attachment parenting 2.75 years in

Well! We've been attachment parenting for almost three years now! With two children! Here's an explanation and review.

Basically, attachment parenting is about encouraging child attachment to the parent (as opposed to discouraging it). It officially has seven B's: babywearing, birth bonding, bedding close to baby, beware of baby trainers, breastfeeding, belief in the language value of baby's cry, and balance. I follow the seven B's pretty much 100%, but I consider myself less of a practitioner of attachment parenting and more a practitioner of biological parenting.

By this, I mean I tailor my parenting to align with what my research has indicated is most appropriate with regards to human biology. I am not saying that I'm going 100% the biological route--um, if humans breastfed as long as other similar primates do, they would wean between ages 4 and 7 and I am not really feeling the need to persist THAT long--but overall, my parenting is based more on my understanding of human biology and less on modern convention. Okay.

Birth Bonding. we did well with Sarah's birth bonding! I gave birth with only 10 minutes of notice, on my living room floor. It took the midwives an hour to show up, and so I just cuddled her and nursed her for that hour. It was really nice, minus the fact that I was like, basically naked on the wood floor and covered in birth goo. But I vastly preferred that than the hospital situation I was subjected to with Nathaniel. That was miserable. This time, neither baby nor I were drugged; we were both awake and alert. I'll never forget how Sarah looked at me as she was so fresh and new, still connected to me from the outside. We didn't cut her cord for an hour. It was beautiful.

Breastfeeding. Nathaniel still nurses at night, but that's basically it, unless he suffers a significant injury. Then I'll let him nurse for a minute to calm him down. I like having that as an option. He is almost 3 (in July).

For Sarah, we still nurse 100%. She gums real food but doesn't eat it yet. She is almost 8 months old. I like nursing her. It makes my life extremely convenient, plus I can eat lots of things and not worry about my size. Win!

Bedding. We moved Nathaniel into his own room in October, and it caused a lot of problems. He was definitely not ready for it, but Carl and I were sick of having him in our room (he'd been in his own bed for several months). Before we moved him into his own room, he was sleeping well through the night; after we moved him out, he started waking up and screaming and being so scared, all through the night. He woke me up more than the new baby did. Also, he developed a super-attachment to binkies. It was horrible. It was deforming his mouth. Eventually we "lost" Orange Binky in January, which I will blog about further at some point. But he was asking about Orange Binky even last week, basically. Horrible, horrible.

Baby Sarah still sleeps with us. I like it. She is a very itchy baby so it's nice that I can keep her from tearing up her face in the night. We swaddle her and when she comes undone, I am right there to fix it. We can nurse at night as necessary without anyone actually having to wake up for real. Very convenient. Minus her teething issues, we sleep very well now.

Babywearing. I wear Baby Sarah everywhere always. It's awesome. Very convenient. She and I are very close.

Belief in language value of cries. I have had to be slightly less responsive to Sarah's cries because now Nathaniel has more opinions! But Nathaniel can talk and she can't, and he recognizes that because Sarah is limited in her communication, if she is trying to communicate something to Mom through her cries, then she has to come first. Usually I can just go get her and put her in the sling, and then attend to Nathaniel. We don't have a lot of crying around here because we are very responsive. I believe our children trust us a lot because we have always been very responsive to their crying. If for some reason we need to let them cry, we never make them cry alone (except in the case of tantrums). Even if they can't have what they really want, or if they're hurting, or scared or over-tired or lonely or something, we go and physically hold them and comfort them while they get their sadness and frustration out.

Baby training. We avoid it.

Balance. Awesome. My kids are happy and healthy, minus Nathaniel's allergies, and I personally still get to clean, blog, research, do a few side businesses, take a meditation class, and enjoy time with friends and family. I'm pretty happy right now, not going to lie.

CONS?
Are there cons we've noticed with this? Yeah. Obviously sleeping with a kid in your bed for years is not for everyone! Haha! It's not always super fun. But I like it better than having to get out of bed to deal with a sad kid in the middle of the night.

Another con would be that I am the only person who can feed my baby. It would sometimes be nice to be able to leave my baby with someone else for feeding. That is theoretically possible with formula and stuff, but I don't know Sarah's allergy situation and Nathaniel was allergic to essentially all formula. It takes me like an hour to pump two ounces of breastmilk. So pumping is not happening. Oh well. I actually don't mind having to be the only one to feed Sarah because it encourages our closeness and trust. It's a way that we check in every day. So while it is sometimes inconvenient, I like it better than the alternative.

