The Attached Mother

I may have talked about this before, but I feel it’s an important subject to discuss.  We, in the AP community, tend toward a “crunchier” lifestyle at times.  This means that homeopathic remedies are preferable to medicine much of the time.  I agree with a natural approach and that the right combination of earthly food and supplements can create optimal health.  However, there is something that bothers me greatly about the refusal of many “granola” moms to skip the anti-depressants when there is clearly a problem.

Parenting is hard.  The amount of parenting it takes to raise the attached family is phenomenoly harder than usual.  We give, give, give and sure we get the joy of our families in return, but sometimes we also give out.  We are pregnant and nursing and tandem nursing and pregnant again.  Our weight is up and down.  We’re always in the practice of forcing ourself to respond in a way that might not be how we were taught as children.  It’s a lot of work.  With hormones rising and falling and washing to and fro and guilt and lack of sleep it’s absolutely no wonder that many of us end up depressed.

Many of us AP moms don’t want our children to be taken care of by anyone else and we find ourself solely  responsible for our brood day in and day out.  Many times we are stay at home mom and our husband are working a great number of hours to support a family on one income.  It’s not easy.

But when we find ourselves yelling at the children, wishing for a break or not feeling as connected to them as we’d like we often don’t even realize that depression has set in.  Once we do we reach for the extra vitamins or a tincture of this or that.  We try to practice yoga in the sunlight with children close by and wonder why we’re never really able to meditate.

I think we forget the purpose of attachment parenting sometimes.  I know we definitely forget–or don’t believe–that keeping ourselves emotionally healthy will help our children to grow healthy too.  For those of you who have found that a tweak in your supplements drives away your blues, then great!  For those who are relentlessly trying homeopathic remedy after homeopathic remedy and your depression or anxiety isn’t going away, go see a doctor.  Medicine is not completely evil.  Medicine could help you be the mother you know you could be if you felt well.

I feel that I’m getting a little preachy here so I will close.  I hope that some mother who is depressed and struggling to stay afloat in parenting will read this and get help.

And speaking of medicine.  Hmm . . .