New mothers need the whole story about AP.

[wenchystrumpet]

I believe some attachment parents are being disingenous when they say their approach was easier for them (compared to other ways one can be a loving mother).

AP approaches are associated with severe and long term sleep deprivation. So, AP may have other benefits, but is being easier generally one of them?

I acknowledge that AP may well be experienced as easier by some individuals.

My contention is that out of the chorus of voices saying "I'm so lazy" there must be a fair few who have hurt their backs from wearing a sling or got depressed from being housebound and are just not acknowledging this part of their experience.

Why is this a problem? It's a problem because I think new mothers are being told only part of the story about AP. Having had no experience of parenting at all, they hear many (but no doubt not all) AP advocates suggesting that this is an easy way to be a mother, when in fact it is a very intense way to mother.

Mothers with mental health concerns, for example, may not find it easier to scale back their work in favour of spending long hours mothering without the balance that work outside the home can provide.

And yes I know AP is an 'approach' or a 'toolkit' but everyone knows certain ways of doing things are considered preferable.

" their marriages really took a hit "

Ah, I think we see the source of some peoples concern. It's not womens welfare that concerns them, it's the teenagers boys they are married to who are sulking as as they are not getting as much attention as before .

Poor lambs

Oh another bash the AP "martyr" mums thread. Yay!

How insulting to blame a parenting style for mental health problems.

I suggest that you do not have the professional authority to make such claims.

I've parented using my instincts. I've read lots of books. I've taken advice from various people and sources. I guess you'd describe me as an AP mum because I bf (dd1 till 2.4 when dd2 was 6 mo), co-sleep, use a sling sometimes, and suffered terrible post natal anxiety. On top my children are awful sleepers. However, the week I put my DD back in her cot to "settle" was the worst week of my life - I was more like a zombie than the nights she slept in with me and woke twice for a 5 min feed. And I can tell you that meeting my children's needs was not the root cause of my mental health issues or suicidal thoughts.

To all of the posters saying AP was useful for them: great! It worked for you. It doesn't all the time, and as the approach becomes increasingly mainstream we need to talk about that.

Already a few women have been on this thread to say that they or people they know followed this approach and found it distressingly unhelpful for them. But they did not reject it because they were afraid they would be betraying their children.

AP approaches are associated with severe and long term sleep deprivation.

needed

Oh FFS.

That was not supposed to be a link.

I was trying to write "citation needed" in double-square brackets, Wikipedia style.

Come over to the other thread? It will be one fewer threads for me to keep track of.

Here is a good citation.

Breastfeeding parents get 45 minutes more sleep a night.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17700096

Are you suggesting only AP mothers breastfeed?

No OP I think you're some way off the mark with what you're saying. A lot of women coming into motherhood for the first time don't have the full picture of parenting full stop. A lot of people don't realise the full range of elation, exhaustion, frustration, doubt, joy, the list goes on... Nothing to do with AP or any other 'style' for that matter.

IME people who "practice" AP are doing what they find works well for them regardless of the name, or they've researched and read widely and are therefore choosing that approach with intelligence and enlightenment - they are not stupid people who will blindly follow an approach that's not working for them.

You don't mention any evidence in your assertions so I think this is probably your opinion or personal experience. I got more sleep through co-sleeping. I haven't heard of anyone being housebound due to AP (but I have heard of people being housebound except for the hours of 3.30-4.30pm for example because they are "following Gina Ford's schedule").

So in all honesty I think you're projecting here, and trying to pick at a parenting style just because it didn't work for you. By all means share your experiences and find like-minded people for empathy, but don't suggest that those who do AP are trying to pretend it's working for them and pull the wool over everyone's eyes!

It's utterly ridiculous to say AP is becoming mainstream like its a new fad. Up till the industrial revolution and to a lesser extent up to the Second World War it was how kids were reared and kept alive. You are utterly ignorant really. Parents & particularly mothers should do what works for them. But often women find following the biological norms can make parenting easier. There are heaps and heaps of sleep studies which confirm that bf/cosleeping mothers get the most sleep. Our sleep hormones adjust so bf mothers fall straight into deeper sleep and they're sleep is of a greater quality. Mix feeding mothers get the worst sleep. I won't bother referencing the studies. A very simple Google will find them for you.

I think there are many other changes that happen in a woman's life when she becomes a mother that are more likely to impact her mental health than whether she practises AP or not.

Take a wander over to relationships and the difficulties with partners and other family members which are far more likely to affect you than if you co sleep or not.

