Remember Blossom from the 1990's sitcom - the fun loving teenager who had a best friend named Six? The actress that played Blossom, Mayim Bialik, was featured recently on a show talking about her parenting approach and discussing how she is raising her children. When Jeff came home from work yesterday, he wanted to show it to me since he knew I would find it interesting. Here's the link in case you'd like to watch it yourself: http://omg.yahoo.com/blogs/goddess/spotlight-to-nightlight-mayim-bialik-from-teen-icon-to-unconventional-mom/270?nc
We do all these things she mentions too - breastfeed & co-sleep with our babies, wear them in a sling or wrap, cloth diaper & ec (elimination communication), homeschool and attachment parent. So why are all these things called being an unconventional parent? Everything about them seems perfectly normal to me and many other parents who are raising healthy, well adjusted children. It makes sense to me to feed my baby the way God intended her to be fed and to keep her close to me so I can meet her needs.
In all sense of the word, I am a "full circle mother" because I didn't always parent this way. My first born took the brunt of my mothering newness and as number two and three came along (together I might add), it finally made sense to me to stop questioning myself and to just mother the way I wanted. We stopped shopping at Babies R Us when we (slap across the head) finally realized that babies only really need three things - loving parents, a mother's breast and some diapers. Okay, a few clothes are nice too and I couldn't live without my sling or wrap after having several children so maybe that's five things.
I wish society would stop treating us as being unconventional and see these common sense ways to parent as being "normal". Yesterday I saw an ad on tv promoting breastfeeding (www.breastmilkcounts.org) so maybe things are changing. Maybe when my girls are mothers it will be normal to breastfeed their babies. Baby steps...baby steps...
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