APtly Said – Page 66

Becoming an AP Mom

I imagine that my journey to Attachment Parenting was typical to some degree. I believe we all learn, grow and evolve as individuals and parents when a child enters our lives.

For me, it’s hard to remember life before my son and even more difficult to remember ideas that I had about parenting. I do know that prior to my pregnancy with my son, I was very career-oriented and spent long hard days either in the office or traveling for business across the country.

My husband and I waited many years before I felt ready to have children, and when I initially became pregnant, I believed that nothing about the professional aspect of my life would change.

I was wrong. Shortly after learning I was pregnant, I became violently ill and was diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum, a severe form of nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. I was hospitalized twice and so sick that I remained on medical leave from my job until the beginning of my third trimester.

When I was at the height of my illness, I recall so many things shifting for me internally and spiritually. Most importantly, my view on motherhood began to shift.

Because I and my son were so nutritionally deprived during my pregnancy, I felt compelled to breastfeed him. I felt that because I was unable to nourish him while he was in my womb, I must nourish him after birth.

I know this is not the reason most women give when asked how they arrived at the decision to breastfeed; however, for me it signified a very important shift on my journey to becoming a mom.

In addition, I also started to view my son and I as a team—a partnership whose one goal was survival. This belief made me strong on the days where I was weak, and I truly believed that my son was doing all he could to survive. Reframing our relationship as a loving partnership rather than a hierarchal parent-child dyad drew me even closer to Attachment Parenting.

If this was our relationship and we were bonding so closely for survival in extreme conditions, then how could I possibly allow that to change once he was born?

At the time, I did not understand what this shift meant or how it would change me to my core.

Upon my son’s birth, instinctually, I knew that I didn’t want to be separated from him. My husband shared this feeling as well. During our first few nights with our son, my husband and I took shifts holding him in our arms while he slept. We were both so exhausted, but we felt compelled to be close to him.

Our friends and family advised us on other methods for sleep. Initially, we hesitantly followed their well-meaning advice but quickly learned that it didn’t feel right to us and clearly did not feel right to our son because he was unable to sleep unless he was in our arms or in our bed.

I remember feeling alone and isolated at that time. Doing what we felt and knew was instinctual was discouraged by others in our lives. Despite this external pressure, my husband and I persevered and we continued to follow our instincts. I was compelled to actualize the commitment that I had made to my son during my pregnancy.

Fortunately, I was able to find information about Attachment Parenting as well as related research. This information resonated with my husband and I, and it helped to solidify and strengthen our belief that what we were doing—what felt instinctual and right—actually had a name and was backed by a plethora of research. It was that information and our strong will that enabled us to initially define ourselves as Attachment Parenting parents.

Following these initial insights, I soon discovered a local API Support Group and quickly became an API member. Joining other families who felt similarly about parenting was extremely validating and served to normalize our feelings and our experiences.

Finally, we had a group of nonjudgmental, supportive families who provided us with resources and friendship. Further, as the years progress, our API Support Group has imparted upon us so much more, including friendships and nurturance, continued strength and support, and the unconditional caring that I believe is needed during the parenting years.

I often question why I was subjected with extreme illness during my pregnancy, and I truly believe that we are all presented with life challenges from which we have the opportunity to learn and grow. As difficult and traumatic as the experience, having hyperemesis gravidarum afforded me the opportunity and ability to transform myself as a person and to prepare for my role as mother. It enabled me to envision my son as a loving partner, and for that, I am forever grateful.

My son is now two and a half, and I am currently pregnant with my second son, who is due within the next few weeks. This pregnancy has been equally, if not more, challenging than my first pregnancy.

However, with the support, guidance and wisdom of my family, friends and API Support Group, I have found this experience empowering and strengthening. Although I do know that adding to our family will lead to additional challenges, I feel confident that we will succeed.

Tara Bulin, LCSW-R, is an Attachment Parenting-friendly licensed clinical social worker specializing in working with individuals who have experienced trauma (including pregnancy and birth trauma). She is currently writing her dissertation on women’s experiences after having a high-risk and traumatic pregnancy. Tara also has a private practice and meets with clients in person and via Skype. She is a two-time survivor of hyperemesis gravidarum. The mother of a two-year-old son, she is expecting her second child in March.

