Siblings

What on earth were we thinking? (Part 1 of series on preparing for baby #2)

June 9, 2009

Panic. Complete panic. It’s 3:00am. I’m 30 weeks pregnant. My 2 year old son wakes up again and wants Mommy. I nurse him back to sleep, get up to pee again (pregnant bladder) and try to find a comfortable position to sleep where my huge belly is neither making me uncomfortable nor in danger of [...]

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Attachment Parenting Is Keeping Us Up at Night: Why We Haven’t Gone the Cry-It-Out Route

February 6, 2009

Our daughter has never been much inclined toward sleep. A standard stretch usually won’t exceed four hours, and more frequent waking (like every hour) is far from unheard of in our house. As a result, my husband and I have yet to get a solid night’s sleep in the last 18 months. We have marveled [...]

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This Father is Not a Mother

December 16, 2008

When my wife and I had our first child, I remember thinking that I wished that we could have twins, so I could hold one sometimes (I have since withdrawn that wish…). I thought to myself that attachment parenting really meant attached-to-the-mama parenting. It seemed to me that when our baby wasn’t nursing on mama, [...]

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Giving Presence to the Firstborn

October 15, 2008

For several weeks, I’ve been thinking about ways in which I give my children presence.  I’ve thought about different ways I spend time with my kids, the talks we’ve shared, the games we’ve played.  But time and time again, my thoughts returned to one specific incident. When I was pregnant with my second child, I [...]

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Does Attachment Parenting Pertain To Me?

September 15, 2008

My kids are not babies.  They sleep in their own rooms.  They don’t breastfeed.  If I wore them in a carrier, the sling would rip and my spine would snap. They have homework. Does attachment parenting still pertain to me? Sometimes it seems as though the API principles are geared mainly toward babies and toddlers: [...]

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Getting Dad into the Game

September 9, 2008

I often hear new moms tell me they are pumping so that dad can give the new baby a bottle. Over and over I hear that they want dad to feel involved and feeding an infant a bottle is just the way to do it. As the mother of four, this seems redundant to me. [...]

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Cobathing

August 20, 2008

Bath time in our house is a social event. Since becoming the parents of a demanding toddler (armed with a growing vocabulary), my husband and I can hardly remember the days when taking a shower added up to a) showering alone, and b) getting in, washing up, and getting out. In our childhood, my husband [...]

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Breastfeeding while pregnant: trying at times, but ultimately worthwhile

August 11, 2008

Originally posted on May 25, 2008 on Crunchy Domestic Goddess When I became pregnant with my son, my daughter Ava was about 20 months old and still nursing regularly. While I had friends who’s children had self-weaned when they became pregnant, I had my doubts that my “na-na”-loving kid would consider weaning for a second, [...]

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