(Also true story, I worked as the Assistant to the Chair in the Economics department, and often the Chair was not in; this is before he went to DC to do something for some guy named Bush. I nursed Avery to sleep many days, both of us lying on the floor, her on a blanket, in his spacious office, while my angel of an office manager posted a sign on the door that said “Do Not Disturb. Exam in Progress.” That was the sign she put up on empty grad student offices for me twice a day while I pumped, too.)

When I was at the BYU, there was a big kerfluffle (or according to motherhood aphasia, a ferdluffle) over a few Rodin sculptures being excluded from a traveling exhibition. Including The Kiss (which is the only one I remembered. Sunstone, however, reminds me that there were four, and that it was also this transition from Rex E. Lee to President Bateman at the time that made me sad).

Sunstone also reminds me that though the four pieces not displayed were of male nudes, the female nudes were exhibited. Also, that the museum director said it was the “lack of dignity” rather than the nudity that disqualified the sculptures.

Anyhoo, that’s not what I’ve brought you here today to talk about. Several months ago Grampa came from Florida and we took him to visit the Museum of Art on BYU campus. We also ate at JDawgs and played a round of bowling at the Wilk. I think we even finished off with ice cream at the Creamery!

 Among the religious paintings highlighting Jesus Christ’s life there was this fantistic Nativity by Brian Kershisnik.

I love that the angels include people of all ages, and that they’re so focused on the nativity until they’re past it and then they’re rushing out into the world to bear witness. I like that Joseph looks a little overwhelmed, and Mary looks exhausted but exultant. I like that she is attended by two women. I like that newborn Jesus has that squished, red newborn look, and most of all, I love that they’re getting belly-to-belly contact and that he’s nursing, or she’s nursing him. The baby’s little fist kneads her breast and she rests one hand over Joseph’s while her gaze and her other arm are all encircling her little one.

 I like the curious dog.

I really, really like the nursing.

I like the differing individual reactions to His birth, and again, poor Joseph. This painting is a little white, and I hope the open exhibition of it is not just a reflection of Western preference for female nudity over male. (Not that there’s much nudity here, but that is a sliver of her breast! and this is BYU!)

Molly has now been nursing longer than my other three kids. I still enjoy it most in my day, though not the occasional industrial suction through two rows of robust teeth, or even more the flailing foot and the busy busy hands and arms that wrap in and out and around my bra and shirt instead of drifting peacefully off to sleep. I have a trip planned in a few weeks, just a short three-day visit that my child-smothered mommy heart is calling the helpline to demand. I thought I would take Molly, because I’m her mother, and she still could fly free on my lap, of course I would take her.

And then I thought of the freedom of three nights away from all of the kids, three days and nights of no one needing nothing. It is bliss, no? Until I sat there this afternoon, rocking her and nursing for nappers, and worried, what if she forgets me in that short of time and weans without me? I would come home and my baby would be no longer be my baby. Ambivalent does not begin to describe it. (Well, actually ambivalent exactly describes it, but I mean, even more emphatically.)

I would turn around once in a circle to the right and find myself the mother of teenagers, or once in a circle to the left and find my own sweet line of ducklings, the youngest one still eager to be with me, be one with me, complete the circuit that is my left arm and my right arm. Which would I come home to? If I never leave her, would I ever be able to stop? Or will she stop one day, ready or not, and the next it’s off to college?

 *More art by Brian Kershisnik: This is us on a Sunday afternoon, ahem.

*In Breastfeeding in Public: What’s the Big Deal? I post a video and more pictures of nursing. In the comments there is a discussion of specifically LDS (Mormon) perceptions of public breastfeeding. I’m for it, in a big way.

There is a prickling at the back of my mind, like a phantom limb that isn’t a phantom or a limb, but is a part of me, if I am away from my nursing baby too long. The unbreakable tie that tethers us is invisible in the hours we are separated. Yesterday I painted downstairs all day, coming up only to nurse the baby and eat a sandwich, both at arms length, careful of the wet paint on my shirt. By the end of the day I needed the smell of her smooth temple against my mouth and nose.

I also needed a bath. My nursing baby was covered in apple sauce, from the hairs on the back of her head to the sides of her thighs under her tray. She needed a bath, too.

I felt the tie that tethers us soften, lazily uncoiling, free as I lay in the water and she flopped from the left of my belly to the right, ever curious and reaching. I sat up to wash our hair and she sat in my lap, her side to my belly. She looked up at my breast, zeroed in on my nipple and reached her mouth up for a nurse.

