Parent Extremis

I didn’t read many parenting books when I was pregnant because I didn’t think I needed to read a million and five theories about how and when to hold and feed my child.  I wasn’t interested in the scare tactics that many of the books utilize to get parents on board with their “methods”.  Ultimately, I believe that children need tons of love, non-physical discipline, age-appropriate, relevant and rational limits, good role models, a strong family network and exposure to a wide range of activities and experiences in order to become healthy and well-adjusted individuals.   I suspect that most parents would agree.

One of the parenting-method theories is called Attachment Parenting.

Those who subscribe to Attachment Parenting believe they are raising children to become highly empathetic people able to form strong interpersonal connections. “Attachment Parenting challenges us as parents to treat our children with kindness, respect and dignity, and to model in our interactions with them the way we’d like them to interact with others.”

The eight principles of Attachment Parenting include Preparing for Pregnancy, Birth, and Parenting; Feed with Love and Respect; Respond with Sensitivity; Use Nurturing Touch; Engage in Nighttime Parenting; Provide Consistent and Loving Care; Practice Positive Discipline; and Strive for Balance in Your Personal and Family Life.  A description of these principles can be found here.

I really like some of the concepts of this “method” but I can’t wholly support any one method of parenting that is so structured.  It can be too challenging and confusing and also it tends to make mothers feel inadequate.  As mothers, we have enough guilt and worry about how we are mothering, we don’t need the added stress of feeling as though we need to follow the rigors of someone else’s recommended model for our behavior.  I do agree that babies need a lot of physical contact and that this specific contact does make them feel safer, more loved and therefore well adjusted children in this world.   For example, a mother should use a baby carrier OR sling because she wants to and needs the convenience not because she if fearful that if she doesn’t she will harm her child or cause irreversible emotional damage.

Do you practice Attachment Parenting, what can you say about it?   Do you feel it has made you better as a parent?  How so?

I am sure you have all been on the edge of your seat waiting to find out if my little Noah has slept at all, anywhere, since I last posted about co-sleeping and newborn sleep. Mainly, how they don’t. At least not where and when you would like them to.

I read a bunch of sleep books, the last one being The No-Cry Sleep Solution and it totally spoke to me, I’m telling ya! Actually, there were a few main points that worked really well for us. Essentially, make a damn bedtime routine. It wasn’t occuring to me that a baby, a three-month old needed a routine with books and special parent time, but, durr! why not?

So for the record, I wasn’t a fan of the cry-it-out method, but it’s normal for a baby to cry for like, five minutes or so when you first put them down. How long the baby is allowed to cry is something that each parent must decide for themselves. It is not easy for a new mom to listen to her baby cry. Her boobs leak, her heart aches, her head pounds and she stands around the corner wonder how long she should let this continue. I am okay letting Noah cry, for a few minutes, if and only if it leads to sleep, and lots of it.

What is working the best for us is that I created a bedtime routine and I stick with it every day. Of course the time varies by about thirty minutes to an hour. I let him get sleepy, give him a bath, nurse and if he needs more time, we read books. Going forward, I’d like to actually have more reading time, and I suppose I’ll add that in as he gets older and can actually listen to the story rather than grab my boob the minute I start in with “In the great green room there was a telephone and a red balloon…”

Okay, so to wrap up this horribly un-flowing and runon entry I will say that I had read books about crying it out and books about how babies need to sleep with their parents and I wasn’t sure where I fell on the spectrum. I found that creating a routine and listening to your baby’s cues worked really well for me.

Sleeping with your baby is beautiful and natural, sadly, it isn’t the safest place for the baby. A baby is safest in a crib with a tight fitted sheet and no toys or blankets or bumpers. However, somewhere between these juxtaposing notions is the reality of having a newborn. I have recently admitted to co-sleeping with my two month old, I swear to you, I do it with one eye open. Explains my exhaustion a bit, no?

Jackie, of Nursing Your Kids, recently wrote a very thorough entry about the dangers of sleeping with your babies and young children. She also notes that if you are set on sleeping with your children, there are ways to do it safely. Keep pillows and loose bedding away from the baby. Keep the baby on his back. You can also use a co-sleeper or a snuggle nest.

If you cornered a group of new mothers and asked them (in secret of course) if they slept with their baby, a good amount of them would confess. The practicalities are endless, really. Nursing is much easier and you both get more sleep. That isn’t to say that safety should be tossed to the curb, but when you are facing your second and third MONTH of 4-hours-of-sleep-a-night you get a little desperate.

I think it is hard for any new first-time mother to know for sure what her baby’s sleeping habits will be and where the baby will sleep. I do recommend knowing the ways to co-sleep safely and also having a safe crib nearby in case co-sleeping isn’t for you, or if you are lucky enough to have a baby who sleeps alone for extended periods of time, you know, like, more than fifteen minutes.

Supposedly, underground co-sleeping is so wide-spread that Babytalk magazine is running a survey about sleep habits. Click here to participate.

When I was pregnant I read books about pregnancy and giving birth. I didn’t read any baby books. Actually, I didn’t think I needed it. After all, I have practiced taking care of babies and children since I was ten years old. I figured I would love my baby, feed him and clean him, teach him good values and all and mostly … follow my intuition.

Awhile back I wrote about Noah not sleeping in a crib and how he slept with me on me. And I soon ate my words because he did a little sleeping in the co-sleeper for about two nights. My doctor reassured me and said that the first month is totally fair game and just to sleep wherever and however you can. So we did. And the next day I bought every baby-sleep book I could find in hopes of figuring out a plan of action for getting little Noah to sleep by himself, anywhere but on top of me.

I read this book and then I read this book and then I threw them both across the room and cried for awhile because, dude! they contradict each other, badly. And I think both books told me I was a very bad mother for not doing something sooner.

See, this is exactly why I didn’t read baby books. They are all a bunch of “theories” and “methods” and some of them work for some people, but they can also make you feel like a real bork of a parent. I kept looking through books and they all seem to be based on some sort of scare tactic, you know, if you don’t do this method you child will grow up to be a hopeless insomnia who might go all Menendez on you one day. Um, no thank you.

I am now back to my original plan, do what feels right. It won’t be a tragedy if Noah doesn’t sleep in his own room through the night for a few more months. I do believe that some babies need more close contact and some babies do sleep better than other.

For now, I’m trying to put Noah in his crib in the evening, when he is tired. I let him cry for a few minutes but not for hours. Not even close. It just doesn’t feel right to me.

If I had absolute 100% confidence in the cry-it-out method, I’d do it. But I am not willing to go through that trauma (me) and racket (Noah) if there is even a remote chance it won’t work.

And all those self-soothing ideas? Yeah, they don’t work for us.

If you had a baby who was a bad sleeper I would love to hear what worked for you and what didn’t.

Greetings!

I’m the new writer for Parent Extremis. I’m no more qualified to write for this site than I am to care for my own seven week old baby. So it should be a fun ride! No, really, I plan to use this site to evaluate and discuss a variety of parenting issues. I hope you will stay tuned for some potentially riveting, or at least mildly interesting discussions of all the issues I can dream up including breast versus bottle feeding, sleep issues (co-sleeping vs. crying it out), the effect of pregnancy on the family, dealing with pediatrician visits and vaccination controversy, dealing with toddlers, heading back to work, discipline methods and much more.

I recently became a stay at home mom, or a work at home mom who does some freelance writing, to Noah, born December 21, 2007. He is almost eight weeks old and I love him more than life itself. We live with my hardworking and devoted husband, Marc, four cats and a yappy little dog.