William Sears Quotes

How you approach birth is intimately connected with how you approach life

Oftentimes I felt ridiculous giving my seal of approval to what was in reality such a natural thing to do, sort of like reinventing the wheel and extolling its virtues. Had parents' intuition sunk so low that some strange man had to tell modern women that it was okay to sleep with their babies?

A curse. Been in our family for generations. The Lees have always been perverts. I shall never forget the unspeakable horror that froze the lymph in my glands when the baneful word seared my reeling brain—I was a homosexual. I thought of the painted simpering female impersonators I'd seen in a Baltimore nightclub. Could it be possible I was one of those subhuman things? I walked the streets in a daze like a man with a light concussion. I would've destroyed myself. And a wise old queen—Bobo, we called her—taught me that I had a duty to live and bear my burden proudly for all to see. Poor Bobo came to a sticky end - he was riding in the Duke Devanche's Hispano Suissa when his falling hemorrhoids blew out of the car and wrapped around the rear wheel. He was completely gutted leaving an empty shell sitting there on the giraffe skin upholstry. Even the eyes and the brain went with a horrible "shlupping" sound. The Duke says he would carry that ghastly "shlup" with him to his mausoleum.

Male rats don’t experience the hormonal changes that trigger maternal behavior in female rats. They never normally participate in infant care. Yet put a baby rat in a cage with a male adult and after a few days he will be caring for the baby almost as if he were its mother. He’ll pick it up, nestle it close to him as a nursing female would, keep the baby rat clean and comforted, and even build a comfy nest for it.29 The parenting circuits are there in the male brain, even in a species in which paternal care doesn’t normally exist.30 If a male rat, without even the aid of a William Sears baby-care manual, can be inspired to parent then I would suggest that the prospects for human fathers are pretty good.

In the first several months of life, a baby’s wants are a baby’s needs.

AP softens every member of the family. You will find yourself gradually becoming more caring and considerate to everyone around you.

Give me ambiguity or something else.

It began as a flicker in her mind. Just a glint in a place still ruled by childish thoughts and fantasies. Yet that single spark ignited something, and the ensuing flame rushed forth with such speed and intensity that she was momentarily frightened it would swallow her whole. But there was no fighting it. It indeed devoured her, as well as everything else in its path. In the brief passage of an instant, the young girl’s tiny form was filled to the brim with brilliant, searing, blinding rage.

The parents who are most frustrated by high-need babies have difficulty unloading the baggage of a control mind-set. “High-need baby” says it all. It’s

If baby is thriving, but Mom is completely burned out because she is not getting the help she needs, something has to change.

Mothers are hormonally wired to respond to, not ignore, their baby’s cries. (Fathers, take note: You can’t argue with biology!)

Della is an experienced lesbian at twenty, with two or three soul-searing affairs behind her and four suicide attempts

For a long time, the moon had seared a white hole in the indigo sky. But now an errant cloud moved across its face and the light vanished

more often than not the person one loves from whom one withholds the most searing truths about one’s self, if only out of the very human motive to spare groundless pain. But

A newborn who is used to this cue-response network learns to trust her caregiving environment.

it is more often than not the person one loves from whom one withholds the most searing truths about one’s self, if only out of the very human motive to spare groundless pain.

A curse. Been in our family for generations. The Lees have always been perverts. I shall never forget the unspeakable horror that froze the lymph in my glands—the lymph glands that is, of course—when the baneful word seared my reeling brain: I was a homosexual. I thought of the painted, simpering female impersonators I'd seen in a Baltimore nightclub. Could it be possible I was one of those subhuman things? I walked the streets in a daze like a man with a light concussion—just a minute, Doctor Kildare, this isn't your script. I might well destroyed myself, ending an existence which seemed to offer nothing but grotesque misery and humiliation. Nobler, I thought, to die a man than live on, a sex monster. It was a wise old queen—Bobo, we called her—who taught me that I had a duty to live and bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love.

