So, I am a thinking mother. I’ve even read an article from a website/magazine dedicated to thinking mothers. Weaning Ella, by Jill Christman, Asst. Professor of English at Ball State University, is a haunting, lyrical elegy to the emotional and physical bond engendered by breastfeeding. Prof. Christman is a genius as a writer; she is also pretty tricky, and, I think, missing a significant point.
I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy breastfeeding, in all its messy glory, but that I also am pretty set on weaning shortly after the age of one. I have probably offended both the bottle-feeders and the extended-nursing feeders with my moderate passion for breastfeeding.
Prof. Christman, who imbues her narrator with an earth-mother sort of longing for the intimacy and soothing sounds and smells of breastfeeding, tells me that she has never been away from her two-year-old daughter overnight, and that her daughter is in the habit of coming in to her bed every morning around five for a morning feed and snuggle.
Then comes the crisis: Prof. Christman, who up until this point was “just” a mother, has to be away for three days to interview new professorial hires. I get the first inkling that she is not “just” a mother. Much trauma ensues, beautifully, evocatively detailed:
By day, I dressed in a loose jacket to hide breasts that grew larger with every interview, and at night, when all of the candidates had gone, I peeled off my professor clothes and climbed naked, a mother again, into the shower. I needed to express milk–enough so I’d fit into my clothes, not enough to encourage production. She’s not here, I told my body. Give it up.
Prof. Christman weeps in the shower. Sadly, what is going on at home is even worse. Poor Ella, who has been cut cold turkey, gives her father a hard enough time that he insists on no backsliding. “We’re not going to do this to her again,” he tells his wife. As they get back into a routine after Prof. Christman’s return, Ella goes through periods of small tantrums and acceptance, after which Prof. Christman is reassured by the babysitter that things will work out.
Have you guessed what I think is wrong with this picture? Let me share, in more prosaic terms, how weaning was for me. With Sally, we started cutting back one feeding a week around 11 months. She was eating so many solids by then, and drinking enough water, that cutting one feeding per week was fine. By her birthday she was completely, and non-traumatically, weaned. Susan was weaned around 14 months. I drew it out longer with her because I knew I’d start to get baby-hungry once I lost that connection.
I asked Dick today if he remembered the weaning of either girl. Nope. Not an issue. And they had been enthusiastic, efficient nursers, too.
I see this picture in my head of Professor Christman weeping in the shower, and mourning her loss:
In the weeks after D.C., even though I could reach out and touch her whenever I wanted, I missed Ella. I missed my baby. The relationship changed–it had to–once the nursing was over. I cuddled her, and she let me, but it wasn’t the same. I had nothing to offer her that was mine and mine alone to give.
I didn’t experience this overwhelming feeling of grief and loss, and my relationship with my daughters did not change as much. Obviously Jill Christman is a caring, first-rate mother, but I think she has missed what I continue to offer my children each day, something that is mine and mine along to give: my time, my thought, and my conviction that the job of mother is the most important job I will ever have.
I’m not saying that working while your children are young is evil, or that Prof. Christman is in any way unsuited for the wonderful work I’m sure she does as a writer and teacher. What I wonder, is, if she were free to spend more time with her child, would she feel such a wrenching sensation over something that is completely natural? In the history of humankind, I would think that it is more unnatural for mothers and babies to be separated for long stretches of the day.
Obviously there are some exceptions. Slaves, for example probably couldn’t always take their children to the fields with them (I should look this stuff up), but, who wants to live like a slave?
I’d like to ask Prof. Christman, in all sincerity, “If giving up nursing was so distressing, how did you ever leave your baby to go back to a job?”
Subscribe by email
I don’t understand how an intelligent woman can take such an unintelligent approach to weaning. She recoginizes it as an emotional connection, but she also cuts it off cold turkey? Weaning is a gradual, gentle process. It’s not the same thing as simply deciding to drink your milk out of a different container from now on. It’s a difficult process both for the child emotionally and for the mother physically.
It does seem really dramatic to me, all the weeping and such, but my blood never has run very warm. But I agree Shannon, I wonder how much if it really has to do with the physical act of nursing.
