Parental Advisory: Attachment Overload
I've got the co-sleeping, baby-wearing blues.
I’ve been really into attachment parenting ever since I found out about it (when I was pregnant). I still believe in it, but now that my baby’s getting older, I’m not sure if I can handle it! He’s so big and heavy and I’m so exhausted:and then I see other mothers with their strollers and their babies who sleep through the night in their cribs and they seem to have so much more freedom. I am thinking about trying out a crib for naps at least, and then maybe if it works out, transitioning him for nights too. I feel like it’s that or weaning him but I’m definitely not ready for that. And also, if I keep carrying him around I’m afraid I’m going to screw up my back. I am so torn though, because the books I read are so convincing. If I decide to stop will my baby be traumatized? Will I undo all the work I’ve done so far? I can’t even talk to any of my friends about this. We used to make fun of people who put their babies in cages! – Detached
Dear Detached,
Attachment Parenting is a wonderful concept: Follow these tenets, advocates say, and you’ll enjoy a bond with your baby that will transcend many of the usual troubles of childhood. The promise of everlasting love and connectedness is mighty appealing to any parent, especially a new one who’s anxious about just how to go about forging those bonds. And there are lots of very real benefits to breastfeeding, co-sleeping, baby-wearing, cue-reading, high parent-baby contact and other ingredients of the AP lifestyle.
Attachment Parenting works really well for a lot of people. We have dozens of friends who swear by it, and they’re happy and fulfilled and reasonably well-rested and their kids are awesome. We’ve done some AP’ing ourselves, and loved it:most of the time. But, like most things, Attachment Parenting doesn’t work for everybody all the time. Some people fall in love with the AP philosophy, but find it difficult to implement – it feels too demanding, too claustrophobic, too exhausting, or too incompatible with the other important things in their lives. And these people, like you, often feel horribly guilty because part of the pitch for Attachment Parenting is that it’s better for your baby (and eventually, your child) than other kinds of parenting. Which makes it really, really hard to switch gears without second-guessing yourself and worrying about how it might negatively affect your kid.
So here’s where you need to take a deep breath and a step back. If Attachment Parenting, as it’s written in books or practiced by your friends, isn’t working for you, it’s time to start free-styling.
As we see it, the main problem with AP lit (not the kind taught in high school) is the same as every other kind of Expert baby book: It’s too bossy, it’s too rigid, it doesn’t take into account the different circumstances of people’s lives. (Co-sleeping is one family’s heaven, and another one’s hell.) If the whole program taken to the letter works well for you – or well enough that you’re not resenting it – then great. If not, put aside what’s important to the philosophy, and think about what’s important to you. You can decide which parts of the high-touch lifestyle matter most to you and your baby, and try making changes elsewhere.
If you’re dreading going to bed at night (every night), move your baby to a crib. If your back is aching when you carry your son, put him in the stroller more often. AP advocates will be quick, and correct, to mention that there are back-sparing carriers – some are far better than others. But still, the stroller is a perfectly reasonable baby transport option. He may take a little time to get used to these changes (you might, too) but he will not be will not be scarred for life, or even temporarily.
What you’re going through right now is a common experience, if not a particularly publicized one. There are people who find a style that works and stick with it, but more often than not, parenting styles evolve. This is your baby. You don’t need to follow somebody else’s set of rules.
Have a question? Email beingpregnant@babble.com
Well, time for a news flash! Mothers and fathers using strollers and sleep-training their babies love their kids as much as you do, forge an equally strong bond and your previous smugness and feeling of superiority was completely unwarranted. They just didn’t fall for the latest “parenting” fad and relied on good old common sense.
Now you can let go of the guilt-tripping. Your baby will be fine, and I’m sure you have what it takes to be a great mom. The hardest part will be getting out of your high horse (and being treated like a villain by your judgmental “friends”).
I had a big baby, too, and sometimes I’d feel like a big box of broken at the end of the day. One thing that helped was a mei tai style carrier. In my case, specifically, the Ergo helped a LOT once she was old enough for a back carry (about six months). A super stretchy pouch would have been nice for a hip carry, too (a lot of the dedicated hip carriers tend to slip off the opposite shoulder – the stretchy pouch things seem to spread out and cling to the shoulder better). Just for the record, I live in a pretty touchy-feeling childrearing area – lots of GD, and hardly anybody feeds formula. But I could probably only name one family that didn’t buy and use a stroller and a crib at least part of the time. I’m not sure I’ve ever met the kind of AP purist described here. Real letter, or just some hot button stereotyping?
If it hurts, you’re doing it wrong.