He [Wallace] sent a quick note to his friend [Franzen] explaining his behavior. "the bold fact is that I'm a little afraid of you right now,"[...] "all I can tell you is that I may have been that [a worthy opponent] for you a couple/ three years ago, and maybe 16 months or tow or 5 or 10 years hence, but right now I am a pathetic and very confused man, a failed writer at 28, who is so jealous, so sickly searing envious of you and Vollmann and Mark Leyner and even David Fuckward Leavitt and any young man who is right now producing pages with which he can live and even approving them off some base-clause of conviction about the entrprise's meaning and end that I consider suicide a reasonable- if not at this point a desirable- option with respect to the whole wretched problem.

Maybe in a few generations, we’ll see studies that indicate that babies who sleep with their parents have fewer ear infections, do better in school, and don’t engage in pseudo-science when they grow up.

the perversity is not lost on me that the most oft-cited, well-respected, best-selling books about the caretaking of babies—Winnicott, Spock, Sears, Weissbluth— have been and are mostly still by men. On the front cover of The Baby Book—arguably one of the more progressive contemporary options (albeit oppressively heteronormative)—the byline reads “by William Sears (MD) and Martha Sears (RN).” This seems promising(ish), but nurse/wife/mother Martha’s voice appears only in anecdotes, italics, and sidebars, never as conarrator. Was she too busy taking care of their eight children to join in the first-person?

Attachment mothering is not martyr mothering. Don’t think that AP means baby pulls Mommy’s string and she jumps. Because of the trust that develops between attached parents and their attached children, parents’ response time gradually lengthens as baby gains the ability to control himself. Then mother jumps only when it’s an emergency.

McDougall was a certified revolutionary hero, while the Scottish-born cashier, the punctilious and corpulent William Seton, was a Loyalist who had spent the war in the city. In a striking show of bipartisan unity, the most vociferous Sons of Liberty—Marinus Willett, Isaac Sears, and John Lamb—appended their names to the bank’s petition for a state charter. As a triple power at the new bank—a director, the author of its constitution, and its attorney—Hamilton straddled a critical nexus of economic power. One of Hamilton’s motivations in backing the bank was to introduce order into the manic universe of American currency. By the end of the Revolution, it took $167 in continental dollars to buy one dollar’s worth of gold and silver. This worthless currency had been superseded by new paper currency, but the states also issued bills, and large batches of New Jersey and Pennsylvania paper swamped Manhattan. Shopkeepers had to be veritable mathematical wizards to figure out the fluctuating values of the varied bills and coins in circulation. Congress adopted the dollar as the official monetary unit in 1785, but for many years New York shopkeepers still quoted prices in pounds, shillings, and pence. The city was awash with strange foreign coins bearing exotic names: Spanish doubloons, British and French guineas, Prussian carolines, Portuguese moidores. To make matters worse, exchange rates differed from state to state. Hamilton hoped that the Bank of New York would counter all this chaos by issuing its own notes and also listing the current exchange rates for the miscellaneous currencies. Many Americans still regarded banking as a black, unfathomable art, and it was anathema to upstate populists. The Bank of New York was denounced by some as the cat’s-paw of British capitalists. Hamilton’s petition to the state legislature for a bank charter was denied for seven years, as Governor George Clinton succumbed to the prejudices of his agricultural constituents who thought the bank would give preferential treatment to merchants and shut out farmers. Clinton distrusted corporations as shady plots against the populace, foreshadowing the Jeffersonian revulsion against Hamilton’s economic programs. The upshot was that in June 1784 the Bank of New York opened as a private bank without a charter. It occupied the Walton mansion on St. George’s Square (now Pearl Street), a three-story building of yellow brick and brown trim, and three years later it relocated to Hanover Square. It was to house the personal bank accounts of both Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and prove one of Hamilton’s most durable monuments, becoming the oldest stock traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

I think that [William] Faulkner and I each had to escape certain particulars of our lives, and we found salvation through words. I understand the Bible story of Babel so much better now. I think that moments of extremity, desires of escape, lead us to foreign languages--not those learned in schools, but those plucked from the human heart, the searing conditions of isolation. I did not have to be limited to my biography because of words, and I shared this with Faulkner, who invented new words and punctuation and expression and worlds. He utterly reshaped the world.

