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Parenting Ideals Revisited

Now that we are well into our second year of this parenting gig I thought I would see how well my hippy/AP ideals have held up in the harsh reality.

Natural Birth Well, that didn’t exactly work out. Bummer. Maybe next time. (And, no, that’s not some kind of subtle announcement.) This is actually the reason I am letting my subscription to Mothering lapse; I am just so tired of the endless articles on how bad c-sections are. That guilt I don’t need.

Breastfeeding Still going strong and still planning on child led weaning. Check.

Babywearing No. Sigh. I like to think of myself as someone who baby wears, but I just don’t. The double stroller is so easy and they seem to really like it most of the time. No cookie for me.

Co-Sleeping and CIO We don’t co-sleep except when F demands it. J never does. In fact, J clearly prefers his own bed; when he is done nursing at night if I don’t promptly put him back in his own bed he lowers himself off of mine and heads back to his room. F would love to be in bed with us every night, but she tosses and turns and kicks and tends to think that our bed is a place to play, not sleep. When she really wants to be with us and nothing else will do, you can tell.

We did break down at 14 months and do CIO to get them to go to sleep at night. J shrieked in utter fury the first night for about 10 minutes. It lessened each night and within a week he was going to sleep easily. They still get up at night and I still go to them and nurse them at night. I think F wakes J up then sucks her thumb to put herself back to sleep because on the nights she co-sleeps he doesn’t get up as often.

Healthy FoodsWell, the good news is we eat more organic produce and far more locally produced produce than we ever have. I joined a CSA this summer and learned to love chard. On the other hand, the kids eat a lot more sugar than I had planned on or hoped for and I need to work on cutting the processed sugars out of their diets.

No TV About once every 2 weeks I remember that I like General Hospital at the same time that the show is actually on and take the kids down to the basement so I can watch it. They run around while the show is on. Other than that, no TV at all. I never put them in front of the TV and don’t use it to keep them distracted while I take a shower or make dinner.

Toys With a handful of exceptions I have stayed on the straight and narrow here. We have a few plastic things that people have given us and some flashy frogs I bought for the bathtub but for the most part we’re managing to only buy sustainably produced toys made by people paid a living wage.

Cloth Diapers We cloth diaper about 75% of the time. F gets the occasional rash that only seems to clear up with paper which is downright weird and I use paper when I am totally overwhelmed and stressed out. You can measure the stress of the day on the diaper/food scale. On a good day it’s cloth and gourmet; on a bad day paper and prepared foods.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 10:31 am and is filed under 15-18 months, Baby & Parenting Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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