As the year turned to 2008, we celebrated New Years at home with our five and a half month old son. This year, we decided to head out to a party with our now 17 month old along. We were invited to a kid-friendly party at a friend’s house and I couldn’t be happier to spend the evening among friends and family.
Normally I don’t make resolutions on New Years Day. I’m a big believer in making the change you want happen as soon as you want to, but this year I had a change of heart.
I’m already a strong believer in AP, but there are some things I could do better, so this year I’m making eight resolutions to go along with the eight principles of parenting. [Read more →]
I would like to be a more patient mother and it turns out I’m not the only one! My readers have told me they want to be more patient too and a 1999 York University study commissioned by Today’s Parent found that patience was the top skill parents felt they needed and impatience was the number-one attitude they didn’t want to pass on to their children.Not only is being patient more pleasant for all involved, I also find that it is more effective. If I am impatient, my son tends to dig in his heels and be stubborn and my daughter gets whiny and clingy.
Good things come to those that wait
Parents are under so much pressure these days from relatives, friends and peers. It used to be that people maybe knew a few others with children their age, but now with the Internet and online forums some moms are interacting with hundreds of other moms whose babies were born in the same month. [Read more →]
In early November, an ad by the maker’s of Motrin sparked outrage among moms who felt that the ad was insulting to babywearing moms. If you haven’t seen the video, you can view it here.
I’ll just say that I thought the ad was poorly done. Although I wasn’t as offended as some were, the ad made me less likely to ever want to buy Motrin. I won’t buy J&J products, but I never did anyway. Generics are cheaper, and just as effective.
I did wear both my babies, but quite honestly, it had nothing to do with bonding and everything to do with convenience. I also breastfed both and I spent so much time doing that, I figured I had the bonding covered. [Read more →]
We have developed several holiday practices over the years to try and teach our children the non commercial meanings of Christmas, Yule, and Chanukah. This year, with the economy being shaky and our recent cross country move draining our piggy banks dry, we are trying even harder to focus on family time and experiences instead of gifts. [Read more →]
When my wife and I had our first child, I remember thinking that I wished that we could have twins, so I could hold one sometimes (I have since withdrawn that wish…). I thought to myself that attachment parenting really meant attached-to-the-mama parenting.
It seemed to me that when our baby wasn’t nursing on mama, she was sleeping. I got to be a champion burper though, because I kept volunteering to do it so I could get more time holding her. Every time our daughter cried I would try to be the comforter, but when you have no milkies, it’s a lot tougher. [Read more →]
Before I was a parent, December was a time of calm. There were a few office Christmas parties, and a little bit of shopping, but there was nothing frantic about it. We’d drive around to find the best light displays, go see a Christmas movie or two in the theatre, and just relish in the season. On Christmas morning, my husband and I would leisurely open our gifts, then head over to his mother’s house.
Joy, love, and simplicity are certainly some of the most compelling reasons that our family has chosen to practice Attachment Parenting. AP principles, like keeping our baby close, responding to our children with sensitivity and respect, and engaging in night time parenting have made our lives infinitely sweeter, gentler, and less stressful. So, recently, when our family was asked to contend with an unexpected hardship we were grateful to already have the strong bonds, security, and trust that we have gained through our AP relationship.
We are a relatively healthy family who relies mainly on good nutrition and clean living to help us keep up with four children. On the whole, we are fortunate to enjoy good health and do not take it for granted. When my husband came down with a touch of the flu last month, we brewed some tea, made some soup and figured he’d be better in a few days. The rest of us went into immune-building mode: I nursed the baby more frequently, we included some immune-boosting foods and supplements into our regular diets and everyone got some extra sleep. By day three, my husband was worse, not better. And nobody else was feeling ill yet. Another three days passed with no improvement. And other than being more tired from having the other half of my parenting team incapacitated, I was not feeling ill. Nobody in our house had the flu—including my husband.
Watching a child suffer through an illness is a parents’ worst nightmare…our little ones can seem so helpless and vulnerable. However, seeing a 6′ 4” grown man who is too weak to get out of bed for a week is very distressing, too. Our big, strong, wood-chopping, snow-shoveling, chief wage earner, and carry-the-kids-to-bed Daddy had come to a screeching halt. This was beyond my soup, rest, and TLC skills. We had no choice. [Read more →]
I feel so lucky that I live in a place that is so open to nursing in public. I have never been asked to cover up, given funny looks, or asked to move to the bathroom to nurse my children. But I know so many mothers who are terrified of nursing in public because they have been questioned, given looks, and asked to move.
As much as those stories infuriate me, today I feel there is cause to celebrate…and to weigh in. Some of you probably already have accounts on Opposing Views because they seem to cover quite a few topics (spanking among them) that AP parents care about. Today they launched the debate: Should Women Breastfeed in Public?
The reason we should celebrate is because it’s not even a debate–no one stepped up to take the “No” position on this one. I choose to make this mean that we’re winning the battle against ignorance and I commend the three wonderful experts who spelled out all the many reasons to support nursing in public. But your votes still send a strong message to any dissenters (and as long as neanderthals people like Barbara Walters are around, there will always be dissenters on this topic), so go on, vote to support a baby’s right to eat in public.
While you’re there, you might also want to vote on these two:
President-Elect Obama has affirmed his commitment to tackling the health care crisis, and the United States Breastfeeding Committee (USBC) is ready to tell him one great way to do so: support breastfeeding!
Citing the numerous studies on the benefits of breastfeeding, USBC states:
Excess health care costs totaling more than $4 billion must be paid by the U.S. health care system each year to treat otitis media, gastroenteritis, and necrotizing enterocolitis–childhood diseases and conditions preventable or reduced by breastfeeding. When prevention of obesity, diabetes, and other chronic conditions is factored in, the potential economic benefits of breastfeeding are significantly greater.
They go on to urge the President-Elect to take the following steps during his administration: [Read more →]