AP isn’t the latest parenting fad – just as Ferberizing your child isn’t as well – my parents and many cultures around the world follow an AP/CC pattern (but thanks for the slap-in-the face comment Good to hear).
I’m an AP parent and for me, it works. But the main thing about any way to raise your child, as Sears notes, is simply to follow your instinct and your child’s as well. If it doesn’t feel good, probably isn’t meant to be. But, to blast the AP crowd isn’t helpful either.
AP isn’t all about doing something all the time. It’s being appropriately responsive to your baby. Using a stroller does not mean you aren’t an attached parent, it means you’ve made the best choice for transporting the baby at that moment. Not abandoning your child at night by co-sleeping is great, but if it means the child is just in your room and not in your bed so you can get sleep, that’s fine too. And it’s okay for a child to take a nap by himself . . . you can get a portable bed and put it where you are if you want, or not.As an attached parent with a not so good sleeper, I’ve really appreciated the “No Cry Sleep Solution” as a practical guide for sleeping that picks up where Sears leaves off.Also, to echo other commenters, the Ergo carrier is fantastic, but even that has it’s limits. I switch between the Ergo, moby wrap, sling, and stroller, and find that works great. I do have the child facing me while in the stroller.
Thank you “AP momma in So Cal” , well said. I’m am also an AP mom and I find it funny ” Good to Hear” thinks APparents are on a high horse or think it’s the only way to raise a child… I find it quite opposite. It seems to me they are a very open minded community of parents. I do not down how you choose to raise your children. Whatever worksfor your family is what will help to create happy, healthy kids. Please stop feeling so threatened and support each other even if we don’t all take the same path, our goal is the same.
Even the creator of the term AP (Dr. Sears) is very clear about not doling out absolutes. If you hate cosleeping, don’t do it. If your baby is too heavy, use a stroller. Every situation is different. I carry by daughter around everywhere. She is heavy but I have just gotten stronger and better at carrying her. I am glad that I do not have a bulky stroller to push around like every other mom I see in my neighborhood. I just grab her and wear a little backpack. I do not cosleep with her since no one was getting any sleep by the time she was older than six months. She needs her space, we need our space, and it’s all OK.
Trust your instincts mamas! There is no magic formula out there. With my one year old I was very much co-sleeping and carrying my baby all of the time as a newborn b/c that is what made her happy. Now she is (along with the rest of the family) happy to sleep in her crib and either ride in a stroller or on my back in the Ergo. Read the books, look at the articles, gather knowledge from different perspectives, but then trust yourself and your baby’s cues to create your own style. One of the best things about AP is the idea of tuning in and staying connected to your baby’s needs and a big part of that is having a happy healthy mama.
“Moderation in everything”. Wise words from my grandmother, which should apply to everyone at least once in their life.
The problem I have with AP is that there had to be a name/movement put on things that just make practical sense to some. For example, most people I know who ended up co-sleeping did so because their babies would not sleep in their cribs, and the parents needed some sleep. I for one used a baby carrier because it made life easier for me. Of course these types of things existed for a long time, but it seems like it is only recently that anything you do in relation to child-rearing has to become a movement.
I loved wearing my babies, but I couldn’t keep it up beyond about 17 lbs. My back is a mess and sadly, I just can’t do it–not matter what the carrier. I tried a number of them, found my favorite and used it as long as my back could hold out. I didn’t do this so much because it was better for my babies than a stroller, by the way. I did it because I liked it much much better. I’d still rather strap them on and go, rather than lugging around this huge, unwieldy thing and trying to negotiate urban streets and public transportation. But if I’m flat on my back with muscle spasms, what kind of mother can I be?
Sticking to one parenting style/philosophy is so radical and ineffective. You have to adapt to each baby’s personality and sensory needs. Some kids do fine sleeping alone in a crib, while others have a hard time self-regulating and require that someone sleeps by their side. Outside, take the stroller, the kids love the ride. You always have the option of parking the stroller and taking the baby in your arms for a while.
Like many of the posters above, I agree that you have to do what feels natural to you. For me, baby wearing, co-sleeping, and breastfeeding felt very natural, but if my back hurt, she went in the stroller. When I had to go back to work, I pumped and she started taking a bottle during the day. Co-sleeping was a perfect fit for us…until she became big enough to kick my husband in the balls. I try to just go with flow.
Wow, I had no idea using a stroller would be considered bad under any circumstances. And having a separate room for sleeping is abandoning your child? Gosh, I can’t imagine why someone would think AP as a philosophy is smug and judgmental.
Cosleeping is not good for babies. Everytime you move, you wake them, then they think it is time to feed. A good nights sleep is vital for a growing child. Sleep with the baby nearby but leave it undisturbed until it wakes on it’s own to feed or be changed. Poor families cosleep out of economic neccesity. There are no long term studies to support the benefits of cosleeping. Besides, having sex in front of my kids is a big taboo. I would die if my 5 year old woke up next to my husband and his morning wood. Creeepy!
