Changing diapers, chasing after toddlers, tolerating loud nonsensical singing from the never-ending musical from hell – all expertise one can expect to pick up as a parent. But there’s a specific subset of skills that my pre-child mind would have never dreamed up until I needed to do them. Here’s some of the things I’ve learned how to do in my three years as a mom that I would have never predicted:
Be okay with handling my breasts in public and exposing my nipples in front of my parents
A Sipoeta stelenes butterfly at the Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy exhibit.
I haven’t done one of these in ages because of potty training and children not staying in their beds and babies and life, really. But I’ve still been reading and keeping my links, so I figured now was a good of a time as any to share them with you. This time it includes riding transit with kids, the biology of breastfeeding, learning through play, poking fun at Trump supporters, and adventure playgrounds in the U.S.!
Our little family is in a rough patch.
The sleep deprivation from being up for 30 minutes or (usually) more several times a night is starting to deeply affect me. Last night, there was barely an hour between when I would put Little Bird down and when he would start crying again. While I was running on adrenaline and optimism immediately after he was born, that’s faded. In the middle of the night, I’ve occasionally dozed off, awakening to the fear that I could have dropped him. While I blew through a couple of books in the beginning, I’m now too exhausted to do anything but check my social media over and over again in a soul sucking spiral. In the morning, I wake up with a sinus headache and a serious fog that I never really shake. I’ve had an on again, off again fever over the past two days.
With everyone having an opinion on the internet today, why not newborns? They’re certainly good at letting you know when they’re not happy. When my son was only a few months old, my husband and I would joke about the review he would write about his daily meals.
Name: Sprout
Location: My house
Number of stars: 2
Many people say that the definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Well, if so, I must be insane, because I keep returning to this place day after day despite the limited menu and inferior service. At least the food is healthy and the price is right.
The menu is extraordinarily limited – nothing but milk! The same thing, day in and day out. And always breast milk; they never even switch it up with cow or goat. There’s no question that it’s good, but a baby wants something different every once in a while. Fortunately, they do provide a bit of variety in the delivery, alternating between the intimacy of nursing and the efficiency of the bottle.
Speaking of delivery, the service is atrocious! At first, I always request my meal quietly, almost silently. Because they sometimes miss this initial cue, I then have no choice but to raise my voice. Even then, I still have to wait; they never understand the urgency of the situation. The one with the breasts is often ready right away, but I get hardly more than a trickle at first. The tall one takes ages to bring the bottle, but at least it comes out quickly once it’s served.
Then, halfway through and at the end of my meal, the waitstaff insists on manhandling me! They pat me firmly on the back for minutes on end despite my protests otherwise. I don’t know why they put me through such torture – I don’t mind a little (or a lot) of spit-up, so neither should they.
The one major advantage of this establishment is that at least it’s free. It also appears to be quite exclusive, although I can’t blame anyone else for not demanding service. I suppose you get what you pay for, especially when all the proprietors expect is an occasional smile in return.
Breastfeeding my baby ended on Saturday, quietly and with no drama except a few sad smiles from me.
I didn’t plan to doextended breastfeeding and certainly didn’t want to draw it out to the point where Sprout could clearly ask for milk. While I respect every woman’s right to make those decisions for herself, the idea of doing it myself freaks me out a little. Sharing my body with my baby who needed it for his main source of nutrition was fine, but I definitely didn’t want a kid (albeit a little one) who can speak nursing essentially for comfort. But I also didn’t want to go cold turkey, which would be painful to me physically and Sprout emotionally.
Once I reached my one year goal, I started the process of weaning. First, I cut out one pumping session each week, which I was more than happy to say goodbye to. Getting back the time and headspace that I had devoted to pumping was definitely the best part of this process. Because I was producing less, Chris started giving him bottles on weekends (in addition to weekdays) to supplement my nursing. I tried to give him a bottle and he did not take kindly to it, throwing it across the room.
Once I stopped pumping, my morning and nighttime supply also dwindled. As he wasn’t getting enough from me to last through the night without waking up hungry, Chris also took the final leg of the bedtime routine to feed him a bottle. Spout also didn’t seem to protest Daddy putting him to bed as much he did me, since he saw him all day and wasn’t as disappointed about not being able to play with him.
