Confidence

I've thought for a long time that I'm a confident person. I guess I've also had a pretty narrow view of the scope of confidence that includes. Lately it has come to my attention that many areas of your life can benefit from having confidence.

I've been struggling with a knee injury that has sort of spread all over my body, basically due to bad posture caused by that injury. I've seen a doctor and a naturopath and had acupuncture and have a specialist appointment scheduled with a rheumatologist. This is going on 3 months now of an injury that is most definitely affecting my life and what I choose to do.

Today I went to see a Chiropractor who is also an Osteopath - basically, this guy just really knows the body. He gave me some exercises and corrections and told me to try these out, but mostly to have confidence in my body and my movements. He said that when people have been in pain, they adapt by compensating with their movements and they lose confidence in that area of their body. This makes us susceptible to more injuries. I left that appointment feeling empowered and with a renewed sense of optimism. I need to have confidence that my movements are not making the problem worse, but are in fact slowly healing my injuries.

This brings me to the other area of life that I am lacking confidence in - baby sleep habits. I know that Zoe has pretty good sleep. I feel confident in the way we are caring after her in a pretty attachment parenting manner. But I want to give her and us the gift of sleeping by herself. She is still pretty much nursed or bounced or jiggled to sleep. At 5 months, we're starting to get to the point where she needs some practice self-soothing and being able to fall asleep by herself. In no way am I wanting to sleep train her or let her cry it out, but I think the key to having her fall asleep without an adult is to consistently do something. I'm not sure what I want to do yet though. I like having the flexibility of her current nap routine, which is to generally fall asleep in the carrier or her stroller as we're going about our day, but I think nap time is a good time to start giving her a routine that she can get used to. In the evenings I am too tired to follow through with anything consistent. I'm more of in the camp of "fall asleep anywhere, just please fall asleep and let me get some time by myself before MY bed time!". I know that a consistent routine of putting her in the crib and constantly going back to comfort her is not going to happen. So maybe if I have confidence in my ability to be consistent and set a pattern around one of her naps that would be a good place to start.