I’ve been thinking, ever since, about breastfeeding in general, and public discomfort with it in particular. Nursing to me is motherhood distilled. It is the last time my baby is part of “me and my baby,” “my baby and I.” It signifies the time before she is apart and away, before she is someone who needs less from me, takes less from me, but then paradoxically requires more from me, more purposeful patience, more counting to ten before I explode over toddler-ish escapades. It’s something I do simply because I enjoy it, not because I feel I should or because it’s best for baby, but because I like it.

The past couple of weeks I’ve been experiencing my first-ever nursing aversion. I didn’t even know there was a word for what I was feeling, the temporary pain, the impatience, the counting down six more weeks until we hit a year, where I had assumed I would nurse till around eighteen months with my fourth baby, and that I would find it heartbreaking to stop this final time. I did some reading, and maybe it’s the weather or my hormones or the baby having a growth spurt or my needing to drink more water and get more sleep.

Last night I thought of all the maternal imagery Jesus uses. I love the types and symbols and metaphors of the scriptures. I love talking with my daughters about the women in the scriptures and imagining what barely-or-not-mentioned women were feeling and thinking. Possibly they are getting a very unorthodox perspective on stories like Queen Esther (poor Vashti, eh?) and the Parable of the Talents (sounds like food storage).

Jesus asks how many times would he have gathered us like a hen gathers her chickens and tell fathers to bring children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. He asks how unlikely would it be for a woman to forget her sucking child and says He is even more constant.

Before He was crucified He said there would come a time when they would say “Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck,” because baring and nursing and mothering make one vulnerable.

Moses, when fed up with the children of Israel for not appreciating manna, asks the Lord why he is responsible for them: “Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers?”

And when Isaiah prophesies about the redemption of Israel, he says that “their kings shall be thy nursing fathers and their queens thy nursing mothers.”

I think one of the reasons I like nursing so much is because it’s one of the few mothering things I’m really good it, one of the few things that comes naturally to me, something I don’t have to overthink or remind myself ten times a day that swearing probably won’t make this situation of the sugar all over the floor any better.

I don’t know why we are so uncomfortable with imagery of the physical, maternal body. Jesus tells us to eat of His flesh and drink of His blood. I bring Molly to my breast and she eats and drinks greedily. I wish I were as eager to accept the nourishment Jesus offers hourly as she accepts the milk that flows from my breast.

My mom nursing me in 1977. If she looks young -- she was.

Breastfeeding is one of those things that I feel differently about, depending on who I’m talking to.

My dad reported on a continuing medical education thingie they had at work (“Most of them are yawners”) with a lactation chief and a neonatology chief (“one of the best lectures I’ve been to”). He said he was emotionally moved when they presented the evidence for skin-to-skin transfer of antigens and antibodies (Because God’s design is great!) and they said that physicians should strenuously promote/support breastfeeding instead of trying to neutrally ask bottle or breast? Even formula supplementation isn’t a neutral practice, because it can hinder digestion and decrease supply.

I have a friend who got mastitis while still in the hospital recovering from an unplanned-natural birth; she hadn’t been successful in nursing her other two kids, hadn’t enjoyed it or seen that they benefited from it, so she decided to formula feed from the start.

My sister swears by feeding her babies one bottle a day so that she can get a relief pitcher when she needs one.’

In the hierarchy of things that will make both mother and baby happy and healthy, mom’s sanity trumps breastfeeding, every single time. This I am sure of, no matter who I’m talking to. Luckily, most of the time, as with everything related to mothering, what’s good for baby is also good for mom, it’s very rarely an either-or.

Me nursing Molly with the 1977 wash from Instagram.

I like to think that my feelings (how strongly I feel about breastfeeding) vary on context because of empathy, but I do know that my personal experience informs my feelings about it as much as the other way around. I know everyone comes with their own personal context, but two attitudes in particular about breastfeeding irritate me:

1- Some men in my neighborhood think that breastfeeding in public is “disgusting.”

2- A lady on Facebook wrote: “Can I just say I hate women who say they don’t have enough milk?”

Both of these absolutely baffle me, from a human-female-Christian–human– standpoint. I can see the men saying they don’t think it’s modest (move to burqa-land, please), or that it seems an intimate thing to do in public (then you can’t ever eat in public either), but the word “disgust” — it’s like the word “contempt.” It’s corrosive. And if you find something natural and female to be “disgusting,” let’s just say I’m glad to not be married to you.

