know how to go about becoming a Christian. The first night of the retreat I heard the gospel preached very clearly and I knew I need to become a Christian. God was very clearly drawing me to Himself my whole entire life and His grace was irresistible to me at this point, and He gave me the faith to trust in Him.

So What About Growing Kids God's Way?

I talk a lot about Babywise because that is the only Ezzo book I've read, so what about the rest of their material?

Here is a GREAT post by tulip girl with links to TONS of other resources!

What about GKGW?

Ezzo Week with Tulip Girl

In honor of the 8th Annual Ezzo Week hosted by fellow blogger, Tulip Girl, I will be reposting a few of my favorite Babywise posts. 


But go ahead and click around on all of them that interest you, and please do check out Tulip Girl's blog. Tons of valuable info and resources to be found indeed!



Welcome to the Why I'm Not Babywise Series. The author of On Becoming Babywise, Garry Ezzo, also wrote curriculum geared towards Christians called Growing Kids God's Way. I have only read the 1995 edition of On Becoming Babywise. I have never read GKGW or Toddlerwise or any other Gary Ezzo "wise" books. So it is only to Babywise that I can speak. I have heard of principles he lays out in GKGW so that may come through a bit in my writing, but I never read it myself. Welcome to the my first blogging series!
 An Intro Please read this disclaimer and intro before reading any of the other posts or you won't understand the context of any other posts)

 My Story
The Author's Character Counts  
My Prayer as a New Parent
From mainstream mama to "crazy" mama. One mom's story 
I'm "that mom" in Chapter One, except I'm not PART ONE
I'm "that mom" PART TWO 
Wisdom from a Veteran Mom of 4
Are babies born to BE SERVANTS or to BE SERVED?
Babywise is NOT the Bible: Parenting by the Law or by the Spirit?
My best friend's Babywise story, and why it worked for her... 
One of my best friend's parenting story and her thoughts on Babywise 
Scheduling, Boobs, and Bottle, part one 


Here is some researching you can do:Information on the author of Babywise, Gary Ezzo
Babywise Series by Sorta Crunchy
On Becoming Ezzowise
Ezzo Week by Tulip Girl
Confessions of a failed Babywiser
Ezzo Parenting

Radical

Love this book!

My husband and I have just finished reading Chapter 6. So far this book sounds a lot like the conversations we have had over our first few years of marriage and a lot of the questions presented in the book are ideas I have been wrestling with and thinking through for years. The book also reminds me of another life changing book on making disciples called Tally Ho The Fox! (The Foundation for Building World-Visionary, World-Impacting, Reproducing Disciples) .

Let me just start by saying you need to read the book! It took me about a year to read it from the first time someone told me to read it, so don't follow my example. Read it now!

The Christian life is supposed to be radical, not comfortable. The Christ of the bible was Radical. The disciples were Radical. And Christ followers today are supposed to be Radical as well. We all have become very comfortable in our easy American Christianity, myself included. Most of the time we don't even realize that many of our views on church, making disciples, and money come from culture  (even, or especially church culture) and not the bible. If you desire to live a life completely sold out to the mandate of Christ to make disciples this book is for you. If you are pretty comfortable in the type of Christianity that just involves going to church on Sunday and throwing some money in the offering basket, this book is for you!

This book is for all of us! Oh Lord, help us to take back our faith from the American Dream!!!

East Memphis Moms: Mom Support Groups

East Memphis Moms: Mom Support Groups: "Having other moms to talk with about your job as a mom is really important. Being a mom is hard work, and can be very isolating. As a new ..."

Nursing in Public

Group of mothers protest by breastfeeding in public - Action News 5 - Memphis, Tennessee (video and news article, and although they are nursing I promise you don't see any boobs)

It's Only Natural. Commercial Appeal Article

The comments attached to this photo are the reason I feel compelled to write this post.

The story: 
I am a part of the facebook group called Alternamama's of Memphis and I love it! It is a very active and very helpful group. One of the mamas in this group was waiting in the waiting area at a Social Security office here in Memphis last week when her little one needed to nurse/eat. She discreetly began feeding him and the security guard told her she couldn't do that and needed to go to the restroom. (really, who eats in a public bathroom?!) She calmly told her of her rights under the law and that she would continue nursing. The security guard got the manager who told her the same thing. So this mama told the other alternamas about it and asked for us to participate in a nurse in on the day she took her letter of complaint. Five mamas and babies peacefully protested by discreetly and respectfully nursing their babies outside of the building. I think this is awesome! Memphis needs some major PR about breastfeeding. People need to know that we are protected by the law to breastfeed in public and it is NOT considered indecent exposure. For the record, she did get a letter of apology and nursed her baby there again on this past Friday and had no problems.


