Thursday, June 19, 2014

On jinxes and attachment parenting

Every time I praise or discuss my daughter (Oooh her cheeks are getting  nice and chubby, Yikes she drank 38 oz of formula today, etc.), I literally have everybody jump down my throat, because apparently, Indian culture dictates that if you praise your baby or discuss a specific aspect of his/her progress, you will JINX WHATEVER IS POSITIVE. Apparently, praise/focus from us moms is the most deadly thing for a baby. Meh. My response, as you could imagine, was always an eyeroll.

But then, I came here and boasted about how well she was getting over her vaccine, and wham. Day 3 post-vaccination, my mostly Jekyll-esque baby was replaced by Hyde. She was uncharacteristically fractious, and wanted to be comforted/held all day. Two days in a row. The third day (yesterday) she seemed mostly back to normal, but now I am a little more respectful of the jinx than before. The scientific side of me says that it may have been a delayed reaction to the rotavirus vaccine which is a live vaccine, and one of its side effects is irritability...it only surprises me that it was delayed by three bloody whole days. Did any of you experience this (irritability, delayed or otherwise) after the rotavirus vaccine? How long did it last?

The day after Gauri was born, in my bleary haze, I downloaded my first (and only, I think) parenting book: The Baby Book, by Dr. Sears. It basically lay mostly unopened in my phone for a while: I did read the chapter on attachment parenting and went Oh crap, she is in the NICU so I cannot bond with her, she has no knowledge of me since I did not carry her, and I can't breastfeed. Thankfully at that point I was too exhausted to add one more thing to the list of things I worried about, and I was confident that I'd be able to bond with her eventually, BF or not.


And indeed, even though I could not do many of those things, I still get to practice attachment parenting and I love the concept. Overall, I love how sensible that book is, though I have trouble believing that the "cry-it-out" style, if used in moderation, is deleterious. I love the fact that he tells you to parent how people have parented for millenia (including cosleeping, though you have to be uber careful/sensible in how you set things up), with no concept of a strict schedule for feeding or sleeping, no crying it out, and comforting your baby when they ask for it, no matter where he/she is on the "needs" spectrum. All of this seems sensible to me. Yet, I recognize and totally respect the fact parents the world over just do not have the bandwidth to parent like that, given the fact that there are only two (or only one) of them with jobs and limited help from others. Even if there are other people like grandparents, I've seen too many cases where interfamilial friction gets in the way. Fulltime attachment parenting in these circumstances would require herculean effort.

Gauri is low maintenance most of the while and plays by herself a lot, but occasionally requires extra cuddling and holding/attention. She mimics a "high needs" baby in that if you don't give her what she wants, she will open her mouth and make the concrete roof shake. Even her relatively limited requirements would have been difficult to fulfill had I been on my own in the States, exhausted from doing everything myself. In India, there is the concept of the joint family, where parents and grandparents and sometimes great grandparents live under the same roof. To be able to give her to multiple somebodies I trust is priceless. Living in a large family has multiple drawbacks and can lead to a lot of friction, but here is its one shiny, ginormous advantage. If your child is raised by the village, life is awesome  for everybody, most importantly the baby itself, and attachment parenting is possible. The situation now makes the past 1.5 years I spent in India with no life (no dating, an utterly staid social life, limited freedom, lots of nuisances) Totally.Worth.It.

As a side note, I was a little bummed that there was so little response by way of comments to my post on enhancing immune responses: parents, I request you to read and respond as to whether you do or do not do any of those things, and whether your pediatrician recommends any of those things, and if it has made any difference. I'm asking for this because I think an interactive dialogue would be useful.

9 comments:

  1. Caution will Robinson. dr Sears and his books are pure BS. You can be fully attached without codleeping wearing your baby all day offering your nipples all night etc. and you're right there is NO scientific proof sleep training is harmful and in fact there is a 2012 study by the AAP showing it a ISN'T. All sears books are good for is causing guilt with antiquated notions of mothering. Hey, we don't sleep on the floor on the dirt anymore either.

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  2. I grudgingly believe it the jinx!! Everytime I have ever posted about Elena's great sleep, it has gone to pot!! In my experience, none of the parenting books are 100% right for everyone. I have read a few, taken the points that make sense for us & that work for us & ignored the rest.

    I swore I would never co-sleep & we are still co-sleeping & I wouldn't change it for the world! But there are still nights when I have to leave E crying in bed because she won't settle down. It took a long time for me to learn to just do what works for us & if something isn't working then I stop & try something else.

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    1. That is a VERY sensible approach when dealing with parenting guides! And yes, I LOVE cosleeping too, although in my case there was no initial guilt in my case. I always planned to cosleep (I come from a culture where everybody cosleeps and SIDS rates are apparently really low), and it just felt *right* to me. As long as you take sensible precautions against your baby being smothered by your blankets and you rolling over on top of it during sleep, cosleeping is fine and offers a ton of advantages. It is what lets Gauri sleep for 8 hours in a row instead of 5; when she starts to rouse from deep sleep into light sleep, I hear her, wake up, and crawl over to her and pat her back to deep sleep, and then I can go back to sleep easily. Everybody wins.

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  3. I like some of what Sears says, but I also think there is a ton of hogwash in his book. The basis of attachment parenting is attachment theory, and sadly, the practice gets much too far away from the theory for my liking. I think that keeping your baby close to you physically is a great idea, but I don't think that not wearing/co-sleeping 24/7 is deleterious. Still, I have a good friend who really liked Sears' book because it helped give her permission to really grow attuned to her son's cues, while people around her were telling her to do otherwise. So for her experience and yours, I will now moderate my own view of Sears.