Now alongside Scovell, John eased preserved peaches out of galliot pots of syrup and picked husked walnuts from puncheons of salt. He clarified butter and poured it into rye-paste coffins. From the Master Cook, John learned to set creams with calves' feet, then isinglass, then hartshorn, pouring decoctions into egg-molds to set and be placed in nests of shredded lemon peel. To make cabbage cream he let the thick liquid clot, lifted off the top layer, folded it then repeated the process until the cabbage was sprinkled with rose water and dusted with sugar, ginger and nutmeg. He carved apples into animals and birds. The birds themselves he roasted, minced and folded into beaten egg whites in a foaming forcemeat of fowls. John boiled, coddled, simmered and warmed. He roasted, seared, fried and braised. He poached stock-fish and minced the meats of smoked herrings while Scovell's pans steamed with ancient sauces: black chawdron and bukkenade, sweet and sour egredouce, camelade and peppery gauncil. For the feasts above he cut castellations into pie-coffins and filled them with meats dyed in the colors of Sir William's titled guests. He fashioned palaces from wafers of spiced batter and paste royale, glazing their walls with panes of sugar. For the Bishop of Carrboro they concocted a cathedral. 'Sprinkle salt on the syrup,' Scovell told him, bent over the chafing dish in his chamber. A golden liquor swirled in the pan. 'Very slowly.' 'It will taint the sugar,' John objected. But Scovell shook his head. A day later they lifted off the cold clear crust and John split off a sharp-edged shard. 'Salt,' he said as it slid over his tongue. But little by little the crisp flake sweetened on his tongue. Sugary juices trickled down his throat. He turned to the Master Cook with a puzzled look. 'Brine floats,' Scovell said. 'Syrup sinks.' The Master Cook smiled. 'Patience, remember? Now, to the glaze...

Nevertheless, it would be prudent to remain concerned. For, like death, IT would come: Armageddon. There would be-without exaggeration-a series of catastrophes. As a consequence of the evil in man...-no mere virus, however virulent, was even a burnt match for our madness, our unconcern, our cruelty-...there would arise a race of champions, predators of humans: namely earthquakes, eruptions, tidal waves, tornados, typhoons, hurricanes, droughts-the magnificent seven. Floods, winds, fires, slides. The classical elements, only angry. Oceans would warm, the sky boil and burn, the ice cap melt, the seas rise. Rogue nations, like kids killing kids at their grammar school, would fire atomic-hydrogen-neutron bombs at one another. Smallpox would revive, or out of the African jungle would slide a virus no one understood. Though reptilian only in spirit, the disease would make us shed our skins like snakes and, naked to the nerves, we'd expire in a froth of red spit. Markets worldwide would crash as reckless cars on a speedway do, striking the wall and rebounding into one another, hurling pieces of themselves at the spectators in the stands. With money worthless-that last faith lost-the multitude would riot, race against race at first, God against God, the gots against the gimmes. Insects hardened by generations of chemicals would consume our food, weeds smother our fields, fire ants, killer bees sting us while we're fleeing into refuge water, where, thrashing we would drown, our pride a sodden wafer. Pestilence. War. Famine. A cataclysm of one kind or another-coming-making millions of migrants. Wearing out the roads. Foraging in the fields. Looting the villages. Raping boys and women. There'd be no tent cities, no Red Cross lunches, hay drops. Deserts would appear as suddenly as patches of crusty skin. Only the sun would feel their itch. Floods would sweep suddenly over all those newly arid lands as if invited by the beach. Forest fires would burn, like those in coal mines, for years, uttering smoke, making soot for speech, blackening every tree leaf ahead of their actual charring. Volcanoes would erupt in series, and mountains melt as though made of rock candy till the cities beneath them were caught inside the lava flow where they would appear to later eyes, if there were any eyes after, like peanuts in brittle. May earthquakes jelly the earth, Professor Skizzen hotly whispered. Let glaciers advance like motorboats, he bellowed, threatening a book with his fist. These convulsions would be a sign the parasites had killed their host, evils having eaten all they could; we'd hear a groan that was the going of the Holy Ghost; we'd see the last of life pissed away like beer from a carouse; we'd feel a shudder move deeply through this universe of dirt, rock, water, ice, and air, because after its long illness the earth would have finally died, its engine out of oil, its sky of light, winds unable to catch a breath, oceans only acid; we'd be witnessing a world that's come to pieces bleeding searing steam from its many wounds; we'd hear it rattling its atoms around like dice in a cup before spilling randomly out through a split in the stratosphere, night and silence its place-well-not of rest-of disappearance. My wish be willed, he thought. Then this will be done, he whispered so no God could hear him. That justice may be served, he said to the four winds that raged in the corners of his attic.

