i was drawn to the ocean

When I was preg with my first child, I was on bed rest for a VERY long time so I got a lot of reading done! I read Dr. Sears' THE BABY BOOK, and quite honestly, I thought most of it was bunk! To me, it sounded like a bunch of extreme-radical hippie type stuff. I was so young and naive...

I didn't bf my 1st child Matthew, b/c he wouldn't latch on...this was before the hospital had round-the clock IBCLC's on board...anyway he ended up being bottle/formula fed. At that time, we lived in a one-bedroom apartment, so he slept in his crib, but right next to our bed in the same room. I didn't have a sling but I had a Snugli-type carrier. I only used it once or twice, because it was so uncomfortable with my abundant chest!

Matthew has always been a daddy's boy...he's six now and I think I really missed out on a lot of connection/bonding with him. He has ADHD and we have a really difficult time with his behaviour. I recently read THE DISCIPLINE BOOK by Dr. Sears, and found it to be very insightful.

Our 2nd child, Avery is now 19 months old. When he was born, at first I wasn't even going to try to bf him b/c of the probs I'd had with nursing Matthew. But it became really important to me to at least give it a shot. The first few days were very challenging, but then we had a great bf relationship. He ended up sleeping in our bed, b/c of being bf. By the time he was 3 weeks old, he would sleep from 12 am - 6 am. During the day, though, he wanted to nurse every 1.5-2 hours. He is a real momma's boy, and we have thoroughly enjoyed one another. When he was about 5 months old, we moved him into his crib, which was in our room, and he did just fine with that.

When I became preg with our 3rd baby, Evan, we moved into a house with my mom. She lives in the downstairs and we live in the upstairs. Anyway, there are 3 bedrooms, so we figured one room would be Matthew's, one would be ours, and the other would be a nursery for Avery and Evan. Evan, like Avery, had his own plans! :-) Evan is now 7 weeks old and he sleeps between mom and dad. I did use a NoJo sling with both Avery and Evan. I love my slings! And my boppys! I keep 2 slings--one in the house and one in the car; and 3 boppys--1 in the bedroom, 1 in the living room, and 1 in the car.

So anyway, with Matthew I almost rejected the ideals of attachment parenting, with Avery I AP'd without really even realizing we were doing it, and by the time Evan came along that had just simply become our way of parenting...