New mothers need the whole story about AP.

'Now the hysteria over "screen time" looks like a genuine feminist issue to me. The minute a woman can eat a meal in peace or get her hair done without drama the whole western world seems to go into a moral panic. I let both my kids watch CBeebies quite a bit because it was good for my mental health.'

As someone currently wondering what is too much (or rather too reliant on) screen time might be, and whether to put the effort into getting our of it, I am loving this perspective!

Just read this article, which reminded me that the UK has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world. Only 1 in 200 women breastfeed to a year. This article suggests that it's due to social pressures over routine and sleep.

Another reminder that the pressures tend to be anti-AP rather than pro...

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/sep/09/low-uk-breastfeeding-rates-down-to-social-pressures-over-routine-and-sleep

I don't think it's being advertised anywhere, is it?!
It was a few years down the line for me before I even heard the term "attachment parenting" and realised I was ticking a few of the boxes. I actually found it quite comforting that there were people saying it's ok to co-sleep - I'd been doing it against the 'official recommendations' just so I could get some sleep!
I don't think AP is harmful at all, I mean any school of thought can be if you feel like you must follow it to the extreme, but I think most people just do what they do and now there's a word for it.

Everybody should just do what the fuck they like, as long as they love their children. I don't see how it is anybody else's business. OP, I think it is pretty rich of you to call those of us for whom AP has worked (brilliantly in my case) disingenuous, all the while having started a thread deliberately to bash people like us. What a waste of everybody's precious time this is.

I hadn't heard of attachment parenting when my dd was a baby. I came across the concept when she was a toddler, and found that it had much in common with my own instinctive way of parenting.

I did work when dd was a baby, though I was able to organise my day so that most of my work was done while dd was asleep. I co-slept, because that seemed to be the best way for us to all get some rest. I bf exclusively on demand for the first six months and then continued with bf until dd was nearly three, because that's what she seemed to need. I carried her a lot because that stopped her from crying. I followed my instincts as a parent because that's what felt right.

I wasn't under pressure to do any of this, it's how I wanted to parent. Lots of people around me followed very strict GF type routines, so if there was any pressure, it was probably more along those lines, but I found that way of parenting to be completely alien to me and so I did my own thing.

No pressure, no suffering. If it doesn't suit you, though, do something else instead.

I have few regrets, but I think it would have been nice to figure slings out.

I never really managed to get it working.

It always looks so easy and nice, but when I did it it was always uncomfortable and awkward.

I probably needed someone to show me the ropes, but I didn't have anybody.

As a new mother I would have loved to have heard that it's ok. That it's ok to bed share. That I wasn't lazy for not trying to get my newborn into a routine. That I wasn't going to spoil my baby by holding them and loving them. That I could breastfeed as long as we both wanted. I never did anything that could be classed as ap because I felt I should, but I felt a lot of guilt and judgement along the way because I wasn't doing what many other parents and health professionals expected. I am envious that the message has slowly changed from 12 years ago and following your baby's needs no longer seems so isolating.
I carried my baby own my back and they were there, happy and pretty much incidental to me going about my day. I travelled confidently on my own long haul several times, knowing I had everything I needed for the journey to go smoothly. I was strong and never in pain or hurt from carrying my baby/ toddler/ small child.
I would not do a thing differently.
As they've grown, if what I did stopped working, I changed it.
I now have a strapping 12 year old who is growing in confidence and independence, in pretty much the same way as every other 12 year old.
I miss having a baby in a sling , I miss breastfeeding, I miss through the night snuggles, I miss that little hormonal bubble of being with my child. But I did it, it was a lovely part of my life and doing it my way felt very feminist.

I hadn't even heard of this, I had babies before I had the internet (thank Christ).

YY DoinItFine. There's no "one right way", there's "what's right for me and my child", whatever that is.

YY DoinItFine - you've made some great points on this thread.

I think it's especially true that sometimes it's hard - often it's impossible - to know whether the answer a mother needs to hear is "It's okay, you've done enough, you can rest now, you can stop" or "You can keep going if you still want to - here's the key you need" or even just "The key is that way but you'll have to find it, hang in there, you're halfway out of the storm". Often impossible online. Easier in person if you're good at reading people. I always try to express both when I'm not sure but it's hard to know if that is the right thing to do. Maybe it just makes things worse :/

Some babies just sleep less for fewer hours at a time. It's just the way they are and were meant to be. I think if you are unlucky enough to have one of the babies (my first was and she has grown up to be an intelligent, lovely girl!) you just have to find a way that you can survive with it as a parent.

The book that I was given, that gets endlessly lambasted kn here, but that I found useful was The Contented Baby.

I had literally never even heard of any of those ways of doing things, until my first friend had a baby and used it.

When I leafed through the book pre-baby, I scoffed at its rigidity.

I remember my MN ante-naral group laughing about the idea that we needed to be told to have some toast.

But in my darkest hour after my first was born, when I was barely coping, struggling to feed, totally terrified and overwhelmed, when I kept forgetting to eat - THAT's what I remembered.

That there was a woman who wrote a book about babies who said to make yourself some toast.

I never read the whole book, and as I recall there was plenty in it that was of no earthly use to me.

But just knowing that making myself some toast could be a priority really helped me.

It helped me to start putting my days back together and to energe from utter chaos.

The only other message I was getting was to be led by the baby (and my instincts) in all things.

But I had no real instincts, just fear. I was constantly trying to guess at what to do next and then realising I needed to pump, but all the bottles were dirty and I had to sterlise them and my boobs were bursting and the baby couldn't latch at the best of times.

Ever since I've always been bemused that a suggested schedule is necessarily harmful.

