Normally I don’t make resolutions on New Years Day.  I’m a big believer in making the change you want happen as soon as you want to, but this year I had a change of heart.

I’m already a strong believer in AP, but there are some things I could do better, so this year I’m making eight resolutions to go along with the eight principles of parenting.

Prepare for Pregnancy, Birth, and Parenting

While I’m not preparing to be a group leader, I did find a lot of interesting books in the required reading list for leader applicants.  I picked one from each category and they’re sitting on my bookshelf right now.  In fact, I got all the books on discipline, as Oliver is proving to be a very strong-willed, high-energy toddler and I think I’ll need all the help I can get.   As of today, I’ve read three of the books.  I resolve to try and make it through the rest (or at least one from each category) this year.  I’m a big reader, so as long as I don’t get distracted by that Truman biography on my shelf, it should be a breeze.

Feed with Love and Respect

We’ve been having some problems with biting recently.  I’m just recovering from my third bite (and resulting clogged ducts) in as many weeks, so the thought of weaning my 17 month old has crossed my mind.  It’s not anything he’s doing on purpose at all.  He tends to fall asleep on the breast and I was happy to let him, but recently if there’s a loud noise, he bites down.  First my husband had a cold and coughed loudly in the middle of the night, then the mailman rang the bell and the dog started barking while Oliver was nursing to sleep for his nap, and finally over Christmas, my mother in law touched his head while he was falling asleep on the breast.  It has always been my goal to let him wean at his own speed, so I am resolving to try to find alternatives to him nursing to sleep.   He is quite happy to fall asleep with my husband, so maybe we’ll try that for a while and see how it goes.

Respond with Sensitivity

I’ve been pretty lazy about teaching baby signs and helping Oliver to identify his emotions.  He knows the basics: hungry, thirsty, want a new diaper, and sleepy, but I haven’t done much beyond that.  I resolve to teach him to label and sign his other emotions this year.

Use Nurturing Touch

I wanted to last year, but never got around to it.  This year, I’m going to learn baby and child massage.

Ensure Safe Sleep, Physically and Emotionally

I resolve to continue cosleeping with our toddler until he is ready to graduate to his own bed.

Provide Consistent and Loving Care

Oliver is much more sensitive about being separated from me than he was as a baby, I resolve to continue being his primary caregiver, staying a stay at home mom.

Practice Positive Discipline

I haven’t needed to discipline Oliver so far, but I can feel this is coming, as he’s been pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable more and more frequently recently.  I resolve to practice positive discipline, not to spank, or use rewards or punishments to coerce behavior.

Strive for Balance in Personal and Family Life

This is probably the category I’ve been the worst at.  People ask why I don’t have photos of Oliver in my wallet, or have his picture in my cell phone.  Over the last 17 months, I’m pretty sure I haven’t been apart from Oliver for more than 24 hours total.  I don’t need pictures of him cause he’s almost always with me.  This year, I resolve to take more time for myself and to recognize that this will make me a better parent.  My husband gave me a full spa day with treatments for Christmas, so that should get me off to a great start.

What are your New Year’s Resolutions?

Christina blogs about life at An American Expat in Deutschland and about parenting at Mamas Worldwide.

Good things come to those that wait

Parents are under so much pressure these days from relatives, friends and peers. It used to be that people maybe knew a few others with children their age, but now with the Internet and online forums some moms are interacting with hundreds of other moms whose babies were born in the same month.

• Is your baby sleeping through the night yet?
• Did your baby roll over yet?
• Is your baby crawling?
• Any first steps?
• How many words does she have?
• Is your child toilet trained yet?
• Is he walking up and down stairs on his own?
• Is she using a fork and spoon?
• Can she count to 10? Recite the alphabet?

Whether it is because they are competitive or just worried about their child’s development vis-à-vis others, parents push their children to do things or learn things before they are perhaps ready. I think that learning to be a patient parent begins with having realistic expectations about child development and also not feeling the need to push our children to reach milestones before they are ready. Just let them learn on their own, when they are ready and when they express an interest. Trust them and respect the fact that it is their body and their life. Nora Rock says it very well in her article Learning Patient Parenting (it takes her a while to get to the point though, so be patient!).

