I often wonder whether I am a good mom or a bad mom. When Dick is home, he is almost always the good cop to my bad cop. He thinks maybe we should stop “discussing” in front of the kids. I say as long as they also see us snuggling on the couch, it’s probably healthy for them to be exposed to dissenting opinions (not to mention fault-finding and nagging).
Some moms (and dads) put their own needs before their children’s to an arguably criminal degree. I’m thinking of a few moms who employ nannies; in terms of class and income, it says a lot that (except in the case of my SIL, who is not a criminal) I am friends with the nannies rather than the employers.
This is not to say that employing a nanny is necessarily bad but rather for me to admit that my view is probably biased as it is based on the nanny’s observation of upper-middle class American family life.
One such mom hired my friend to watch her kindergartener for a few days a couple times a month when she needs to travel for her job. Normally the little girl is at school, before care, and after care from 7 am to 6 pm (that’s eleven hours). When the mom travels, my friend picks her up from school and stays at the house until daddy comes home from his high-powered job around 11 pm. Mom sometimes calls to make sure the nanny made it to the school, but never asks to speak to her child.
Other moms (maybe dads too, but this is less common I think) subjugate their own thoughts and needs to the whims of their children to a bewildering degree. I’ve heard of mothers who co-sleep with teenagers and others who think “time-out” is cruel and unusual.
Also bizarre (to me; to others, nursing up to around 6 is very desirable–see comments) is the mother who writes about how wonderful it was to nurse her firstborn for five years. This necessitated tandem nursing as he has two younger siblings. Anyone see The Last Emperor?
According to my first-encountered (on the web anyway) “alternative parenting” adherent, this is called “child-led weaning.” What’s next? “child-led internet surfing” or “child-led menu planning” or “child-led potty-training”?
Susan told me today “I love my diaper, Mommy.” Should I let her wear them until she’s 5? No, that would be ridiculous. (Oops, Alternative Parenting is also against vaccines, so I can’t really count them in the catering to children camp; I happen to think vaccines are necessary).
Who’s in charge here? I ask this a lot around my house when my kids want to eat dessert before dinner or watch a movie before doing their chores, homework and reading a book. Now, maybe nursing is different. It is certainly special, something I love and support. And I agree also with being sensitive to the baby’s cues about how and when to wean–within rational boundaries.
Kind of like letting your child choose between the red sweater and the green sweater on a chilly day, but ruling out the swimsuit as simply inappropriate. As a matter of disclosure, I planned to wean Sally right at 1 year, but when she bit me and drew blood exactly one week shy of the mark, we called it good.
With Susan, I didn’t mind stretching it out a little longer, despite her major urp factor, because I was afraid I’d get baby hungry once I no longer had one attached at the breast. She was 14 months when we parted.
And it is a parting, an emotional milestone as well as a physiological and nutritional one. On another blog, Rixa’s Page, I came across this image.
Wow, propaganda? truth? certainly not beauty. According to the IBFAN, it’s a picture of mother and twins. The mother was told she wouldn’t have enough milk for both, so the boy got breast, the girl bottle. But in poor countries, water is often contaminated. Apparently, the girl died the day after this picture was taken.
I do know that my children have been extremely healthy. Spot is now almost six months and has never had any kind of illness, and no medicine (except those vaccines, baby!)
Ok, I’ve kind of gotten side-tracked into the nursing thing, but, wait, it does tie back in. (and no, I am not turning into an “alternative parent”).
My dear friend Melinda is now weaning her baby at six months. It is a hard thing for her to do. She doesn’t want to do it, and her baby doesn’t want to do it (I assume; the baby is a beautiful, bright, happy girl). But my friend’s neurologist insists, because Melinda has MS, and she needs to get back on the medication that she has been off for the past 15 months (luckily, pregnancy serves as an immunosuppressant, so wasn’t too much of a risk).
Six months is a longer run of breastfeeding than 75% of mothers in the U.S. achieve,* even though recommendations range from 1-2 years. And there are other options; some of us who produce like your blue-ribbon jersey cows should donate milk, etc.
Sometimes it’s not a matter of being a good mom or a bad mom. Melinda, I think you are a best mom, doing what’s best for yourself and your kid. There’s nothing worse than those TV medical dramas where the mother is pregnant but has cancer and won’t accept chemotherapy even though that means certain death. I don’t know how often such a dilemma appears in real life; hopefully not very.
In the meantime, let’s hear it for balance.
*The CDC and other groups recommends “exclusive brestfeeding” (that means nothing else) for the first six months, though their 2004 survey found the results I list above).
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Well I am glad that you think I am a good mother.
Well, you said in your last email that you felt like a criminal, and I was thinking of these other crazy moms, and that’s why I wrote this post.
I’m sure you’re glad to know that, I, the great arbiter of normal, think you are a great mom!!
I was lamenting how hard it is to find normal people to relate with, and Avery said, “Mom, you are the only normal person I guess.” Sometimes I think this is true.