There’s a Pause Button, Just in Case

“It’s green. Really green,” said my midwife just after my water broke. The amniotic fluid was meconium-stained, and my mind went to the worst.

“So he’ll end up with some in his lungs?” I asked.

She threw out a percentage of babies who aspirate meconium, and I don’t recall the exact figure, but it was in the 20s. And she said of those, not all babies have problems from meconium aspiration.

That was enough to keep me from worrying. After all, I had work to do.

My midwife told me that she would have the neonatal team at the ready, just in case. Of course, I wasn’t focusing on much of anything at that point, except getting the baby earthside.

When my sweet boy was born, there was no cry. Nobody in the room smiled. Instead, there was a mix of hesitation and silent commotion. Everyone faced the warming table, where the neonatal team was hard at work trying to stabilize him.

The nurse came over to tell me that I could hold him briefly, but that he would need to go to the NICU right away. When she handed him to me, I held him for just a moment, gave him a kiss and willingly handed him back. He was struggling, and I didn’t want to waste another second. I wanted him to go wherever he needed to go to get better.

We later found out that my baby had a collapsed lung and had to stay in the isolette under oxygen therapy. I couldn’t hold him for three days and I couldn’t nurse him for four.

I worried that the separation would tamper with our biological bonding mechanisms. I wondered whether he felt secure and comforted. I wondered how this would affect my hormones and my milk supply. I worried that he felt abandoned.

I wondered if it hurt to have a hole in your lung.

For my baby’s first few days, I would sit near his isolette, occasionally reaching in to trace his little fingers with mine.

On the third day, the nurse told me that the doctor thought that kangaroo care (holding the baby skin-to-skin) would help him make some strides toward recovery. I tried hard to keep it cool, but I failed hard – I burst into tears right then and there. I had waited so long to hold my baby boy.

When the nurse handed him to me for the first time, I felt that rush of love you hear about – that same surge of emotion that I felt right after the birth of my first two babies when the nurses handed them to me.

All this time, I thought I had missed my window. But it was there, waiting for our little reunion.

There was no doubt that that feeling was our bonding hormones at work. I knew because it was familiar. I had felt that before with my first two babies and it is an indescribable feeling that cannot be replicated. As for more concrete evidence that the hormones were in working order, I had been pumping 0.2 or 0.3 mL of colostrum at a time (drops!) and after I held my boy I filled a full 3 mL.

The next day, the doctor suggested I try to nurse him. I expected a learning curve, as he had gone days without learning to breastfeed instead of initiating within minutes of birth. But I was wrong. The little champ latched like a pro right away.

My sweet boy is now off of the growth charts, strong as a bull and he’s the happiest and most loving baby I have ever seen. All you have to do is make eye contact with him and he’ll give you a big cheeky toothless smile that just puts you deeper under his spell. And I have every reason to believe that we have established a secure attachment that we will build upon for a lifetime.

I hope I’m not diminishing the importance of bonding immediately after birth. Mother and baby are primed for bonding during this time and should make the most of those short minutes and hours if they can. Just know that if you have to wait a few hours or days to begin getting to know each other, it will be okay.

Feature Friday: Why You Should Always Apologize to Your Kids

API is pleased to recognize this blog post for its contribution to AP and to share it with you, our readers. API does not review other content on the author’s blog or website and takes no responsibility for how that information may or may not align with API’s ethos or API’s Eight Principles of Attachment Parenting. We thank you for remaining supportive and encouraging when interacting with the author and with other readers, whether or not the ideas presented work for your family.

Why You Should Always Apologize to Your Kids

by Nina

On a recent blog post, one of my readers wrote:

I think it’s also important to know that it’s okay to apologize to your child and explain why you reacted the way you did.

I couldn’t agree more. We adults apologize to one another—we should extend the same gesture to our kids. Perhaps we fear losing our ground, likening an apology to forfeiting our authority. Or maybe we feel vulnerable admitting our mistakes. Or our pride holds us back.

Despite the challenges hindering us from saying sorry, doing so provides several benefits, both for parents and children, such as:

Apologizing shows kids that we make mistakes

I want my kids to learn that no one is perfect, even their parents. When they realize we make mistakes just as they do, they’ll understand that things aren’t always their fault. We’re not exempt from the same fallibility as they are. We’re also just as bound to the consequences of our mistakes. And they can question something that an adult has said or done.

