forbabygifts.com is proud have Suzanne as a guest blogger.

She blogs at Without Dash.

“Caring for a newborn can be at best exhausting. Sleeping for only two hours at the time, changing nappies, feeding, and that after all your energy is drained from giving birth. Hours and days melt into each other and you do not even remember what you ate for breakfast, or if you had any breakfast at all today. How many times did you get up last night? And at what times? Hard to say when you hardly opened your eyes. So, you would think that a new mummy could do with some advice from the diehard veteran mums.  Or do you?

I have been very thankful for some advice given. I did not realize that putting a newborn in a baby carrier for long periods at the time wasn’t healthy. I am also happy that my sister-in-law pointed out that using Vaseline with every diaper change prevents rashes. Even though I have become an expert at the healing of rashes, I never prevented them from returning.  And probably the best advice given is to remember taking care of yourself and make a priority of resting.

However, the useful advice is by far outnumbered with useless advice. Ever since my first daughter was born I have made a point of giving every new mum my own advice, which is: Do not listen to any unwanted advice, but ask the right person when you do need help. This is mostly because as a new mum I wasted far too much energy on being annoyed by the useless and often ridiculous advice that I received.

I guess that every mother receives her share of unwanted advice on how to raise her kids. And as I wrote a few months ago in a post called the truth about motherhood,  that as a mum you are going to be wrong all the time. No matter what you do, someone will always have a remark to make or knows better than you. Living as a European in Thailand, I have found that I am more wrong than others, simply because I do things very differently than most people here. Locals are still very superstitious and believe in old wives tales, whereas these theories seem ridiculous to me.

When I was breastfeeding my first daughter the advice I received went from breastfeeding for longer than three months is not healthy for your baby, to you cannot have sex when you are breastfeeding. The latter was based on a theory that the man’s sperm might end up in your milk, and was given by a professional masseuse. (How can you be a masseuse and not understand basic biology?). The most stupid suggestion was that one breast would contain milk, while the other has only water. Like with bottle-fed babies, you can only give a limited amount of milk and then have to fall back to water if the baby is still thirsty. (Why it would be white in color from both breasts when I extracted it with a breast pump, no one could explain.)

Other advice given is that babies with a hiccup are feeling hot and should be bathed in cold water. I am quite sure that this method works and clears a hiccup in no time, since the terrible crying that it will cause will stop any hiccup. But who would let someone do that to a newborn baby? A woman helping out in the first few days after my daughter was born was going to act on her theory if I did not step in and stopped her. This particular woman did not last long as a help and I decided to manage on my own a lot better.

Despite our cultural differences and probably even more the difference in education levels, the local people did teach me valuable lessons on child raising as well. Here the children are more respected as people, they are listened to and given a chance to speak up, which in turn makes them respect adults more. Co-sleeping is the most natural thing here (often the reason for it is the fact that most people have only one room to sleep in) and children are not put in bed at 7 pm to get rid of them and have a quiet evening with only adults. Adults and children alike are very much part of a family and share everything together. The gap between the parents and the children is not as large as I have experienced in Europe. And this makes it easier for the parents to handle their children.

I am thankful for living a cross cultural life and being able to choose the best of two different cultures. I raise my children with values and habits which I think are best for them. Sometimes I have to accept strange comments from one side, and sometimes from the other side, but most often I find that people agree with me and try to learn their own lesson from it.”

-Without Dash