Finally, there were just two feedings left – when Sprout woke up and right before he went to bed, special times for us. As I knew these would be the hardest, I gave myself another week before tackling them, to make the transition as smooth as possible. Also, possibly, to drag the process out a little bit longer. As A Benediction for Nursing Moms says, we both mourn and rejoice at the beauty of what we’re leaving behind.
As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about in terms of Sprout being traumatized. He actually became rather ambivalent about nursing. He would latch on when offered, but would only stay on for a few minutes. Rather than rejecting me (which he’s done before), he just seemed apathetic. If he had the social sophistication, I would say he was doing it out of a sense of obligation.
In fact, he didn’t even seem to notice when I cut out the morning feeding. Unlike the first time I offered the bottle, he accepted it readily, happy to be able to drink a lot of milk, fast. He even continued to play with my hair, something he always did while nursing.
I had planned to wait a full week and a half before stopping the evening feeding, but moved the calendar forward because of his lack of enthusiasm. I purposely chose the last night as a quiet one, with Chris at the movies and me putting Sprout to bed by myself. Of all the milestones, this was one I actually controlled and I wanted to give it the focus it deserved. I felt a bit sad, knowing that this would be the last time we shared this special bond. But I didn’t cry. Instead, I just watched him with special attention, lingering on the look in his eyes. When he finished, I hugged him, kissed him, and offered him a full bottle, the transition complete.
While so many things with him becoming a toddler are loud, the end of nursing was hushed, a gentle kiss goodnight to his babyhood.
I believe in being positive, especially as a parent, but sometimes I get frustrated. I get angry when people are being oppressed, when someone is reinforcing prejudicial societal patterns, or when people are putting others in unnecessary pain. Rather than making Chris listen to me rant (yet again), I’ll write an Open Letter addressing whatever is making me angry.
As you can imagine from this week’s topic, I’m a big supporter of breastfeeding. I truly believe that hospitals, the medical institution in general, and all of society should support breastfeeding moms far more than they do, starting with placing the baby skin-to-skin immediately to accepting women feeding children in public. (Mega props to the Pope for furthering this cause.) I managed to breastfeed my son for a full year and am only now just tapering off. But I do have a reoccurring issue with how some advocates frame the issue of breastfeeding in public. While I appreciate that they don’t want to be shamed for nursing without a cover, I feel hurt by the way they refer to the idea of mothers covering themselves up. Terms like “breastfeeding burqa”, implying that I’m denying my baby fresh air (even though that article is pretty funny), and phrases like “I would never put my baby under a blanket!” make me feel as if I’m not “doing it right” or letting down feminists by wearing a nursing cover. While I think they intend to make nursing a more accepted activity, by denigrating a tool that enables many women to breastfeed who wouldn’t otherwise, I think they could be driving mothers away instead.
Personally, there is no way I would ever be able to breastfeed after a couple of weeks if I didn’t have my nursing cover. I am an extremely modest person; just scheduling the posts this week gives me the shakes. So when I started nursing Sprout in public, I became hyper-aware that people would be thinking about my breasts, even if they couldn’t see them. And that totally freaked me out. I was so nervous that even with the cover, I tried to make myself as invisible as possible. I sat in the back of the church instead of our usual spot; I fed Sprout in the car at an outdoor mall instead of on one of the many benches. There is absolutely no way that I could have started feeding him in public if there was the chance anyone would see my bare boobs, nipple exposed or not. And as any nursing mom knows, you absolutely need to feed your baby in public. Bathrooms are not appropriate places to bring hungry babies. So if it wasn’t for my nursing cover, I would have breastfeed my baby for a drastically shorter period of time. I suspect I’m not the only one in this situation. Now, some advocates would say we should just get over our neuroses and throw off societies’ restrictions. But it’s damn hard enough being a new mom – why add more emotional and social burdens than necessary?