Considering how much we want to protect our kids, it’s vital they know that adults can be wrong, too.

Apologizing shows kids how to say sorry

Modeling the behavior we want to see is one of the best ways to teach. If we want our kids to learn how and when to apologize, we need to take that first step and do so ourselves. Parents apologizing makes more of an impression than simply forcing our kids to say sorry.

Apologizing respects children

Despite our role as their parents, kids are still fellow human beings deserving of the same respect we would bestow on another adult. Apologizing teaches both parents and children that kids warrant an apology as much as any other person.

After all, we messed up. The next best thing to do is apologize. Whether the mistake was grand or a simple oversight (“Oops! I’m sorry I forgot to bring your toy.”), kids aren’t less valued as to simply be brushed aside.

Apologizing humbles parents

And perhaps most importantly, apologizing reminds us of just how much we have to learn. We’re not these big bad head honchos of the family—we’re constantly learning, often from our mistakes.

Nor should we expect ourselves to solve every problem or perfect every craft. We guide and nurture, but we also make mistakes, sometimes to the very people we mean to guide and nurture.

I’ve apologized to my kids, whether they can understand my words like my four-year-old, or have to rely on my tone and body language, like my 11-month-olds. I’ve apologized for various reasons, from simple oversight to losing my temper. And while apologizing can never undo the mistakes I had made, it will at least have shown my kids how sorry I felt.

Does apologizing come easily or difficult for you? What do you think about apologizing to your kids? Let us know in the comments below.

Nina is a working mom to three boys—a preschooler and infant twins. She also blogs at Sleeping Should Be Easy, where she writes everything she’s learning about being a mom.

The Llama Book and Why I Still Sing My Daughter to Sleep

Ever since my daughter was born my favorite part of the day was bedtime (and not because it provided me with much needed rest.) I loved to rock my sweet baby and listen to her breath start to steady and slow as she drifted off to sleep. The fingers she had so tightly wrapped around locks of my hair would loosen and my heart would nearly burst with love as I looked down at those beautiful half-moon eyes closed so tightly.

I swear in the moment that a child drifts off to sleep, they become an angel. Nothing on Earth is more angelic than the face of a sleeping child.

Now as my daughter has grown, our bedtime routine has shifted and changed more times than I can count. My daughter is going to be two and a half next month and while she still ends up in our bed at some time around 3:00 am, she generally likes to sleep in her own bed where she can stretch out. One thing is for sure however, she loves to have her Momma and Daddy put her to sleep and we are more than happy to do it.

When friends come over and I excuse myself to put my child to bed and go missing for 45 minutes or when I schedule evening outings late so that I can be the one to put my sweet angel to bed before having a family member come over to stay with her, I often find myself once again justifying why I don’t just teach my daughter to put herself to sleep. The short answer is I am against sleep training and quite frankly I don’t want her to feel forced to put herself to sleep. She wants her Momma and it’s my job (and my pleasure) to be there for her.

Here is a more lengthy explanation which began when my daughter and I sat down to read Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney. Now before I continue, my daughter and I both like the Llama Llama books and don’t see anything inherently wrong with these books, I just tend to disagree with some of the practices that are displayed in the story line.

Picture this…

My darling curls up on the couch as bath time approaches and says “will you read to me Momma?” The answer is always yes and I told her to go pick a book. She came back to the couch and handed me Llama Llama which had been given to us by a friend. We were both excited to read a new book and we settled ourselves on the couch for some pre-bath snuggles. I began to read.

“Llama llama red pajama reads a story with his mama.” So far so good.

As the book goes on however, my heart aches for baby Llama, and for all of the sweet babies who are left to put themselves to sleep.

As the story continues, Llama calls for his mama who says she will be up soon but then busies herself with dishes and an unexpected phone call. Llama begins to get increasingly upset.

When we got to the page that depicts baby llama softly crying and feeling alone and abandoned, my daughter began to get upset. “Why is he crying Momma? Where is his Momma?” she asked sympathetically. I explained that not all mommy’s sing their babies to sleep and reassured her that I would continue to do so as long as she needed me to.

The page that really broke me was when baby Llama began to fear that his mother might never come back.

