Crazy Hippy Club

Or not, as it turned out. A couple of days ago (Monday, I think) I was having a search online for a local nappy library. I don't really know why, I think I have enough nappies and I know what I like, but when she's bigger and sleeps through I will need to try out some other options for night nappies. But I digress; I happened upon Coventry & Warwickshire Attached Parents, who meet weekly in a library in one of the posher bits of town. Attachment parenting is something I've had a bit of a read up on, and although in its full form it seems a bit OTT, I think it's far more the style of parent that I want to be than something like Gina Ford.

Dr Sears appears to have been the person that coined the term (thought might not be, I'll admit I've not read that much), and there's something about the principals of it on Wikipedia. I didn't prepare for pregnancy, it's a bit hard to do that when you didn't really get to the trying stage, but we certainly prepared for birth and, as much as you can when you have no idea what is coming, for parenting. I'd like to think we're doing all the nurtring, respond with love and so on. I'll fully admit to being frustrated when there's a session of crying for no apparant reason (dry, right temp, fed, cuddled) but we still plod on trying to comfort and sort her out - she's a baby, it's not her fault. Luckily, we've ended up with a little person who is almost always happy, in some ways though that makes inconsolable crying harder - we're still learning how to deal with it at 9 weeks, and because it's out of character the need to stop it is enormous and the stress when you can't is a bit much.

I've gone off the point again, anyway, I decided I'd go along to the group. As I explained to one of the Mums later, I'd been worried they were going to be breastfeeding teenagers and wearing hemp dresses hand dyed with woad. They weren't, it was all OK, they were normal. They listened to the nightmare I'm having with breastfeeding, joined in with horror when I recounted our hospital experience and the NG tube threat - something others seem to have seen as "normal", and didn't think I was nuts with my insistance to make sure I could express milk for every feed and stay away from formula. They think co-sleeping is normal (we don't do it full time, but if she's upset and won't settle I don't hesitate in popping her in the big bed (if it were a proper big bed there'd be no reason not to do it full time!)), and best of all, none of their babies had pierced ears - a big improvement on the last local baby group I went to!