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2015, March: Banned from Google

This blog post is a promise to myself: I will no longer seek baby advice on the internet.

I love social media. I like seeing what friends and family around the world are doing and sharing my life with them in turn (probably too much, sometimes). I love that I can easily video chat with England, do all my shopping online, and turn my random musings into a blog. Peoples' comments on here and on Facebook in response to past posts about Declan were a huge help in getting me through those first few weeks (thank you). The internet is a wonderful thing.

But access to endless information is doing bad things to my mental health. The last few days I've fallen back into a deep baby-blue slump for absolutely no logical reason at all. Declan is doing well. He sleeps for slightly longer stretches at night and as a result I'm getting a decent-ish amount of sleep, too. He does a lot of fussing and what feels like a lot of crying, but in the grand scheme of things I don't think it's all that much. He's started to think about smiling at us and his alert times in the mornings can be quite fun. But I'm thoroughly miserable and it's all the internet's fault. In the last 48 hours, Google searches have convinced me that:
  • He's napping too much during the day
  • He's not napping enough during the day
  • He's napping in the wrong place
  • We should have a better nighttime routine
  • I'm ruining everything (and I mean everything) by rocking him to sleep
  • We're not bathing him enough
  • He should be on a feeding schedule by now
  • He's feeding too often
  • He's not feeding often enough
  • ...
It goes on. Trust me. There is no end to the list of things I have worried about and therefore googled. And the answers NEVER HELP. They just add to the confusion and stress, so that's it. I'm banning myself. I'm going to try and trust my instincts and not turn to groundless* research and opinions online. (*Because, as Christian says, it would be impossible to do a meaningful clinical study of the effects of any of these things without royally screwing up a bunch of kids.)

It's hard. I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing and there's nowhere to go for definitive or even helpful answers. Postpartum hormones are squashing my rational mind again and turning on the tears. I've been looking to the internet in the hopes that the next article will put my mind at rest and tell me that I'm doing something right, but it never does. I need to stop.  

By putting this promise down in writing and sharing it with all of you, I'm optimistic I will actually stick to it.  

Goodbye Google. Argh.
P.S. If you found this through your own frantic search for answers then you should stop, too. Make a cup of tea and call your mum (or sister or friend. Someone who will tell you you're doing okay). That helped me.

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