The second — I’m at a loss. It assigns some attitude or motive to the woman that I just can’t fathom. It’s probably true that the woman has mistaken perceptions about her milk-production abilities (since only two percent of women suffer from primary lactation failure), but even so, it’s more important that the woman thinks this to be true (unless you’re accusing her of lying, which again, I don’t get). Her perception is more important than reality, because that is what will guide her to either get help or give up: it’s too-often a self-fulfilling prophecy and if someone is “pro” breastfeeding, shouldn’t the response to that sort of statement be compassion? It’s also word choice here that is troubling — “hate” is as corrosive as “disgust.”

The only sort of comment I ever get when I nurse in public or post a picture of me nursing is of the “I could never type and nurse at the same time!” or “I was never able to be that discreet!” variety. So I feel that I have maybe presented a misleading picture of how I do it, and I also feel (quite strongly, so many feelings in this post already) that it is important to nurse in public. I am good at doing this in real life, but I have been hesitant online. And that would be fine if I was also reticent about posting other pictures of my family life.

But nursing in public (online or in real life) is important for many reasons (besides how wrong the ghettoization of women would be):

1. You’re more likely to nurse (longer) if it fits into your life. Breastfeeding exclusively is easy for me now, because I don’t mind taking my baby wherever I go. If I can’t take her, I don’t go. I need a break from the other kids at least weekly (sometimes hourly), but the baby? Once you have more than one child, you appreciate how easy the one is who doesn’t have to be told ten times to put her shoes on. When I went back to work after Avery was born I pumped at work and she also got a bottle of formula every day, because it’s really hard to pump as much as a baby would nurse. But I know I was very, very lucky to have a workplace where pumping fit in my life (I even nursed her to sleep for a nap several times there, lying on the floor in the office of the chairman of the economics department.)

2. Women (and babies) benefit from seeing what nursing looks like. Even the way you hold a baby is radically different from bottle-feeding. Seeing how other women and babies do it helps with latching and general comfortableness.

3. Men and boys benefit from seeing women breastfeed. When they see what breasts are for, they see what breasts are for. Breastfeeding combats the hypersexualization and objectification of the female body.

I made a couple videos of nursing Molly, because I wondered what other people see if they look past the nursing bubble that usually seems to enclose me. Discretion is not my first priority when nursing in public. Getting baby fed is number one, then probably covering up my fat rolls as much as possible, but then, yes, I do nurse differently in public than I do at home, just as I eat differently myself too. At home I’m afraid I’m inclined to sit like a kindergartner and let my elbows rest on the table and I’ve even been know to let out the most delicate of lady-like burps (okay, I do that one in public, too). I’ve never used a cover, because I just never have, but I naturally don’t go for the same sort of skin-to-skin time in public that I can indulge in at home.

This first video is actually at home because I didn’t want to leave my house, and it’s shorter than an actual nursing session (I usually only nurse one side at a time, which takes about ten minutes, every 1-2 hours during the day; Molly sleeps through the night). You can see the logistics of wearing a nursing bra and that it’s easier to get to things if you’re wearing a looser shirt. I don’t own any actual nursing shirts.

molly nursing january 2011 from shannon johnson on Vimeo.

From my point of view there’s more showing, and this video is of a really successful nursing session: Molly isn’t tired or frustrated, she’s hungry but not starving. I try not to go out at all if she is going to be extremely tired, frustrated or hungry (or if I am!) during our outing, but of course sometimes this happens, and it always seems to be the case (for both of us) by the end of church. In that case, getting latched and settling down can take more time and include some crying, but one of the best things about breastfeeding is that it is almost always the solution. Even if what baby really needs is a nap or a diaper change or some Tylenol for her shots, breastfeeding will comfort her until the other things can be arranged. The other thing to keep in mind is that I spent practically the first week of nursing this kid naked from the waist up — this video shows how quick and simple nursing can be after four and a half months of daily practice.

We took the kids to the mall play place on Saturday. Tom took this video on my iPod:

Again, it surprises me how little shows from that angle. So here’s the controversial shot. Sometimes, when I’m nursing, and Molly gets distracted, or full, or tired of sucking, this is what it looks like:

You can call it anything you like (nourishing, comforting, not-something-you’d-ever-show, etc) — anything but “disgusting.”

Molly nursing, not in the middle of the night

It’s still dark. It’s winter, of course it’s still dark, but even in the summer it’s dark at 5:44 am. A cry comes from the baby’s room and I’m up and stumbling bodily to the door before my brain has even recognized the sound, my torso moving with purpose, working my legs and even less gracefully my head a step behind out into the dark. I pick up the baby, who’s always on her stomach now, sometimes an arm trapped under the side she rolled from.

