Want those full 9 hours of sleep you remember?

Pump your baby full of Enfamil’s “Restfull” formula! It’s,

Specially designed to help babies feel full longer and sleep better…[It] thickens gently in baby’s tummy and digests slowly.

Because didn’t you hear? Formula-feeding is apparently,

A natural way to help keep your baby feeling satisfied.

Ri-ight. Because as a natural parent, when you’re not forcing your baby to sleep through the cry-it-out method, certainly you’re hoping to find something that will stick in their bellies. Or even better, something that will magically “thicken” in their bellies.

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Sometimes I’m pretty good. I hang cloth diapers on the clothesline. The girls and I cook homemade play dough on the stovetop, and scent it with food coloring and essential oils. We eat husk cherries straight from the garden. I sew sweet summer party dresses for the girls from thrifted pillowcases, and sew myself a matching skirt.

Sometimes, though, I am very bad. Have you heard of that True Mom Confessions book? Here’s my version, Eco Child’s Play style:

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Now we’ll talk a little bit about the mei tai.

 The mei tai is most accurately pronounced “may tie,” although since the words come from a language with some phonemes that are different from English, a completely accurate pronunciation in English is unlikely. And don’t fuss at people who pronounce it “my tie,” either–you know they mean the carrier, not the cocktail.

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Next up? The wrap!

Remember that we’re evaluating each carrier based on its own pros and cons. Each carrier has its own style for wearing your baby, each carrier looks very different, and each carrier may feel very different on your body and to your baby.

All the possible styles of carry are this: cradle front, vertical front facing in (baby’s legs are frogged up as a small infant and spread to fit around your waist as an older child), kangaroo front (a vertical carry facing out, in which baby sits in the carrier and tucks her legs in front of her), hip on either side, piggyback. These mimic ways in which you might carry a baby in your arms, and thus tend to be pretty comfortable and ergonomically correct.

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Next up: the ring sling.

The ring sling tends to be the go-to babywearing carrier for most babywearing parents. It’s very adjustable and fairly versatile, but its learning curve is less than some of the other baby carriers we’ll be discussing.

The ring sling is, basically, a long length of fabric with two sturdy rings sewn into one end.

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Each kind of carrier has its own pros and cons. Each kind of carrier has certain styles of wearing your baby that it’s the best at, and certain styles that it’s not well suited for.

Your job is to do your own pro/con analysis, deciding which disadvantages you’re willing to put up with to gain certain advantages, and deciding which styles of wearing you’re most likely to use with your baby and which you’re not.

The list of all possible styles of carry are as follows: cradle front, vertical front facing in (baby’s legs are frogged up as a small infant and spread to fit around your waist as an older child), kangaroo front (a vertical carry facing out, in which baby sits in the carrier and tucks her legs in front of her), hip on either side, piggyback.

Here’s what the pouch can do:

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We talk a lot about babywearing here at Eco Child’s Play, and for good reason. Babywearing, or the act of wearing your baby on your body for a good part of the day, generally (although not always) in a native-style carrier, has a lot of real benefits for all kinds of kids and all kinds of parents.

As a babywearing instructor here in my community, I’ve had a lot of practice teaching parents about babywearing and helping them learn the right ways to carry their babies, and I plan to share all my wealth of knowledge here with you.

First up–benefits of babywearing:

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Many of us practice some form of natural parenting. Many of us choose breastmilk, cosleeping, babywearing, and whole foods for our babies and families.

But lately, I’ve noticed that something is lacking with a few vocal members of the attachment parenting community. Empathy. Yep, that’s putting yourself in another’s shoes.

You don’t have to agree. You don’t have to sanction. But it’d be nice if some APs would understand that it’s not as easy as popping a baby on a breast or in your bed. Life is not the same for everyone out there. Our experiences are different. Our reactions are different.

And until the Attachment Parenting community isolates the elitists, it will be hard to gain ground.

