TV and a baby

When I was pregnant, I didn't really have a viewpoint on E's tv watching.  I was always of the mindset that I wouldn't bash different parenting choices because I hadn't experienced it yet.  In those first few weeks and months, the tv was constantly on in our house.  It was winter, NYC had seen several blizzards, and I had a newborn who wanted to eat 24/7 and was not yet comfortable nursing in public, so I was basically home-bound.  I needed something to do during the day to keep me occupied after trolling Facebook got boring, so tv it was.  I found myself measuring my days in Food Network shows and laughing along with the women on The View.  But, as E got older, more alert and more aware (and less scrunched-up-old-man-newborn looking), I started noticing that if the tv was on, her eyes were glued to it.  So we stopped watching so much tv when she was awake, and eventually S and I pretty much stopped watching tv altogether.  It's gotten to the point where S and I have realized it's a lot more cost-effective to rent instant videos through Amazon Prime Instant and catch up on network shows the day after they air through the networks' websites.  Eventually we'll go back to cable, but for now, we're using the internet to watch our tv!

And don't worry, we're not too crazy about enforcing this zero-tv policy with E--she has a bunch of favorite YouTube videos she watches pretty much daily!  I'll be doing a separate post about that later.

E's new position of choice while watching her YouTube videos