Embracing Mañana

I just returned from a vacation in Cuba, which got me thinking about the mañana attitude as it relates to parenting. Generally this term, which means “tomorrow” is reflective of a more laid back culture or lifestyle. In the United States and Canada we are always in a rush and always on a schedule. I know that certainly one of the impatience triggers for me is when I need to be somewhere or want to get something done. If we’re just going outside to the park, I don’t care how long my son takes to put his shoes on, but if we’re late for a scheduled activity I get impatient.

So I think that perhaps one solution to more patient parenting is to slow down, realize not everything needs to be done now and in a hurry, and just enjoy life rather than scheduling and rushing. Part of that is questioning your own motives in the moment. Why do you want your child to hurry up and finish? Is it because you are done and figure he’s had long enough to finish? Is it because you have something else to do and if so can that wait so that you can give your child the time he needs? Is it because you have promised to be somewhere? That brings me to the other part, which is questioning whether you have over committed yourself and your child. If you are constantly rushing from one place to the next (doctor’s appointment, haircut, playgroup, music lessons, swimming lessons, coffee date) have you taken on too much? Should you plan some more downtime into your schedule so that you have more time to be patient? More downtime gives you more time to be patient and also leaves more time for play and cuddles!

Great “in the moment” tips

The tips I gave above are things you can do to create an environment more conducive to patient parenting. However, there are also things you can do in the spur of the moment when you catch yourself about to be impatient. Zenhabits has a great post on how to become a patient parent that lists some of these tips. Some of the key ones include:

• Counting to 10 and taking deep breaths
  
• Pretend someone is watching and act accordingly
• Take the time to teach your child and consider how what you are about to say will help your child (and don’t say it if it won’t help!)
• Visualize what to do in difficult situations or ask yourself what your mom (or other patience role model in your life) would do

Err on the side of love

The Zenhabits post that I quoted above ends by saying:

Bonus tip: just love. Instead of reacting with anger, teach yourself to react with love. Your child spills something or has a messy room or breaks your family heirloom? Yells at you or gets in trouble at school? React with love. It’s the best solution.

BarelyKnitTogether feels this way too said in her post The Life I’ve Created:

My feeling is it is almost always best to err on the side of mercy and love. There are many parenting ‘mistakes’ that can be ameliorated by lots and lots of love, and the feelings of security it can bring.

I think this is a great mantra to remember when you are about to lose your patience. If you don’t know what to do and are about to throw your hands up in the air, try a hug. Worst case scenario, you create a connection instead of causing a rift. Best case scenario, that is what your child really needed and he starts cooperating after the hug because his needs have been met.

Annie blogs about the art and science of parenting at PhD in Parenting.

I’ll just say that I thought the ad was poorly done. Although I wasn’t as offended as some were, the ad made me less likely to ever want to buy Motrin. I won’t buy J&J products, but I never did anyway. Generics are cheaper, and just as effective.

I did wear both my babies, but quite honestly, it had nothing to do with bonding and everything to do with convenience. I also breastfed both and I spent so much time doing that, I figured I had the bonding covered.

I wore my first child in a front carrier when I wanted to go outside and didn’t feel like getting the stroller out. I wore him when he was teething and fussy and didn’t want me to sit down. With him securely strapped into a Baby Bjorn, I had my hands free and his weight distributed evenly across my back. I could even work on dinner or clean my house, and he was content.

When my daughter was born, my son was just over two years old and at a very needy phase. With my Maya Wrap Sling, I could carry and breastfeed my infant hands free and still pay attention to my toddler or assist him with meals or change his diaper. Particularly when my daughter was going through a growth spurt, she would cluster feed, wanting to nurse every 30 to 45 minutes. With the aid of my sling, I could nurse her discreetly without having to stop what I was doing. Also, a couple of weeks after she was born, we had several days of very warm weather. It was simple to put her in the sling, stick a burp cloth, my keys and cell phone into the pocket on the sling, and take off for a walk along the water.

They are older now and I haven’t worn either of them in quite some time, but I can’t imagine those early days without my baby carriers.

I want to wear my baby, but it really does make my back hurt. What can I do?