I make it back to the bed and put her on my right even though my hand on that side is still tingling from sleep, because I always nurse on the right side first in the morning, saving the left side for the leisurely second side, the we-can-lie here-as-long-you-want side, the maybe-I’ll-even-fall-back-to-sleep-while-you-nurse side, but I never do, now that I’m getting solid sleep again.

The milk swells, stored and waiting for the breakfast-starved chubbermonkey to swallow in happy, hydraulic gulps. She latches on and patiently works her cheeks, in and out, three, two, one, here it comes gushing, in both breasts even though only one is in the mouth of the precious lover-baby to appreciate it.

Some gets spilled, from the second breast it soaks my top, more in the morning, less in the afternoon, by nighttime I’m so empty from nursing every hour there’s no extra for the wringing out.

Every day the circuit. Pressure of bursting fullness, of dammed nourishment-to-be; rush of release and flow and satisfaction; deflation of all-gone-ness needing re-stocking.

In my brain I keep getting to the still-dark phase, the before-letdown phase. But there’s no writing baby to suck it from me, no story baby who needs it to live, no other baby who will demand it whether it’s ready or not. Whether I’m ready or not, awake or still sleeping, tired or revived.

I wish there were.

When we brought Molly home, I was lucky that Tom could take a few days off work, and then it was the weekend, and Labor day, and so I got to spend almost the first week of her life with just her, in my room, on my bed. I also spent most of that week mostly naked, with Molly even more naked. Breastfeeding has always been my favorite part of having a baby, but this time I was curious to see how much of a difference total on-demand and skin-to-skin feeding (plus no epidural, which some think interferes with initiation of breastfeeding) would make. It seemed to me that I produced much more colostrum and that my regular milk came in about a day earlier than usual, so closer to day four than day five. This is with feeding that kid every 1-2 hours day and night. (I never once looked at a clock or kept track of these feedings or her diapers, as the hospital lactation consultant suggested, I just fed her whenever she wanted to eat, and counted how many times that was each 24-hour period).

For comparison’s sake, with Avery, I was sent home from the hospital with instructions to continue giving her one bottle of formula a day because her blood sugar had dropped in the hospital and since she was so big (9 lb 3 oz) she “needed” something extra until mine came in. At her two-week check-up she weighed 10 lb 14 oz. At Molly’s two-week she weighed 9 lb 14 oz (gaining almost a pound over her 8 lb 15 oz birth weight). With Avery I had also read and been told that I could/should get her on a feeding schedule of something like every 3-4 hours. I remember several frustrating evening hours when I thought we should wait awhile before the next feeding.

With Molly, I wish I could say everything was perfect because I was doing the breastfeeding “right” this time, but actually, we had a rocky couple of weeks where I worried about reflux and colic because she both threw up a lot and was occasionally unhappy during or after feedings (something I’d never experienced before, but now that I have, I say hats off to moms who persevere with breastfeeding a baby who doesn’t act like mom’s milk is ambrosia of the gods).

Sometime during week two Tom came home from the grocery store with a couple pacifiers (the nice soother kind), and then during that week or the next I bought a manual breast pump and a couple bottles. Then I remembered how pumping is so much less comfortable and rewarding than nursing a live baby, and sometime the next week I drove to the store chanting “I am not a martyr, I am not a martyr” and I bought a can of formula to be used in emergencies (like, you know, when I need an hour or just fifteen minutes TO MYSELF). Tom is very good about helping with the baby, but he panics if he doesn’t have a way to meet all her needs (especially the food need).

Molly is a month old tomorrow, and so far she has drunk two ounces of that formula, which means I got to take a walk with my friend one evening without any kids (usually we both push double strollers and Callie rides her bike alongside).

The funny thing (to me) is that the hardest part of buying that formula (which at two ounces a month is going to go bad before it gets used up, but is still a powerful psychological presence in my cupboard, a presence that frees me, if only theoretically because 99.9% of the time I don’t need that freedom since I both enjoy breastfeeding and don’t mind being tied to the baby as long as Tom can care for the other three kids when he’s home) the funny thing is that I felt furtive and guilty buying it because I knew I’d be supporting these formula companies that are so unethical in their advertising practices both here in the U.S. and especially in third-world countries.