YOU ARE YOUR BABY’S BEST EXPERT Whenever we are asked advice on any topic, a favorite question of ours is “What do you think?” For example, if parents ask us if they should co-sleep with their baby, instead of simply saying yes (because that’s what felt best for ourselves and our babies), we like to first hear what the parents’ intuition is telling them to do. We may then share our personal thoughts on the matter, which may or may not be in line with how the parents feel. We would rather help parents build on their own intuition than try to shape their ideas to fit ours. And the same goes for you, our readers.

More changes occur in the first month after birth than at any other time in a woman’s life. It’s no wonder that 50–75 percent of all mothers feel some degree of baby blues (the incidence would be 100 percent if males gave birth and fed babies).

Parenting is a learn-as-you-go profession.

She loved her steak barely seared on each side, and this one was made to perfection.

One of the jobs of the birth partner is Chief Water-Bottle Pusher.

Consider the source. Criticism from your parents or in-laws can be a delicate problem, as can criticism from anyone whose opinion you value. Feelings run deep, especially between mother and daughter, and gaining your parents’ approval of your parenting style may mean a lot to you. It helps to put yourself in your mother’s place and realize that she may think you are criticizing her when you make choices different from the ones she made. Remind yourself that she did the best she could given the information available to her. Your mother (or mother-in-law) means well. What you perceive as criticism is motivated by love and a desire to pass on experiences that she feels will help you and your children. Be careful not to imply that you are doing a better job than your own mother did. Don’t be surprised if your parents don’t buy AP. It’s not because they’re against it; they probably don’t understand it. If you think it would be helpful, share information with them and explain why you care for your baby in the way you do. But don’t argue or try to prove that you’re right. When you anticipate a disagreement, the best course is to avoid the issue and steer the conversation toward a more neutral topic.

Those little buzzers had worked some kind of Robin Williams magic. I didn't just understand the weight of my abuse logically. I felt it, like a blade through flesh, a bone popping out of place. I felt it like a lover saying it's not going to work: sharp, immediate, and terrifying. I actually felt, with searing clarity, the horror of what happened to me -- maybe for the first time ever. I felt how tremendously sad it was that I was forced to make my parents feel loved at such a young age. I felt how courageous I must have been to endure that torture, day after day for so many years, by the people I trusted most in this world. I felt a sense of love and adoration for my childhood self that I'd never been able to summon before. There is a difference between knowing and understanding. I had known that this wasn't my fault. EMDR unlocked the gate to the next realm, towards understanding. The difference is one between rote memorization and true learning. Between hypothesis and belief. Between prayer and faith. It seems obvious now -- how can there be love without faith?

But sometimes the memory-coding metastasizes. Trauma is increasingly recognized as a memory disorder, in which searing life events continue to act upon the mind and body of the sufferer as though the events are still occurring.