    In terms of parenting books, I much preferred 'Your baby and child' by Penelope Leach. It provides a very sound developmental foundation upon which to understand the growing child, from 0 to 5. I cannot recommend it more highly.

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    1. While I bought a baby book, I did not use it as my guide. I figured things out as I went along, and basically tailored my style according to what Gauri wanted and her unique personality. I ended up reading his book (not done yet) well after I had become comfortable with the entire parenting gig, and I basically liked his central philosophy and found it agreement to mine, even though I was not following all his recommendations. Recommendations/ideas aside, I THOUGHT his central message was that you really do not need a parenting guide to parent (utterly true IMO), but rather need to listen to the baby's cues and respond to them instead of imposing a schedule that may end up ignoring/overriding those cues (I completely agree with this in theory, but if you are a busy parent with not that many resources, you may end up having to do a little ignoring), and tailor your style based on your baby's personality (very true again). He seems to say that as long as you do this, baby-wearing/breastfeeding or not, your babies should be fine, and there, I do see how this may heap unnecessary, unwarranted guilt on exhausted parents. He does make an extremely vehement argument for co-sleeping, yes, but then I am naturally a fan of that.

      It is rather sad that people feel that need to come up with a parenting style based on what some so-called expert (be it Dr. Sears or Dr. Ferber) says, and feel bullied by other parents. It is utterly messed up that your friend felt that she needed permission/validation to parent a certain way, and its a sad indictment on the direction we are drifting in! I've had multiple people tell me that I need to be putting Gauri on a strict schedule to make my own life easy, and I say no thank you, I'm doing what I'm comfortable with, and things ARE pretty easy (terrified of the jinx as I type that out!). Thanks for the book suggestion, I will check it out on Amazon.

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  4. Will click over to your other post right after this comment. I'm not a fan of Sears at all. I was very much an "attachment" parent with my first for the first year. I read his book "Attachment Parenting." I was exhausted, constantly nursing, carrying her in a sling all the time. Attachment is about the quality of interactions, not proximity. Sears' ideas are a bastardization of attachment theory. If you're looking for a smart book, more respectful of parents and infants, something that fosters true, authentic interactions, I'd recommend Magda Gerber or the new book, Baby Knows Best.

    pk. Clicking over now.

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    1. I totally agree that attachment is about the quality of interactions, and does not necessarily need to be in abundant 24/7 quantity, and yes, attachment parenting should be a philosophy, and should not be used as a club to bash exhausted parents over the head with! I can see how a William Sears book exclusively dedicated to AP may go in that direction. With respect to the quantity of interactions, I do not need to babywear at all at the moment: Gauri for example is often happy playing by herself for stretches of time (and this is healthy) and as long as we are around to respond whenever she wants to be picked up, cuddled, or fed, things are fine and she is a very happy baby. In all this, it tremendously helps that I am bottle feeding, and different people can take over the feeding duty. Overall though, I think baby books are like buffets....you should take what you need and leave the rest, and feel utterly no guilt about doing so. I'll check out Magda Gerber, thanks for the recommendation!

      And thanks for responding to the other post, and your response was really useful. I think people can get more from the comments on such a post than the post itself, so thank you! You rock :)

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  5. Hey, I read and responded to your immunology post! And I see you are going "native" with all of the Indian superstitions. I guess its time to break out the Ayurvedic medicine!! Take comfort in knowing that I'm getting bombarded with the same stuff. My mom was laying it on especially thick: "Don't kiss her cheeks, it will make them swollen!" or "You can't take her to the doctor on Tuesday! It isn't auspicious!" or "Put these magic drops in her bottle with her milk! I paid 10,000 rupees for these drops and they came straight from India! Don't ask questions, just do it!" I remember 2 weeks after Ellie was born, she said it was critically important that we drag our chronic lung disease afflicted baby to India on her 1st birthday to tour some holy sites. I love her, but for a woman with degrees in computer programming and mathematics...

    As for parenting strategies, Rani and I have gone rogue like you. We looked through a few books to stay abreast of developmental milestones and such, but damn it, I spent half my life studying Behavioral Ecology and Evolutionary Psychology and I'll be damned if I don't put it to good use! Besides, I've had cats. They're mammals. We're mammals. We've got like 96 percent the same DNA... how different could they be?

    Curiously, we're also in a joint family situation, as well. Boy does it help, especially with a baby that has extra needs. It sucks not having that space, but it's also nice to have an extra pair of hands when you really need to go on a jog. That, and my Dad always makes sure that Rani and I don't forget to read each new issue of The Scientific American :-)

    Speaking of joint families--- what was the reasoning behind "single mom" by choice? I only ask because I'm a student of human nature (aka, nosy). Was the clock ticking and no opportune mates stepped up to the plate? Or is there some deeper philosophical reason? The whole "by choice" thing makes it sound like the latter, which makes me very curious. I "collect" people with interesting perspectives. Comes in handy with future novels :-)

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    1. Lol...Typing from my phone, so I'll have to keep this short... I decided to become a single mom because despite meeting many nice men, I sadly remained as commitment phobic as George Clooney, but I did want have a family, and I was independent enough to go for it alone. There's a much longer and more nuanced explanation too, but that will have to do for now. And yes, you did respond promptly to that post, and were in fact the only one to do so initially :))

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