Attachment Parenting?

I have just two words for you. Attachment. Parenting.

I remember talking to Robin Grille about it all. I almost fell over backwards when he said he didn't like the whole attachment parenting thing. At the time I thought that attachment parenting was da bomb you see. But Robin had seen a different side of it. One that I am only just starting to see with regularity now. Parental burnout.

I know so many mummas trying to parent their children a la The Continuum Concept while living in our separatist, perfectionist society. Most of us live on our own with our nuclear families where one parent is solely responsible for the children. Being at home all day with hugely dependant children while trying to break old cycles and not crush their poor little souls is virtually impossible. And we are setting ourselves up to fail.

I have had to find my way with this parenting gig. I read a line in a Dr Sears book once that changed my life. I think it was in the Baby Sleep Book and it said something like - if you don't like something (are really, deeply not happy about something) then something has to change. This was when I was breastfeeding Jake (he was just over 2) and pregnant with Aron. Jake was feeding a million times a night and I was in pain with every feed. So I night weaned him. It wasn't the most pleasant thing I have ever done but he did cope so much better than I ever thought he would. And I think we both learnt a very valuable lesson. That I have needs that are important too and that it is ok to be sad/angry/pissed off. He also learnt that he could be and show all of those emotions and I would still be there and still love him.



As my children get older, the negotiations and compromise become more even. We have rules and boundaries that are really very solid. Most of them are around safety but lots are around personal space and respect. I try very hard to communicate these boundaries clearly so there are no misunderstandings and then to enforce them when they are challenged. And sometimes this involves quite a bit of unpleasantness. I yell, hell sometimes I scream. I get angry. Quite a lot actually. But I think it is important for children to see (age appropriate) anger. I would much prefer my children to see clear anger from me when I feel it rather than an insidious build up of resentment that poisons every interaction we have (often leading to a hugely inappropriate explosion of rage).

I really think it is important for children to see all sorts of emotions. I hear some parents speak to their children in such a boring, almost pleading monotone, "oh sweetie, please don't do that, darling, we don't do that....." or "no sweetie, we don't run across the road because we could get hit by a car because cars go so very fast and the people driving them don't expect people to just run out onto the road, I know it looks like fun and that you want to run on the road but it really is dangerous sweetie...blah....blah...blah...." jeebus, if I were a kid I would run onto the road just to get away from it.



I think it is important to respect children, which involves talking to them like they are human, not a chiuaua.



This is all part of the reason why I don't feel like I fit in with the "crunchier" crowd. Sometimes I think they have a competition going to see who can hold their baby the most, who can breastfeed the longest, who can delay solids the longest, who can have the least amount of rules (and still be zen). What they forget to do is to look at their child and their family and their individual circumstances.

I've been there. Putting the ideals above my own needs, above the needs of the family. I still struggle with it, finding the happy median is one of the hardest things about being a parent.

I find the attachment parenting principles really sound but I do prioritise. I call myself an attachment parent because I follow what I believe are the most important practices. I co-sleep, breastfeed full term, I believe that vaccinations are harmful and that schooling is damaging. I believe that children should be treated with respect and kindness. I believe elimination communication is ideal, and failing that, cloth nappies should be used. I think that hammocks and dummies are poor replacements for human arms and breasts. I believe in baby led weaning and the thought of spoon feeding makes my stomach churn, I also believe that the longer a baby is EXCLUSIVELY breastfed the better. I don't think punishment and rewards work and I believe in unschooling. However.....

I haven't been coping really well these past few months so I have started using disposable nappies, using a dummy and/or the hammock (and other peoples arms!) when I have needed to. I have introduced some more structure in the form of a curriculum and some (light?) punishment and rewards in the form of pocket money and clear consequences.

I weaned both my boys at night and encouraged the full weaning process when it started with both of them (Jake was 3 and a half and Aron was 2 and 8 months). And maybe all of this means that I'm not really "AP" enough. But you know what? I've let go of it. I've found it easier to let go of it all this time round and I think that's because it is working. For all of us! How nice....

R U OK?

It's RUOK? day today and I absolutely love the idea.

I help organise a birthing and babies group (Macedon Ranges BaBs) and we meet up every Monday. On the days when we have our formal topic sessions we go round the circle introducing ourselves and we ask everyone to answer the question "What's life like for you at the moment?" It's kinda like saying RUOK? every fortnight.