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A growing number of children are experiencing mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and aggression.  Many experts this increase in is due to lack of “deep connectedness” to parents and the larger community.

Attachment parenting offers a solution, and the founders of Attachment Parenting International Barbara Nicholson and Lysa Parker have recently published a fantastic book on the subject backed by research.

Attached at the Heart: 8 Proven Parenting Principles for Raising Connected and Compassionate Children teaches parents:

· Important facts you need to know before and after having your baby
· Strategies to strengthen the emotional bonds with your child
· How to be a more conscious parent with your children
· New information to help you make informed decisions
· How raising our children with empathy and respect can positively affect society

No other parenting book is as comprehensive in its scope, from an overview of attachment theory and current child development research to practical strategies for everyday situations. Attached at the Heart is a vital blueprint for change that begins at home.

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Exhausted Mom by Halfmoon Jewelry, Flickr, under a Creative Commons license

I have an eleven month old little girl named Emerson who, in spite of the nurses at the hospital saying “you’ve got a sleeper”, turned out to not be much of a sleeper.  There are worse stories, but mine is a good example of mixing mom’s intuition, dad’s motivation, and a great deal of research to figure out the best path to sanity.

Our Story

Month 1

Emerson started as a fairly typical baby. She slept for two hours at a time around the clock, waking only to latch on for her fill. I co-slept with her in our bed and my husband slept in an extra room so that he could get enough sleep to deal with life (don’t worry, we slipped nookie in here and there). She almost never cried the entire first month of her life. I thought the situation was quite blissful, particularly because I took the age old advice of “sleep when your baby sleeps” to heart. Clearly something in the mommy brain prepares us for waking up to feed a baby every two hours…but only up to a point.

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Along with Baby bath seats, Crib bumper pads and Sleep positioners were listed two products near and dear to advocates of attachment parenting: Co-sleepers and Slings!

Consumer Reports first blasts co-sleepers saying:

Although sleeping with a baby in an adult bed is a common practice among some cultures, it can be dangerous. The new bassinet-like devices designed to go in between parents or alongside an adult bed don’t necessarily make co-sleeping with a baby safer… Currently, safety standards don’t exist for either co-sleepers or bedside sleepers. Until they do, we think the safest place for your baby to sleep is in a crib.

Then they go on to denigrate slings:

Over the past five years, at least four babies died and there have been many reports of serious injury associated with the use of sling-type carriers. The incidents include skull fractures, head injuries, contusions and abrasions. Most occurred when the child fell out of the sling. As slings grow in popularity, so do the number of serious injuries. No safety standards exist for slings. We think you should skip the sling and opt for other types of infant carriers, which have safer track records.

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GreenTalk Radio host Sean Daily talks about attachment and natural parenting concepts and resources with Attachment Parenting International (API) founders Barbara Nicholson and Lysa Parker, who also co-authored the upcoming book “Attached at the Heart”.

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There’s a phenomenon in the blogging community that I like to refer to as The Artful Parent: in this blog, parenting and the booming DIY/handmade/arts and crafts movement interconnect. Both activities are discussed in equal measures, although the real emphasis is more, perhaps, on the status of both parenting and crafting as meaningful (if usually unpaid) work, the lessons that can be taught to and learned from children while crafting for and with them, and how creativity and inspiration are rewarding mindsets that can be taken from and brought to both parenting and crafting.

Most of these blogs also share a focus on the handmade over the store-bought; the use of natural, found, and/or recycled materials over brand-new and/or synthetic ones; and the act of parenting as a gentle, positive, attached life’s work. Here are a few of my favorites of these blogs:

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We’ve been co-sleeping with all of our children (not all at the same time- we have a one-out, one-in policy) for almost 11 years now, and I love it. However, I do get asked about it by new dads who are not quite sure that it’s safe or beneficial for the child. “Cloth diapers, I get. Breastfeeding makes sense. Babywearing could work for me. But having an infant in the bed with us? I don’t know…”

Here’s my take on co-sleeping issues.

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