ESSAY 03
Finding Our Rhythm with Our Baby
Letting go of fixed answers, learning one another’s signals, and finding a rhythm of our own as a family.
It has been a week since we brought Jjuhyeok home.
At first, I wanted to know everything precisely: how many milliliters of formula he should drink, how many hours there should be between feedings, and how long he should sleep each day. I thought that if I kept careful records and followed the numbers, I could be a good parent.
But Jjuhyeok did not move according to the numbers.
Sometimes he still wanted more after 80 mL; other times, he drank 100 mL and fell peacefully asleep. When we gave him more, he sometimes spat it back up. His sleep changed from day to day, too. What worked well yesterday did not work today.
Little by little, I began to understand: what matters in parenting is not following the right answer, but learning to read your baby’s signals.
When his body says he wants more, we increase the amount a little; when it seems too much for him, we reduce it again. If he struggles to fall asleep, we hold him, put him down, and wait. We do not find the answer all at once. We watch how Jjuhyeok responds and adjust again.
This is neither about making the baby conform to the parents’ rhythm nor about letting the parents be pulled along by every demand the baby makes.
It is about exchanging signals and creating a rhythm that belongs to us.
That is when keeping records becomes meaningful, too. Data does not dictate the answer to us; it becomes a dashboard that reveals changes we might otherwise have missed. Numbers cannot stand in for the baby. They become useful only when they lead us back to looking at him more closely.
The rhythm we find with our baby extends to the rhythm between my wife and me. When one of us is exhausted, the other steps in. We pay attention to each other’s condition and adjust our roles and expectations.
We are not becoming a family that never falls out of step, but one that knows how to find its way back when it does.
Perhaps parenting is not only about learning the skills needed to raise a child well. Perhaps it is the process of three different people finding a rhythm for living together without any one of them losing their own breath.
During our first week at home with Jjuhyeok, we did not find the right answers. Instead, we began, little by little, to learn one another’s language.
Good parenting is not about producing the perfect feeding amount or sleep schedule. It is about seeing the Jjuhyeok who is here today and responding to his smallest signals—and finding our rhythm again each time we fall out of step.
In the end, perhaps what matters most is not the numbers we record, but the shared breath that comes alive within our relationships.