spoiling our dependent, crying baby

To save everyone the embarrassment of questioning our parenting choices, I have been making it (I hope) loud and clear that we have chosen to raise our child using the concept of attachment parenting.

It's really just what it sounds like--the baby is attached to us as often as possible; this includes breastfeeding on demand, sleeping with us, and being carried in the sling or the baby bjorn. There are a ton of benefits to this style of parenting, including having a more independent child with high self-esteem, a thriving baby (both physically and emotionally), smarter baby, not to mention, as parents, we learn to read our baby a lot faster and easier than if we were to leave him alone in his crib.

So our responses are as follows:

THEM: "You're going to spoil your baby."
US: "Spoil as in love him too much?"

THEM: "Your baby is too dependent on you."
US: "So should he be changing his own diaper and fixing his own meals at 3 months?"

THEM: "If you don't let your baby cry it out, he'll never learn to go to sleep on his own."
US: "Letting him cry it out is not our style, and we actually enjoy our family time soothing him to sleep at night. After all, he'll only be a baby once."

And basically our response to every other form of criticism is: "We love our baby and we are going to raise him in the way WE think is best and what works for our family. Whatever it is that makes all of us genuinely happy is the path we plan on taking."

So. I try not to take everything as criticism, as I know that everyone wants to help us do our best in the scary endeavor of being responsible for raising a smart, well-rounded little person who has wonderful morals, goals, loves his family, is motivated to do good things in the world, and makes good choices for himself. But we turned out pretty ok, didn't we?

And, believe it or not, Trey is an extremely high-need baby. It's not a bad thing, it just means he'd rather be watching the world from our level than laying in his crib staring at the mobile. He's happier when he is close physically to mom and dad. He's also very active and aware of the world around him and is excited to learn about his surroundings. Trey has a hard time winding down on his own, although he's slowly learning that sucking his thumb is soothing (but so is sucking mom or dad's knuckle!) and he wants to talk to us constantly, which we respond to by giving him our full attention. This, of course, means that some things don't get done around the house, or perhaps we stay in most nights, but when Trey gives us that big grin, we don't regret one second.

For anyone who doesn't know, Trey does come to work with mom every single day (mon-thurs). He gets to experience lots of different people and activities and new noises and sights on a constant basis. And yes, he does stay attached to me most of the day, except for when someone comes to visit or is in the office for a meeting, then he gets passed around to many different people. And once school starts. . .well, I can't wait for that. He's going to have the time of his life!

Hopefully, I've cleared up some questions. . .not that I feel the need to explain our choices to the world, but I have high hopes that those who love Trey will help us raise him, together.