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!

curing fungal infections with essential oils

My little baby had a horrible rash in her skin folds: her neck skin, and the little folds of her baby fat. The creases were all bright red and stinky. I kept putting Balmex on the skin, and then Vaseline and cornstarch. None of that helped. It didn't dry the skin, didn't do anything. Lame.

Fortunately, after a few weeks, we were due for her 2-month appointment, so I was able to ask her pediatrician about the issue. The doctor said it was likely a fungal infection and recommended some kind of anti-fungal cream to treat it.

Well, guess how interested I was in buying an anti-fungal cream? Um, about 0%. I remembered that tea tree oil is supposed to be anti-fungal, so I came home and whipped something up.

My Awesome Natural Anti-Fungal Rub
1/4 cup coconut oil
1/2 tsp tea tree oil
1/4 tsp lavender oil
3 drops lemon oil

I don't remember why I added the lemon oil.

It's cold here, so I had to melt the coconut oil over a burner. Then I just mixed in the other ingredients and poured it into a container.

Totally worked.

I'm just using it as an all-over body lotion for her. Today it occurred to me that I'd read about cradle cap potentially being a fungal infection--apparently no one knows what cradle cap is or why babies get it? weird--so I think I'll try it on her cradle cap next.

Takeaway: I'm glad I had my essential oils on hand to treat my kid's fungal infection. It worked like a charm.

gave birth at home! and other fun stuff

I haven't updated here in forever.

Lots of stuff happened since I posted here--my younger sibs both got married, for example. My handicapped brother James passed away. And I gave birth in my living room.

So now we have two kids and we are crunchily raising both of them!

My brother's passing was--a blessing, mostly. For him and for all of us. The last few weeks leading up to his death were excruciating to behold. He just got sicker and sicker and sicker. Eventually it got to the point that he wouldn't hold any food down, so we decided to stop feeding him. I told my younger brother about our decision early in the day. By the time I got Sam's protestations over the decision via text, it was too late: James was already dead. We hadn't even had a chance to not-feed him.

I miss him, but kind of... more theoretically than practically, I guess you could say. I miss the essence of him, I guess. But I don't miss him in pain, or him struggling, or me struggling to care for him, or any of that.

My new baby is awesome. We named her Sarah and she is adorable. Almost 12 weeks now. She smiles, and has tons of dark hair and big blue eyes--slate blue, almost gray. Very pretty. She coos a LOT and has since she was just a few weeks old. We took her in at 4 weeks and she was already kicking and holding herself up really well, and cooing. Basically all the stuff you're not supposed to do until 8 weeks. She's my little baby smartie. Right now she's sleeping next to me in her new Swaddleme. She really loves being swaddled, apparently. Good times. We're in the living room, mere feet away from where she was born right next to my coffee table. I'm really glad I aimed for a homebirth--I would have had one anyway. I was in active labor for 10 minutes in the end. Very intense 10 minutes, I might add.

But the point is, I recently decided I should be more proactive in updating the world about our crunchy life. Some of it might come in handy.

One! Two!

Well, Nathaniel officially gets the concept of "two," as of today. This morning when he got up and went downstairs, he counted his steps all the way down: "One! Two! One! Two! One! Two!"

He counted his baby Crocs a bunch of times (there are two of them!).

He counted bugs.

He counted whatever he could find.

When he ate all his fruit snacks except for one, he held the one up and said, "MOMMY! ONE!!!" over and over again, elated to understand and articulate that he only had one fruit snack.

I'm pretty happy with him!

He's doing well with his pre-reading, too. He loves his Dr. Seuss ABC book (Big A, little a--what begins with A?), and he loves to point at all the letters and say their sounds. On every page, he points to the word BIG and says "B! I! G!" He really enjoys that.

He turns 2 in about three weeks. Pretty crazy!

attachment parenting 23 months in

Well! Nathaniel is now 23 months old. I figured it's a good time to check in with you all about our attachment parenting ways, since I haven't been that good at updating about them, and we have another kid on the way. Baby #2 is due in late August, so Carl and I have been talking about what we liked and didn't like about our parenting experiences so far.

Mostly, we've liked them.

As a reminder, there are Seven B's of attachment parenting: birth bonding, breastfeeding, babywearing, bedding close to baby, belief in language value of baby's cry, beware of baby trainers, and balance.

