This changes everything

For nine months now we have been doing the impossible. I'm scared to actually tell you what we've been doing because I assure you, it will suck every glamorous notion your have ever had out of attachment parenting and send you right back to Mr. Ferber with a bottle of champagne and a bucket of fried chicken (best to cover your bases ).

Here it is: the truth. With the exception of the last several days (and the odd, rare, unexplained miracle) my baby has not slept alone since he was born. He has napped in our arms and spent the night cuddled against me in our family bed. This means I have spent 13-16 hours a day sitting in bed every day. And you're wondering what my ass looks like, right? Small, in fact. But I'll get to that in a bit.

If you're not already someone who lives in San Francisco, owns several slings and buys your baby recycled toys on craigslist, your internal crazy-dar is probably going off right now and you might be moving this blog from your mental category of "not me but relatable" to "this lady is clearly a wack-job." So, let's take a little detour down I'm A Regular Person, I Promise Blvd.

The basic presmise of AP could probably be distilled like this: babies have a certain set of needs which, if not met, may have far-reaching consequences. And my husband and I happen to have a Munchkin with more needs than average, or at least, more persistence. This means that if I didn't sleep with my baby, he wouldn't sleep at all. And yes, in case you're wondering, we did try the whole sneak away thing and the leave-an-object-that-smells-like-momma thing and many, many others which all pitifully, rapidly, undeniably failed. And when I say tried, what I really mean is we really, REALLY tried! Finally, we saw that our only two choices were
1) give the baby what he wants
2) ignore what the baby wants.
There was no middle ground, no bag of tricks, just the two extreme choices and we chose to meet our babies needs the best we could.

Now? After nine months of gentle parenting, I snuck away during a nap and my baby slept. And slept and slept and slept for two whole hours and I felt like crying because we have survived and he finally got here, on his own time, and I am just so proud of him, of us and also I am so exhausted I can barely think.