It is cool to see how people answer. Most of the newer attendees just say 'fine' or 'good' - the standard responses you give when someone says how are you? As they get more comfortable though you hear the truth, which is refreshing. Just this last Monday we could have spent the entire session just answering this one question.

We all fall into the trap of pretending everything is fine when sometimes life just sucks. We all think that, in order to be seen as coping, we need to hide how we are really feeling. What happens is everyone thinks that everyone else is stronger or happier or better than they are.

So today when someone asks R U OK? Be honest, you might be surprised by how good it feels!

On babies and 'experts'....

I was all set today to sit down and write a big, serious post about babies and crying. And I will. One day. I have lots of thoughts buzzing around my head but am having trouble in the fog of new babyness to get anything really coherent on the page.

My 6 week old baby boy is my FOURTH child. I have 4 (count 'em) children. When did that happen? You would probably be thinking that I have things in the parenting department fairly sorted out by now, huh? And, in a way, you would be right.

Thinking back over my parenting career, I can see that I am so much more relaxed when it comes to the baby stuff. If Tom cries I'm not completely distraught if I can't fix everything right away. I get that he is sometimes going to feel frustrated/uncomfortable/generally pissed like the rest of us. I also do everything in my ability to make him comfortable and would never leave him alone to cry. If I can't get to him straight away I will call out to him, make sure he can hear me and let him know that I am coming.

I am also acutely aware that all of the things I find vaguely annoying about new babies (constantly wearing him (in a sling) is hard work - he is around 6kg at just 6 weeks old! Night time feeds, constant work interruptions etc) will pass all too quickly.

I was told so many times with my first that babies "grow so quickly", now it is my turn to tell new mums the same thing. When my arms ache now from holding his weight, I remind myself that my arms are always going to ache - not with the weight of a babe but with the want of my babes back in them.

I have cut myself a lot of slack with this little one. I feel I know where the ideal of parenting is but I am much more aware of my own abilities to care for a tiny one as well as 3 other children and a huge amount of other things.

Tom has a dummy. And I spend some time each day trying to get him to sleep in his hammock (both I believe are poor substitutes for my breasts and my arms). None of my others ever had a dummy and I do having conflicting feelings about it. For this baby however it seems to fulfil a need. He gets so cross when my milk lets down and all he wants to do is comfort suck. And the car! My god has it made a difference in the car.

I'm looking at him asleep in his hammock and am wondering if I am the only mother in the world who feels replaced, by bedding.

This is all quite new to me. My first babe spent all the time in my arms when she slept because I didn't have anything better to do. My second babe spent all the time in my arms because (due to circumstances surrounding his birth) I was quite convinced he was going to die. And my third spent all the time in my arms - to the detriment of his older siblings.

And so I find myself here, just feeling around in the dark again. And you know what? I am actually finding that I am enjoying this adventure. Getting to know Tom, really being aware that I don't know who he is and really relishing finding out. I can feel myself falling in love, I can feel the love of the family growing to encompass him. Most of all, I can really cherish what a blessing he is and what he has to offer this world. I think I have really been able to see all of the above because I have been able to let go. Let go of ideals and guilt and worry (for the most part!).

I am so aware now that there are no parenting experts out there, and that babies don't really need experts anyway. All they need is love, compassion and understanding - just like any other human being.

A bit of a birth story. Doing it wrong.....again.

I gave birth three weeks ago (3 weeks and 12ish hours ago to be exact) and I found myself doing it all wrong (again).http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Between Aron's birth and this last birth I became a doula and a HypnoChilbirth practitioner. I attended six births in that time, both in hospital and out and I had supported another two women through pregnancy. I thought I knew a bit about pregnancy and birth. Lol.


Bear(bare?) with me while I jump around a little. I have never really been a fan of second stage. With Aron I coped really well with the labour (even enjoying much of it) and never noticed transition. Pushing him out though was a different story. It was so quick but jeeze did I scream, there was no orgasmic birth for me!

I've seen a few women give birth now and I swear I have never heard anyone make these sorts of noises! So with Tom's pregnancy I decided to work on accepting second stage, I dreamt about breathing my baby out, I may have even fantasised about having an orgasmic birth. I wanted to be silent (or at least not wake the neighbours 2km away :D), I wanted to be in control and dignified and I wanted it be gentle. I would use my yoga breath, I would quietly hum yessss, instead of scream NOOOOOOO!