Now some may find this comical or gloss over it without a second thought. But the fear associated with feelings of abandonment at nighttime are very real to a great number of children. This truly made me sad for all children who feel this way while being sleep trained.

Now once again, I am not condemning parents who do not stay with their children until they fall asleep completely. Some children don’t need them to, and some parents simply don’t realize the feelings of fear, abandonment, and panic that their children often experience.

As we continued to read, my daughter was very happy when Llama llama’s mama finally came upstairs to tend to his needs once more, but we spent a few extra minutes cuddling before bath.

At bedtime that night, I was ever more grateful for the privilege of helping my baby girl fall asleep. As she lay on her belly, I rubbed her back and sang “Tiny Bubbles.” She held on tightly to two of my fingers and 15 minutes later as her grip softened and she slept soundly, I kissed her once more on her forehead told her how much I loved her, and slipped quietly out of her room.

My baby won’t need me to do this forever. Every day I bear witness to the fact that she is growing more quickly with each passing day. She is such an independent, curious, brilliantly imaginative child. I can feel these moments slipping away and there will come a day when she won’t want me to sing to her and hold my hand each night, so I am going to be sure to enjoy and treasure every moment of it while it lasts.

Childhood is a fleeting gift. Life gets too hard too fast. I love being her mom and I adore the opportunity to be there for her whenever she needs me to.

The Hard Heart of Parenting

My body tenses. Teeth clench. Heart hardens.

I don’t hurt him. I don’t yell. Yet, my heart hardens with frustration.

My agenda to clothe my two-year-old collides with his interest in remaining naked. He wants to play with his trucks on the bedroom floor; I have a morning adventure planned. After several attempts to wrestle him into some clothes, he runs out of the room crying “No!”

My son says “Stop!” and “No!” frequently these days. He even asserts his will while mimicking favored construction trucks.

“Beep, beep, beep!” he says. Usually he does this while putting his hands on my legs and pushing me backward.

This morning I miss his “Beep, beep, beep!” which always makes me smile. I imagine it would translate to something like: “Back up Mom. Give me some space. Who needs clothes? Can’t you see I’m really enjoying this moment of being naked? I have no interest in your morning agenda. Let’s play trucks!”

This morning, instead of construction sounds, he shouts and cries. I feel my body tense. I feel my frustration. I remember to breathe. I remember my intention to soften into empathy.

I walk into the front room where my little naked boy cries in anger. My heart’s hardness melts as soon as I kneel down to connect at eye level. His face is blotchy, his eyes red, his nose runny. He is bawling. He is angry. Yet, I stay present. I sit on the floor.

“You are mad at mommy right now. That’s OK. I love you. I’ll be here when you want a hug.”

He yells again and runs into the kitchen.

“Take a deep breath,” I tell myself as tears filled my eyes.

Grief resides in the dark waters of the hardened heart. As I make room for my sadness, a gentle space of compassion opens. This space is wide enough to include all of the feelings swirling around, and through, both of us.

I sit on the floor and patiently remain present for him. I watch strong emotions move through his two-year-old self.

Yes, he will feel angry. He will feel sad. This is part of life’s flow. How do I respond to the energy of his anger and sadness? Will I try to make him laugh and distract him? Will I respond with my own anger? Do I take it personally? Can I breathe and gently hold space for his pain?

I can choose to soften around these hard edges. I can choose to breathe in gentleness. In this choice, I feel the freedom that comes from releasing the patterns of generations.

For certainly, the hard heart is passed on, inherited. Years before I decided to become a mother, I was committed to transform the negative aspects of my childhood. It took a great deal of therapy, meditation, dance, yoga, and travel to soften the scared and angry parts of my heart. Motherhood takes this process to entirely new levels. May I be grateful for this extraordinary opportunity to put into practice all that I’ve worked hard to uncover about the truth of love.

A minute or two pass. My son comes back to me. He reaches for me. I hold him. I feel the tension within — and between — both of us release. He looks at me and I wipe tears from his face.

“Outside?” He points to the door. Can we go outside?

I smile. “Yes, we can go outside. Let’s get dressed and go for a walk.” He nods and hugs me again.

I release my morning agenda as he welcomes my help in getting dressed. I take a deep breath. A few minutes later, we walk hand in hand into the sunlight.

