“I’m going to run the Bristol 10K.” When Laurence told me this I shrugged. Good for him, he could go lose his baby weight as long as I didn’t have to. I couldn’t think of anything worse. I’m really not a fan of running, for pretty much any reason.

Almost every year that I’ve known him, he’s done something like this for charity. Twice it was the London to Brighton cycle ride. Once it was a Rickshaw Run across India. This time he’s running with a group of 500 from our church and they’re calling themselves Love Running.

I really dig the name. I’m drawn to the idea of getting out and physically doing something for the love of others: the poor, the oppressed and the needy. This is how they put it: “Love Running is about seeing love in action, love with legs.”
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Dear baby,

I’m sorry you are so ill. It hurts to see you so dazed, worn out, inactive – well, for you, anyway, which probably means your fever’s making you behave like a normal baby instead of an infant mentalist, but I wouldn’t know.

You latch my breast for moments before gasping for air. You wake up every hour, every two hours to feed again. Little and often is all you can manage right now. I am tired but so are you.

I feel like transported back to your newborn life where you mostly slept or screamed. You demand to be in my arms at all times, hardly content even to be carried on my back.

So I get stressed worrying about the laundry and the dishes and at least a dozen other chores to be done around the house. You are unaware and unbothered about these things. You only know that I must hold you.

I rage against being pinned under your tiny, snuffly, sleeping body. I am trapped by your smallness, by your fragility. I couldn’t do this if I had more than one child to look after…
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No, we’re not trying.

Now wouldn’t be a good time. I’m on domperidone for two or three more months to keep my milk supply up and though the research on its effects on a fetus are not conclusive, I’m not willing to take the risk. That’s why I’m testing though, just in case I catch an early positive so I’d stop taking it.

So why was I a little disappointed with the negative result?
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I’ve recently become uncomfortable with the term “attachment parenting”.

It’s tricky because it very much describes what we’re trying to do. Though we do have a routine, we watch our baby and not the clock. We refuse to rush her independence. We respond to her physical and emotional needs quickly. This tends to involve a lot of physical closeness – you could say “attachment”.

(For a solid post on what AP is and isn’t, see The Analytical Armadillo)

What bothers me is that people tend to hear the term “attachment parenting” and get distracted by the practices it lends itself to. I’m talking extended breastfeeding, babywearing, co-sleeping, elimination communication and the like.

While all of these things are useful, they cannot make anyone a better parent. You can wear your baby dawn to dusk and ignore her. You can put you mattress on the floor in committed bedsharing but resent your toddler for changing the way you sleep.

You can get caught up in a list of rules and feel self-satisfied about ticking all the boxes. It doesn’t improve your parenting. It only means you’ve found a new religion.
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It’s one of the headache-inducing paradoxes of parenthood that you are both wonder-struck and frustrated by the presence of this new person in your life.

So many days I find myself alternately longing to freeze this moment, to savour everything baby about her, and clock-watching, desperate for her bedtime.

I feel guilty even thinking this, let alone writing it. Yet there it is, the reality of where we stand. We sit in the rocking chair tonight. I hold her as her wails fill the room. I don’t know what’s wrong. Everything’s wrong.

Even after she finally drops off to sleep (her father’s doing – she always settles with him) I feel little satisfaction. I eat more than I should and wonder what measure I should use to gauge my parenting.

My frustration – because there is no word that quite describes what I’m experiencing – seems without direction. I suppose it’s mainly at myself. It can’t be with her because I know innately that none of this is her doing. She is crying because something is wrong.

I look at her and ache with love. It’s a love that just can’t be equated with anything. I want her to stop crying not because it’s annoying me and making it impossible to think clearly – though, yes, this is true – but because I cannot bear her unhappiness.

Instead I am disappointed by my own lack of patience. I am angry that even with all the resources available to me – the time, the knowledge, the energy, the support, the love – I still keep coming up short. I still feel like I’m only just coping.

I don’t want her to see this in me.
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