Beyond the modesty issue, I wonder if Sprout himself would be able to eat in public places without the cover. He’s been a very observant, engaged baby since the day he was born. As a result, he’s always been easily distracted while eating. His very first night, I struggled to get him to latch as Chris and I talked. A moment after Chris left the room, he latched on perfectly, his attention no longer split between eating and our conversation. Even if he wasn’t too distracted in public to latch on, he would constantly be breaking his hold, exposing more nipple than a wardrobe malfunction would. He still does this when Chris walks in the room while I’m nursing. Even if I wasn’t quite modest, that would be a whole lot of public nudity and unfortunate leakage.
Beyond my personal experience, assuming people have the social capital to nurse their babies in public without a cover is a privileged position. Women of color and poor women already have huge societal burdens put on them and shouldn’t need to feel even more judgment. People are more likely to feel like they can make disparaging comments to them than a white, middle to upper class woman. Lastly, the consequences of social approbation are likely to be more severe for people who have less power to push back. While a manager of a restaurant or pool may give a more privileged person a warning first, they may go straight to kicking out someone who society already undervalues. Plus, these groups are already less likely to breastfeed, so they should have access to anything that might help them do it.
In general, we need to support breastfeeding moms in whatever way they choose to breastfeed. Shaming women or denigrating blankets or covers only harms new mothers that are trying to do the best for their babies and themselves. There’s enough judgment out there – let’s stand in solidarity in a positive way.
“This is not a canister of failure.” That’s what my husband said as he held up a brand-new can of baby formula.
I had worked so hard to avoid feeding my son formula. I pumped four times a day on weekdays in addition to nursing him three times a day (morning, evening, middle of the night). I had built up so much supply in the freezer that Chris completely relied on breast milk while I was away on a business trip. I considered the single time my mom fed him 30 ml of formula while we were out to dinner an anomaly.
So when Chris told me that we were down to just a few liters in the freezer, my heart sunk. Although we had gotten through the trip with some supply left, Sprout vastly increased his milk intake the following week. Each day he drank more and more and I simply couldn’t keep up. If I was staying at home and nursing him, my body would have adjusted, but there was no way to pump more than I already was.
I just had to face the facts; Sprout was going to have to drink formula, whether I liked it or not. Coming to terms with this forced me to consider why I was so obsessed with Sprout only drinking breastmilk.
Part of it is that I really do believe breast milk is better than formula. Breast milk is easier to digest than formula, has just the right variety of nutrients and is simply the best food for babies. But I mainly drank formula as a baby due to my mom not getting enough breastfeeding support and I’m fine. Similarly, I would never say to another woman that supplementing breastfeeding with formula is wrong.
Part of it is that I really hate supporting the companies that produce formula. They’ve run huge marketing campaigns in developing countries convincing doctors to provide formula and women not to breastfeed. While breastfeeding is the best everywhere, formula feeding can downright dangerous in developing countries where women may not have access to clean water to mix it or a way to sterilize bottles. In addition, it’s shameful to be telling someone to buy something over a free option when they may not have enough money to both buy it and pay for their other kids to go to school. But as much as I try to avoid it, I still buy plenty of other morally dodgy items (Cascadian Farm cereal, owned by General Mills, jeans from the Gap), so it wasn’t just that.
A lot of my disappointment in needing to supplement came down to simple pride. I was genuinely proud that my body could feed my baby and I believed that through sheer will alone I could produce all the milk he needed. After all, if I just tried hard enough and was just dedicated enough, I could overcome the limitations of the pump and therefore, of returning to my job.
But it simply wasn’t true. I couldn’t force my body to do something it wasn’t suited to do. To feed my child, I needed to set aside my pride.
So Chris started feeding Sprout formula, mixing it with breast milk. And the world didn’t come to an end. Sprout liked the formula just fine and continued to increase his intake, far past what I pumped on even my best days. I kept pumping as much as I could and doing the best job that I could as his mom.
Now that I’m winding down pumping (thank God), feeding him formula and now cow’s milk doesn’t seem like such a big deal. But at the time, admitting that I couldn’t do it all myself was So Damn Hard. But sometimes you just need to accept help, even if it’s from a can.