Babywearing--I wear my kids all the time, pretty much. The main con to this is that after a while your back can ache. But I consciously relax my muscles regularly (this is a practice that takes weeks of trying to really master!!). Sometimes my back gets pretty achy, but overall it's not bad. I prefer a sore back and being close to my baby to having a non-sore back but a baby who's crying because she wants to be held!

Also I love babywearing because babies get so much more intellectually out of their environment when they are on the adult's level. Babies love faces and watching interactions. It's harder for them to do that from a carseat or the floor. I probably don't spend as much time, say, reading stories to my 8-month-old as other people do, but she is involved in all my interactions with people and is able to observe basically everything going on around her, from an adult's-eye-view. People always say how alert she is. Well, yes: she has a lot to look at!

Other cons... I guess it can kind of be a con that my babies are very attached to me. They don't have lovies or blankies or snuggle things that they're attached to, because they're attached to me instead. So if I leave for any real length of time--even just for half an hour--sometimes this can cause huge tantrums from my kids.

But for me--this is a long story, but here's the short version--from an early age I attached to a snuggle thing, and it was the one thing that was always there for me, at least in my own mind (which is the important thing to a child). When I was four, we lost it as we moved into our new house. And I was heartbroken. Seriously, remembering how I felt at the loss of "The Puh" has brought me to tears almost two decades later. I will never forget how horrible it was. It was like a death. My parents got me a new Puh but it wasn't the same. I mourned that silly scrap of fabric and fluff for years.

For me, I never want my own children to feel more loved by a Puh than their own mother. I never want them to prefer finding comfort from an inanimate object than their own mother. Even if that means I spend way more time way closer physically to my children than other mothers would, I just can't do anything else. It is imperative for me. This is not to judge anyone else who encourages attachment objects in their parenting; it's just that for me personally, I was so scarred by the untimely loss of my lovey, I can't stomach the idea of my kids having that kind of sorrow in their lives. I'd rather have my kids just love me, even if that makes my life harder in the short term. A Puh can't hug my child, but I can. And so I'd rather do that.

Basically, there are definitely cons to attachment parenting, or biological parenting, or responsive parenting, or whatever you would want to call it. It's a very involved approach to parenting. It's definitely not for everyone. With attachment parenting, you give your literal all to your children. My 8-month-old? Her body is literally, entirely, 100% made of my body. I have given her my body to make hers, from pregnancy to now. I give my kids my sleep in the night as I wake up to care for them, or snuggle them in the dark basically on command, I give them large amounts of time as I put them to bed, I give them my muscles as I carry them around, I take them with me everywhere and carry them with me at eye level most of the time. I give them as much as I can. But it's not forever. They'll only be tiny for a little while, and then all of this will just be a memory, and I will cry because I miss the sacrifices so much. So for now, attachment parenting might be a lot, but I'll keep doing it. Because I love it.

Why I don't use baby food

Someone asked me the other day why I don't use baby food. I forgot my coherent answer and gave dumb answers at the time! But here are the real reasons.

1. Kids are fickle and you don't know what they are going to like. So I only buy food that I like. I have a grocery budget, you know! My kids eat what I eat and if they don't like it, then I can eat it. No wasted food.

2. I super hate spoon-feeding. No, I SUPER HATE SPOON-FEEDING. I super hate it, guys. For real. I can nurse and eat at the same time, but I can't spoon-feed another person and eat at the same time. It is easier for me to just let my kid nurse at dinner and eat, rather than go hungry while they are spoon-fed.

3. I really hate food messes. My family can back this up. From the time I was less than a year old, I ate with silverware and never made a mess with my food. To this day I can eat tacos and other messy foods with basically no mess on my plate. I just hate food messes. Mushy baby food is inherently messy, and therefore I inherently abhor it. Just the thought of mushy food smearing on anything makes my little heart cringe. I don't care if other people's kids have messy food or something, but for mine... I'd rather just avoid that.

So, how do I feed my babies?

They get food that I like that is easy to dissolve--graham crackers, cheerios, etc. Sometimes, yes, I will chew up food for them and give it to them neatly. Mess-free. Plus adult saliva helps break down the food for the baby. I know it sounds gross but biologically it's actually a smart way to introduce your kids to adult foods.

Basically, it comes down to: I am lazy and I hate food messes and I hate cleaning up food messes. Also I hate spending money on food that I won't eat if no one else will eat it. I spent money on baby food for Nathaniel but regretted it. Now I just avoid that whole thing. It's not a philosophical issue and there is no judgment in my heart for people who use baby food. For me, I'm just too lazy for that! Haha!