In my youth . . . my sacred youth . . . in eaves sole sparowe sat not more alone than I . . . in my youth, my saucer-deep youth, when I possessed a mirror and both a morning and an evening comb . . . in my youth, my pimpled, shame-faced, sugared youth, when I dreamed myself a fornicator and a poet; when life seemed to be ahead somewhere like a land o’ lakes vacation cottage, and I was pure tumescence, all seed, afloat like fuzz among the butterflies and bees; when I was the bursting pod of a fall weed; when I was the hum of sperm in the autumn air, the blue of it like watered silk, vellum to which I came in a soft cloud; O minstrel galleons of Carib fire, I sang then, knowing naught, clinging to the tall slim wheatweed which lay in a purple haze along the highway like a cotton star . . . in my fumbling, lubricious, my uticated youth, when a full bosom and a fine round line of Keats, Hart Crane, or Yeats produced in me the same effect—a moan throughout my molecules—in my limeade time, my uncorked innocence, my jellybelly days, when I repeated Olio de Oliva like a tenor; then I would touch the page in wonder as though it were a woman, as though I were blind in my bed, in the black backseat, behind the dark barn, the dim weekend tent, last dance, date's door, reaching the knee by the second feature, possibly the thigh, my finger an urgent emissary from my penis, alas as far away as Peking or Bangkok, so I took my heart in my hand, O my love, O my love, I sighed, O Christina, Italian rose; my inflated flesh yearning to press against that flesh becoming Word—a word—words which were wet and warm and responsive as a roaming tongue; and her hair was red, long, in ringlets, kiss me, love me up, she said in my anxious oral ear; I read: Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour; for I had oodles of needs, if England didn't; I was nothing but skin, pulp, and pit, in my grapevine time, during the hard-on priesthood of the poet; because then—in my unclean, foreskinned, and prurient youth—I devoutly believed in Later Life, in Passion, in Poetry, the way I thought only fools felt about God, prayer, heaven, foreknowledge, sin; for what was a poem if not a divine petition, a holy plea, a prophecy: [...] a stranger among strangers, myself the strangest because I could never bring myself to enter adolescence, but kept it about like a bit of lunch you think you may eat later, and later come upon at the bottom of a bag, dry as dust, at the back of the refrigerator, bearded with mold, or caked like sperm in the sock you've fucked, so that gingerly, then, you throw the mess out, averting your eyes, just as Rainer complained he never had a childhood—what luck!—never to have suffered birthpang, nightfear, cradlecap, lake in your lung; never to have practiced scales or sat numb before the dentist's hum or picked your mother up from the floor she's bled and wept and puked on; never to have been invaded by a tick, sucked by a leech, bitten by a spider, stung by a bee, slimed on by a slug, seared by a hot pan, or by paper or acquaintance cut, by father cuffed; never to have been lost in a crowd or store or parking lot or left by a lover without a word or arrogantly lied to or outrageously betrayed—really what luck!—never to have had a nickel roll with slow deliberation down a grate, a balloon burst, toy break; never to have skinned a knee, bruised a friendship, broken trust; never to have had to conjugate, keep quiet, tidy, bathe; to have lost the chance to be hollered at, bullied, beat up (being nothing, indeed, to have no death), and not to have had an earache, life's lessons to learn, or sums to add reluctantly right up to their bitter miscalculated end—what sublime good fortune, the Greek poet suggested—because Nature is not accustomed to life yet; it is too new, too incidental, this shiver in the stone, never altogether, and would just as soon (as Culp prefers to say) cancer it; erase, strike, stamp it out— [...]

From their mentors, therapists need to learn how to weather storms of negative feeling coming directly at them from miserable people, how to keep their self-esteem when being relentlessly devalued, how to recognize and deal with the grain of truth in patients’ complaints about them, how to handle their traumatic internal responses to searing accounts of trauma, how to bear ugly and personally alien feelings in themselves, how to tolerate uncertainty, how to set boundaries with people who feel wounded by reasonable limits, how to maintain an unnatural level of secret keeping, how to find hope when clients fill the office with their despair, how to manage anxieties that a patient may die by suicide, and other emotionally taxing lessons.

On Tuesday, February 20, 1962, Williams was in Chicago for three days of meetings with Sears, Roebuck executives.

