Conflicting Advice on Babies

Since Hayley was born we have gotten so much conflicting advice, starting on the first day. Every nurse had a different philosophy on how and when to feed her. Some were like "Get her up every three hours to feed and make her take at least an once.", others were saying "Let her eat when she's hungry." It was so mind boggling. Then there's advice about sleeping. One of the most common things we have heard is "You can't spoil a baby, if she's crying hold her and comfort her". Only one nurse we talked to said something different, she said if you're constantly holding them they will be easily awaken and they'll get crabby, and they'll always want to sleep in your arms instead of the crib.

Well we've been basically feeding Hayley whenever she's gets up. She seems hungry and crabby all the time lately. She has started to cry all the time. We were told that she's probably going through a growth spurt and she needs to eat more. We'll after I fed her last night she kind of fell asleep on my chest. So I started reading a book on the "First Year" and I found an interesting section on when babies cry and what a certain cry might sound like. One interesting topic I found was that babies cry before sleeping. So all this time when Hayley has been crying we've were thinking she was hungry or she needed to be comforted. Soon after reading this Hayley starting crying super loud and she started acting like she was hungry again after I had just fed her. I tried to feed her again but she'd take a little and then start crying louder. So I thought I'd try putting her in her car seat for a couple minutes and see what happens. She cried and cried, louder and louder, and I was just about to pick her up and it was like she got knocked out or something, in blink of an eye she was out cold. This was at 9:30ish. Well she slept until 3:30am and she only got up once during the night. I learned a huge lesson yesterday about watching for a signal that Hayley is tired and wanting to sleep even if she's crying.

I've also come to the conclusion that listening to everyones advice is not a bad thing because people are telling you what worked for them. Since every baby is different, parents need to find what works for their baby and you never know when you might come upon some advice that will work for you.