Any AP parents out there with a High Need Child?

[vnmum]

i have a high need child who will be one in a week and after struggling through what hasnt been the easiest first year i have come to notice that i actually have no one other than DH who understands what having a high need baby is really like. i practice attachment parenting with him as quite frankly anything else wouldnt work but it is draining having an insomniac limpet for a DS

i was just wondering if anyone else on MN has a high need child to chat for general support, moans advice etc

yes there are plenty of parents who understand this - my dd1 was a 'high need' baby and has grown into a 'high need' toddler - but she is absolutely lovely, and great fun. I agree the only way that works with some babies is AP. My second baby has been far easier, and AP suits her and me fine.

It is draining but I promise you it will get easier, and it's certainly has made me and my dh better parents!

Yes!

DD is 2.5, still in my bed, still BFing and I am due with another in March who will be fighting the bed for space!!!! (Am intending to make concerted effort to get daughter sleeping independantly and weaned at Xmas when DS is off school as she screams the house down and not fair on him when he has to get up for school).

DH calls her "the shadow" as where ever I go, she follows. I can only go out when I really have to as she goes berserk.

It is draining at times but she will not be like this when she is a teenager so we jsut go with the flow...

im glad im not the only one. im having some problems at the moment with sleep issues so any advice would be great. DS insists on waking up at 10.30 and wont go back to sleep for 2 hours. he just wants to play. ive tried BF him, ignoring him, laying him back down, cuddling him and he just screams. i certainly dont think controlled crying would work with him.

im not sure if its partly my fault as i was staying with family for a few weeks (who dont have HN baby and dont breastfeed or do AP) and he wasnt eating much solids but still feeding regularly through day and they talked me into thinking that all this was wrong and that he shouldnt need to nurse at all at night. i spoke to HV and she said to go cold turkey at night and cut him down to 4 feeds in day. im now thinking that hes feeling pushed away and is waking for comfort and that i should just go back to feeding on demand etc like i was before. ive also moved him to his own room after 10 months of co sleeping and am wondering if this is upsetting him and that maybe we'll have to go back t co sleeping again.

what do you all think? am i right in my thoughts?

try elizabeth pantley's no cry sleep solution we did it worked wonders and no tears. ignore advice most people haven't got a clue.

my ds1 whos now 5 was/is high needs.i believe being ap helped us.i gave him lots of attention and love,while he fights for even more!my dd and ds2 are not high needs but we still ap!

weve been doing ncss with ds2,brilliant for sleep!

my dd1 is v high need, although thank god not bf anymore (she is 21 months). she is either permanently in my arms and she weighs a ton, or surgically attached to my ankles. it does get v frustrating esp being a single mum of 2 (she is 2nd youngest) thank god the baby is good. she doesnt sleep very well going to bed usually about 10 30 at night and waking about 5 am and is generally very difficult. that said, when she is in a good mood she is wonderful and frequent has me pmsl. she is very chatty ( mainly complete gibberish still) but you usually have a pretty good convo with her. prob is she is v bright and you can sometimes forget that you are dealing with a toddler not a 3 year old. very rewarding at times but other times could quite happily strangle her.

whats a high needs child???

Oh yes vnmum, another one here! My ds is nearly 20mo, we bf on demand and co-sleep for part of the night. Nothing else would work for him either. He is an absolute delight, and I wouldn't have it any other way, but it can be very draining. And we need to have a whinge about it sometimes to people who understand

But your HV and family - nooooo! Don't listen! It really bugs me when people try to tell you what your child 'should' be doing. It makes you really doubt yourself (even though deep down you know you have been doing the right thing for your child). People who say things like this don't have a clue about what your child needs. Trust your instincts and go back to bf on demand / co-sleeping if you think that will make your ds happier.

hi there vnmum, my ds2 is now 2y4m and still sleeps in our bed (although he usually starts off in his own) and feeds loads throughout the day or night. He was a silent refluxer, only came off the anti-reflux drugs around his 2nd birthday, and just like you I found the first year hugely difficult.

Most other people base their 'advice' on their own experiences, strongly influenced of course by whatever the conventional view/media view of parenting is. If they haven't ever had a high needs baby to deal with and don't understand the background to attachment parenting, I wouldn't take any notice of their advice.