The original members of the Community that started the unique experiment were Mr. Alcott, his wife, and four small daughters, the Englishman Charles Lane and his son William, H. C. Wright (for a short time) and Samuel Bower, Isaac T. Hecker, of New York, Christopher Greene and Samuel Larned, of Providence, Abraham Everett and Anna Page, Joseph Palmer, of Fitchburg, and Abram Wood. The transcendentalism of this last individual showed itself chiefly in insisting upon twisting his name hind side before and calling himself “Wood Abram.” As this he was always known at Fruitlands. These members did not all arrive at once, but came within a short time of each other. Wright

On one of his fishing trips to the county, Ted Williams was rumored to have spent time at the Bide-a-Wee field-testing part of the line of fishing tackle the Red Sox legend endorsed for Sears and Roebuck.

One of

the long roll called William Wofford’s Georgia brigade to fall in for duty. Orders were issued to fill haversacks with snowballs and form line of battle, and behind its color guards the brigade marched two miles to the camp of Joseph Kershaw’s South Carolina brigade. “We were in line of battle on a hill and Kershaw’s formed and come out to fight us,” Georgian Jim Mobley wrote his brother. “The field officers was on their horses and when they come against us, they come with a hollar! and, Benjamin, Great God, I never saw snow balls fly so in my life.” The order to open fire was given at 100 feet. Charge and countercharge were spirited by the Rebel yell. Combat was hand-to-hand, prisoners were taken. “I tell you it beat anything . . . ,” Mobley exclaimed. “There was 4000 men engaged on both sides, and you know it was something!

While many men indulge freely without any notion of restraint, others are repulsed by their response to pornography. The arousal that they experience sexually is accompanied by a conflicting sense of shame, guilt and/ or anxiety. Such men have a sense that something is just not right about what they are doing. The nagging voice is repressed while viewing pornography, but afterward there is a gnawing sense that we shouldn't have looked. We intuitively know that what we saw was not meant for us. We have intruded into someone's intimate space. To the properly oriented conscience, viewing pornography elicits a healthy sense of guilt. To the seared conscience, one that has been ground down by abuse, fear, selfishness or repeated exposure to sin, pornography is just something you do. The seared conscience is forced either to turn against itself and plunge into the despair of self-loathing and unhealthy shame or to adopt new standards that allow for the acceptability of pornography. That standard may work for a time, but ultimately it leads to hurt, pain and suffering.

So when Mother goes away, baby feels that the one person who can make him feel right has completely disappeared, perhaps forever. Baby just can’t hang on to a mental picture of Mother to reassure himself, and he can’t understand the concept of time, so “Mom will be back in an hour” means nothing to him.

The gentle motion a baby experiences during babywearing stimulates the vestibular system, and scientists are finding that this stimulation helps babies breathe and grow better, regulates their physiology, and improves motor development. This is especially true for premature infants. Some babies recognize on their own that they need vestibular stimulation. When deprived of it, they often attempt to put themselves into motion and develop self-rocking behaviors.

To your baby, you are the best mother.

He awakes in a mindless terror of the silence, the motionlessness. He screams. He is afire from head to foot with want, with desire, with intolerable impatience. He gasps for breath and screams until his head is filled and throbbing with the sound. He screams until his chest aches, until his throat is sore. He can bear the pain no more and his sobs weaken and subside. He listens. He opens and closes his fists. He rolls his head from side to side. Nothing helps. It is unbearable. He begins to cry again, but it is too much for his strained throat; he soon stops. He waves his hands and kicks his feet. He stops, able to suffer, unable to think, unable to hope. He listens. Then he falls asleep again.

There is no such person as a perfect parent, and certainly this book was not written by perfect parents. Do the best you can with the resources you have. That’s all your child will ever expect.

You can’t wait until your son is old enough to throw a football to become an involved father. If you want him to enjoy playing catch with you when he’s ten, you have to start enjoying him when he’s a baby. (The same goes for girls, including the part where they’ll need a baseball glove.)

