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Attachment Parenting
Poll: Did you know you were going to be AP before LO arrived?
There are some aspects I knew I would use but for the most part, I changed everything when DD arrived 4 weeks ago. I hate to admit it but I used to think co sleeping = suffocation and I was uncomfortable about NIP. Now I have a wonderful daughter who sleeps next to me every night and I wouldn't have it any other way!! I also EBF and I'm getting more courageous (sp?) everyday. Just wondering how others came to AP!
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Re: Poll: Did you know you were going to be AP before LO arrived?
Hello fellow KY Momma!
I planned on EBFing & BWing.. I also planned on having DD beside my bed, but never, ever in it. I, to, thought of it as a suffocation hazard. DH was actually the one that kept talking about bringing her in bed with us all throughout my pregnancy, wanting to get a king bed, etc... and I always told him no way.
Yeah, that held until about night two when I was EXHAUSTED and she had to be held.... and so our lovely bedsharing relationship began!
I was also way nervous about NIP... but now I'll pull it out (discreetly of course), anywhere, anytime and not bat an eye.
I knew I'd have these parenting convictions, I just never knew I'd be so passionate about them!
With DD yes, but she is my second. I'm more AP with her than I was with DS when he was a baby. I think with DS it was something that was just natural to me. I didn't know of the term "AP" when I had DS, but now that I know it, it fits the kind of parent I am.
I'd agree with this for sure!!
Breastfeeding Counselor with Breastfeeding USA
Babywearing Guide ** Newborn Carriers
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Almost everything I thought about parenting went out the window the minute I held my LO. I knew I wanted to breastfeed, but thought I would only do it for a few months. I am BFing my DD now at 15 months with no plans to stop any time soon. I enjoy deciphering her cues and learning as much as possible...holding her & nurturing her has been an amazing, joyful, (and exhausting) experience.
Yeah... my location is wrong, we've moved since I updated! LOL I actually live in South Eastern KY now.
Do you know about/have you visited Mother Nurture on Richmond Road? It's in the brown building in front of Lowes. Baby carriers, CDs, Nursing tanks/bras/pumps.... it's wonderful!!!!
Where did you give birth?
My pregnancy wasn't planned and I had absolutely no experience with babies before DD. When I first found out I was pregnant I had a conversation with my mom in which I said that she'd be sleeping in her crib in the other room from day one. I wasn't going to have some spoiled, coddled baby
How things have changed as I've become more educated and in touch with my own parenting instincts!
I had no clue I would be AP, or even what it was. I knew I would bf and BW and wanted DS in a PNP in our room at first but that was it. I was completely against bedsharing and believed in CIO at an appropriate age. I kind of wanted to research parenting but DH kept saying he wanted to go on instinct.
When DS was about 3 months old, I started to realize our instincts were either very different from everyone else or a lot of people were blindly listening to 'experts.' By the time DS was about six months old I was so frustrated with people trying to tell DH and I to go against our instincts. I complained to my like minded cousin who told me to read the damn books she had sent me while I was pregnant, lol. It was the Dr. Sears Baby and AP books. Lo and behold, I realized we were unknowingly practicing AP. It opened up a whole new world of support and confidence. We pretty much follow everything.
I am not the mom I thought I would be and I am SO happy about that!
Until this board popped up, I just thought it was "the way you do things."
I come from a long line of crunchy hippie moms and have an aunt who found out I was pregnant and sent my the Michael Olaf catalogue and pictures of indigenous moms and siblings wearing their babies.
It makes sense.
I am constantly amused by the label, but I'm happy to own it.
I'm going to be honest, I used to think APer were nutbags. All I knew about it before my pregnancy were stories about women kicking their husbands out of bed so they could bedshare; not exactly a great first impresion.
But, I randomly watched the business of being born very early on in my pregnancy. That lead to hiring a doula and trying for a natural birth (unfortunately my nearly 10 lb sunny side up son had other plans). My doula was the catylist for getting into AP, she has 4 kids and is super duper crunchy. Then I randomly found out a couple of my good friends are very AP (I just hadn't picked up on it before). I talked to H about it, we checked out Dr Sears website, and it was a no brainer.
