I read something about this on Mama Birth, which is a really awesome blog, not terribly long ago. In fact, click here to read that article if you want.
I, too, have a love-hate relationship with attachment parenting. Who doesn't?! It IS a harder way to parent than the mainstream way. When Erin was little, I always kind of wondered how the AP moms did it. Wearing their babies in slings, while I pushed a stroller... cosleeping and breastfeeding, while I tried to maintain as much 21-year-old single girl normalcy as I could cling to... The AP moms were a different species than me. They were so much more patient. It was more than I had to give at that point. I tried to breastfeed, but that was about it.
When Orren was born five years later, we did enough AP stuff to be considered an AP family, or at least AP novices. By the time Chai was born, we had developed our AP skills to a level rarely seen. Most of our friends consider us to be extremely AP. Just like homebirthing was a place we arrived at over a nearly 8 year journey, so was Attachment Parenting. I know it's not that way for everybody, but it was for us.
I can attest that it is harder to do things this way. Everything in that blog entry from Mama Birth is right on, except the stroller thing. Funny enough, the more babies I have, the less I like strollers. I don't have anything against them. I just don't use them anymore. Everything else in that article, though, I'm so there.
One thing about AP that none of the experts ever tell you, is that while it flows nicely in the construct of a nuclear family, it is very difficult to do it alone. That probably has a lot to do with why I wasn't drawn to it when Erin was a baby. I know a lot of great single AP moms, of course. I'm just not those people. In my normal life, I have Thak, and when it comes to parenting babies, Thak is an absolute gem. He's super AP oriented, before he even knew there was something called AP. Honestly, he's more AP than I am. He babywears every chance he gets, loves cosleeping, and really believes in the importance of breastfeeding. With his help, we are an awesome AP family much of the time.
When he's not here, that's when it starts to suck, because I have three kids to deal with, and let's face it, AP practices are really time consuming. My average evening looks like me cooking dinner while the almost-3-year-old asks ten million questions and runs between me and the stove at random, and the learning disabled 8-year-old muddles through her homework, while trying to trick me into letting her go out to play with the neighborhood delinquents, all while the baby screams a few feet away because he's hungry and tired, and it's about time to begin his bedtime routine, but everyone else is hungry, too, so I'm cooking. Then I feed the kids, feed the baby, get the baby dressed for bed, and then nurse, and hopefully get the baby down for the night. Then MAYBE eat, but probably not, because it's bath time, and I have to keep the older kids quiet enough to not wake up the baby (I never succeed at this), and then do their bedtime routine. Somewhere in there, they wake Chai up, and I have to nurse him again until he goes back to sleep. With luck, all three kids are down by 9 pm, and I can maybe eat my dinner. Then I have to clean up after all of the day's craziness, and talk to Thak on the phone for a while, of course. By the time I'm ready to think about going to bed. Chai is waking up again. He never goes back down, unless it's in bed with me. If he's in bed with me, he nurses all night. It's hard to get any sleep with a baby latched on all night long, so I don't really sleep. Then at 6, I wake up, cook breakfast, wrangle Erin and Orren (And getting Erin presentable for school is a task in and of itself. Plus, Orren is NOT a morning person.), and get us all out the door by 7:15 to fight traffic across town to Erin's school. I am exhausted. I haven't had more than a couple hours' sleep in over a month.
Normally, the above would look like Thak feeding Chai his dinner, while Orren asks him a million questions, while I cook everyone else's dinner and help Erin through whatever homework disaster she has that day. Then we'd all eat. Thak would hold Chai so I could eat. Then while he ate, I would nurse Chai, while he did bathtime. As I got Chai to bed, he would get the older two ready, and read stories. Then everyone would go to bed, and we would hang out for a little while, and then go to bed ourselves. If Chai woke up and wouldn't go back down after I had nursed him for a long time and tried everything else, he could rock him, maybe feed him a bottle of pumped milk, and get him back down whether in our bed or the sidecarred crib, and we would all sleep several hours at a time. Then in the morning, he would get up and cook breakfast while I nursed Chai. Then we'd work together to get Erin and Orren out the door. He would help me strap the boys into their carseats, and then we'd leave for school as he left for work.
It's a whole lot easier to be AP when you're not doing it all alone. I have come to some hard decisions within the past 24 hours, and it might be the sleep deprivation talking, but I'd rather it take this form than me falling asleep while driving the kids somewhere and running us off the side of the mountain or something. Anyhow, yesterday, I took the crib away from the bed. No longer is it in sidecar form. It is about 3 feet from the bed. If this doesn't work to help him sleep better, then he is going in his own room. Erin could not sleep when I was in the same room as her when she was about this age, too, so it's not the first time I've seen it. Erin and Orren, who currently sleep in Orren's bed (yes, both of them) will be moving to Erin's room, and then I'll be moving the crib into Orren's room, and having Chai start sleeping in there. It was not our plan to give up cosleeping this soon, but I do think it is for the better, just so we can all sleep better.
We're still AP. We still plan to breastfeed until Chai weans himself. We still babywear. We still will never "sleep train" (also known as letting the baby cry it out). We still try really hard to use positive discipline (although that's easier said than done when it comes to certain kids). AP isn't all or nothing. We didn't take this decision lightly. I think it's right, though. I really do.
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