You are definately a good mom. And that picture was totally disturbing. She should have rotated the bottle between the babies….
sorry, first email (new) doesn’t seem to be working.
your friend melinda might be interested in Dr. Thomas Hale’s website:
http://neonatal.ttuhsc.edu/lact/index.html
he is the leading (?only) pharmacologist doing research on “medications and mothers’ milk” (and wrote the book of the same name). a search for “multiple sclerosis” in the medication forum of his website leads to several threads on the topic of the safety of MS drugs, including Betaseron/Avonex/Rebif, Copaxone, and Interferon B1:
http://66.230.33.248/cgi-bin/discus/search.cgi
a quick skim of the posts in the threads pertaining to those drugs shows that most can be compatible with breastfeeding, despite the concerns of neurologists. they don’t transfer into the milk enought to be of concern. melinda may wish to investigate his book and website if she has any more children.
now as to your opinion of “alternative parenting,” in the interest of “balance,” perhaps you will entertain the viewpoint of one who has nursed her children beyond an arbitrary cut off date, that you refer to as a “rationale boundary.” clearly one year is YOUR boundary, but to hold it up as an example of “rational” goes against thousands of years of human history. i refer you to the anthropologist Katherine Dettwyler, PhD, who has shown that the natural weaning age for primates is when they are halfway to sexual maturity, get their first permanent molars, have a fully developed immune system, and weigh ~1/3 of adult weight. all of this happens around 6 years old in humans. anything less than that is a CULTURAL boundary.
http://www.kathydettwyler.org/detwean.html
clearly the “alternative parenting” is the current mainstream detached model. it is simply an experiment of some hundred years, and there’s nothing rational about it. your discomfort with and ridicule of a mom who views nursing as a joy and natural connection between mother and child (and continues without fear of something being wrong with it), is sad. and your view that nursing past one year (nearly on the dot) is a bad habit that must be squelched by a responsible parent means that you have missed out on the most fun of all: toddler nursing! they play and have such fun nursing, in no way are mamas nursing them “subjugating their own thoughts and needs to the whims of their children.” you might try it before you disparage it. you have another chance with Lucy.
Hi Teresa,
(sorry for the delay in getting your comment posted. it was waiting for moderation, something that hasn’t happened to me before with comments, so I’m not sure why it happened now).
thanks for your thoughtful comment. I hope Melinda will investigate all of her options, and I’ll point this reference out to her. i know doctors vary a lot in what drugs they approve for breast-feeding. while i was nursing my first, I had to get a steroid shot for a mango allergy (it’s related to poison ivy), and i “pumped and dumped” for 3 days to be safe. luckily, we resumed with no problems.
just to clarify–i nursed my second to 14 months, so 1 year isn’t my cutoff; for me that’s about 2 years (as the WHO recommends–partly as a bc method for poor countries).
if it were a choice between nursing not at all or until age 6, as you say, then, of course, i would say it is better to nurse until age 6. But that would mean i would now be nursing 3 children, one of whom attends kindergarten. this just seems a bit ridiculous to me. besides seeming to present quite a logistical nightmare.
you’re right, though, my squeamishness about >2 nursing is just my own personal feeling, and others should follow their personal feelings (within rational boundaries!!–just kidding).
i think breastfeeding is such a wonderful, beautiful thing. i guess i also fear that we might not be doing the practice a good PR job when it is taken to the extreme, you know what i mean?
i feel another post coming on: “to blanket or not to blanket.”
in the end, i have to say, it’s all about balance. which we each have to find for ourselves, of course.
hi shannon,
thanks for taking the time to respond. i’m glad to see you are willing to consider conflicting opinion. sorry to hear you had to deal with a “pump/dump” situation yourself; that must have been stressful. if you are faced with such a choice again, i highly recommmend Dr. Hale’s book/website. most MD’s get their info from the physician’s desk reference (PDR), which is basically a compilation of the package insert, provided by the maker, who does no research into the effects/passage of the drug, but will label it “catagory ?C (not sure of the letter), discouraged during bfing” because they don’t want to get sued. (no one would win a lawsuit in this country on the adverse consequences of NOT bfing). for example, there are women told to pump/dump for an antibiotic use, then 2 weeks later their ped rx’s the same antibiotic to their baby. the baby might not have gotten that sick if bfing had cont’d uninterrupted, and the baby gets much less antibiotic thru the milk than by taking it directly, so how could it be unsafe?
i mainly commented because i felt it was harsh to single out a specific mom, and use her in a discussion of good/bad moms. and by linking to her, you are then directing people to her website who might be looking for conflict with her. so i felt called to defend the practice.
logistically, (i have tandem nursed) it is not so difficult. you spend time cuddling each child anyway, and older children usually nurse much less often, and (unlike babies), can wait a bit until you are done with a task.
just to clarify, the WHO recommends 2 as a lower limit, not a cutoff, and more for the immunological protection than for the child spacing.
my personal feeling is that i would never wean my child for no other reason than a concern for “doing the practice a good PR job.” that’s where discretion (in this strongly bf’ing negative country) comes in. there are a lot more nursing 3, 4, and 5+ year olds than you may realize, they are just not nursing out in public anymore, and sometimes simply because they only nurse at bed/waketime for the last year or so.
