{"id":627,"date":"2012-05-16T22:49:20","date_gmt":"2012-05-17T02:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/?p=627"},"modified":"2012-11-02T20:13:41","modified_gmt":"2012-11-03T00:13:41","slug":"are-you-attached","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/2012\/05\/16\/are-you-attached\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You Attached?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When my oldest daughter Lucy was born in 1998, it took me one week to realize that this young lass was never going to sleep according to my schedule. Daytime&#8211;always asleep. Nightime&#8211;always awake. Unless I planned on becoming nocturnal, I was just going to have to figure out a way to cope. Enter the family bed. And when Lucy was just 3, and Ben was just born, people said, &#8220;what are you going to do now?&#8221;. Ben had the same idea of sleep hours as Lucy, but this time, Lucy took matters into her own hands. She declared &#8220;he&#8217;s too loud!&#8221; and went off to sleep in her own room and in her own bed, for the first time, without any fuss.<\/p>\n<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p><script>(function(d, s, id) {\r\n  var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];\r\n  if (d.getElementById(id)) return;\r\n  js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;\r\n  js.src = \"\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\";\r\n  fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);\r\n}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));<\/script><div id=\"attachment644\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/files\/2012\/05\/IMG_0172.JPG\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment644\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/files\/2012\/05\/IMG_0172-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Some sibling snuggling in Ben&#039;s hospital bed, 2007\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-644\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment644\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Some sibling snuggling in Ben's hospital bed, 2007<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n<p>Without planning to, we were following what &#8220;attachment parenting&#8221; disciples had been preaching for years. <a href=\"http:\/\/healthland.time.com\/2012\/05\/10\/has-motherhood-gone-to-extremes\/\">Time magazine&#8217;s<\/a> May 10 cover story on attachment parenting by Kate Pickert has been all the rage&#8211;and has caused rage&#8211;for the last week. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/community\/moms\/blogs\/24_hour_workday\/2012\/05\/motherhood-mom-enough-advice.html\">Kara Baskin<\/a> has summed up why&#8211;because it seems that we parents are more focused on what parenting means for us, and are not thinking about the bigger picture for our children.<\/p>\n<p>But attachment parenting behaviors may be viewed in a totally different light for parents of children with medical complications. Prior to his tracheostomy, Ben used to sleep with a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pulse_oximetry\">pulse oximeter<\/a> sensor wrapped around his toe, and this machine&#8217;s screeching alarms would notify us when his oxygen levels went below 89%&#8211;which meant it went off several times an hour. In order to stop this racket from waking the whole house, I would often sleep in his bed, so that I could quickly shut off the alarm and save Lucy and Sherin from the horror. When Ben would wake up in the middle of the night in terror because he didn&#8217;t remember going to sleep with the threatening <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhlbi.nih.gov\/health\/health-topics\/topics\/cpap\/\">CPAP<\/a> mask on his face, being closer to him helped me soothe him faster. And now, I still awake once or twice each night and traipse to his room&#8211;every night&#8211;to wipe away the goop he coughs up from his trach, turn him from his favorite right side that I&#8217;m afraid will become tender with sores, and when he is sick, suction him. I often think, I might be getting more sleep if I was sleeping in his bed.<\/p>\n<p>We can&#8217;t be in every parent&#8217;s shoes. Co-sleeping, extended breast-feeding, and other attachment parenting behaviors may be the ways that some parents&#8211; who have lost a child to miscarriage, or who are coping with a child&#8217;s life-threatening illness, or who work all day and feel like they are missing out on so much&#8211;cope with life&#8217;s circumstances. I don&#8217;t know many parents of 10 year old boys who curl up in their son&#8217;s bed, but if you meet one, please know that their behavior is probably based on circumstances that not every person can understand. Instead of trying to understand, we should just accept.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When my oldest daughter Lucy was born in 1998, it took me one week to realize that this young lass was never going to sleep according to my schedule. Daytime&#8211;always asleep. Nightime&#8211;always awake. Unless I planned on becoming nocturnal, I was just going to have to figure out a way to cope. Enter the family [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2966,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[500,11811],"tags":[252,5175,7587],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2966"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":799,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions\/799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}