My experiences with nursing in public: Unfortunately very few. Baby Girl had really bad acid reflux when she was a newborn and would cry during and after almost every nursing session. She would also unlatch frequently and I would have to struggle to get her back on. I usually nursed in women's lounges or dressing rooms because a screaming baby would have drawn too much attention for my liking. One time I tried to nurse her at Panera and she started crying a lot so I resigned myself to nurse in the bathroom. Ugh! Usually I would nurse her in the car before or after going into a restaurant. If she were a quiet nurser without acid reflux I think I would have nursed her in public way more often. When she was a little older and getting over her acid reflux I was able to nurse her in public a few times. One of my favorite memories with her is nursing her at The Journey in St. Louis during praise and worship. There is nothing sweeter than nursing your baby while participating in corporate worship. She actually fell asleep nursing that day and nursed and slept through most of the service. I didn't have a cover on but I was very discreet and showed no breast at all. Somehow being in St. Louis made me feel more comfortable to breastfeed in church. I don't know, I just feel like it is more common and accepted there. Memphis is not very breastfeeding friendly in general. When Baby Girl got a little older it was really difficult to nurse in public because she would get way too distracted and just want to people watch instead of nurse. Also, we are on a nurse, sleep, nurse, awake schedule so since she is nursing so often she rarely needs to nurse when we are out. 

All that to say that I haven't been able to experience too many nursing in public sessions, but I support it wholeheartedly. It makes me smile when I see a mama nursing in public. And actually, covers sometimes bring more attention to the fact that someone is nursing than otherwise. To the untrained eye, most of the time it just looks like the mama is holding a sleeping baby. Only another nursing mom can tell that they are in fact nursing. I have NEVER seen a nursing mom in public that was exposing unnecessary amounts of breast. No one is trying to give anyone a peep show, we are just trying to feed our babies. New moms need not feel trapped inside their home for fear of offending someone should they happen to need to feed their baby in public. This is how depression and post partum can set in, by mothers feeling trapped. A mother should feel confident to nurse her baby in any location where a mother would feel confident to give her baby a bottle.

About covers: most older infants will just pull it off or play with it, and it is really hot too. And like I said a cover can draw more attention to the fact that you are nursing than if you weren't using one. If a mom wants to use a cover, great! If she doesn't, great! It is possible to be discreet and modest even when not using a cover. You can wear nursing tanks under your shirt and by doing that basically no boob, back, or stomach shows at all. You see more skin when someone is wearing a bikini, or just a low cut top.

For the record, I am very pro-nursing in public, and at the same time very pro-modesty. Actually, to read what I think about modesty and swimsuits you can read this post. I don't even feel comfortable putting bare belly pictures on the internet from my pregnancy. I also go to great lengths to try to make sure I don't show cleavage (not that I have much) whenever I go out in public, and I also do not feel comfortable in two piece bathing suits. I think modesty is beautiful and that our apparel should draw attention to our faces and not our boobs or butt.

Women that nurse in public are NOT flaunting their breasts or being skanks (as some of the commenters said on the news story). They/We are feeding our babies! It is the most natural way to feed a baby. It is the way that God designed for babies to be fed. If people are uncomfortable with it they should look away. No mother should be told to feed her baby in a bathroom or made to feel that she should feed her baby in a bathroom. I have never seen a mom giving her baby a bottle in the bathroom or seen an adult eating a meal in a public restroom. Boobs have been so sexualized in our culture that mothers can't even use them to do what God intended for them to be used for without facing ridicule. This should not be! I hope everyone reading this will take time to think about whatever stereotypes they have placed on moms nursing in public and replace this with truth and facts.

Disclaimer: I have several friends that would love to nurse (and nurse in public) but for one reason or another have been unable to breastfeed. This post is not an attack on you or an insult to you for formula feeding. It really saddens me when my friends are unable to nurse because I know it deeply saddens them. Regardless, just as someone who is struggling with infertility may get sad when they see children, they wouldn't expect us to not write blogs about our children or post pictures. Same with nursing. Although it may sadden some moms when they see posts about breastfeeding because they aren't able to, it is still a topic that needs to be discussed.