Sometimes carrying your baby can be literally a pain in the neck (or the back or the shoulders). Here are a couple of things to keep in mind:

**Read the directions–It sounds silly, but double check the manual that came with your carrier to make sure you are wearing it correctly and that your baby is correctly positioned in it. My Maya Wrap took some getting used to, and at first, I was uncomfortable because I had it threaded wrong. With the adjustment, I was much more comfortable!
**Readjust the fit of your carrier. If you’re sure you have the carrier on correctly, make sure the straps fit your body correctly. Although my husband and I are roughly the same height, he always had to play with the straps on our Baby Bjorn after I wore it, to accommodate his broader back.
**Try a new carrier. Not all baby carriers are created equally and not everyone will have the same results. While I loved my Baby Bjorn, a friend never felt comfortable using one. My very first carrier was the Infantino Slingrider, and it always made my back hurt, but I’ve seen other women wearing them successfully. Personally, I never liked carriers that positioned the baby lower, at my waist, instead of higher on my chest, because that position strained my lower back.
**Try a new position. Part of the reason I liked my Maya Wrap so much was because it was versatile. I used it to breastfeed my daughter hands free as a very young baby, and then switched to carrying her on my hip as she got bigger. When my son was two, I used it to carry him across my back when we needed to cross a busy street. If your baby is very large or very small, or if you are very tall or very short, you may have better success with a different position. Check the product manual for suggestions.
**Reevaluate. If you’ve done all these things and your back is still hurting, you may not be able to use a baby carrier. Not everyone can. If your baby is large for his age and you have herniated disks in your back, you’re better off with the baby in a stroller. And despite what the Motrin ad says, there is no such thing as “good pain.” If it hurts, don’t do it and save yourself the pill popping.

Did you wear your babies? What carrier would you recommend?

Additionally, it’s tradition in our house to have a culling of the toys about two weeks before  Christmas in anticipation of the goodies to come. We go over the toys we already have and chose those we don’t use anymore to donate to the Salvation Army, the Goodwill, or other causes of note. Most of the time the kids are okay with getting rid of some of their things, though it’s important to remind them to jettison the nice things they don’t use, along with the ones better suited to the garbage bin. (Otherwise you are likely to get a bag of toys missing parts, stained with juice, or broken, instead of something you can genuinely pass on to others.)

We also try and do something charitable to remind ourselves how lucky we are. We have purchased a goat for a family in Africa through WorldVision, done all our christmas shopping from the Hunger Site store, and dropped coins into the Salvation Army bucket. This year Monkey took these lessons on herself and donated half her piggy bank to her schools Giving Tree, a class project centered around providing christmas toys for kiddos whose parents can’t afford them. She came up with the idea herself, and we were very proud of her decision to give her own money, instead of just asking us for ours.

We are looking forward to our Louisa May Alcott christmas this year. I hope we can get our family to focus less on getting and more on experiencing with each passing season. This year we have limited our gift gettting by agreeing that we will each get a gift for each family member, and Santa will get us a gift as well. The rest of the gifts are tiny ones that fit in the stockings. That way each person gets four gifts and a stocking. This is still a generous christmas, but is a far cry from the past, when our tree would be buried in gifts and the kids would practically be bored with unwrapping them before they were done.

The best present we are getting each other this year is time together. My husband is taking nearly two weeks off, Monkey will be out of school, and I will be taking the same time off. That way the four of us can go into the mountains and ice skate, or visit the lights downtown at night, or sled down the hill by the REI. We are decorating together, and making ornaments, cookies, and gifts. We are trying to regain the sense of wonder that used to come with this holiday, instead suffering from the annoyance and stress we have had as adults.

What are your family’s holiday tradtions?

It seemed to me that when our baby wasn’t nursing on mama, she was sleeping. I got to be a champion burper though, because I kept volunteering to do it so I could get more time holding her. Every time our daughter cried I would try to be the comforter, but when you have no milkies, it’s a lot tougher.

As our baby grew, I tried to find more ways to connect with her, and it wasn’t until she was a toddler that she really started to want to hang out with me and do papa-stuff. Even then, she still wanted to be put to bed by mama, and if she was hurt or upset, only the mama would do. I was feeling kind of like a second-hand parent, wanting to play a bigger role.

By the time we had our next baby, our oldest was five. Since mama now had her hands full with the new one, she became my helper and I became her playmate. I was able to take almost a month off of work after the birth, and she and I did all of the shopping, cooking, and cleaning during that time. We spent many hours hanging out in the laundromat washing dirty diapers together.

The pivotal father-daughter event for us was teaching her how to ride a bike. At first I tried taking the pedals off, to make a coaster bike so she could learn to balance, but she wasn’t having any of it. She’s as stubborn as I am, I thought. So we started going to a nearby school to practice on the track, and I think I clocked about 20 miles with her before we even got close to her riding by herself. Around and around we went, with me bent over and holding on to the seat. If I let go when she was doing well, she could pedal by herself. If she looked back to see if I was still holding on, she promptly started wobbling and then crashed (there’s a lesson in there somewhere…).