Whilst it's great that we (more or less) have equality. The pressures put on woman to be able to do EVERYTHING at once, raise a baby, do the chores as she's at home, lose weight, go back to work away from baby, give her partner attention, living away from family/support groups and being isolated. Not being around babies much to gain experience before you have your own. Our society is simply not geared towards mothers now and will have a massive impact on mental health.

AP is a wanky label for a completely normal approach to parenting. I was doing it when I was a 22yo mother, way before I had the Internet or subscribed to any parenting 'methods'.

I've always breastfed, because I was fortunate enough to find it easy, coslept because I'm inherently lazy and it's the best way (for me) to get the most sleep, used a sling because I could get stuff done with a colicky baby, and taken a 'gentle' approach to parenting because it's the type of person I am. Same with 'Baby led weaning', I just couldn't be faffed with purées so just gave them small amounts of what I was eating, that they could hold so I didn't have to sit there spoon feeding.

It's just much easier, I found, than the alternative (routines, timings, bedtimes etc). My sister is a very Gina Ford style parent. All our kids are fine. As far as I can see it makes no difference, it's just parental styles and personalities.

There have been no large scale clinical trials researching the links between self identified AP parents and sleep deprivation. I am working with observation. And so are AP advocates, because there have been no large clinical trials proving that AP leads to superior sleep outcomes either.

Please do not suggest breastfeeding is an appropriate proxy measure, as many women breastfeed. I hope as more and more women go down this route a university will fund a large study into AP and mental health outcomes.

Yes, utterly ignorant. Forgive my poor use of English and sad lack of familiarity with scientific method.

I actually think you might be a bit bonkers.

Why have you choose AP rather than say the contented baby as the parenting philosophy to attack?

What about baby led weaning over annabel karmel? BLW has had research done is that ok?

What have you got against AP? It's a pretty niche parenting choice- do you have some personal experience which means you are particularly anti?

Im a new mother, i was definitely aware of it - all the midwives and healthvisitors and everyone is advocating ap practice now (although they never called it 'attatchment parenting' but baby lead this and baby lead that.

I have mixed feelings towards it if I'm honest. Whilst pregnant i knew i wanted to do things in a natural way, i.e- natural birth (i did and that was fine, realistic expectations), i knew i wanted to breastfeed and do baby lead feeding, i.e: reading cues and not squedualing feeding- i did and i loved it but it was alot more full on than i ever realised (think feeding for an hour and half every hour and a half day and night).

We were told against co-sleeping, although we ended up co sleeping sometimes as it was a quick fix and we have a terrible sleeper (now 1 yr old).

I think new mums should be told the reality of both the good and the bad, but also told that you dont have to be black or white - you can choose bits of what works for you, you dont have to be so rigid in your approach to parenting, and its more of a dynamic between you and baby and finding what works for all of you

Up till the industrial revolution and to a lesser extent up to the Second World War it was how kids were reared and kept alive. You are utterly ignorant really.

Except for the staggering infant mortality. And infanticide rates. And the fact that people living in overcrowded conditions had little choice in the matter. And baby farmers were a thing.

Gosh my ignorance of history really is astounding!

Attachment parenting and "baby led weaning" are not the same thing.

No they aren't but it was one parenting thing i could think of that came out of evidence as a way of illustrating my point

Wendy now you need to stop being so disingenuous You think then infant mortality etc was caused by bf and cosleeping? Really?

Well, to go with your anecdotes, the biggest source of stress the new mums I know have had is people telling them that they should have baby in a rigid routine and let the baby cry "for a bit" when they don't want to do that.

One of the people I know who is most routine driven is "allowed" (by herself) out of the house between 2.30 and 4.30. That's far more restrictive than the AP sorts I know. I wouldn't describe myself as an AP'er, or anything else, but it's closest to my parenting style.

ICJump, thank you for the citation. However, the citation you gave does not appear to support the statement wendy is making. Does such a publication exist, do you know? Or another reference?

No I never said that. I am just raising the point that many infants did not survive in the past at all, so we should be careful about referring to earlier times as some sort of mythic idyll where people were kinder to children.

No I think it probably goes some way to disprove wendy's arguments

Oh and one thing that killed infants back in olden times was milk as it was given additives to make it not taste off, oh and opium was given to help babies sleep which works well provided you don;t over does them

This has a few citations on it. One of them suggest that the fast you respond to an infant at night the quicker it goes back to sleep.

www.attachmentparenting.org/infantsleepsafety/