But in the first month of a newborn’s life, the line between feeling like you are going to survive, that there is life on the other side of this sleep deprivation torture and the feeling that life is completely insupportable and that not even sweet nestling baby on your heart is recompense for the wasteland that is your ambition to even get dressed in the morning — that line is so thin that boycotts and high-minded principles be damned. Knowing I have that formula, just in case is worth more than all the blood diamonds in Africa.

Heather shared an interesting post today, which referenced a debate going on about whether the word “intimate” should be used in relation to breastfeeding. I shouldn’t have been, but I was surprised that people were taking exception because “intimate” also often refers to sexual situations. Apparently Facebook is also still antagonizing people by deeming breastfeeding photos “obscene” and then the issue is that if breastfeeding is intimate, why would you want to post pictures of such a thing?

I don’t know. Things like this (the whole debate) and the fact that I thought twice (or seven) times about buying an emergency can of formula because of angry rhetoric I’ve read online (though I agree in principle, usually) makes me rethink what I’m doing online, or in real life, whenever I feel tempted to give an opinion or when I’m trapped listening to someone else’s.

I’m fairly opinionated, and more, I think there’s usually a right and a wrong in most situations, or a good-better-best in most parenting dilemmas. I think breastfeeding is intimate, and only sexual in the sense that I have breasts that produce milk because I am a sexually-mature (and active, obviously, or was 10 months ago, anyway) mammal. I love the intimacy that bonds my baby and me as we sit connected literally and nutritionally. Breastfeeding is less intimate when we do it in public, because usually that means it’s also a noisier, less relaxed, more mechanical get-her-fed type experience, but that also happens sometimes at home, when other family members are clamoring for attention.

Either way, I want to do my part to promote acceptance and encouragement of breastfeeding anytime, anywhere. I also want my emergency can of formula.

Shannon will be returning to her blog shortly, but for now you can read a little about the birth experience on my blog.

My mom is a sort of den mother for a mommy group over at the BYU, because my dad is on the High Council (church thing that sounds more highfalutin’ than it is) over at the BYU, and because my mom has lots of mother/homemaking-type skills to share. (And now she’s read the Aeneid, too, which I never finished (or possibly even started) when I took History of Civilization in college, so, good job, Mom!)

We were talking about breastfeeding on Sunday night, which we talk about an awful lot for people who are not currently breastfeeding, and she said that the women in her mommy group do not breastfeed in front of each other, even in each other’s homes. One woman will say to the other woman (no men present), “The baby’s hungry, I better get home to feed him.” Not even with a hooter hider or a blanket.

This confounds me.

When we were in Cairo, it was pointed out to us by a native-type lady that there was a strange phenomenon occurring, where the older women, the professional women, the secretaries and workers and mature ladies in public wore no headcovering, or a very simple, not-concealing, high-fashion material-type scarf headcovering, and that it was the younger generation of women who were, some of them, adopting plain, concealing hijabs, and in some cases, burqas (although I think they had a different name for them in Cairo, and unlike in Saudi Arabia they aren’t blue, but black, which is even hotter).

This was confounding, even to the native-type lady.

In Cairo, there are womens-only subway cars, and at first this sounds sexist and ghetto-izing, but the women (including me) like it. The women’s cars always smelled better, for one thing. And in those women’s cars, among the women in burqas, the women in hijabs, the women in clothes much modester than most Westerners would ever wear, they breastfeed. Openly. In front of complete strangers!

Is this just a Utah/Mormon thing/why is it/what the tarnation is going on?

And . . . will I be completely ostracized in September? I’m tempted to vow that if I get so much as one comment, I’m moving back to the Middle East, where people understand women!

We organized our supplies in first one cabinet and then the right one. I trailed along as classrooms were assigned and hymn books were stacked. And then I saw a sign for “Restroom. Mother’s Room.” You walk through the restroom to get to the Mother’s Room. So all the stink is in one place, joked my friend. The place of eating has the place of pooping as an antechamber.

I’m not even nursing right now, don’t even know if I’ll have another baby. But as God is my witness, if He does send me another child to nourish and nurture, I will not be sitting in a small room off the bathroom to breastfeed.

With several grown-up books to choose from, I agreed to lunch at Carl’s Jr with the big play place. We should have driven to a play place in the next school district over, but I am blessed to block out almost anything while reading. Two mothers near me were breastfeeding their babies.

They were both modestly covered with hooter hiders.

Some women are a lot more reasonable about this than I am. I told Chrysanthemum that if women want to wear hooter hiders, why stop there? Why not go for a burqa or a niqab? Chrysanthemum says she’s comfortable, but wants to make sure other people are comfortable too. (Which is only thoughtful.)