Frozen

I am frozen. Frozen in the moments that are precious and true.

I recently went back to work. It has been a hard adjustment. I started in early November. I had to hit the ground running and it has been a blur since I started. I eventually got used to my new schedule and feelings of mom inadequacy. The thing is, I had to let go of the reins of stay-at-home mom and grab the wild reins of working mom. Both are wild horses, but both ride much differently. As they say, balance is key, but I acknowledge that balance is a bit of a myth. Balance is choices. It’s going to take time and practice to keep all the balls in the air.

I have not been writing (here or on my own blog). This gets to me because I know that writing is my calling. I wish I could say I have been too busy writing to write for APtly Said, but that would be a lie. I am too busy to write and that is no excuse. I just realize that this is not the best time for me to be writing. I just can’t seem to get that ball in the air with the others.

When my son was seven months old, I quit my job as an elementary teacher in the middle of the school year. I tried being a working mom with a new born, but it just was too much for me. When I quit my job, I thought 40 hours would open up. How wrong I was! But that is a different chapter.

I was a stay-at-home mom for three years. I loved it and I hated it. I could not seem to find balance and eventually found there really is no balance – just choices. So I chose to be happy when I was and I chose to be sad when I was sad. I allowed myself to feel angry and I allowed myself to feel joy. I embraced all the emotions that come on the stay-at-home mom spectrum. I wrote a lot about these feelings, as I was also in graduate school for Creative Writing. I wrote my thesis about my feelings about new motherhood and it eventually turned into a book.

Now as a working mom, I am juggling routine with busy and guilt; they smack each other often, knocking the balls out of the air. Meeting goes late at work — I call my husband to pick up our son from my in-laws. Special Education paperwork to prepare for upcoming meetings — text husband to take care of dinner.

From trial and error, I have learned to just up and leave my classroom to get out the door. The work will be there the next day. My mind scissors the to-do list in a well-needed manner, shredding the ridiculous details that must be accomplished before I go home. But somedays, the list keeps on growing and I’m not the one adding to it. Work. It will always be there, growing. I do love a to-do list slashed though. Oh how I love that sense of accomplishment. The thing about motherhood and parenting is that there is no concrete list — just a liquid that flows into the container available. This container for me is the free time I have with my family after work and I absorb it and let it flow all over me. I saturate myself in it. It is the love of my family. It mends my guilty mom heart and makes me happy.

The alarm on my cell phone goes off at 6 am. I press the snooze alarm three times on days I don’t have to shower, once on days I do. It’s non-stop from there. I put my make-up on at work, sometimes in the car at stoplights. I manage to scramble out the door with my briefcase and purse in hand. To people on the outside of that door of our house, I look polished and poised. Inside I feel frazzled, late, and never enough.

My husband makes our son breakfast and prepares a to-go mug of coffee for me. He hands me my lunch (which he makes) and offers a quick kiss before I head out the door. I am very lucky because my husband is picking up the slack and the role of attached parent. He gets our three and half year old son ready for pre-school and drops him off. They hold hands and kiss each other good bye like I did during drop-off. I miss drop-off. I miss pick-up. Mostly, I miss that initial hug and that smile and holding hands as he tells me about his day. Ben loves pre-school and we are very lucky with the school we chose.

We are also very lucky because our son spends the afternoon with his grandparents after my husband takes his lunch with our son and they play. My in-laws also watch Ben on one of the two days he doesn’t have pre-school. My husband covers the other day as he works from home one day a week.

As a junior high school Special Education teacher, I am constantly on the go. My mind often frazzled, but surprisingly focused. I am busy during the day like I have not been in a very long time. I am on the go almost all day long. My head is one long comma splice of to-do lists and I am constantly overriding the least important of tasks to finish.

This brings me back to the frozen moments – the icicles that freeze joy. I choose to spend time after work with my son. This is a priority. Everything else gets put on the back burner – papers to grade, lesson plans to write, dinner to cook (I am lucky because my husband does most of the cooking), house to clean, books and essays to write, laundry to do, laundry to fold, laundry to put away, the list is endless. I do feel guilty and I often freak out about how messy our house is (I have been struggling with spending the money on a housekeeper).