As it turned out, we were AP before we even really knew what AP was. I remember reading all about AP principles and H & I just looking at each other and saying "well, we were going to do that anyway".
BFP 01.23.2012, EDD 09.28.2012, MC 03.13.2012
BFP 06.15.2012, EDD 02.21.2012, MC 07.17.2012
Both losses measuring 7-8 weeks
I planned to breastfeed, but that was about it. I had never heard the title "Attachment Parenting" before, but a lot of AP is just what I imagined in my head to be "regular parenting" and what I assumed I'd do once she got here. I was AP and I didn't even know it!
I learned tons about BWing here though, and that was all new info to me!
There were a lot of aspects of AP that I really believed in before I had DS, but I didn't necessarily plan to follow them and I wasn't quite as gung-ho about it all. I really believed all of the co-sleeping research, but I was very afraid of killing my baby in my sleep, so I did not want to co-sleep - or at least, I was afraid of it. He ended up in my bed though when he wouldn't sleep anywhere else. I also planned to wear my baby, and I had a moby, but I couldn't really figure it out. So I bought a sling, and he didn't really like that either. I didn't give up though and I finally got the Ergo to work when he was about 3.5 months old. I wish I had it sooner because my life would have been a lot easier. I spend $$$$ on a stroller, and DS hated it with a passion. He would just cry and cry when I put him in there. DH always ended up holding him when we went on walks. lol
I always planned to bf for at least a year. I also was very anti-cio before I had DS (though I didn't really think about it much), but I didn't really think there was anything wrong with crying. I thought that babies just cried and there wasn't anything I could do about it. Turns out that there was a lot I could do about it
I definitely was into the "birth bonding" thing. I chose a hospital that doesn't even have a nursery (okay, they have one but it is only for babies who do not have parents to take care of them or whose parents absolutely refuse to keep them in their room) and that doesn't take LO out of the room for hours after birth. They do everything in the room, but they did take him about 4-5 hours later for a bath. I also chose a midwife and attempted a med-free birth in order to promote bonding with DS (that didn't work out though). However, I did have the ILs at my house after DS was born and that will never happen again.
I don't think I really read too much about how to parent before DS was born. I really thought it would just come naturally to me (and it did, but I took forgranted all of the outside noise/advice I would get).
I didn't think much about balance.
I hope I'm not overstepping my bounds here, since I'm just a lurker and I'm not pregnant yet, but....
I randomly stumbled across this board sometime last fall, I'd say, before I was even TTC. I had never heard of attachment parenting. I knew I wanted to have a natural birth and to breastfeed, but I'd not really thought about much else. After I found the board and saw reference to the Dr. Sears website, I browsed it for a while and felt like it made just way too much sense to do it any other way!
I just feel pretty strongly that raising our kids in a way that is more baby-led and promotes attachment seems like the right thing to do for us. I am SUPER excited to baby wear, too. I want to try a bassinet beside the bed for sleeping because thought of bed-sharing makes me a little nervous, but I am not going to rule it out. We'll just have to see what our (phantom) babies are like and go from there.
I'm just glad I found this board!
Definitely not overstepping any bounds!
I don't come from a line of hippies or cruchy mamas like some pps, but rather from a line of proud, independent, Catholic SAHMs of big families (I am one of 5 kids, mom was one of 7, grandmother one of 10, etc.). For them I think AP principles were traditional and old-world rather than new age. When you have a lot of kids and not a lot of resources, AP comes naturally.
Also, academically...I went to Notre Dame for undergrad where James McKenna, the cosleeping guru, was so popular you often couldn't get in his classes even if you had the first registration time on the first day. Also my grad studies focus on medieval and early modern women, so I have learned a lot about changing trends in pregnancy, childbirth and childcare which made me more aware that the modern, western, mainstream way is not necessarily the only or best way.
I had NO desire to be an AP-parent. To me, the AP parents were the chicks in town with the dreads and hairy armpits who nursed their 6-year olds in the middle of the grocery store, had orgasmic water births in a baby pool in their living room while their whole family watched and ate potluck, who had a family bed until the kid was like 7, were always vegan, always homeschooled, and always were on a mission to protest this or that.
