Some not so unbiased advice

When you are pregnant every man and his dog wants to give you some precious nugget of advice. When you have a newborn baby that number doubles. And when you have a non-sleeping baby that number can be multiplied into oblivion and back again. And let me tell you, almost none of it is useful.

Are you a kind and caring friend, family member, workmate, acquaintance or total stranger on the street about to give the parent of a non-sleeping baby your two cents? Let me give you some advice. Don’t! You don’t know what you are taking about, you can’t know what you are talking about and the person you are about to bestow with your obviously insightful words of wisdom probably hasn’t slept in months and may well punch you in the face. And so they should.

Unless of course you have had a non-sleeping child yourself and somehow managed to make them sleep. In which case we want to know all your tricks, all your insights, all your middle of the night (eyes barely open baby screaming for the third time this hour brain not functioning considering walking out of the house in pajamas and never coming back) secret manoeuvres.

This information is useful, or at least gives us hope. And hope is the only thing keeping us from running screaming from the house in the middle of the night. That and the complex web of locks and latches that is just too difficult for our fried brains to contemplate at three in the morning.

Useful information and hope was something I was expecting (not unreasonably, I think) when I spoke to my long time GP about Luca’s sleep issues. Instead what I got was a slightly condescending smile, a recommendation to try control crying (which I explained I had already tried and had not found useful) and an exclamation ‘You’re not doing anything stupid like letting him sleep in your room, are you?’

Now call me Pinky McKay (a whole other story), but I would’ve expected GP’s today to be a little more open-minded and unbiased. And this one’s a woman.

What if I was co-sleeping with Luca? God forbid if I was bed sharing. Probably the fact that I occasionally practice a little baby wearing would’ve been enough to have her send me home with the latest copy of Save Our Sleep.

Now my search for a sleep theory has resulted in a new search. The search for a new GP. Preferably one with a little insight and understanding.

Sayonara Dr Wheeler. Let’s hope all your children learnt quickly.

Heads will roll

It’s been a crazy few weeks.

We moved out of the place we were house sitting, Luca had his four month immunisations, and we moved in with my parents. Temporarily!

Now I’m not sure which (if any) of these factors caused it, but Luca added to his somewhat skanky current appearance (a disgusting yellowing cradle cap scalp) with a rash that covered his entire face, head and most of his body. He then proceeded to scratch himself silly every waking minute, and while asleep, began to maniacally rock his head from side to side.  To any practiced observer it would’ve been obvious that he was trying to relieve the itching, but to me it looked like he was, in the words of my mother, a few cents short. I spent the next few nights hovering over his bassinet holding his head still, hoping to preserve what brain cells had not already been lost.

What’s all this got to do with Attachment Parenting (which I was supposed to be trialling)? Well, all the head rocking and thoughts of vanishing intelligence (some might question mine) encouraged me to do the one thing AP promotes that I had declared I would never do. I brought Luca into bed with us.

Co-sleeping (or bed sharing) is a big thing in AP and quite a controversial issue. SIDS safe sleeping guidelines don’t recommend it, nor do other subject experts. Tizzie and the other sleep trainers would have a fit over it, and just the thought of it gives me nightmares.

I’ve actually woken at night to find myself shoving my partner across to the other side of the bed, searching through the covers looking for a tiny squashed body.  And he has done likewise. It once took me several minutes to convince him that we hadn’t rolled on Luca and that he was in fact sleeping safely in his basinette in another room. It’s a very freaky feeling.

Needless to say on the night (and there was only one) Luca slept with us, he was the only one who got any sleep. My partner got none because he was constantly being shoved off the bed and I got none because I was constantly shoving him off the bed. In the morning I couldn’t move for a good ten minutes because I’d ‘slept’ the whole night with one arm above Luca’s head, to prevent him going under the pillows, and the other hovering in mid-air across his chest, to prevent the doona from going over him.

My body felt like it had aged about fifty years and my brain was mush. Like mother like son.