Back to frozen and true and not writing. Well, I have chosen to spend time with my son and husband after work. Sometimes I don’t get home from work until 6 pm. Those are the days I choose to be frozen – frozen in the precious hour or two that is mine to play with him. We are still co-sleeping and this time is precious as well as we all snuggle together in a cozy bed. Until the alarm goes off at 6 am the next day.

I also have to choose to not feel guilty about not writing and not being there for pick-up and drop-off and all the fluid moments in-between that used to be my life as a stay-at-home mom. I choose to accept and to be present in the moments I do have with my family.

Why?

“Why mama?”

Two huge brown eyes looked up at me, searching for answers. I stopped stirring and put down the spoon.

“Because it is hot, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Acceptance. There was no drama, no bargaining or rewards. Only contentment, pure and simple.

For me, “Why?” is one of the most treasured words that Little Bean utters. I adore it because it represents her questioning, perceptive nature. But more than this, it makes me stop stirring and put down the spoon. It makes me look–strike that, it makes me FALL–headfirst into those deep, pool-like eyes and truly connect in the moment. In our moment.

“Why?” is perhaps one of the most symbolic words of childhood, one of the most representative questions of innocence. What if we choose to view our child’s questioning outlook as the gift that it is? What if we accept it as an invitation to see the world through new eyes? Because, wow, what a view we get!

We get to watch as our baby, the one we cradled and dressed in tiny booties, pieces together her own picture of the world. The answers may seem obvious to us, but each “Why?” that we answer becomes another crucial piece of her puzzle. We also get to update, recreate and polish our own picture of the world. Because no matter how much I teach Little Bean, no matter how much I show her and share with her about life, she will always, without question, teach and show me more.

There are times when I am busily racing through our daily tasks or appointments and I hear a little voice asking, “Why, Mama?” Sometimes these moments stop me in my tracks. There are times when I hear an easy-yet-empty answer run through my head, yet I cannot utter the words because I realise that they are nothing more than a prettified version of, “Because I said so.”

It is in these moments that I stop, humbled by the lesson that my toddler has inadvertently just delivered to me: why not? Why not take a moment to look Little Bean in the eye and answer her question carefully and with consideration?

Why not wear a summer hat with a winter coat? Why not take four stuffed toys along for the ride? Why not sing nursery rhymes at full volume whilst walking down the street?

Because when it comes to our children, their wants, their needs and their questions, why not just put down the spoon and stop stirring?

Choose Compassion

It’s likely, as a reader of the APtly Said blog, you’ve done it. You looked at the world, at families, at children, and said, “I choose compassion.”

In choosing compassion, you really have made so many choices. A choice to become educated about parenting and prepare to welcome your child into the world; a choice to try to respond with sensitivity to your child and others; a choice to be present with your child and nurture your child’s health and emotional well-being; and a choice to live out compassion in many other ways that are intentional and meaningful to you. You practice compassion. Now here is a chance to wear it.

Selfless apparel approached API to say they have a mission to help nonprofits, and they want to support our mission. As their charity beneficiary, we are excited to have teamed up with them to bring you the “Choose Compassion” campaign.

Beautifully designed by their talented team, a Choose Compassion shirt represents so much opportunity!

Wearing your Choose Compassion shirt means you helped to financially sustain and develop parenting support networks benefiting caregivers and children.
It represents a chance to create awareness about Attachment Parenting every time someone compliments you, asks what it means to you, or asks where you purchased it.
It encourages the volunteer Leaders, staff, donors, and all those freely giving their time on behalf of others.
It generates a connection and supports a movement as together we take this one week to visibly Choose Compassion in unison.

Already we have reached our initial goal, and we are thrilled! We thank those who have made purchases and who’ve been so complimentary about the campaign.

But let’s do something extraordinary. Just visit the site and check out the shirts–see if you can help us push beyond to a new goal. Each shirt represents so much more than clothing each time you wear it–together we are all choosing compassion.

There are two more days to purchase your shirt or purchase gifts before the campaign is over. We hope you will seize the moment and show your support. After that? Wear your shirt, continue to support the movement for compassionate parenting and raising children with healthy, secure attachment, and make a difference in your home and in the world.

Thank you for your support!

Purchased your shirt? Remember the API 2013 Annual Appeal, vital for meeting its 2014 budget, and consider your donation today.