the idea of “taking a practice to the exreme” seems ok if you are talking about things that are considered “good,” like the length of a marriage. i certainly wouldn’t get a divorce to fit in with the norm, with the average marriage lasting ?7years.
with respect to discretion, discretion is really a catering to the idea that there is something wrong with breastfeeding. in cultures where biologically normal breastfeeding is practiced, no one buys “hooter hiders,” or sits on a toilet to breastfeed their babies.
i feel that the more that 2yo’s are seen nursing in public, the more chance that a mom nursing a 1yo will feel supported and encouraged to continue herself. maybe when my daughters have kids it won’t be an issue at all, or the “ick” factor will have moved up to nursing 4 and 5yo’s, but 2 and 3yo’s will seem “normal.”
these are simply my thoughts. i don’t expect others to do and think as i do, but i hope not to be thought of as a “bad mom,” and thankfully have never been harrassed as some have (in restaurants/parks/etc.) i feel the best thing we can do for other moms is to realize that we are each making our own way the best we can, and if we can’t fully understand another’s position, we can at least accept/tolerate it.
Hi Teresa,
i appreciate your thoughts. and i think you might be right; maybe i should not have pointed to the blog of a very well-intentioned mother whom i was showing in a negative light.
i am still new to this blog-etiquette. (i did check all through her site before linking, to make sure that her site was for public consumption rather than a mom blog of the scrapbooking variety (see my post “What About Mom, explained”). Her tone seemed very militant in favor of what she calls “alternative parenting,” and she encourages people to subscribe to her “Rant,” so i thought she might even welcome the publicity.
interestingly, she actually took down that post after i linked to it, and when i attempted to subscribe/register to her site, she never sent me a password (as the screen promised me). i don’t know if this is coincidence or if she doesn’t have the courage of her convictions. The tone of her site led me to believe that she would not shy away from discussion.
You?re right?the WHO never said to stop at 2 (and I didn?t mean to imply that it had, but they do mention ?2?). I was at storytime yesterday with my 2 ? and ? year olds, and saw a mother nursing her 3 year old. The girl (and her mother) were both very skinny, so I hope the breastfeeding is helping that (the girl looked too skinny; the mom just looked like a model?she was tall, too).
My husband spent two years in Venezuela when he was 19-21. when we got married and he saw me nursing (anywhere, anytime; we were in nyc then, so that included the subway and while walking down broadway) he told me (probably he had mentioned this before) about seeing the women nursing so nonchalantly; this was distracting for a male American adolescent who was in the country on a proselytizing mission for our church.
we spent 2 years in Cairo 2001-2004 (the academic year), and one of the biggest surprises for me was that women who covered their bodies from head to toe would nurse openly in many circumstances. What a wonderful thing! I respect Muslim modesty, and it seems like a great acknowledgement of the function of breasts that I saw some women doing this.
And maybe I would not be so discreet if I had cute, perky boobs. Unfortunately, mine are quite saggy and stretch-marked. that, I feel, comes from their function, but I have no desire to show that to the world. (although maybe that?s exactly what we need in order to remove the breast-as-sex-object views of some!)
Oh, I totally agree that we should take our good practices and institutions to the extreme; I remember feeling strange for a couple months around my 7th anniversary when I pondered that milestone. Now we are approaching the 9th, and I couldn?t be happier.
Hi,
)
I am that mom…
My post is still there.. just private for registered users because I didn’t want negative attention towards my son coming from your site.
Anyone can register at my site and I have no control over passwords, the software I use does that (wordpress)… check your junkmail maybe?
I promise, I do not shy away from discussion… as long as things remain polite. I might think about making that post public again, I trully am proud that my son led his weaning… (and he isn’t five yet… just FYI
Hello,
i feel really bad for ever making a big deal of you and your son. and i really, really appreciate how nice you are in this comment to me–i think if someone had referred to me as i did you, then i would probably not be so restrained–so, another area in which you are a great person! (i edited my post a few days ago so that it doesn’t reference you at all.)
i didn’t check my junk mail, i’ll do that, and i promise to be more discreet in future. i certainly wouldn’t want anyone being negative towards my kids.
(argggghhh, i am so sorry!!!).
i do have reasons for what i said (probably not very good ones, but) like, the other things i was thinking of in connection with it, etc, and wanting to show my support for my friend, who was feeling so guilty for stopping at 6 months.
i’ve read so many comments about the negative breastfeeding climate in america, and i worry that there is an equally strong militant-you-have-to-do-it or you’re consigning your kid to outer darkness climate in other parts of america.
i know i strongly urged my sister to keep trying when she had extreme difficulty (inverted nipples) with her first. she now is successfully breastfeeding her third, but i still feel bad that i bullied her about it so much the first time.
and since i don’t contribute to a milkbank (and therefore make my milk available to more babies than just my own), how can i tell others who adopt or for other reasons can’t do it, that they should somehow find a way? so i guess i feel hypocritical, and that makes me defensive.
anyway, i apologize again, and thank you for being so (understanding?) polite.