Gabriel on his first day outside...
... accompanied by his happy mother with some of the flowers she has received...
... and finally, still asleep, in his bed at home. The white teddy, Oursinette, has been made by Michelle.
Michelle has stayed at the hospital for four days out of the five she was entitled to. Even though it was hard for me to drive home and leave Michelle and Gabriel behind at the hospital every time, I am still glad that she had the option to stay there for a bit. This allowed us to learn from the experienced nurses and midwifes how to handle the baby. For example, I bathed Gabriel twice under expert supervision, and I was glad that the second time I did most things right. A baby has lots of moving parts, which make dad's life difficult, and you can't just dunk the baby a few times to wash it.
Now that Gabriel is at home, I have the opportunity to watch him and to hold him whenever I want. According to the advocates of attachment parenting, I should not only do that, but I (or Michelle) should carry him around wherever we go.
I am generally wary of all parenting styles that come with a label, because they tend to overemphasize the labeled aspect, and I believe that this could be the case for attachment parenting, too. I have a very strong urge to hold him all the time, and once I held his little body against mine for a while, I don't want to let go of him anymore. This is supposedly good, though I believe that if I just give in to these urges, my life will revolve around Gabriel and only around him, which is neither good for him, nor for me. For one, I should not forget that am still married to that other person who gives milk to Gabriel.
2 comments:
Not that I have any direct experience, but I too am skeptical of fad parenting, which, like fad food regimes reveals a deep lack of and longing for a rooted tradition in our cultural practices. However, attachment parenting seems to point to something more or less universal in child rearing, perhaps something like a Natural Law. Even when there are such interesting studies about language acquisition and the impact of child rearing on their concept of God, it seems that just doing what we were created and evolved to do achieves miracles, as Gabriel already reveals!
Most fad parenting styles come out of a realization that an aspect in child rearing isn't being emphasized enough. However, the strategy then seems to be to overemphasize that aspect, which can create as much of a problem as the new style was supposed to solve.
Thus, I am not trying to be as emotionally detached as possible, but neither do I want to latch onto Gabriel with my all. As I already mentioned, there is that other person, and then there is that guy in the sky, to just name two that also deserve my energy, attention and affection.
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