I’m not saying that attachment parenting is remotely lazy in anyway.
I just think I wound up adopting it because I was too lazy and disorganised for schedules or to put up a fight with my infant son who was definitely an attachment baby.
(PS I’m also aware there’s no such thing as perfect parenting, attachment or otherwise…)
10 Steps to Lazy Your Way to Perfect Attachment Parenting:
Step 1
Notice The Baby really, REEEEEALLLY hates being away from your body.
Step 2
Try to convince The Baby that the rocking swing chair is just like being in muma’s arms.
Step 3
Try to convince The Baby that the hot water bottle wrapped in muma’s dirty old, milk-stained nightie in the Mose’s basket is just like sleeping in muma’s arms.
Step 4
Wonder if putting a blonde wig on the hot water bottle is verging on crazy.
Step 5
Ask another person to hold the baby while you have a shower. Listen to The Baby scream inconsolably for the duration of your shower. Start to suspect that The Baby isn’t accepting that he is no longer a part of your body. At. All.
Step 6
Read a book about routines that confuses and scares you in equal measure. What exactly do they mean by ‘playtime’? He’s virtually immobile, he can’t ‘play’. Stumble over the phrase “learn to self-soothe”. At 30 years-of-age I still have trouble self-soothing from time to time, it seems a bit much to expect the one week old to self soothe. Decide that The Book is borderline barbaric and discard.
Step 7
Start to accept that perhaps it’s perfectly reasonable for The Baby, who up until pretty recently actually resided inside your body, to want to be close-by.
Step 8
Discover the joys of co-sleeping*. It’s so cuddly and, most importantly, seems to be the quickest route to everyone getting some sleep during those early chaotic days of babyhood.
Step 9
Discover the joys of the sling. Praise be! I can butter toast without putting The Baby down and setting off a crying jag of EPIC proportions that has a distinctly “Why have you betrayed me, mother????” tinge to it.
Step 10
Realise that in a few short days you have become an attachment parenting boss. And even though it was slightly foisted on you by the infant and through your own laziness in the face of adopting rigid routines, it’s really lovely.
*Visit SafeSleep for the recommended HSE guidelines for safe infant sleep.
