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!

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!

Or was that the baby torturer?

The past week has been rough.

I have tried to follow Tizzie Hall’s routine to the letter. When Luca has woken up at 6am I have fed him, burped him, rewrapped him and put him back to bed. Then twenty minutes later, as the book demands, I have woken him up, fed him again, burped him again and attempted to keep him awake until his next scheduled sleep.

Tizzie claims that by doing this my baby will stop waking at 6am and learn that 7am is when he is supposed to wake up, and so on throughout the day. Well, it hasn’t worked and it is starting to remind me of sleep torture, where prisoners are repeatedly left to fall asleep before being instantly woken up again. I wonder if this makes them highly punctual inmates?

I guess if I persisted with the routine for long enough Luca would eventually figure it out. Either that or he’d tell me all his innermost secrets. But the real killer with this book is the fundamental assumption that you are able to tell what type of cry your baby is crying. I can only speak for myself, but this being my first baby I have no freaking idea which cry is what.

What I do know is that for as long as I can leave him, Luca can cry. One day he cried for an hour straight before I gave in and picked him up. It sounded like a protesting cry, which Tizzie says should be ignored, but surely leaving him for that long had to be unhealthy.

It seems that opinions on Save Our Sleep (and other similar books) are totally divided. Online forums are littered with comments from the Tizzie lovers and haters. Those in favour of Tizzie claim she has given them back their sanity, those against brand her as a torturer. Some in the later camp even go as far as saying that her methods can cause brain damage, depression and serious psychological damage.

While I’m confident Luca will make a full recovery from his week at baby boot camp, I have no intention of continuing with Tizzie’s methods. I’ve never been a fan of routine myself.