Do You Have What it Takes? My Experience with Attachment Parenting and What Works for Us

Everyone has an opinion about parenting. It takes very little to provoke a passionate treatise on the benefits of, say, co-sleeping and baby-wearing, or conversely, sleep training and promoting independence from an early age. So, where do I fit in this conversation?

Before I had Mr. D, I agreed theoretically with attachment parenting. I was ready, with Dr. Sears as my guide, to breastfeed exclusively for as long as my child desired, to wear him in a sling most of the day, to sleep with him at night. I found that attachment parenting seemed to jive with what I thought of as “good parenting.” After all, didn’t I have a strong attachment to my totally breastfeeding, affectionate mom?

My Experience

Then, Mr. D was born. The labor was long and grueling, and left me unable to walk unassisted for more than a week. I couldn’t get in and out of bed without extreme effort, and relied on my husband to bring our baby to nurse every couple hours.

Breastfeeding

And, oh, the nursing. I encountered (and, three months later still encounter) pretty much every breastfeeding challenge known to (wo)man. I tried, I really tried, to make enough milk. I nursed Mr. D round the clock, pumped when I wasn’t nursing, took way too many galactogogue supplements, sought the advice of several lactation consultants, attended La Leche League meetings, read websites and books. And it still wasn’t enough. Mr. D apparently required even more. After 48 hours without a wet diaper, we began the torturous road of supplementation with formula. That just about killed me. Here I was bending over backwards trying to make enough milk for my big little guy, and he needed more. Much more. I felt like a completely failure, as a woman and mother. Never mind that I had successfully labored and delivered a 9 lb, 13 oz healthy baby boy, with a head the size of Texas (okay, maybe not Texas…Utah). Postpartum hormones are cruel, and they don’t make allowances for failure, no matter how small.

Baby-wearing and Co-Sleeping

At first, Mr. D loved the Ergo baby carrier. He only seemed willing to sleep if he was touching one of us. So, the “co-sleeper” bassinet was used as nursing pillow storage for the first few weeks, while Mr. D slept glued to my side. That all changed during our trip to Hawaii when he was 6 weeks old. One night, as Mr. D fussed unhappily next to me in bed, Andy suggested that I move him more to the middle of the bed, so he wasn’t touching either of us. Almost immediately, his crying ceased. When we got home, he suddenly decided that he’d had enough baby-wearing time, thank you very much. We'd put him in the Ergo, and he'd arch his back and scream. As soon as we put him on the floor, he'd wriggle with delight. He’d discovered that having room to fully extend his body was much more exciting than skin-to-skin snuggling.

This revelation prompted us to try out the co-sleeper bassinet again. He slept better than ever. Then we were so bold to move the bassinet to his own room. He began to sleep even longer (which meant that we were, too, thank God!).

We seemed to be moving more and more away from “attachment parenting” to the “sleep training” camp. I began to realize, with more and more clarity, how divided these two philosophies are. Parents we knew swore by Dr. Sears and exclusive breastfeeding, and others swore by Dr. Ferber and supplementing with formula if necessary…no big deal. But where did we fall? With each side warring for our allegiance, I found myself fighting against both simultaneously. I knew now that all-out attachment parenting was not going to work for us, at least this time, with this child. But I didn’t feel like I could impose my schedule upon Mr. D (You’re hungry again? Sorry, bud, but you have to wait another hour. Don’t want to get off schedule!).

Conclusion

Three months in, my parenting philosophy can be summed up by two principles: Follow the child and Make decisions for the best of the entire family.  Follow the child, a Montessori principle, allows us some flexibility in our child-rearing. It means that we adjust to our child’s current needs. At first, Mr. D needed to be close to us while sleeping, and we accommodated that need by co-sleeping with him. We all slept better that way. But we couldn’t just sit back and say, “Great, we’ve figured out sleep for Mr. D. Our job is done!” We had to pay attention to what he was telling us. Full credit goes to Andy for figuring out when co-sleeping wasn’t working anymore. Mr. D needed space. So we gave it to him at night, and allowed him playtime on the floor for him to move and groove to his heart’s content. We all slept even better, and Mr. D was much happier during the day.

Follow the child also meant that I had to accept that Mr. D needed more food than I could naturally give him. Supplementing with formula has been hard for me. For Mr. D, it has transformed him from a fussy, cranky baby into a cooing, contented one. 

Which leads to the second principle: Make decisions for the best of the entire family. When I was desperately trying to make exclusive nursing work, I wasn’t doing much of anything else…including sleep. That’s one of the ironies of milk production: you are supposed to nurse on demand, pump often, and somehow eat and sleep well. With Mr. D, “on demand” meant I was glued to the couch most of the day trying to fill a black hole of a stomach. Supplementing has given me the freedom to continue living, and has increased the quality of my days. I now have the energy to actually play with my son. I’m not just frantically trying to feed him enough so I can please, oh, please take a nap. Since I’m sleeping more at night, it’s not a big deal if I don’t sleep during the day. And having Mr. D sleep in his room at night means that I don’t keep Andy up at night while I’m nursing. I don’t pretend that this is the best “parenting philosophy” for everyone. But, for us, this is the best parenting philosophy for this child and at this time.  

So often, we judge other parents with different parenting philosophies (Don’t you know that one drop of formula will reduce the life expectancy of your child? or Are you seriously going to let your child sleep in the same bed with you? What if you accidentally smother him?). What if we channeled all of that critical energy into trying to be the best parents possible for the children God gave us? I may not "have what it takes" to be an attachment parent this time around. But I do have what it takes to be the best mom and wife I can be. And that is a goal worth pursuing.