Attachment parenting

This post is about attachment parenting, which I kind of discovered is the name for the way I am parenting Isaac. I needed to write this post as a bit of an emotional release... all will become clear!

What is attachment parenting? 
noun

noun: attachment parenting

1. an approach to raising infants that aims to promote a close relationship between the baby and its parents by methods such as feeding on demand and letting the baby sleep with its parents.

Also sometimes referred to as gentle parenting, attachment parenting means (to me anyway) being with your baby whenever they want you and seeing to their needs as soon as you possibly can. It means cuddling your baby as often as they want, being close to them, and fostering a relationship of trust with your baby. 

This is where I'm putting a disclaimer so as not to offend, because parenting is an emotional thing - you are investing your whole self into another tiny person. You will find your own way to do it, you have to. It's personal and subjective and there is no right and a wrong way to parent. I am talking about attachment parenting, its ups, its downs, and why I'm choosing it to be right for my family.

Lets start with the downs 

The number of times a day I am told I am spoiling my child. Sometimes it comes from people I trust; my family and friends, people involved highly in Isaac's life, and whose opinions matter to me. Sometimes it comes from people who I only see now and again. Sometimes its in jest, sometimes they're deadly serious. Some people tell me my baby, at less than six months old, is manipulating me to get his own way, as though he is physically and mentally capable. Some people just say he has me wrapped around his little finger; he should, I'm his Mum and I'm attentive to his needs! People tell me later on I'll regret comforting him when he's sad, picking him up and letting him have me when he wants me and not someone else, and that I should let him learn to be independent. No baby should be expected to be independent at six months old.

You can't take a break. This is something that people seem to think is really important; a mother being able to leave her child and be apart from them, whether this be to go back to work or simply to go out and enjoy yourself. What bothers me about this is that 1. people don't seem to understand I enjoy being around him all the time! 2. people seem obsessed with parent wellbeing as being more important than baby's wellbeing. We'll come back to this when I talk about sleep, but to me it's more important that baby knows I am there for him whenever he needs me than it is to be able to go out without him or to be able to leave him with another family member. Now this doesn't mean I'll never leave him, in the right circumstance I have and we've both been happy, but it means being responsive; choosing my time carefully and being flexible with it if he's not happy, being available to come back to him if he needs me, and choosing carefully the people I trust to care for him. It blows my mind that the government and companies expect new parents to return to work with babies as young as three months and where this is no alternative family available to care for them, forcing parents to leave young babies with childminders and in nursery settings - trusting your child to someone is a stranger to you and them.

But... sometimes they are right: it can be tough never having a break. It's tough putting babies needs before yours sometimes, but in time I found the balance that worked for me. I spent long evenings under a cluster feeding newborn wishing for a snack, a drink, to go to the toilet, or just to have five minutes peace to drink a hot cup of tea. Balance didn't mean letting my baby cry, it meant finding strategies that worked for both of us; using slings to hold my baby close to me (and even allow him to feed) while freeing my hands for other uses, accepting help from friends and family (to hold him while I'm still there, to cook or clean, to chat when I needed company), being prepared and organised and managing my time, and relaxing - letting myself off the hook sometimes to just sit and enjoy holding his little body in my arms while it's still little.

The label 

A friend of mine added me to an attachment parenting group on facebook. Before being allowed in I had to agree to read and abide by their rules: the rules of attachment parenting. That any kind of parenting had rules was bizzare and intimidating, because even when you follow a type of parenting like this, one attachment parent isn't a clone of the next, we don't all act the same, and we don't all agree on everything, but that's okay. Attachment parenting doesn't really have a rule book, regardless of what a group on facebook might say, it's a philosophy and nothing more. It's a term used to describe a type of parenting that supports some things (like baby led weaning, natural term breastfeeding, and babywearing) and disagrees with others (like cry it out) to be empathetic to a child and foster a strong parent child relationship.

I've been lucky enough to make friends who share some of my ideals when it comes to attachment parenting but that doesn't mean we agree on everything. It's nice to have people to ask parenting questions and advice that are likely to make a suggestion you'll be open to trying. It's even better to see my friends listening to their babies, understanding their needs, helping them to make choices and seeing these babies flourishing as happy, healthy, and confident individuals. If you're reading this you know who you are, and you got this mommas.

Feeding on demand and baby led weaning

By dictionary definition Attachment parenting includes feeding on demand, rather than only offering baby scheduled feeds. This is because attachment parenting is about trusting your baby to let you know their needs; when he is hungry, he cries to tell me so, when he's not hungry he doesn't. Now, there are medical exceptions to this which me and my boy went through in the early days so I know it's not a one size fits all, but there is a danger with scheduled bottle feeding of both under and over feeding which is much less prominent with breast on demand. When a breastfed baby is full, they stop suckling. When a bottle fed baby is full, they don't always have the chance to say no - sometimes that bottle goes on being poured into them, stretching their tiny stomach and making them hungrier more often and leading to over feeding. Sticking too rigidly to a schedule sometimes lets parents decline a screaming baby a feed because 'it's not time yet'. NHS guidelines recommend feeding on demand, and yet when I was in hospital with bubs the policy seemed to be feed on demand and the practice was scheduling with a facade of the babies being demand fed that wasn't always followed. 