Most women are physically capable of having this kind of birth. I know I am PHYSICALLY capable of having this kind of birth (I had had 3 straight forward births before this one) and I knew that the only challenge I faced was mental, I knew my thoughts and my constant-over-the-top analytical mind could possible hinder my path to a gentle, beautiful, ecstatic birth. So I worked on it. I listened to hypnosis cd's, I watched tons of YouTube videos of women breathing their babies out, I read birth story on top of birth story. I talked to my midwife and my doula at length about it, I was a little bit obsessed to be honest. All my preparation focused on riding the waves of labour, of getting into the rhythm, of really accepting and going within. This was my last birth and I was going to do it right damn it!

And then labour started...or did it? I wasn't sure. Yep definitely intense, hard to breathe through contractions...oh no wait they have gone away. My body betrayed me. I had never laboured like this before! There was no rhythm, no consistency, no rhyme or reason as to when a contraction (or string of contractions) would hit. And I. Was. Pissed.



After almost 24 hours (with very little sleep) I gave up. Fuck it, I thought. I was going to get a shower and go to bed. I had a big cry in the shower, a big self-indulgent 'poor me' whinge. Where was my baby?? I got out of the bath and promptly hit transition. My last contraction had been 20 minutes earlier and only lasted 40 seconds. Transition lasted almost two hours complete with uncontrollable shaking, crying, nausea, horrible thoughts and....yes, screaming. Loud enough to wake the neighbours. Pushing him out was long, intense and bloody hard work. It involved more screaming and complaining and quite a few "no, no, no, no, NOOOOOOOO"'s.

It has taken a bit of processing this birth (only a little bit though - he is only three weeks old!) but I have accepted that this is just the way I birth. And birth is not always pretty or gentle or easy. In fact I would hesitate to say that it rarely is (and please note that I am only talking about unhindered birth at home here, hospital birth is a whole 'nother kettle of fish).

I roar and scream and swear my babies out. I don't like it, it hurts and scares me. But I do it. I just give birth 'cause that's what women do. And, instead of seeing everything that was wrong with my labour and birth, I am now focusing on what was right. I'm focusing on the courage and the rawness and the beauty. On the knowledge that, despite REALLY not wanting to, I pushed him out of my vagina and into the world, drug free, free of strange hands and rough instruments. He got a gentle transition into this world, into water with his cord intact. And I am proud of that. And that's an awesome feeling.



I've learned lots of things over the last nine months. And one of those lessons is that there is no right or wrong way to give birth. No one is better than anyone else. And every single birth is different.

xo

Things that helped...

A few people have asked what I did to aid recovery from pre-natal depression. There were a few things I did to try help but I need to make it really clear that I had a very strong feeling that it would go away as soon as the baby was born so many of the things I put in place were to simply get through the pregnancy. This is so different to people who suffer from depression in general (post partum included). For them there is no end point, no magical date where everything will suddenly be ok again. So with this in mind, these are the things I did to help:

Nutrition. I can't stress hard enough how important this is. I really believe that many common 'pregnancy symptoms' are actually vitamin or mineral deficiencies (this requires its own post). So I started taking high potency fish oil (ethical nutrients), vit C powder (Blackmores) and Magnesium powder (Blackmores) twice a day. I really felt a difference - more energy when I wasn't depressed and it felt like longer stints between the down times.

Someone to talk to. I would suggest someone outside of your immediate circle. Some people are just too close, for example I would try to talk to mu hubby about it in the beginning. We talk about everything and are very close so this seemed logical at the time. However, he really had no idea that this was different to every other time I was sad and would try to cheer me up or snap me out of it or similar such annoying behaviour. A councilor would work if you were that way inclined. I had a midwife who had all the time in the world for me and who never once tried to fix things. I also had a doula who did the same thing but who also offered really practical help (kids, housework, meals etc).

Hypnosis/Positive affirmations/meditation. Or something similar. I am a trained HypnoChildbirth practitioner and I would put on a CD of some of my scripts twice a week. While it wasn't a cure all by any long shot it did give me some time and space to myself and let my mind rest just a little. I used these methods to deal gently with my kids even when I wasn't feeling it. I also used some positive affirmations and meditation a few times a week at bedtime to make sure they kept their feeling of self and to reconnect and remind them that I loved them unconditionally.

The days where I wasn't too bad I would try to get out of the house. Even if it was just to take the kids to the park (I would usually just sit on the bench but at least the kids got some exercise!) The days that I was bad I would try to organise someone else to have them, worse case they would watch movies and tv all day - the damage from the telly was a lot less than the damage they would have got from what I wanted to say to them!

