Becoming An Attachment Parent

I didn’t set out to become an “attachment parent”, it just evolved.  The early days of my first son’s life, 7 years ago, are a bit of a haze.  I found becoming a mother a very hard transition.  I had given up my job at a national radio station and suddenly spent large parts of my day alone, covered in one form of bodily fluid or another. My family weren’t close by and I had very little idea of what to do with a baby. I struggled with breastfeeding. We had to have weekly weigh ins to ensure he wasn’t “failing to thrive”.  We were given differing advice from health care professionals every day.  I had a very medicalised birth and developed an infection which really drained me.  I was in a two bed, second floor Dublin apartment, packed with baby paraphernalia that I had no clue how to work.  The buggy required an engineering degree and left me red-faced on more than one occasion, reduced to tears by the devil on four wheels!

I attended ante natal and pregnancy yoga classes.  I listened to my hypnobirthing tracks and made lists of what to bring in my hospital bag but I was totally unprepared for after birth. So, I read books. Books that told me my baby MUST be in a routine, that without three naps a day, he’s suffer a lifetime of sleep deprivation.  While he slept, I should express because if he didn’t take a bottle, then he’d STILL be breastfeeding when he went to college / his father wouldn’t get to bond with him / I’d never get my life back / some version of all of these.

I studied child psychology, had worked with children for years and was a trained infant massage instructor, yet I found myself totally floundering as a new mum.  I felt completely and utterly out of my depth.  I wanted desperately to get out to meet other mums but didn’t because I was so restricted by the “routine rules”.  Finally, after reading advice that encouraged me not to make eye contact with my baby when he woke at night, I realised the ridiculousness of what I was doing, to both of us. Imagine taking the advice of someone who encouraged me to go against every instinct I have? 

So I took a deep breath and said “you’ve got this”! The books went in the bin and my baby came into my bed (and shock horror sometimes still does). He fed when he wanted to, for as long as he wanted to. I carried him in a sling, while the buggy grew cobwebs.  I started to listen to my baby. My body grew him and birthed him and I realised that I knew him and he knew me. Somehow I knew what he needed and I was never going to find that in a book, because it came from inside me.  So I trusted myself and my baby and together we muddled through.

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