the little black belt
I'm all for attachment parenting. I think it's a wonderful concept. I had no idea what it was before having my baby, but after a few weeks I gleefully found I'd signed up for each well-promoted AP activity. After all I was already doing most of these AP things anyway. I felt like I was viewing pamphlets for vacations to Tahiti or Morocco with all of AP's promises lined up and staring me in the face: "An easier lifestyle and happier kids...real honest to goodness emotional bonding (none of that cheap quality time crap!)...hey, what more could you want!" And I went ahead and signed up. After all, I'm the type of mom who yes, in fact ...hates to see her child's tears, ...knows the benefits of breastfeeding, ....can't get anything done unless she wears her sling, ...and selfishly covets her sleep. Yep, yep, yep all me. I just never really read the AP disclaimer which stated just how emotionally stretched I'd be in the end, struggling to stay emotionally attached.
It is for this reason I am changing the name from "attachment parenting" to "attrapment parenting." How on earth did I get here? Or, I'm here now and I can't turn around. What now.
Help.
It's called co-sleeping folks and I'm all for it. Your baby snuggled up between you and your husband. The little tyke just a shirts-lift away from your bountiful breasts bursting with the sweet nectar of life. You don't even stir from your slumber as he helps himself to his midnight and 4am feeds. The whole family breathing in unison. What bliss.
The reality...
A mini, blue-polared, pajama-wearing, judo black belt kicking your gut as he greedily claws at your undershirt. His muffled cries encased in a winter weight goose down comforter that your snoring husband accidentally draped over his sweet little face. The grunts, the cries and the eventual wails which seem to say in a New York cabbie toned voice "Hey lady ...try to be a BIT more speedy we haven't got all day here...you know!" Upon presenting him with your wares he inhales your nipple with such vacuumed force you'd swear he'd swallow it all whole if it weren't attached, leaving it for you to retrieve days later during a particularly memorable diaper change. He sucks like this until blissful sleep overtakes....him. Not you. All this while you cling desperately to the edge trying hard to maintain your fair stake of the "family bed."
1 comment:
I know this is an old post and I'm not sure you will ever read this comment, but my God, I laughed out loud in the middle of my workplace when I read this entry. It is so right. I'm on my second child and the kung fu kicks in the middle of the night, the whipping of the arms so that the little dimpled hands land squarely in your eye sockets -- it all disappeared with the memory of my first labor. And now it's all come rushing back.
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