However, I didn't know Dr. Sears was AP and I liked his books and read them. I came across Ina May Gaskin's Guide to Childbirth and was inspired and empowered. When doing my registry on Amazon I read reviews and found the Baby Bjorn was bad but the Ergo and Moby were good and learned about the benefits of wearing a baby not just when at the market but when napping, nursing, being at home. Oh, and due to EF reasons I wanted to CD and learned about EC.
I was going to BF for 6 months, baby would be in her own room by time I went back to school, and I didn't know much about babies so I didn't have any preconceived notions. And kiddo was going to go to public school to be exposed to all sorts of people and cultures just like me and her dad.
And then you have a baby, and things change. In some ways maybe I got less AP, many ways I got more. And now I am okay with the word AP because my stereotype of AP parents is as bad as when people stereotype me because I have two fashion blogs, or consider myself a feminist, or married my HS sweetheart.
This. I've realized since becoming a parent that I was pretty much raised in an AP way, as were most of my cousins. All of it just makes sense to me.
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LOL! I agree with everything the previous posters have said. Before I had DS, I thought "Babies are suppose to cry, I can deal with it. You have to let them cry" Boy did my attitude change when I had him. I had never heard of AP, read Dr. Sears' book and realized I did most of what he said.
This with BF. I new I wanted to try it, but I hadn't realized it would be so hard! After I had DS and BF was so difficult for us, I became obsessed with making it work, and I am still EBF 6 months later, and hope to continue for at least another 6 months.
I also had not heard much about BW until one of my friends had her second child and I researched slings for her. I then fell in love with the idea and when I became pregnant several months later, I found carriers for me and DS.
Bedsharing, which we did full time the first 3 months or so and we do part time now, came about when DS wouldn't sleep any other way than right next to or on me.
I new that I did not believe in CIO before I had a baby, but I had not really thought about how I would deal with my crying baby, but when I had DS, I realized there is absolutely no way I could leave him alone to cry. I felt a very strong attachment to DS almost immediately, without knowing it was called AP, and I have just acted on those feelings since in the way that I parent.
I knew I was going to BF and BW, and I had an ARCS. However, we only planned on having DD in our bedroom for a couple months. She's still waking often (every 1-3 hours, though the past few nights she's gone 4 and 5! A miracle!), so she's still in our room (sidecarred crib).
Like others have said, I didn't know I'd be so passionate about my parenting convictions!
Not really. I planned on EBF and planned a natural birth. The sling just seemed neat and handy and I didn't really realize the benefits of it until later. I had this grand plan that she would sleep in the PNP in our room at night and take her naps in her crib during the day. Once she was sleeping longer stretches, I would move her to her crib, which she would be used to from nap time. Genius, right? Yep. She NEVER slept in her crib, slept in her PNP one night, and now, at two, is still sleeping in our bed, lol.
Once she was born I seriously almost never put her down. I read the Dr. Sears book when she was a month or two old and realized that there was a name for what I was doing. But it just kind of happened, I didn't plan it.
I did not know that I was going to be AP before my LO arrived....but then again, I didn't know what AP was until LO (who is now 10 months old) was about 1 or 2 months old.
Before LO was born, I knew that I was going to breastfeed, but I thought I would stop around 6-9 months -- LO hasn't stopped nursing yet. Before LO was born, I just KNEW that I wasn't going to bedshare because I had been told that it shouldn't be done -- after being SO VERY tired from the 1st night we brought LO home, I brought LO to bed with DH and me....we all slept better that night and many times, we still end up bedsharing at some point during the night. Also, it was only after LO was born that I decided that I didn't want to use spanking as discipline.
The bedsharing and discipline mentality were so different from what I expected I'd want...and also very different from most people I know. I can't even remember how I found out about AP, but it was after I had already started doing some of these things because it felt like the thing I needed to do for us. Once I found out about AP, I realized that many parents follow this model (whether intentionally or instinctively or both) and I didn't feel alone.
So glad this board is here!