Family at the Center

I am sitting in an RV. Again. This is a very common scene. I am surrounded by the sounds of a music festival gearing up. Our community is the grounds crew, as we have been for the past six years. While we are “on the road” my jobs include communications and music, as well as all the various mom-jobs. This can be a challenging way to AP.

Since the beginning my husband and I have made an effort to make our child, and therefore our little family, the center of what we do. We believe firmly in a child changing our life fully, in us becoming different people through the experience of a new person joining our lives. That, for us, has taken the form of home birth, co-sleeping, exclusively breastfeeding, child-led weaning and much more.

Living in an intentional co-housing community poses unique challenges because we travel so much. One of these challenges is making sure we keep our little world revolving around the needs of our family, no matter where we are or what we are doing. Remembering that we, as parents, must take time for ourselves in order to remain firmly attached to one another allows us to represent a united front that our young son can in turn be firmly attached to.
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Weaning in the Context of AP

My son Cavanaugh is a little over two now and we recently embarked on night weaning. Night weaning then researching weaning for our API meeting last month got me thinking about breastfeeding in the Attachment Parenting  community. So many of the AP mamas I know were planning on child-led weaning and many of them are changing their minds as their kids move further into toddlerhood. But a lot of us have mixed feelings about weaning, whether we decide to partially, gradually, or abruptly wean or to nurse as long as our kids feel like they need it.

So here’s how I’ve been thinking about weaning in relation to the Eight Principles of API

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