I took the breastfeeding classes at the hospital. I read the relevant sections of the pregnancy books. I even practiced positioning with a teddy bear. I was ready for breastfeeding. Or at least I thought I was.
As it turned out, I actually was – I managed to nurse both kids for an entire year. But all of the preparation in the world didn’t teach me some lessons that real life imparted. Much of the literature on breastfeeding goes one of three ways: technical “how to” descriptions, lyrical meditations on its beauty, or warnings about its difficulty. My experience didn’t match any of those. Both times, it was a mix of the painful and easy, the boring and beautiful.
Here are a few things I wish I had known from the beginning:
I believe in being positive, especially as a parent, but sometimes I do get frustrated. I get angry when people are being oppressed, when someone is reinforcing prejudicial societal patterns, or when people are putting others in unnecessary pain. Rather than making Chris listen to me rant (yet again), I’ll write an Open Letter addressing whatever is making me angry.
I don’t believe in parenting philosophies. That’s not to say that I don’t believe they exist – the reams of parenting books and blogs would immediately disprove me. Rather, I don’t believe in their usefulness as moral and ethical frameworks. Instead, I think they’re useful as broad sets of guidelines from which parents can and should pick and choose based on their own values. Trying to apply something as restrictive as a specific ethical philosophy to something as situational, deeply personal, and chaotic as parenting is bound to end in frustration. Parents feel judged enough – making them feel as if it’s straight up immoral if they don’t follow your philosophy in every situation is just wrong!
Lately, I’ve felt very frustrated when I’m reading a blog post or book where I agree with the broad viewpoint but they take a position that’s so extreme that it doesn’t match anyone’s lived experience that I know. This is a pretty common issue with philosophical frameworks – it’s how you end up with annoying thought experiments like the trolley problem. Normally, this isn’t a huge issue. In “real life,” the only person who will judge you if you don’t follow a single philosophical framework in every area of your life is a freshman philosophy student. However, everything in parenting is about people’s personal, everyday lives. Unfortunately, most parenting philosophies don’t make space for the variability between families.
Often, this narrow viewpoint comes from the author’s unacknowledged privilege. This unexamined privilege shows up in all sorts of issues, from prenatal care to sleeping arrangements.
Broadly, it’s a good idea if pregnant women eat a variety of fruits and vegetables. But using language that’s going to inspire guilt in women who can’t meet those requirements (looking at you, What to Expect When You’re Expecting) is unfair to the many pregnant women who feel hideous nausea all of the time and can only eat very limited diets. And that’s not to mention the women who had food sensitivities before they got pregnant.
In general, breastfeeding is a important behavior to encourage and teach new moms how to do. But for women for whom breastfeeding exasterbates post-partum depression or is so awful that they’re in chronic pain, telling them that using formula denies your child “what is needed for development” is just reinforcing the narrative of failure that’s already running through their heads. Besides physical restrictions, there are many women who have to return to workplaces – especially retail and other service industry positions – that have no space or time accommodations for pumping, making breastfeeding after a few weeks impossible. New laws require employers to provide these resources, but considering how common wage theft is despite the fact that it affects a much larger population, I’m not confident in enforcement. While these articles often blame the larger society for not supporting breastfeeding instead of the individual, the language still feels intensely personal.
I’m all for the general idea of attachment parenting, but saying that co-sleeping and baby-wearing will guarantee that your child will never be a bully minimizes so many other social pressures and makes non-attachment parents feel unnecessarily guilty. Statements like that fail to acknowledge that not everyone is capable of that level of intense exercise after giving birth. A friend of mine was left with severe back pain after a very long, intense delivery and unable to carry her son around. However, that doesn’t mean that she loves him any less or he’ll be irrevocably damaged.
Beyond privilege, some of the philosophies are just absurd when carried to a certain point. I believe that babies shouldn’t be cooped up in seats or forced into positions they aren’t ready for. But claiming that propping your baby to sitting once in a while will doom him or her to a life of klutziness is ridiculous.