And then one day, she just got it. The look on her face when she realized that she could do it was priceless. It was like a gift from her to me.

That day really helped me to understand how different the role of the father is from that of the mother; all this time I had been trying to learn how to “mother”, and it never felt natural to me. I’m still learning how to father even after five kids and 20 years, but now I know that part of it is teaching what I know. It’s not all silly jokes and rowdy rough-housing (although those are important, too).

Dads, if you feel left out, or are confused because you don’t know how to mother, just relax. Your time will come.

Be yourself, enoy the difference, and before you know it, you’ll have a little “mini-me” following you around, too.

How times have changed.

Two kids later, and the holiday season is a lot more hectic. There are more people to buy gifts for, visits to Santa, Christmas wishlists to write, gifts to hide, pictures of the kids to take to enclose in Christmas cards, gifts to wrap secretly, classroom parties to plan, teachers to buy gifts for, all while the Chipmunks Christmas Albums blast over the stereo.

And then there’s the worries: will the kids have too much? Will they have enough? And exactly how many candy canes have they eaten, anyway?

It’s so easy to get caught up in the hubbub, and it’s so hard to slow down and nurture relationships. As an attached family, we realize the importance of the kids’ connections to people rather than the things under the tree.

To this end, we do our best to make an attached holiday. Here’s what my family does:

1.) My kids get no electronic gadgets as gifts. Our gifts are simple toys that invite cooperation and imagination. Admittedly, this is difficult when many different relatives are buying gifts for our kids and who have different ideas of toys. But the gadgety toys they receive from relatives are few and far between.

2.) Our Christmas Eve is a time for family. We don’t shop, we don’t hustle about. We all work together on a Gingerbread house.

3.) Our kids have the same bedtime during the school break as they have while school’s in session. Sleep is important for their health, and even though there’s no school for two weeks, we still have to make sure they get all the shut-eye they need.

4.) I limit the amount of cookies I make. If they’re around, the kids will eat them and won’t have room for the healthy food. I know it’s a special time of year and many people believe plates of cookies around is part of the holiday. But my kids are sky-high anyway this entire month; they don’t need any help from the sugar, and I like to make sure they’ll have enough healthy energy to last them the month!

5.) Our family does Santa, but we don’t use him as a discipline tactic. The kids have no idea of the notion that they “must be good” so Santa will come; Santa doesn’t withhold his love any more than I do. Santa is an AP guy, too! Why do you think his elves are so happy?

6.) My husband and I forego the office Christmas party in lieu of spending time with the family. We don’t miss the party at all! For New Years, several friends and I have gotten together for years. When the kids arrived, it became a family friendly party. We play games, (You’ve not played Twister until you’ve played it 8 months pregnant!) eat pizza, and have a corny gift exchange. The kids are right there with us.

How does your family stay attached during this time?

We are a relatively healthy family who relies mainly on good nutrition and clean living to help us keep up with four children. On the whole, we are fortunate to enjoy good health and do not take it for granted. When my husband came down with a touch of the flu last month, we brewed some tea, made some soup and figured he’d be better in a few days. The rest of us went into immune-building mode: I nursed the baby more frequently, we included some immune-boosting foods and supplements into our regular diets and everyone got some extra sleep. By day three, my husband was worse, not better. And nobody else was feeling ill yet. Another three days passed with no improvement. And other than being more tired from having the other half of my parenting team incapacitated, I was not feeling ill. Nobody in our house had the flu—including my husband.

Watching a child suffer through an illness is a parents’ worst nightmare…our little ones can seem so helpless and vulnerable. However, seeing a 6′ 4” grown man who is too weak to get out of bed for a week is very distressing, too. Our big, strong, wood-chopping, snow-shoveling, chief wage earner, and carry-the-kids-to-bed Daddy had come to a screeching halt. This was beyond my soup, rest, and TLC skills. We had no choice. Now the doctors were going to be involved.

Spending an entire day in a hospital emergency room with overworked and underpaid health care professionals, a sick hubby, and an active eight month old might be enough to send most women over the edge. However, we had already established such a close and respectful relationship with our baby, that she was perfectly content to nap in her sling, sit in my lap, bounce on her daddy occasionally, read a book and entertain the parade of nurses who came to visit our room. Never once did she cry, or want to be put down on the icky ER floor to flex her very active crawling muscles.