Surely most women adapt whatever soeaks to them, mux in their iwn exoeruence, their griwing kniwledge of their baby

Good post FATE. There are no bad parenting methods just bad parents - and they would be bad, regardless of the method they used. A loving parent will do a good enough job, whatever label they/the world try to put on it.

I think that there is also an assumption that most parents decide that want to do AP and stick rigidly with it despite the misery

Your post berates routines, like EASY, as making you miserable. But you counter this with your opening paragraph above Jasper. No method or patenting ethos needs to be stuck to rigidly causing misery. That doesn't make it bad.

EASY can work if you take it as an idea, an ethos that might work for you, and you tweet it to fit your baby.

AP can work if you take it as an idea, an ethos that might work for you, and you tweet it to fit your baby.

Any other type of sleep training and/or patenting method can work if you take them as an idea, an ethos that might work for you, and you tweet it to fit your baby.

Instincts are amazing things. There is no "I'm right and you are wrong" in anyone's instincts. Aside from the caveat that advice from abusive/negligent parents can safely be ignored - everyone else's instincts are likely to be spot on regardless of the label they are given.

Oddly desperate to use the example of a highly negligent parent in an attempt to prove a point against sleep training

Well you don't like your aunt, so it is a bit unfair for you to use her as the archetype of sleeptraining mum. With 11 children & 10 non contact, I think that is an extreme that really cannot be more broadly applied.

I think sleep training can be a very good thing in some circumstances as can co sleeping. I don't think one method is intrinsically 'better' than the other, because I respect mother's rights to make their own decisions about what suits them & their child. I am cool about people choosing to formula feed as well. If it works for them, then it is all good.

what not that you have too much background to go on but believe me you would judge her if you met her, some people are shit parents and she certainly was. She is a total and utter narcissist and barely any of the 10 surviving speak to her. Her neglect continued for the rest of their childhood too, luckily now I don't have to speak to her either. Surprisingly most of the children turned out well but mostly because the eldest daughter eventually took over parenting.

But she is an extreme example of what I am saying that not every sleep training method is equal and discussion on negatives are valid, not least because some sleep methods are damaging and most especially to children who won't be trained because they have a neurological condition which affects their sleep.

Well if your aunt had 11 children presumably that was the best method that worked for her? Meh, can't get judgy on the sleep techniques of a woman with 11 children.

Doingit not all choices are equal no matter how much we want them to be. People are allowed to discuss the negatives of one method versus another. I had an aunt who had 11 children, when I had my first she told me that she never once went to one of hers in the nighttime ever, she needed her sleep, from newborn. Am I meant to see that as a valid sleep training method that worked for her.

Of course there are no guarantees.

But there are options.

And when those options are artificially restricted due to a tendency to only approve the "correct" options, that's a bit shit.

It depends so much on the question - you need to read/listen very carefully to know whether a woman is asking

Is it OK to give formula, breastfeeding is making me miserable?

Or

I'm "failing" at breastfeeding and gutted about it, please tell me I can do this and don't need to switch yet

Sometimes women need to hear - "try this, it can really work"

Others they need, "you're doing great, this will not be forever"

What they pretty much never need is either line of advice being shouted down as cruel and unacceptable.

For some though Doingit the sleep training methods you are alluding to won't work and their situation will still not improve so there are not guaranteed fail safe methods. The amount of mothers of children with ASD that I know that have never slept a full night in their child's life is huge, it is a big issue for parents in this community. We do not typically know which babies have ASD at birth and the instance of ASD is relatively high and similar sleep issues can exist with other disabilities.

Sleep deprivation is awful but I think you are being naive with suggesting that all issues be resolved by just trying everything out there. However I do agree that is is worth trying to find something that works but there are no guarantees.

Well I had never heard of sleep training until after I had babies.

It was certainly new to me. If I had needed it, I would have been grateful for someone whonhad done it to explain it to me.

To me it felt like a secret I was only let in on once I was inducted into groups of mothers that weren't my family.

I know, and I know of, families that were transformed from barely coping utter misery into happy, functioning units due to sleep training. It is not shameful to use it.

When I was at my most sleep-deprived, I hated people telling me to sleep train. It's not as though the existence of sleep training is a big secret, known only to a select few. Everyone suggests doing it, and I couldn't do it. My children are fine. I'm fine. It was hard, but in my case, it was better than the available alternatives, including sleep training.

I think it's good to hear lots of different opinions. Every mother and every baby is different. Cliche but true! Every mother has to work out her own relationship with each baby. What develops is an accommodation between baby's and mum's needs that works for each individual pair.

Mums, especially first time mums, need to experiment a little to find out what works for them. It's good to know that there is a range of acceptable possible strategies.

I am a big believer in "good enough" parenting.

I think that there is also an assumption that most parents decide that want to do AP and stick rigidly with it despite the misery.

Most people I met at baby groups started out with a load of different baby books and tried a bit of everything before finding out what worked best. When DC1 was a newborn, I had a copy of a notoriously strict routine-based book, a copy of the Baby Whiperer (I think - the one with the EASY routine) and the Dr Sears baby book.

The first book made me feel miserable and inadequate, and I spent all my time doing sums to work out when the next feed etc was due. I hated it.

I quite like the idea of the EASY routine, and tried it for around a month, but my baby refused to play along. She would fall asleep on the boob, I would spend ages trying to wake her up, her "activity" consisted of crying and trying to get back on my boob, and she never napped for longer than 10 minutes if left to sleep in her cot.

Then I tried just feeding her whenever she liked, and it was bliss in comparison and we were both a lot happier.

Most of the people I know who co-slept did so because although they didn't get a lot of sleep, they gotore sleep than would have done without co-sleeping.

In the case of around the first time co-sleeping parents I know, the bad sleep led to bed sharing rather than the other way round.