Breastfeeding helps you unwind from a busy day’s work and reconnect with your baby, especially after a tense day.

in the early months enter sleep through an initial period of light sleep lasting around twenty minutes. Then they gradually enter deep sleep, from which they are difficult to arouse. If you try to rush by putting baby down during this initial light sleep period, he will usually awaken. This fact of infant sleep accounts for the difficult-to-settle baby who “has to be fully asleep before I can put him down.” In later months many babies can enter deep sleep more quickly without first going through light sleep. Learn to recognize your baby’s sleep stages. During deep sleep you can move a sleeping baby from car seat to bed without baby awakening.

the early months, baby’s sleep cycles are shorter, periods of light sleep occur more frequently, and the vulnerable period for night waking occurs twice as often as for an adult, approximately every hour. Most restless nights are due to difficulty getting back to sleep after waking up during this vulnerable period. Some babies have trouble reentering another stage of deep sleep.

TIRING FACTS OF INFANT SLEEP Babies enter sleep through REM sleep; they need help to go to sleep.

Sleep cycles are shorter for babies than for adults, with more light than deep sleep. Babies have more vulnerable periods for night waking than adults; they have difficulty getting back to sleep. The medical definition of “sleeping through the night” is a five-hour stretch. Babies usually awaken two or three times a night from birth to six months, once or twice from six months to one year, and may awaken once a night from one to two years.* Some will wake more. Babies usually sleep fourteen to eighteen hours a day from birth to six months, fourteen to sixteen hours from three to six months, and twelve to fourteen hours from six months to two years. Babies’ sleep habits are more determined by individual temperaments than parents’ nighttime abilities. It’s not your fault baby wakes up. Stuffing babies with solids at bedtime rarely helps them sleep longer. It’s all right to sleep with baby in your bed. In fact, sharing sleep works better than other

arrangements for many families and may be more “normal” than baby’s sleeping separately in a crib. You cannot force sleep upon a baby. Creating a secure environment that allows sleep to overtake baby is the best way to create long-term healthy sleep attitudes. The frequent-waking stage will not last forever.

As a practical guide, music you can carry on a conversation over is safe. If you have to shout over the noise, it’s too loud.

After years of watching newborns smile, we wish to deflate the gas bubble. Newborns do smile, and not because of gas (unless after passing it). As veteran smile watchers we divide smiles into two types: inside smiles and outside smiles. Inside smiles, occurring in the first few weeks, are a beautiful reflection of an inner feeling of rightness. Some are sleep grins; some are only a happy twitch in the corner of the mouth. Relief smiles occur after being rescued from a colicky period, after a satisfying feeding, or after being picked up and rocked. During face-to-face games is another time to catch a smile. Baby’s early smiles convey an “I feel good inside” message and leave you feeling good inside. Be prepared to wait until next month for the true outside (or social) smiles, which you can initiate and which will absolutely captivate all adoring smile watchers. Whatever their cause, enjoy these fleeting grins as glimpses of the whole happy-face smiles that are soon to come.

In the second month you are, in the words of surviving parents, “over the hump.

The second month is baby’s social debut—the coming out of herself. She opens up her hands to greet people. She opens her vision to widen her world and her mouth to smile and make more noise. The feeling of rightness and trust developed during the first month opens the door for baby’s real personality to step out.

Pills and Skills Model, Instead of asking your doctor what can I take, ask your doctor what can I do.

Married?” William bellowed. Aggression seared his limbs. Once, he’d preferred married women. Wham, bam, go back to your hubby, ma’am. But no longer. The thought of Sunny bound to some piece of shit male... Fuck! With a snarl, he released Sunny, grabbed a chair and tossed it across the stable. It hit the wall and shattered upon impact. Tonight, Sunny becomes a widow. His codebreaker, lifemate and temporary, live-in girlfriend would not have divided loyalties. By the Hell kings, I will be her one and only. “Shall I fetch another chair, or are you done with your tantrum?” she asked. “Fetch. Another. Chair.” She rolled her eyes. “I was married, yes, but I’m not now. Blaze was the son of the unicorn king, killed in the battle with Lucifer.” A heavy breath escaped William. Okay. All right. The urge to commit murder faded. Now he only wanted to dig up the bastard’s grave and spit on his corpse.