I’m sure this doesn’t work for everything, but maybe consider this first whenever you hear the word. What do I mean?
Well theres all these things that you’re going to do without a second thought. You see everyone else doing and you think well of course thats what baby needs. But as you start to do things you’ll find that you’ll quickly have to ween them off in a couple of months. OMG… that was a lot of hard work to teach her to do it in the first place, now you want me to undo it?? Here’s couple of bigger examples of steps we’ve decided to skip and with more research seems more common than not.
Potty Training – We decided to start with Elimination Communication right from the start. There was nothing to teach really she just did it and now theres nothing to transition, she’ll just naturally gets better at cuing us (or us understanding her cues rather). Now we don’t have to “potty train” her.
Bottle Feeding – This was one of the first things I researched (and when I research I go all out), and at no point did I come across anyone not using baby bottles… It’s one of those givens right? Babies drink from bottles… Well for starters my baby was never into pacifiers or bottles. We tried for 2 weeks each and she didn’t really take. We could have tried longer but I decided to do some research and found that I would have to ween her off the bottle around 1 years old anyway because it’s not good for her oral health! Why put her and myself through this torture then? So we went straight to feeding her from a cup. Well not really a cup it’s a small silicone pinch bowl review. In the end it makes sense, all those things that make life convenient that would not mimic nature ends up being bad for baby. Go figure.
Bassinet – We didn’t actually do this one and it might be really specific to us right now but I definitely could have skipped the bassinet and waited on buying the stroller. For starters, we don’t really go out much because of CV19. But, when she was a new new newborn we carried her in a k’tan review then after a month we carried her in her Tula carrier review. She also didn’t like being on her back for the longest time. Now at 4 months she has excellent control of her head, and can almost sit up entirely on her own, and it seems a lot of people go straight to a sitting stroller, set at the farthest recline. So looking back we could have definitely, only buy what we need, when you need it. Lesson Learned.
(updated 9/15/2022)
Breast Feeding– This one isn’t 100% without transition but for me at least the slowly decrease of duration and the “never say no but don’t offer” technique of weening her off didn’t work. I’m still doing some transitioning but with with a bit more structure. I started with capping the # of times I’d breastfeed, started with 3x/day. And then I limited a time/event, wake up and sleep only a 2x/day. We’re now down to 1x at night only. I really enjoy our bond during breast feeding so this has taken the better part of 9 months now. My goal is to achieve this before she turns 3 (fingers x!) I’d caveat that this is all with a lot of discussion with my daughter first, and she tends to noodle on the idea for a couple days and comes around and lets me know she’s ready.