Co-sleeping worked great for us and we all slept well, as a result. I can’t make the claim that it works or doesn’t work for anyone other than me. Clearly, we do not have sex in front of our children or while they are in the bed. I don’t know any co-sleeping families who do that…it wouldn’t even occur to me.
I have to agree with the other post, I never thought using a stroller was considered being unattached or inattentive parent. I love being a Semi-attached parent and recommend most of their teaching to my friends, but I love my stroller, no matter what they say!!
“Attachment Parenting” is just a label exploited by marketing execs to sell books and gear to anxious parents. It may have started out as the good intentions and opinion of one or two well-meaning authors, but now it’s just another thing for people to get all fundamentalist about.
If raising your kids with an instruction manual makes you feel better, then more power to you.
Yes, physical affection and closeness is important. And it also feels good. It’s pretty intuitive, isn’t it? Why do we need a book to tell us this?
And on the other hand, why feel bad if you don’t exactly follow the instructions in some book which are, after all, one person’s opinion?
I have met judgmental AP parents. In fact, the AP listserv I belonged to for a bit routinely seemed to hold tribunals and kick people off for not rigidly adhering to AP guidelines. Didn’t really bother me, because I just felt sorry that these women had so little faith in their own parenting choices that they clung religiously to somebody else’s guide to being a parent. And that other choices were so threatening they pilloried other parents. Use what works for you and discard what doesn’t. Love your baby. Do the best you can. Be invested in your child’s development and resist the urge to be lazy and rely too much on TV. It’s all pretty simple.
The part about AP that bothers me the most, is that people actually think their child is going to feel more secure about themselves in life if their parents sleep with them and hold them every second of the day. Give me a break! My children get nothing but love and attention, but they also sleep in their own beds and play by themselves when they need to. I guess when my kids act up in school or get insecure about something in life, I will blame it on the fact that I made them sleep in their own beds at night.
I can appreciate that everyone has their own parenting styles, I just feel that AP can definitely be over the top!
why do some comments sometimes have grey highlights? is that some moderator’s way of highlighting them as extra good, or something?
I think the author is truly mistaken about the definition of “Attachment Parenting”. Rather than being about a specific set of “rules”, it is about following your parental instinct in order to form the best possible bond with your child. Don’t like co-sleeping? Don’t do it. Not ready to wean at 12 months? Then by all means keep nursing. It seems like there has been a collective anti-AP backlash and it seems to be rooted in an underlying defensiveness some of these people have about their parenting choices that I just don’t get.
I followed my instincts and they matched with a lot of attachment parenting ideas. I think the reason some people find the movement overwhelming is because it is actually really going against the grain of the dominant parenting theories in this country. The no co-sleeping movement for safety, the selling of so many cribs and strollers and gadgets and exosaucers etc etc… means that the movement away from these things sometimes has to be a bit loud in order to be heard. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a child rearing guru to understand that always pushing a child in a stroller for hours a day (yes, this can easily be done in NYC) isn’t good for themhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/nov/22/forward-backward-facing-baby-buggies, or or it may be helpful for some of us who don’t believe that putting a four month old baby in a crib in another room and letting him cry himself to sleep will teach him how to soothe himself (Happy Sleep Habits healthy child) … perhaps it takes a few annoying and loud people to offer some ideas that go against the grain. As far as following the AP doctrine without question, well, that doesn’t seem helpful either because if you are tired, angry, overwhelmed, overburdened then you aren’t doing a very good job of parenting either. No need to follow it to a tee but its good to read and think about things so that when you are faced with a difficult situation or a question about how to be with your child, maybe you will have given it a little bit of thought before hand and not just do it out of reaction which at least with me isn’t always the best possible way to be. I recommend Alfie Kohn’s Unconditional Parenting … it’s incredible!
The problem with all parenting philosophies is that rarely does one method (AP or whatnot) work in all instances (sleeping, eating, discipline) for every kid. My almost 6-year-old still sometimes co-sleeps – but loves to play alone for hours; she loved the stroller as a baby, hated the sling; she nursed till she was 2 but rarely for comfort. A lot of APers are very anti time out, but it works for my kid. Kids also change – the same 2 year old who refused to leave my side at the playground (I never tried to push her to go) now dashes off without a goodbye at school. Trust your instincts, do what feels right for you and your family. Oh – but I have to comment on the poster who worried about co-sleeping because of her husband’s “morning wood.” My kid comes into bed in the AM (or overnight) all the time. Husband just rolls on his tummy to hide his AM friend or goes to take a whiz. It’s no big deal. Unless you make it one.