So to cut a long story slightly shorter, the pram is back, but I’m hanging on to the sling. Some of the principles of Attachment Parenting have worked for me. I like the softer approach. I prefer to pick Luca up and comfort him rather than leave him to cry. I enjoy carrying him close to me when I am out for lunch or doing the shopping and it’s useful when he is having a crappy day and he won’t sleep. But I don’t go in for the whole co-sleeping thing or the really strong emphasis on the mother as sole caregiver. I will pass that kid off to any family member or friend who looks our way, and I think that’s good for him.

And another thing that bothers me about AP is that every website I visit, every book and every piece of promotional material I read shows images of women giving birth at home with their older children watching. Now that is just weird. And creepy. And wrong. And if leaving a baby to cry is going to mess them up, then just imagine what that’s going to do!

Wearing my womb on the outside

OK, this kid is in paradise but I feel like I’m turning into a kangaroo.

I’ve been baby wearing for the past few days and for the most part it’s been pretty good. I even ‘wore’ my baby to a wedding on the weekend, mind you he cried from about 7.30pm onwards, but that may have been the music.

As Attachment Parenting (AP) requires, I’ve ditched the pram in favour of the sling and Luca seems to appreciate it. Finally I’m getting smiles instead of screams, and as an added bonus I’m growing muscles on my muscle’s muscles. But after only a few days of this I’m not sure where I end and he begins. Maybe that’s the point?

One of the eight principles of AP is ‘nurturing touch‘. Babies should have contact with the primary caregiver – preferably one with boobs – as often as possible, if not all the bloody time. According to AP babies are ‘hardwired’ with a need for physical touch and a baby’s cry is a technique to keep the mother close. This is a vastly different interpretation compared to that put forward by the previous method.

Although the closeness is nice, I have noticed a definite downside. When I leave Luca with my mum (which I’m probably not supposed to do, although she does have boobs) he is more inclined to cry and less likely to go to sleep. Whereas before she barely had to look at him with her ‘You’re no match for me, I have five children and thirteen grandchildren’ eyes and he’d be asleep on the spot.

But there is a plus side to all this baby wearing. Sometime during my pregnancy I remember watching a TV series about different styles of parenting, one of which was very similar to Attachment Parenting. The proponents of this method claimed that by constantly keeping your baby on you, the baby would inadvertently learn how to do things simply by observing you. I’m hoping this is true because if so, Luca has just learnt how to make a mean Rogan Josh.

The baby mafia

In my travels relating to all things Save Our Sleep, I came across a group of passionate Tizzie haters. Each forum had them; women stridently trying to persuade all the enquiring new mums to ditch the routine in favour of a warmer approach. While debate rages on some forums there are others that are ruled mafioso style by these parents who insist forced routines and sleep training do damage to babies.

Seeing how Tizzie didn’t exactly rock our world with her stopwatch and ‘close the door and have a cup of tea’ approach to getting your child to sleep, I thought I’d give the baby mafia (aka Attachment Parenting advocates) a closer look.

Attachment Parenting is based on eight principles. I won’t go into all eight, but basically they encourage the mother to pick up her child at birth (or before if at all possible) and not put it down until it turns twenty one, or gets married, which ever occurs first.

Where as Tizzie took her cues from the fifties post-war stiff upper lip culture, Attachment Parenting (AP) is based on a style of parenting found in less developed countries where communities consist of large extended family groups. In these communities children sleep with their parents until they are quite old, babies are almost always carried (known today as baby wearing) and leaving a baby to cry would be unheard of.

My partner was brought up in this manner, and while he has his quirks, he’s not totally screwed up. And who knows, maybe there will be some kind of genetic trigger that will be set off in Luca and he will suddenly start sleeping 8 hour stretches. But then I’m pretty sure I was brought up with a touch of the ‘let them cry it out’ method and he didn’t take too kindly to that.

Well, he does look a lot more like his dad than me so here’s hoping!