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Our baby hated the car

Sometimes the frenzy shows us we have misconceptions. It teaches us to not trust common knowledge. I hope that by sharing our story we can push back against some of those expectations. Prior to having a baby, we thought babies loved the car. We heard stories of tired parents driving their children around the block at 1 AM. This sounded miserable, but it sets a certain expectation

Expectations about babies and cars

We had an expectation that babies love cars, they would go to sleep instantly in the car seat when the engine started. We practically turned around on our way out of hospital to tell them they must’ve forgot some secret procedure because our lovely new baby screamed the entire car ride home. We hoped it was just a fluke a single trip. It turns out it wasn’t . The “common knowledge” about babies and cars was not true for our baby.

Your baby is not broken

So why share this story? You baby may love the car. But there is likely something else that “all babies love” or “all babies do” that just doesn’t apply to your baby. Your baby is not broken. Every baby is different. For us, we learned this lesson early on when our child screamed at us every car ride. It didn’t last forever. At some point it stopped happening. But for the first few months, we hated going anywhere. Visits to grandparents were not fun. Going grocery shopping was not fun. Our desire to go anywhere decreased as a function of the amount of time we would need to spend in the car.

Do what works

It’s OK the first time you have a baby to spend time figuring out what works. Don’t worry, you’re not going to spoil an infant. Just figure out what keeps them happy. What allows them to sleep. What keeps them fed and hopefully keeps them from spitting back up everything all over the clean shirt you just put on. If it’s doing power lunges down the road with a baby carrier on, then that’s OK. You’re going to have amazing quads.

We’re with you

Here at ZtF, we stand by new parents because we’ve recently been there. It may help to find some people in your life who have also recently been there. The memory of trying a million things before one works apparently fades with time. You just remember the silly thing that finally worked. This amounts to a huge amount of confirmation bias online in parenting advice. The people who tried to soothe a baby by dancing an Irish jig while holding them post endlessly about how amazing their technique to soothe babies is and if you only do it the right way it will work every time. When the Irish jig trick utterly failed, people don’t run to the computer to post about it. Don’t worry about “common knowledge” about babies. Do what works. We’re with you.

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