I do see what you both mean, Shannon and Marie. I couldn’t help thinking what you were thinking. But, easy for us to have answers to how she should have avoided all that anguish. Of course, I like to imagine I would have done it differently, too. I would have weaned HER daughter differently — but if I had her daughter to wean, then I would be that professor of English as well. (And I admit, that sounds really nice to me.) Then the Professor Christman-me would surely be aware of what I am missing when I am not with my daughter. Just as the real me is sometimes regretfully aware of what I am missing professionally while raising my children.
Regretfully aware some days, but gleeful on others. I have yet to proclaim raising my children as the best job I could possibly have, but I did give up a good, real job after each child born. I remain ambivalent. My ambivalence forces me to be charitable with other mothers’ choices. If I were living a life like Professor Christman’s, which sometimes seems enviable to me, I may well have done a desperate and misguided and dramatic thing like that, too. I might have regretted it, or I might have written a sentimental piece about it.
Besides, the real me would have weaned my own child differently, too. It’s not for not spending enough time with my 9-month old that my milk dried up. I was all his, full time, mind and body. He self-weaned, gradually. It was an easy process both for him emotionally and for me physically. And I was heartbroken over it. With lots of dramatic weeping and such! If I were to publish a sentimental essay about that, would my fellow mother readers think they have an easy answer to how I could have spared myself all that anguish? Would their opinion be relevant to my experience?
I think mothers judge one another more than other people do. I’m guilty of this too, but shouldn’t we ultimately aim for empathy?
I don’t think anyone is being judgmental. It stands to reason that a mother who works outside the home would miss her child during the day. My friends who work have told me they often get misty-eyed when they think of their children while they are at work. It also stands to reason that such a mother would especially value a nursing relationship with her child, which allows a degree of closeness they don’t enjoy during work hours. It’s logical to conclude that the immediate severance of such a relationship would be very difficult on this mother. I’m not questioning her life choices, I’m questioning her knowledge of the weaning process. For someone who clearly valued her breastfeeding experience, especially as far as the emotional connection, I find it amazing she would cut it off so abruptly.
I agree with Marie. It seems strange that if she was so attatched to breastfeeding she would stop cold turkey. I feel for her and the daughter, who obviously enjoyed that time as much as the mother, because of the shock it would be to be happily breastfeeding and then have that cut from her.
I have experienced quiting breastfeeding cold turkey and I will say that it is awful!! Will was only two months when I had to stop with him. My emotions were crazy because I was in a lot of pain and very sad not to be able to breastfeed him anymore. My other son is ten months and he is weaning himself so I haven’t had to experience the pain of quiting cold turkey and while still a sad experience, it isn’t quite the sad experience it was will Will because it is happening gradually and giving me time to get used to it. I guess what I am saying is that her experience seems really dramatic but I can imagine how hard it is. I just wonder, did she not see that it would be this hard? Obviously not…or maybe she did and thought it was worth it. I don’t know.
I think she is crazy for breastfeeding that long anyway, but I have very different feelings about breastfeeding than most moms so I just have to remember that everyone has their own way of doing things. Luckily, either way you do it, your kid will be OK.
I agree with Judit on this one. (not with the “I wish I were working” part. I personally love living off my husband). But I agree with the part about not being judgemental when it comes to other mothers. Im sure we all have done unwise and illogical things as mothers many times, especially with our first child. come on, at least the lady breast fed and for a long time too.
I happen to know a lady who is a very good mother who loves her son very much, but she has always worked outside of the home. Her husband expected it of her and even though she would have liked to stay home, it wasnt an option for her because she wanted to keep her marriege happy and strong. and I think thats great. there is one more child in the world who has both a father and a mother. i know the father as well, and he loves his son very much. my friend made the right choice in the end by working and dropping her child at daycare, but im sure many could find fault with her decision to work and not stay home.
there is one more angle to all of this that we may have not considered. the article was meant to catch peoples attention and draw in controversy so it might have been exaggerated. afterall, the mother was a professor of english and therefore she probably has the ability to write shoking articles that will appeal to a publisher.
sylwia
Hi Ladies,
thanks for your comments. i’m so grateful for your different perspectives. silly me–i was almost afraid that i’d be preaching to the choir with this post (because most of my friends/relatives/readers are sahms), but i need the different points of view and different reactions as i try to articulate what i think about the larger issue, which is, to me, the plight, philosophy and practice of being a stay-at-home mom.
Marie–i agree, and thanks for seeing that i wasn’t trying to be judgmental of her as a mother.