Babble.com couldn’t be more transparent. In all of the AP literature I have read I’ve never come across a single article or book that said if you did not wear your baby 100% of the time or co-sleep 100% of the time your child would end up somehow damaged. Why does every article here have to be against attachment parenting and in defense of the conventional?
Wow I guess being ever so slightly critical of AP means your comment is going to be censored!
I posted the first comment where all I said, besides telling the LW to relax and that she had all it took to be a good mom, was that I found AP to be the latest “parenting fad”, that I preferred good old common sense and that in my experience AP parents tended to be smug and extremely critical of other parents choices (babys “in cages” for crib, “abandonned at night” for sleeping in own crib, fed “poison” by a “lazy” mum for formula fed, etc…)…
AND MY POST GOT DELETED AFTER TWO DAYS!
So I do call BS on posters who pretend Babble to be anti AP!
Honestly, people need to just do what works for them, have some balls and not worry what books say. I do a combination of whatever is easiest at the moment, feels good in my heart and makes my kid happy without spoiling her. Of course, with newborns, you have to be a little more on the ball or they will die.
OF COURSE you should do what feels right for you. A happy and rested mom is a good mom. And you won’t undo all the good you have done. Babywearing is the most important in “the fourth trimester” , aka newborns. (Even though I must agree, if it hurts its done wrong. Could you check out some baby wearing boards to find someone to help you?)
I carried my child every day untill she was 10 months, then summer came, she startet taking one long nap and we switched to the stroller. No biggie. She’s two now and I still carry her in the mei tai (www.babyhawk.com) when that is more practical (airports for instance).
We co-slept untill I stopped nursing (2 years), but I always thought that if one of us (my husband, myself or the baby) started seeing it as a hassle we would stop.
In the end the transition went easy. (Look!Wow! Big girl bed! Do you want to sleep in it? YEEEAH!) I got her a matress on the floor with a new linen (with her favorit cartoon characters on) and because its just an ordinary matress it’s still comfy for me the nights she has nightmares.
Short version:You soundlike a wonderful mom. Do what works best for your family.
I wish you good luck!
are these write-ins asking for advice supposed to be from real people? because this one just has a made-up ring to it. not to say that some people don’t feel this way — i’m sure they do — but the phrasing… just seems fishy.the odes/morris advice column has frequently struck me as anti-AP/conventional/mainstream.i agree with the posters above who say trust your instincts and don’t be rigid about attachment parenting, if you want to do AP at all. respect parents who are trusting THEIR instincts and doing things differently from you.
I totally agree fishy, I get the impression that as much as “Bad Parent” seems to want to create drama, so do these columns. I call “You-Be-Mom-made-it-up Tailand-sytle” Foul!
You have summed up what I needed to hear in two simple, profound sentences: “This is your baby. You dont need to follow somebody elses set of rules.” Thanksyou.
Oh, and the fact “Detached” admitted to once making fun of people who put their children in cribs speaks to the fact that we really need to stop judging other people’s methods because they are different from ours. As my grandma would say “different strokes for different folks.”
So in other words, the author doesn’t actually understand AP. Congratulations on writing an article based on misconceptions!
To use your own examples, if you aren’t a fan of co-sleeping, then DON’T DO IT. AP doesn’t “say” you have to co-sleep. It acknowledges that ROOM-SHARING (which doesn’t mean IN your bed) is safest for the baby, encourages nighttime bonding, and helps breastfeeding. I have a very AP-minded friend whose daughter only sleeps in her own room, in a crib. Does this make her less AP? Of course not. Attachment parenting is about understanding the needs of your child, and therefore, if her daughter needs it to be quiet and alone to sleep, she’d be going AGAINST the tenets of AP if she tried to co-sleep. Instead, she listened to her daughter’s ques and understood what was necessary for her unique child.
Go read on AP, then try again. As others have said, AP discussions are very clear that you are to be attached to YOUR child, and each child is unique.
I agree with RanaAurora that the authors don’t understand AP and I also feel that the content of the person who ‘wrote the question’ seems fishy. Did the authors just make up the question in order to be able to say something about it? The most important thing for ME about AP is connecting physically with my daughter, who is now five. I breastfed (not only because it is ‘best’ but because it was easiest for me too!), we co-slept (not only because it is ‘best’ but because I slept so much better being able to just roll over and breastfeed then fall right back asleep), and she is an incredibly bright, independent and caring child. Every parent has instincts they should follow and to find a style that creates a loving, balanced home environment. Trust yourself!
I might be beinatg a dead horse, but thank you for posting this!