Across the hall from our room, I caught more than a few glimpses of a five month old baby with a pretty serious gash on his head. His infant carrier had fallen out of the grocery cart at the local big chain superstore parking lot…I was grateful that my baby was snuggled close to me in her sling. His mom ran back and forth from the room to the public bathroom sink mixing and heating up his bottles of formula…I was grateful to have clean, warm milk already prepared under my shirt.

I overheard his mom tell the nurse that she was worried that checking on his head injury in the middle of the night would undo all of the work she had done using the Ferber method to get him to sleep through the night…I was grateful to know that my baby would be sleeping soundly next to me tonight. I know that his mother loved him—I could hear the concern in her voice, I could see how his face lit up when his mother would sing to him.

I certainly did not think that she was a bad parent simply because she made different choices than I have. I did wonder whether her choices were making her life easier and whether her baby was happier or healthier for all of the hard work and effort she was putting in. Despite my difficult circumstances at the moment, parenting was simply a natural part of what I did, no harder than usual, just different. And obviously, I was at the ER with a sick grown man, not an injured baby. I was grateful that I didn’t have to choose between helping my husband through this tough time or being the parent my baby needed me to be…because of AP, we had been making choices all along that allowed our baby to feel safe and right at home (no matter where we were or what we were doing).

Having the ability to parent under ideal circumstances is enough to challenge parents everyday. Attachment Parenting was the no-brainer everyday solution for our family right from the start. Time and time again, the philosophies of AP have been instrumental in allowing me to keep my cool, do what is best for my children in the long run, and use love and respect to deal with the everyday challenges that parenting inevitably presents. With my husbands difficult and long illness (which is still unresolved and undiagnosed a month after its onset) I have learned that AP is nice to have when life is just regular old crazy life, but it is absolutely indispensable when life gets turned upside down.

justine

As much as those stories infuriate me, today I feel there is cause to celebrate…and to weigh in. Some of you probably already have accounts on Opposing Views because they seem to cover quite a few topics (spanking among them) that AP parents care about. Today they launched the debate: Should Women Breastfeed in Public?

The reason we should celebrate is because it’s not even a debate–no one stepped up to take the “No” position on this one. I choose to make this mean that we’re winning the battle against ignorance and I commend the three wonderful experts who spelled out all the many reasons to support nursing in public. But your votes still send a strong message to any dissenters (and as long as neanderthals people like Barbara Walters are around, there will always be dissenters on this topic), so go on, vote to support a baby’s right to eat in public.

While you’re there, you might also want to vote on these two:

• Will Formula Feeding Harm My Baby?
• Is Spanking an Acceptable Form of Discipline?

Citing the numerous studies on the benefits of breastfeeding, USBC states:

Excess health care costs totaling more than $4 billion must be paid by the U.S. health care system each year to treat otitis media, gastroenteritis, and necrotizing enterocolitis–childhood diseases and conditions preventable or reduced by breastfeeding. When prevention of obesity, diabetes, and other chronic conditions is factored in, the potential economic benefits of breastfeeding are significantly greater.

They go on to urge the President-Elect to take the following steps during his administration:

1. Instruct the Surgeon General to issue a statement in support of breastfeeding urging all sectors (governmental and non-governmental) involved in supporting women, children, and families to improve their breastfeeding policies.

2. Enact a national paid family leave policy.

3. Endorse the World Health Organization’s International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes as well as the Global Strategy for Infant & Young Child Feeding.

4. Ask the Federal Trade Commission to monitor infant formula marketing.

5. Ask the Food and Drug Administration to include labeling on powdered infant formula warning that it is not sterile and providing instructions on how to properly reconstitute it.

6. Highlight the benefits for employers of workplace breastfeeding support programs as part of your program to promote flexible work arrangements.

7. Urge all insurers to cover lactation care and support services.

8. Approve an increase in breastfeeding support funds for the USDA’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), especially to support the peer counseling program.

9. Instruct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to recommend that all hospitals achieve the Baby-Friendly designation.

10. Ensure that emergency management agencies are trained in breastfeeding support and have breastfeeding supply kits available for distribution in emergencies.

Want to lend your voice to this debate? You can sign the USBC Breastfeeding Petition too!