So what is this Attachment Parenting?

We practice Attachment Parenting in our house.
Have we always? Nope not at all in fact we were pretty much the opposite, detached! 

We used to think we needed to implement routine and foster independence in the kids by having them sleep alone we used to use controlled crying and "cry it out methods" because we were told by so called "experts" to do as little as possible as it would become a habit, not to rock our babies to sleep, to have a strict routine and the like which now I just shudder at the thought of all of that but did I love my baby? yes. and was I doing the best with what I knew? Yes, of course as we all are but sometimes what's recommended by so called baby experts and health professionals isn't always what's best for baby and there is scientific evidence to show this.

I'm not sure why but it seems the trend these days is disconnected parenting which I think has come from us having such busy lives these days lots of families have both parents working ect so society now believes that babies should fit into there lives and dare I say it "scheduled" like everything else in their lives. Society has extreamly unreasonable expectations of babies in regards to sleeping, feeding and just needing love its just compleatly unnatural I've seen it written somewhere else before "were giving birth to stone age babies but putting modern day expectations onto them"  When we have a baby we need to understand they are demanding little creatures and we cannot expect them to fit in with our lives we need to fit our lives into theirs.

Basically Attachment Parenting is just a name for natural parenting how it should be.  Its all about instincts and about meeting you babies emotional and physical needs and responding in a gentle and sensitive way to those needs. This produces a strong, trusting relationship between parent and child and in time produces a well adjusted, confident and independent little person because as a baby their basic needs were met by feeding baby on demand and for an extended period of time, responding to you babies cries, carrying your baby or "baby wearing", co sleeping with your baby and using gentle methods to help you baby to sleep and minimising separation between yourself and baby for the first few years.

For me I feel it was a natural progression I started questioning what we were doing and started following my instincts gradually more and more so which led me to find the fantastic AP community I now have in real life and online and I kid you not its changed my life!!!

 If my little miss is hungry I feed her even if I only fed her an hour ago, if she is crying I pick her up and if I have stuff I need to get done I use my ergo or mai tai so I still have my hands free and can get on with what I need to do whilst meeting my babies needs. 

We co sleep with a side car cot so she starts out in her cot and during the night when she needs to nurse I just pull her over into me and away she goes, Little Miss is now 5 moths and still feeding 2-3 times a night and breastfeeding + co sleeping make this no drama. When she goes down for a nap if she is struggling myself or Pappa B will lay down with her and just chill ourselves until she is nice and relaxed and happy to go off to sleep, we use gentle discipline with our older children and recognise that "bad" (I hate that word) behaviour is often caused by an unmet need or emotional frustration so instead of punishing we look at what led to that behaviour and what we can do to avoid it and help our child express and deal with their emotions.

Since adopting this approach we have been so happy, my life feels so fulfilled I feel like I'm not wasting a day or moment and I get so much pleasure out of watching my kids grow up and they amaze me so much they are just thriving in every way. We just go with the flow and keep it simple and its awesome!

ATTACHMENT PARENTING = NATURAL PARENTING