May Meeting

It was great meeting so many new people today and nice to see some familiar faces too. I'll try to compile a short summary of what we talked about and the books people mentioned soon. In the meantime, any thoughts? Anything you didn't get a chance to mention or thought of later?

I'm really upset that we missed the meeting...

I'm looking forward to your summary....

Here are some of the favorite books people mentioned:

Diaper Free! The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene
The Attachment Parenting Book : A Commonsense Guide to Understanding and Nurturing Your Baby
The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age Two
The Discipline Book: How to Have a Better-Behaved Child From Birth to Age Ten
The Science of Parenting
The Nursing Mother's Companion

Also mentioned were Dr. Nils Bergman and Dr. James McKenna. Here are some articles by McKenna. You can Google Bergman for some limited information, but one of our members may have a recording of one of his talks. (Maybe we can meetup to listen to that sometime.)

If I'm missing any, or if you think of more, please add them to the thread.

We also talked about naps for co-sleeping kiddos. At least one person had had success with baby taking naps in a crib. (If anyone would like to try to transition to napping in the crib without the tears, you might give this book a shot: The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night.) Most co-sleepers reported that their children were pretty resistant to this, and they had some strategies for managing naps in the shared bed:

• The Furniture Fortress - Strategic arrangement of bed and furniture to prevent the baby from rolling or climbing to the floor.
  
• The Parental Protector - A parent stays in the room to ensure safe sleeping.
  
• The Attentive Attender - An audio or video monitor is used to monitor the child's movement or waking.
  

Most co-sleepers reported not following all of the co-sleeping "rules" such as no pillows and blankets. Several reported using king size beds without bed frames to keep the sleeping surface low to the ground.

There was also some talk about diapering options and attachment parenting. A cloth diaper user reported that cloth diapering had been an AP-enhancing practice for the family because closer tabs had to be kept on the baby than otherwise might with disposable diapers. Another family reported that elimination communication had greatly contributed to being in tune with their child's cues and had thus had been an attachment-promoting practice. There was an EC book recommendation (see above) but not a cloth diapering book recommendation (or there might have been, and I missed it), so if you know of a great book on cloth diapering, please post the title.

Again, it was great to meet you all. This being our first meeting, I bet that most of us were a bit more shy than we might otherwise be, but I'm sure that as we get together more, we'll all loosen up a bit. I'm excited that we have so many members with different AP strategies and experiences; this should make for quite an AP resource!

Thank you to everyone who showed up, and for those of you who couldn't join us this time, we hope to see you next time! I'll be adding to our calendar over the next week: if you have an idea for an event, or if you would like to host an event yourself, shoot me an email.

I'm sure that I didn't hear (or remember) all the great tidbits of AP info or ideas that people had, so if you have anything at all to add, post it here. In a week or so, I'll consolidate all the information into an email to send out to everyone. I'll try to do this for each monthly meeting.

Just remembered another co-sleeper napping method that was mentioned:

• The Swinging Sleeper: If they won't nap in the crib, maybe they'll nap in the swing. Might be worth a shot with the littler ones.