You probably have your own favourite information sources, but kellymom.com has been a great help to me, especially when I felt under fire from many different directions! I like the fact that it's not just a personal point of view, she provides links to lots of research to back up her suggestions. Plus the 3 in a bed book was great in reinforcing the way I felt about bed sharing, and I've just finished reading Our Babies Ourselves which is a bit dry but also very good - with a small proviso that I disagree with her approach to colic. (Ds1's colic was so clearly caused by a sensitivity to cow's milk protein and I get when colic is purely seen as a problem with the caregiver.)

NCSS is good too.

I'm pretty sure I have one of these too - DS is 8.5 months old, made almost entirely of velcro, won't sleep for more than an hour or two at a time... oh yes, I've got a high needs baby...

Oh vnmum...it can be difficult can't it! My youngest one is what I would class as a High need Baby and we are leaning towards AP style of parenting....he is now over 2 and slowly I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! Quite oddly he is, in some respect much easier then his 2 older brothers were at this age, and then he seems to be much more difficult...I know, that doesn't make much sense, I suppose!
And grrr at the nighttime feeding advice you got...I was silly enough to follow such advice with ds2 and well, it landed me in the same kind of nighttime nightmares as it seems to have done with you and your lil one....! I think someitmes the best rule is, if it isn't broken don't fix it;) But hindsight is a beautyful thing, isn't it....just not very helpful at the time!

arnt all babies high need? in that they need us to provide everything for them ? Whats attachment parenting ? im not having a go im just interested thats all . I bf my dd until 13months so was naturally and physically attached to her for most of that time ! does that count ?

ratclare,
here some links:
link
and another one
Dr William Sears Website
The difference with ap is, that a Baby will be carried a lot , in a sling, in arms, etc...and that things like CC are not on the list of to do things!
Like I mentioned our parenting style has tendency towards AP more then to mainstream, but I am really more an Inbetweenie parent, lol!
In mainstream parenting feeding schedules and sleep ones, etc...are often put upon a Baby for teh grown up convinience rather then anything else...where in attachment parenting the child will be seen as an individual with it's individual needs, and things like co-sleeping and extendet Breastfeeding are perfectly acceptable, etc...

I would also love to know what a high need baby is as the behaviour you've described seems totally normal to me. I tended to pick and choose advice and approaches rather than adopt any approach as surely kids are unique and it makes sense to do what works for that child. I carried my 2 most of the time as babies and slept with them when they needed it (and still do)they have different personalities and different needs. It is hard work, all parenting is but especially in the first year. Also I think your first child is a huge shock to the system and turns all youre life upside down. Now mine are toddlers not babies I think I'm a better person for all this devotion to others. But allways make time for yourself otherwise you go under.

I totally agree that there is no such thing as a 'low needs' baby! But 'high needs' is very much a continuum - defining high needs must surely depend on both parents expectations & personality and the child.
The Sears, who coined the term, had 8 kids - I think it was about no. 4 or 5 who made them search for a more positive label than 'difficult' or 'fussy' for their most demanding baby.
I feel comfortable with the term 'high needs' applied to my DS because his behaviour is so different to that of the other 5 babies from my antenatal group. The issue for me is not that he is demanding (all babies are demanding) - it is the frequency, duration, constancy of his demandingness! I came to AP ideas partly instinctively, partly because none of the other ideas worked. Friends suggestions to take the pressure of me by providing playpens, cots, bouncy chairs, babywalkers, baby Einstein DVDs are just hopeless - the only thing that calms him is close human contact. And swimming!

The reason why I calls my ys as a High need baby/child is, that from teh moment he was born he pretty much screamed for teh first few month, or actually most of his first year....unlike his brothers he was not easily to please...and even carrying didn't make any difference to him, he scream anyway...but it was worse if he was in a rocker, etc...a High Need baby in our case was a velcro baby that needed to be attached constantly!
I can only compare him to my other 2 children, who were normal demanding Baby's!

thanks everyone, im glad there are others out there i can have a whinge too who understand when ive had a hard day or few. i have gone back to BF on demand and paying DS alot more attention and carrying him more again and last night he did wake every few hours for feeds but went straight off again. im expecting it to take a few days for him to settle back into the change but i did get more sleep last night and co slept for part of the night