Serving doubles at the breastfeeding bar, straight up with a twist of peaceful parenting.
This post begins a short series about child-led weaning. What is it? Who does it? What are the common concerns and myths? The process of weaning — whether led by the child, the mother, a doctor, or society’s expectations — is an emotional, personal, and rather fascinating one.
Let’s start off with a discussion about these questions:
Meatal stenosis. Go ahead, say it out loud. Doesn’t really sound like something you want to invite over for dinner, much less be prescribed for surgery, right?
Recently, television host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel revealed to a panel at SXSW Festival that he once underwent two surgeries to correct his case of this condition. Kimmel may be a funny man, but there’s nothing funny about this penile complication, which affects the meatus by causing a narrowing and, in his case, closure of the urinary opening.
Thankfully, the dangerous condition is largely preventable in your own sons by simply saying “No” to routine circumcision. Read More
It’s pretty annoying when your baby sprouts a tooth and suddenly everyone’s clamoring to know if he’s bitten you, right? (Oh, the drama!). Most likely, those comments are more dangerous than any potential bite itself. Fear of getting bitten by your child is no reason to avoid breastfeeding. Trust me, this is not a problem exclusive to the lactating set — as a formula-fed baby myself, I had a rather serious biting problem in my toddlerhood and the rampage was released upon everything and anything… except nipples (but was no less painful to tolerate, I recall).
There’s got to be a way to talk about nursing, modesty, and covers without painting the uncovered breastfeeders as selfish exhibitionists or the covered ones as selfish prudes, right? In duly respecting nursinghood as a time for openness of many things — including our minds, hearts, and shirts — we help re-normalize a society that inaccurately views breasts as sex organs.
I hate to hear this: “Here’s XYZ method that will allow you to breastfeed in public without anyone even knowing you’re breastfeeding!”
It is your legal right to breastfeed anywhere you are lawfully allowed to be, covered or uncovered, with any amount of exposed breast skin as might naturally show in the process of feeding. No one can make you leave and carry on in, say, a public bathroom or the backseat of your car.
I was waiting on my dinner at a restaurant, newly pregnant with my first child. Though I sat at the table preparing to nourish myself and, by default, my unborn baby, I wasn’t too familiar with the feeding of an infant outside the womb. After all, I’d only ever fed myself, my dogs, and my goldfish (and a few plants, but that never ended well).
I was ignorant to the issues moms face when feeding babies outside of their wombs. I knew nothing of a “formula versus breast milk” controversy. I knew nothing of the media-fueled “Mommy Wars.” I knew nothing of how women are harassed for feeding their babies however they choose to do so. I had a lot of assumptions, but you see, assumptions are like opinions, and you know what they say about those.
Nursing has become repulsive. Not all the time — just during episodes of aversion, otherwise known as breastfeeding agitation, which come sporadically. And it’s intense enough at those times to make me want (need) to force weaning.
Seriously? Me, The Nursaholic? Wanting to wean? Well, this aversion stuff SUCKS. And it’s curiously confusing because, as everyone already knows, I LOVE breastfeeding so much that sometimes I suspect my heart is powered by breast milk.
You sit down to the dinner table on Thanksgiving Day with nursling in tow. The unenlightened relative to your left makes a joke about “juicy breasts” (on the turkey, natch), and the friend to your right commits you as her official Black Friday shopping buddy. It seems that everyone is begging to give your exclusively-breastfed baby a taste of the mashed potatoes, and the smell of sage wafts so heavy from the kitchen that you can taste it on your pecan pie.
How can a room full of blessings and joy be so full of breastfeeding landmines, too? Thankfully (because it’s just that holiday), you can move forth into the upcoming turkey-carving and gourd-displaying processions without threat to your nursing relationship so long as you know where to look.
Here’s a quick rundown. Read More
We all know the deserved reaction to harsh comments about breastfeeding in public. Someone who says “That’s gross!” might benefit from being handed a therapist’s business card. Someone who insists “No one wants to SEE that!” could use a reminder that it takes only 30 degrees of movement to make a publicly breastfeeding pair disappear from peripheral view, if so necessary. Whoever snidely laughs, “Stop trying so hard to prove a point!” may be appropriately received with literature on biology and survival (preferably a hardback cover straight to the face), the “point” of ensuring that our children stay alive and happy.
What concerns me more than the pitifully ignorant and sadly classless ones are the well-intentioned ones who occasionally say the wrong thing too, and risk causing as much harm as the jerks. For especially sensitive women (read: virtually all postpartum mothers), certain phrases, questions, statements can be taken the wrong way.
Everyone experiments… with breastfeeding advice! It’s true. Maybe you got suckered into buying those over-the-counter alcohol screeners to test the “safety” of your breast milk only to realize you can just measure your drinks for free, if you’re so inclined. Maybe you tried nursing your baby on the left side while pumping on the right (because ability to multitask is a commodity of motherhood) only to watch as antsy infant legs knock 10 ounces of just-expressed milk to the floor. Or maybe you casually decided to surprise your older infant with a nipple shield, as if no proper introduction is needed, only to find out they’d never play nice together.
Breastfeeding moms are kind of ridiculous.
Seems like all we say is, “Hey, breastfeeding is so not a big deal! Lighten up, naysayers!” But then we stage nurse-ins, tweet to businesses that have mistreated us, and remind everyone from our friends to the mailman about the zillion ways that “breast is best.” I know, it’s a bit backwards to make a point of talking about breastfeeding at every chance, purposefully inflating it into a big deal when the bottom line of our advocating is, “Hey people, breastfeeding is NOT a big deal!”
Especially, especially, especially… breastfeeding in public.
If breastfeeding had remained static in all the physically burdensome, emotionally draining, and psychologically-testing aspects as it were in the first six weeks or so, then would I still be nursing?
Well, yes!
But I say that only because I grew a whole other heart for breastfeeding as time progressed. Breastfeeding may have helped shrink my uterus back into its petite pre-partum shape, but it created something else entirely to take its place. Something knitted of emotions, and big enough to house a whole growing child.
Of course, the answer that makes more sense is… No.
Babies are born with a natural skin-protecting substance called vernix. This should not be wiped away from the skin; rather, it can be rubbed into the skin for maximum absorption. This covering, which was laid down in the third trimester of pregnancy, has many important functions: easing transition to life outside the uterus, offering body temperature control, “skin surface adaptation,” plus antioxidant, anti-infective, wound-healing, and moisturizing properties, and it has been shown to be a more effective skin cleanser than commercial soaps. A study published by American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology called Antimocrobial Properties of Amniotic Fluid and Vernix Caseosa are Similar to Those Found in Breast Milk came upon some rather fascinating and groundbreaking findings, some of which unveiled some new information about vernix.
I trust that my Mommy knows best, so please ask her, _________ (mother’s name), whether it’s okay to give me anything other than her milk. This includes water, glucose syrup, formula, and even pacifiers.
But please help my Mommy to breastfeed me every 1-3 hours while we’re in the hospital by tending to her childbirth recovery needs while she tends to mine.
Her designated birth partner, ________(birth partner’s name) will stay with me in the event that I might need to leave her side (let’s do all of my pediatric check-ups at the side of her bed or in her arms! Thanks!).
We’re both new to this, so we like to consider all decisions together very carefully.
___________________________________________________ Mommy’s Signature
___________________________________________________ Baby’s Name
Mama's Milk, No Chaser 