Not ideal but it is what got us through. And sure enough, the minute the babe was born I was back. The love I now feel for my children is very well cherished at the moment!

xo

Light at the end of the tunnel....

I don't do depressed very well, as a rule. I get sad, sure, but I can never really commit. Usually when I get sad I can work it all through in a very logical manner. Sometimes I think about ways I could snap myself out of my melancholy, sometimes I recognise that I need a sad day and just let myself mope. 'It' would always go away without too much effort. As I said, I was never very committed to being depressed.

Until I got pregnant with my forth child. I now believe I probably had varying levels of pre-natal depression with my other children but I think circumstances conspired this pregnancy to make it all so much worse. I don't use the term depression lightly. Before this last pregnancy depression wasn't even something I really understood. I thought people who were depressed were just sad and that they just needed to snap out of it (like me when I'm sad). Even though I knew logically it wasn't that easy and I tried very hard to emphasise with them, deep down I did think that maybe it had just a bit to do with strength (insert embarrassed blush here).

I now see things a little differently. Depression is not simply sadness or anger or weakness. Depression is an insipid companion that lurks and pounces when you are not looking. It sucks the will to live out of you, sitting heavy on your chest until you no longer recognise yourself.

I stopped feeling. It scared the shit out of me. I got to the point where, if one of my children (who I love dearly) had broken their arm, I would have just looked at them and wished they would go away. I would lay in bed and just Not. Care. There were no feelings, I didn't feel that sad or angry like I have in my other pregnancies. It was like I was sitting on the edge of a big black hole. My life was nothing, I had no feelings for my husband or my children or my unborn baby. It was frightening. This feeling would last a few days and then I would feel myself coming out of it. I had no idea how long this reprieve would last before I once again felt that chilling feeling of utter despair, of nothingness creeping back over me like some sort of morbid veil. Ugh.

In the beginning I would try to be logical about it, like I would when I was sad. The thing with that was that as soon as I started thinking "ok, your sad - what can we do to snap you out of it?" (yes I talk to myself, who doesn't?) my brain would just shut down. I Don't Care was my mantra. What can I do to make myself better? I don't care. How can I help myself? I Don't Care. Etc, etc. I no longer knew who I was, I couldn't predict how I would react to things or treat people. I lost me for a while there. My entire life became pretence.

In the end I would recognise what was happening and try to protect the children from it as much as possible, arranging play dates before I got too bad, begging my husband/mother/mother in law to take them away before I spiralled out of control.I stopped speaking to friends, I stopped going out, I stayed tucked away in my bed where I didn't have to pretend as much. It was a hard time for everyone involved.

And that's the thing with depression, it doesn't just affect the person going through it. When I think of how my husband must have felt during that time my heart breaks. Imagine loving someone with all your heart knowing that it isn't enough. That you aren't good enough or strong enough or capable enough to make them happy. I think it scared him as much as it scared me (maybe more).

I am on the other side of it now. I hope never to go back there. I have come out of it with a huge understanding of what depression is, and what it means to be depressed. It has nothing to do with the strength of the individual, it's not sadness, it's not selfish, it's not simple.

There are so many places to get help, it is just hard to care enough sometimes. This was the key for me. It took me a while to realise that when I was depressed I wouldn't give enough of a shit to make the effort to get help and when I had come out of one of my 'episodes' I would just hope that it was over and that it wouldn't happen again. It was a vicious cycle. The key is to call when your feeling ok. Then you can put things in place for when you do start to spiral:

PANDA - Post Ante Natal Depression Association

Beyond Blue

Lifeline 13 11 14

My love and thoughts go out to everyone who has ever suffered this disease and to those who are still battling it.

xo

I'm baaack....

Feeling the need to get back into blogging. It's been a while for a number of different reasons. Many of which require their own post.

The first of which I will introduce you to now:

Tomas Edward Pritchard born 29th July 2011 at 12.11am 11lbs4oz (5.2kg!)










Being pregnant and giving birth to Tom was life changing (as all pregnancies and births are) and I am looking forward to sharing more of our journey.

I have a feeling it will take a bit to adjust to being a mother of four but for me it is/will be far easier than being a pregnant mumma of three. Two weeks in and I feel like the fog has lifted and I am me again. Thanking whatever entity I believe in today as I was beginning to think I might have been gone for good.

xxoo