Baby led weaning is a method of introducing solids wherein you offer baby safe finger foods and allow them to feed themselves, rather than spoon feeding mushed foods. This requires trust in your baby and it usually pays off - babies have good gag reflexes and will learn quickly to only put in their mouth what they can manage, or spit out what they can't. It is important for any family to know what to do in the event of a medical emergency when baby is choking, but BLW for me has involved coughing and gagging as baby learns his limits, but not choking. I have loved to see the motor development opportunities BLW has given Isaac: watching him learn how to coordinate one and both hands and grip items of different sizes and textures and take them to his mouth, as well as learning what to do with them once they get there. Isaac is learning how to manipulate food in his mouth, not just swallow mush, actually helping to prevent choking.

Co-sleeping

The dictionary definition says 'such as... letting the baby sleep with parents'. This is a touchy topic because NHS and society in general teaches us that bed sharing is not safe and can be a cause of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome, formerly known as cot death). This makes people understandably afraid, but its not always true. It is possible to safely bed share, but the fear often keeps people from believing this. It is a cultural belief that bed sharing is unsafe, while cultures with higher breastfeeding rates actually recommend bed sharing. We'll come to why in a moment.

This fear is why, when asked if I bed share with Isaac, this is the only parenting question I sometimes don't tell the truth about. Sometimes it's easier to avoiding answering and arguing with you about this (especially if you are a stranger and not worth the time, but sometimes also because I don't want to upset a friend), because I know you think you are looking out for me when you tell me it's dangerous, but I would never have done it without first doing my research!

Lullaby trust, experts on SIDS research and advice, explain that firstly, it is unsafe to let any baby younger than six months sleep alone (in an empty room) for any length of time. They also outline the guidelines for safe cosleeping. See the full guidelines here.
As this site explains, your fear of baby suffocating is more likely to happen from loose bedding which should be kept away from baby, than from the parents body. Bed sharing is also safer for a breast fed baby because a breast fed baby generally sleeps lighter than a formula fed baby (especially if they are over fed as discussed above) so is more likely to wake if there is a problem, sometimes able to negate the problem by moving position. A breastfed baby is also able to smell mum's milk and orientates itself to the breast, reducing the risk of falling.

If I still haven't changed your mind, that's okay. My decision wasn't made by research, it was made by the necessity of sleep. If you'd have asked me before I had Isaac, I wouldn't have believed bed sharing was safe either, I too had the fear. The reason I bed share is put nicely by LaLecheLeague (link); "A baby is born expecting to stay in close contact with its mother night and day in order to stay safe, warm and well-fed... parents who follow advice to never take their baby into bed with them may have difficulty getting enough sleep."
When Isaac was newborn and feeding very regularly through the day and night, I would accidently fall asleep with him in my arms feeding through pure exhaustion. I could make a choice to keep risking this, or to learn how to safely bed share to stop this happening. I don't think anyone would argue this was the wrong choice. Having started bed sharing occasionally, I discovered the benefits; both mum and baby were getting more sleep, with less anxiety. Now I  love waking up beside his sweet face, and make the most of it. That doesn't mean he'll never sleep in his own cot, in time I hope he'll feel safe enough to be in his own room at night, but we'll do it when he is ready, not when I say it's time because I trust and respect his feelings.

The science 

Most parents who practice attachment parenting will be able to tell you about the hormones cortisol and oxytocin. Cortisol is the stress hormone, released by adults and children alike when we are anxious and uncomfortable, and is damaging to all of us. Research shows that if you let the baby go on crying without comforting them (such as in "the cry it out" method used for sleep training), they go on releasing cortisol days after the event; they stop feeling safe. These babies were also harder for their mothers to soothe; they had lost the trust and attachment that attachment parenting aims to protect. (The same source sites "securely-attached 9-month-old infants did not show a rise in cortisol for approximately 30 minutes when separated from their mother, but were left with a babysitter so long as the babysitter was responsive to their distress.  However, if the babysitter was non-responsive there was a significant increase in cortisol." supporting my earlier point that it matters for me to be with my baby and it also matters who I choose to care for him if when I do leave him).
Advocators of cry it out argue that sleep training which lets children cry until they learn noone is coming to comfort them is necessary because "parents of children over 6 months need to get 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep a night". As promised, here we see society putting parental needs before babies needs. To me, this is not acceptable.