Adrianne–it’s always good to hear from someone who has experienced it both ways. thanks for your input.
Judit–(congratulations on your beautiful birth and baby–i’m impressed you’re so mobile — physically and mentally — already!).
when you say we need to be empathetic, of course you’re right, but, i am truly interested in why women choose to go to work or to stay at home. and i think this should be, and is, a purpose-driven choice, rather than a merely pragmatic one as feminists such as Judith Warner argue. the rhetoric surrounding the “mommywars” is so vitriolic that i think you can’t imagine that i could ask my final question in sincerity.
but i am sincere, and i think it should be possible to examine our choices and our assumptions and the repercussions of each without getting defensive or criticizing each other personally. i do think that after an examination of these things, it might be possible/necessary to criticize certain choices or assumptions. and i think many mothers might be happier if they could think more objectively about their assumptions.
you (and Sylwia) might ask, why can’t i just mind my own business and not worry about the choices other women make? well, for one thing, which choice we support as a society could (already does?) affect my family’s economic health. for example, if tax dollars are earmarked for funding and regulating daycares (as Judith Warner promotes) instead of being saved in the form of child-tax credits or a credit for sahm, that would be bad.
more generally, if the voices that are heard are always those of the working moms, because they are the ones with time and monetary incentive to write and speak about such things, i think we could find ourselves making even bigger financial sacrifices to stay at home than we already do.
finally, a few background items that might explain my negative reaction to this beautifully written story:
1) i hate hearing this: “you’re so lucky you can afford to stay home” and “I work full-time and have a nanny, but I would give ANYTHING to stay home with my kids.” unless a woman is a single parent or has an incapacitated husband, too often the “anything” she would give up does not include the prestige of her job, the fancy/moderate house or the new cars or the fun vacations, or the toys she thinks her kids would rather have than her attention, etc.
2) we all breastfeed (or not) and co-sleep (or not) and everything else for different reasons and in different ways and to varying degrees. what makes me question the validity of our assumptions and/or choices is when mothers do certain things for odd reasons. for example, the mother who is happy that her child wakes up every night btw 12-1 am to play and then they co-sleep the rest of the night. she is fine with this not because she thinks co-sleeping reduces the risk of SIDS or for other possibly well-founded reasons, but because she misses her baby during the day. i don’t find fault with her missing her baby; obviously, this is a good thing. i do wonder though, why this undesirable (the playing at midnight part) sleep pattern doesn’t make her reconsider her assumptions about wanting/needing to work. if she misses her baby so much that she wants to do the babywearing thing while getting dressed for work (how does that work?) and while making dinner and doing the dishes at night, why doesn’t she realize that she has other choices?
oh, and i didn’t say being a mother was the “best” job. i said it was the most important. i hope to someday have a fantastic job of some sort that doesn’t involve bodily functions, but, for now, this is the most important job.
Sylwia–when you talk of women whose husbands “expect it of them,” i can only agree with you that we are lucky to have the other kind of husband. of course, i would get mad if my husband “expected” me to stay home in a domineering sort of way (like i imagine Andrea Yates’ husband). i think it profoundly sad that your friend is in a marriage in which she is “expected” to do anything contrary to her feelings or wishes. marriage should be more of a partnership. i don’t find fault with her, but i do with her husband, as you describe the situation.
i hope i conveyed this above, but what i am saying is that, while i don’t want to be “judgmental” about other mothers, i think it is important that we do judge our choices and, even more importantly, our assumptions. i am afraid that too many of our assumptions (about “having to” or wanting to work) are based on some of the feminist’s rantings (like Linda Hirschman) and on our materialism. if a mother of young children works because she believes that is where she should be and that she is contributing to society in the best possible way, great (i disagree with this assessment, but if this is her honest evaluation of things, it is a choice i can respect). if a mother works because in doing so she provides food, shelter, clothing and health insurance for her children, great (and we, as a family, church and/or society should support her in that endeavor). if a mother works for reasons similar to those expat mom stated on her blog recently:
then i think it is time to re-examine why we do what we do.
shannon
my main point in my post was that that article was written for drama. not many people want to read another woman?s weening experience, so it had to be juiced up, to get people worked up and it worked.
though I agree with you that we should talk about and promote staying at home with children so good job for bringing it up.
sylwia