Ask anyone over the age of 16 about parenting skills, and I can assure you the topics of controversy are there: sleep habits, discipline, technology, stay at home vs working parent(s). Can parents be cool? Is the relationship between Rory and Lorelai even possible to replicate? How do you potty train? When should a baby sleep through the night? Are middle children always less happy than the oldest or youngest?

Everyone knows a parent. Parents like to talk about their kids, especially if they are new parents with cute babies whose entire being revolves around all of the above. Though there are humans out there who declare their dislike of children, it is a basic fact that children are likeable, maybe due a large part to their ignorance of self, social norms, and things like distance and reason. If a child is in a position of danger, instinct takes over all around to keep the little one (who doesn't know better) safe. So no wonder parenting is so controversial: even if a person never has or wants kids, it doesn't stop the next generation's arrival or the onslaught of ingenuity and change. We're all invested.

As a first-time parent of a one-year-old, I know these controversies well. I love my daughter and want the best for her: her emotional and physical wellbeing being the most basic. The reality of how much wiggle room there is in how a child should sleep, eat, or how much physical touch should be allowed (eg. don't pick her up when she cries, or she'll turn into a convict)-- the necessary aspects to sustain this baby's life-- blew me out of the water. So I spent a large portion of year one trying to navigate sleep, eating, and touch, bumping up against our cultural norms and that inner parent voice that tells me what is good and right.

I viewed my blank-faced idiocy on parenting (how to hold a newborn, napping methods, and the existence of nighttime diapers being a few) as a huge deficit, and yearned (and still do yearn) for community. My living situation, being away from my family, and the fact that my family is close but not, like, mom-is-going-to-come-cook-and-clean-for-a-month-while-you-figure-this-out close, paired with my own independence and inability to make friends unless I'm forced into a social situation (work or school, for example), made me read a lot of books, a few Internet forums and parenting blogs, and, of course, talk with family or friends, largely over text. I kept backing into this whole "normal" thing our culture has come up with of separating a baby from its mom, pretty much ASAP, for sleeping and eating, allowing for both mother and baby to have independence and individuality, those things so valued to us. Most women work, too, which, in my experience is due more greatly to the necessity of a double income to sustain a "normal" lifestyle rather than pursuing one's dreams.

The thing is, I am not returning to work, and I am willing to budget, live in a small house, buy second hand, or whatever it takes, to stay at home with Eden-- not because I didn't enjoy my career or want to further it, but because I can't imagine leaving her. I don't want to. Being with her makes me happy. It fulfills me. I can continue to pursue work when she is old enough to read books and have sleepovers. It's like I told my dad: these "normal" practices of separating a baby and mom for sleep or food are modern and new when considering the history of human beings-- and are necessary for a working mom. But I'm not a working mom. I am, however, often embarrassed when discussing my sleep and nursing habits with other "normal" moms, which frustrates me. I yearn for a community of moms who "get" me and who are, for lack of a better way of making it happen, forced to be near me. I wish I had the circumstances where my mom or grandma could come over every day or every other day. I wish I felt like Eden had a network of trusting, similar-minded people. Instead, I find myself in an individualistic culture where it feels like moms who work are forced to push their babies away to maintain a "normal" lifestyle. And I am so individualistic myself that it takes effort, a lot of it, to engage with other moms at all.

The truth is this: I love breastfeeding Eden. I love that special connection, I love the time of quiet, I love watching her at peace when she sleeps, I love when she makes eye contact, I love when she is being silly and crawly and blows raspberries, I love how I can instantly calm her if she is upset, and I love the purpose of my breasts which under any other circumstance are merely sexual playthings or means to a backache or reason to adjust a wardrobe. Breastfeeding (along with growing a being in my body) has made me put a value on myself and women in general that I didn't know before.

The truth is this: I love sharing a bed with Eden. It's the most natural thing to take the being that was in continuous contact with me for 9 months and continue that contact through the night and most of the day. While it is "normal" to get babies on sleep schedules and used to sleeping solo etc, I couldn't bear to deny Eden the comfort of being beside mom and dad. I love that I can check on her by simply opening my eyes or moving an arm. I love how she looks for me when she rouses. I love her cuddles, and I love when she wakes up, sees me, and is comfortable and happy and smiling. She's so small and needs me so much; why would I put her in a different room to sleep by herself, except for the fact that it's "normal"?

A year in, I have come to appreciate my ignorance. It means I've had to depend on my heart. It means I have the ability to question the "normal" that I might not be able to question if I lived more closely to the people I love and respect who endorse the "normal."

I don't want to push Eden away in any capacity. I don't want to buy her move-out luggage when she's eighteen. I don't need to raise a child who is independent and individualistic. I want her to value family, community. For year two, my goal is to proudly declare these things that I love, with no judgement to those who conform to our social norms, but also no apology for my rejection of them.