Basically, these philosophies and their advocates need to cut parents – especially moms, because they’re usually targeted at moms – some much-needed slack. Moms are expected to get everything just right these days, truly “leaning in” and “having it all” when that’s impossible or much too stressful than is healthy. Adding to that pressure by implying that moms who don’t follow a definitive philosophy are permanently damaging their children is irresponsible and mean. Babies have flexible brains and are remarkably adept at developing well even when we screw up once in a while. Similarly, making hyped up promises that everything will go perfectly – your baby will definitely sleep through the night, be wonderfully calm or naturally graceful – makes the parent who follow those philosophies and don’t get the results feel like there’s something wrong with them rather the idea that maybe the approach doesn’t work for their family. While there are (TW: descriptions of child abuse) some philosophies that no one should ever adopt, no single philosophy is perfect for every situation or every family.
Instead of presenting these philosophies as the end-all and be-all, I wish that the advocates would present their ideas as a toolbox of skills and options that parents can use as needed. I would like them to acknowledge that other philosophies may have some good points that parents may want to draw from. I would like them to even show parents how actions offered by their philosophy can fit with or complement others.
In the meantime, it’s up to us as parents to not allow ourselves to be intimidated by dire warnings and over-promises. By rejecting the formulation of One Right Way to parent, we can embrace the fluidity and chaos of parenting in all of its messy glory. By allowing ourselves the freedom to pick and choose, we can end up with what’s right for our families, no matter what anyone else thinks.
Fear of rejection is pretty universal. But as bad as having someone spurn your romantic advances or a friend ending the relationship, the most heartbreaking experience I’ve had was when Sprout has rejected me. It wasn’t because of any emotional trauma; he simply didn’t want to nurse. But as a mother, it was very hard to not take it personally, even if I knew intellectually that he didn’t mean to hurt me.
The absolute worst experience occurred the week I returned to work, about three months after Sprout was born. I was working from home, so that Chris had ability to call on me for backup. We had introduced the bottle a few weeks before, but Sprout hadn’t really taken to it. Among my many worries, I was concerned that he would refuse to eat when I returned to the office.
After a week of Chris struggling to feed him, Sprout finally got the hang of the bottle on Friday. I was very reassured – until I went to nurse him. Something about switching back again bothered him at an innate level. He absolutely refused to nurse. He’d look away, squirm, frown and start crying.
After several attempts, he didn’t even want me to hold him. He’d start screaming in my arms. I was at a complete loss; the only thing I could do was cry as well. Seeing my helplessness, Chris took Sprout from me and cuddled him. Once he was calm, Chris took me in his arms, to create a hug sandwich. He then started leading a slow, awkward dance around the living room, holding the three of us together. Oh so slowly, he handed Sprout back over to me, stopping every time he started to cry. Eventually, I was holding Sprout again, with neither of us crying.
Once we recovered from the trauma, Sprout did eventually resume nursing. He started that night when he was half-asleep and then picked up again when he was hungry the next morning. Needless to say, that experience taught me not to take my son’s interest in me for granted.
I recently dealt with this issue again because Sprout decided the position in which I’ve nursed him for the past 9 months was completely unacceptable. Every time I tried to lean him back, he’d twist and try to flip over. We had some limited success with some awkward positions, but he’d only take little sips during the day. (Of course, he was fine in the middle of the night.) Then, after several days of this routine, he decided that the way he used to do it was just fine. I guess he got as frustrated as I was and realized it wasn’t worth the hassle.
But it was another reminder about how this relationship is a give-and-take, requiring both of us to participate. Since then, I’ve been much more engaged with him while he’s nursing, rather than reading blogs on my phone. I even made it one of my resolutions for Lent.
While our most recent experience ended well enough, I’m worried that an upcoming situation will be more problematic. A few weeks ago, I found out that my bosses want me to go to a four-day conference in May. It will be just before Sprout’s 11-month birthday, more than a month before our one-year breastfeeding goal. I can pump enough milk to feed him while I’m gone, but I worry that he’ll no longer want to nurse when I return. It won’t send me into despair like it did the first time, as I’ll expect it and we’ll be close to weaning anyway. But it’ll still break my heart a little.
Of course, nursing my baby has to eventually come to an end. But at this point, I know that at least we’ve had more than nine months of this special form of bonding.