How I Became a Catholic AP (that's Attachment Parenting) Mom

So, what qualifies me to write about attachment parenting (hereafter known as AP)?

Well let's look at my AP stats:

Home-birth (in a pool). Check.
Exclusive breastfeeding. Check.
Non-vaccinating. Check.
Co-sleeping. Check.
Extended Breastfeeding (five years and two months and counting between my two sons). Check.

Does homeschooling count? I've got that one, too.

AP type things that I don't do:

Baby-wear. (Tried it, babies didn't like it)
Cloth Diaper. (Tried it, I didn't like it)
Whole foods, all natural diet. (Too lazy to stick with it)
No television. (Like TV too much)
Gentle discipline only. (A nice pop on the hand can be effective)

In many of these choices I must credit my mom (though these days she gets wide-eyed when I talk about not vaccinating and home-birthing). In my small home town, my grandfather delivered a lot of babies - including myself and three of my siblings, as well as most of my cousins. After my birth, a twilight sleep birth she has no memory of, my mom thought there must be a better way. Thus she and my dad (a Physician's Assistant) introduced my grandfather to the natural way with the birth of my brother, Wilder, in 1978.

By this time, she had also learned a few new (though really ancient) ideas about breast-feeding (like it's good for the baby and should be done for longer than 6 months). This choice soon led to other discoveries such as IUDs cause abortion (she got that removed quickly), and breast-feeding is easier when baby sleeps in the bed with you. I still have my mom's copy of The Family Bed by Tine Thevinin. Then there's Natural Family Planning, which luckily I grew up seeing as perfectly normal - though my parents are not Catholic.

And as many things as she and my dad got right, I've learned a great deal from her admitted regrets. Like my brother Wilder, who she weaned at 17 months because she became pregnant with my sister BJ. Wilder ended up with huge unrealized sucking needs and sucked his tongue for 18 years. She had her tubes tied after my little brother Colby was born and has always regretted that decision. She admits now that she may have wanted another child, but having that procedure ended the choice.

Some of her choices were to an extent forced upon her. As in when she went back to work at a job she quickly became indispensable at, yet one that took her away from her family. Seeing the struggle she faced and still faces between work and kids has led me to choose to stay at home as much as I can. Certainly to not take a job that could take precedent over my kids.

So, many of these choices I made even before I got married. Others have been part of a process. My choice to home-birth was a gradual one, one that started in nursing school with the appalling treatment of laboring women - something I instinctively knew that I didn't want. My first son was a birthing center transfer for failure to progress. That birth only cemented my desire to get out of the hospital.

Extended breastfeeding has just happened. I have seen the wonders of the breast in soothing and comforting and in supporting through illness and toddler-hood. My almost three-year old loves it, and it has staved off a tantrum more than once.

The issue of not vaccinating has also been a process, one that began with questions in nursing school about the chicken pox shot and continued to evolve after my first was born with a lot of research and soul-searching. All of these choices have to do with wanting the absolute best for my children.

To me, that is the ultimate goal of an AP parent, and a mother especially. We see our children as individuals with very specific needs and one need above all other - Mom. They grow in our wombs for nine months, they have us 24/7 during that time, and that need for MOM doesn't change just because their location has changed or because the clock says it's 10 p.m. They need us, and the AP mom understands that the type of need changes from day to day and child to child. They aren't cookie cutter images, each one responding to how WE want them to be.

Where for one child weaning happens quickly and early, another may wean so gradually we barely notice when the last nursing moment takes place. Because there was no rush, no wailing, no gnashing of teeth. Just a gradual understanding that this need is over and a new one has begun. The constant challenge is to listen and notice. To find new, sometimes less easy, ways of meeting those changing needs. And the Catholic AP mom has an even bigger goal. To see within herself the God-given instinct to nourish and respond. And for many, AP is a model of the total sacrifice that each of us is called to, no matter the time, nor place, nor age of our children. As a Catholic AP mom myself, my goal in talking with other moms (hopefully the goal of this column) is to empower - not in the militant feminist sense of the word - but to empower them to listen to that voice, the voice that says "I can do this. I can know inside my soul that being a mother is the most important role I will ever play and God has equipped me perfectly to fill it."