Topic: letting your baby cry

I’m not sure where I got the idea that “attachment parenting” was my maternal calling, but I know I had it in my head while my oldest girl and I were still in the hospital after she was born. That’s probably why I slept on the couch in the visitor’s lounge after they discharged me, while the baby was still under the lights for jaundice. I had asked the critical care nurse what I should do, since breastfeeding was not going very well, and the baby was drinking mostly pumped breast milk. Knowing I had had a c-section, and that I hadn’t slept in three days, she still thought I should stay near so I could nurse every three hours through the night. Then I could go back to the lounge, pump and bring a bottle back so the baby could actually eat what she wasn’t getting from breastfeeding. I could sleep in two-hour stretches. “I’m just thinking of the baby,” she said.

So I came home engorged, and thinking about the baby… When Baby cried, I jumped. When she squealed, I leapt. When she woke and stirred, I raced to her side. I had Dr. Sears’ The Baby Book by the bed. It was full of solutions for grooming our attachment in the face of “contemporary” obstacles like “two-income parenting,” busy-ness and colic. Basically, all of these solutions amounted to the same thing: wear your baby, rock your baby, coo and talk to your baby, sleep with your baby… Whatever you do, Mom, don’t walk away from that baby. And don’t let her cry! More »