Rebecca Gayther-Moore
I just had to send you an e-mail after reading your book ‘Parenting By Heart’. I am a mother of two amazing sons and 25 weeks pregnant with another son and I wish I had your book when I was pregnant with my first! As mothers, we experience so many wonderful emotions and just holding your beautiful baby for the first time is so surreal but when you get home, no one is there to help you so you panic! I had so many people telling me things like ‘Don’t let your baby fall asleep in your arms’ and ‘Let him cry, he’ll soon learn to self-soothe’. Because I was a first time mum, and these were experienced mothers & grandmothers I took it as gospel. I don’t want to think of how much time I wasted watching my baby from afar when I should have been cuddling him as my instincts as his mother were telling me to. With my second, I tended to relax a bit more and my husband and I had a nice routine of sharing the responsibilities but I still felt guilty when I held him until he fell asleep and then kept holding him.
After reading your book, I have been empowered to trust my instincts and believe that I know best. I am the one who is there when my baby wakes, I am the one who knows him better than anyone else and want him to trust and feel secure in my love. I am planning to ask the midwives at my baby’s birth to allow the baby to breath before the cord is cut so that my child can get every last inch of goodness and to make sure he is laid on his tummy on a warm towel when the time comes to weigh him (though not before I spend time cuddling and breastfeeding him!). I have realised, through your book, that these are my rights as his mother and no one can take them away from me.
So, from the bottom of my heart thank you. You are enabling a whole new generation of mothers to feel competent in their feelings and to trust that they know best.