1. Birth Bonding. Did our best with that one, but that went horribly with Nathaniel because of my [unwanted] pitocin induction and epidural, and then the fact that he was so late and so big--he ended up in the NICU for the first day or so after birth. We will do better with this kid because I know now to really work hard at going into labor at 39 weeks (no more 43-week pregnancies, thanks), and we're having Kid #2 at home. So we will bond with this one.

2. Breastfeeding. I still nurse Nathaniel and I am not ashamed. He is allergic to lots of things, and nursing is one way I can be sure he's getting nutrients he needs even though his diet can be... uh, imbalanced due to his dietary restrictions. He only really nurses once or maaaaybe twice a day now--at night right before sleeping, and then before a nap if he bothers to take a nap these days. Mostly he is too busy for breastfeeding. On the pro side, I feel like nursing strengthens our relationship. On the other hand, I'm a little tired of my nursing wardrobe. It's not terrible, but I miss wearing other clothes. On the plus side, as a pregnant person, now it doesn't matter what I want to wear, because everything will be uncomfortable and look weird and I just have to deal with it for another three months. AUGUST!

3. Babywearing. Babywearing is AWESOME and I way recommend it. Nathaniel and I have always been very close--literally and emotionally. When he was just little little, I would wear him as I did my chores. I always wore him to the grocery store and on walks. And on airplanes--SO convenient on airplanes. Now that he's bigger and I'm pregnant, I don't wear him as much, but I still do a little bit. Well, not this month. But last month I did wear him! I fully plan to wear the second one a ton. It will be very convenient while I have to chase Nathaniel around to have both hands free and my little one right next to my body. Best babywearing tool: the ring sling. I got mine on Amazon for like $29.99. So worth it, so much better and more comfortable and convenient and cheaper than anything else I've tried.

4. Bedsharing. We still bedshare. My grandma was like, scandalized by it. And yeah, at this point, it's getting a little bit old. Nathaniel's getting big. But since we have been travelling and still have more travelling to do before the summer is over, we've decided not to move him to a toddler bed just yet. It would be bad to move him over and then have him sleep with us again while we're on the road, and have to have all the battles over again.

Bedsharing has been awesome for us. We've all slept very well, overall--I can count on two hands the times Nathaniel has woken us up with crying in the night. Every time it's been teething or illness, and we were right there to comfort him--no need to get out of bed. It's been amazingly convenient and very cuddly. Also it's been nice because a lot of times Carl doesn't get to see Nathaniel for more than an hour a day--but they can cuddle at night and it's nice. Also, Carl never lost sleep having to leave the room to bring me a screaming baby in the night. We will most likely bedshare with #2 as well. REMEMBER if you bedshare to follow all the rules for safe bedsharing. Look 'em up if you're interested.

5. Belief in language value of cries. I have always felt like Nathaniel's cries were important communication. Babies, at least as far as I can tell, don't cry because it's fun. They cry because they're scared, or tired, or lonely, or hurting, etc. All of those feelings are valid and crying is the only way a baby can express them. We have been very, very responsive to his cries and we do not let him cry it out. As a result, I believe, he's been a very chill dude, and he trusts us a lot. We will definitely work to be as responsive to #2 as we were to #1.

6. Beware of baby trainers. Eh, I was already doing this one. We'll keep being wary of baby training.

7. Balance. Been working on this one. I feel like life is pretty imbalanced right now, thanks to my pregnancy and travelling and weddings and Nathaniel's allergies and everything. Who knows. But we're trying. And we'll keep trying with the next one!

In other news, I'm excited to cloth diaper #2. Our cloth diapers have been fantastic and I way recommend them. They have saved us so much money. And now that Nathaniel's approaching potty-training age, he's really aware of everything going on down there, because cloth diapers are less comfortable than disposables. I think it will make potty training him a lot easier.

Anything else I'm missing? Anyway, attachment parenting isn't for everybody, but so far, it's been great for us.

Tuck.

Nathaniel has a NEW favorite word, and it is "Tuck." As in, "stuck." I never realized how many things are stuck in this world until my toddler started pointing out every single time anything is stuck.

He lets me know when he is properly buckled into his carseat: "Tuck! Tuck!"

He lets me know when his toys are stuck inside each other: "Tuck! Tuck!"

He likes to have me and Carl grab him and not let go: "Tuck! Tuck!"

His first sentence, if you can call it that, was "More tuck!" He wanted me to keep grabbing him over and over and not let him go.

He's a silly one!