Saturday night I held Chrysanthemum’s baby while she ate with the menfolk after the priesthood session. I burrito’d him and rocked him in the granny recliner my mom has in her living room. I had been dying to get my hands on him all day, but I couldn’t take his sweet weight drooping in sleep for long.

I promised Chrysanthemum that I really won’t kidnap him, mostly because she knows where I live anyway, but also because when he cries, I can’t comfort him if what he wants isn’t a bounce or a bundling or a burp. I am not equipped, right now, with what he needs.

—

I’ve never loved my body (has any woman?). Stupidly, even when I was in high school and thinner than I’ll ever be again, I was unhappy with this bulge and that blemish. I was also not happy to be growing breasts. They budded and blossomed, right on time; not too big, not too small, but the mere fact of them, the changing from child to woman was not welcome. I know most girls look forward to the bras and the makeup and the high heels as markers of maturity, but I did not.

I hated that I had to wear a bra. It felt like a betrayal, a shrouding of my ribcage, a constriction of my breathing, an infringement on my freedom and rights and autonomy. And no, I wasn’t melodramatic as a teenager at all, why do you ask?

I still hate wearing a bra, but I’ve resigned myself (in public). I sometimes feel frumpy and flubbery and (I don’t say “fat” around my daughters), and I don’t mind the religious obligation I have to cover up because I have no desire to show my thighs in a short skirt or my belly in a bikini.

But at some point I started appreciating what my body can do rather than what it looks like. Function superseding form, form respected for the function that follows. My hands can knead bread, my feet can peddle the bike that pulls Susan and Spot for a ride. My womb can grow a child. (It can also miscarry, but that is normal.)

And my breasts? They sag and stretch. (I even get a few wild hairs now and then. Don’t tell Mr. Bennet.) But my breasts can feed a child all she needs for the first year of her life.

Which is almost as miraculous as never once feeling self-conscious or unsatisfied with how my milk-swelled breasts looked. Even when a stranger glimpsed a patch of blue-veined flesh.

My boss helped me find empty faculty offices to pump breastmilk in twice a day. I read advice that you should carry a picture of your baby to help your milk let-down when you pump. All I had to do was relax, close my eyes, breathe deeply, think of small, sweet Sally, and the milk flowed.

There are so many myths and misconceptions about breastfeeding, and then there are so many well-meaning people who give odd advice. A friend said to me the other day “You know how you’re not supposed to read while you breastfeed?” and I looked at her blankly, Huh? “You know, they say you’re supposed to be bonding with the baby, stroking their cheeks, looking into their eyes.”

I think having quiet time to read a book, and yes, to sniff the baby’s soft, fuzzy head every few minutes, is one of the best things about breastfeeding. Also the urgent tug on my breast and the curled fists that knead and the sighs and the last drop of milk that dribbles out as my baby gives her drunk sailor smile when she’s full.

If I have another child, it will probably be because I want to feel that again. Because the promise of being that close and that necessary to another human being for the first year of her life outweighs the other promises: of sleep-broken nights and whiny voices raised in petty disputes.

Breastfeeding, to me, was more emotionally significant than carrying my children in my womb. They lived, each of them, for nine months, inside me. They kicked and slept and bounced. They came from me, are of me, they have my freckles (and Dick’s). But it was when I held them to my breast, and they sucked and sucked and sucked, sometimes until I felt I had nothing left to give, like the Giving Tree who gave it all — that was when I knew they were mine.

I know some women can’t breastfeed, and other women don’t enjoy it. I can, and I do, and I’m sorry: so, so sorry, if you can’t or you don’t (and wish you could or did). There are probably experiences you enjoy that I’ll never fully understand, but let me share my joy without thinking I’m criticizing you or diminishing you.

Unless you think breastfeeding is something that should be hidden or something weird or something to be done under cover, in that small room, or only as long as “nothing shows” or no one is inconvenienced.

Then I am criticizing you, and I’m saying you’re mistaken.

And this includes people who are afraid that exposing (young) men to women breastfeeding will somehow harm them morally. I can’t even believe I typed that sentence. It is completely illogical. Letting young men see what breasts are for will LET THEM SEE WHAT BREASTS ARE FOR.

Under Islam, if a woman breastfeeds a child, the child is considered related to her, meaning that breastfeeding children who are not yours is common in other parts of the world. The United States is whacked, my friends. Whacked, I tell you. We’ve hyper-sexualized breasts for so long and so completely that when we even contemplate the public practice of WHAT BREASTS ARE FOR, people get uncomfortable.

And often these are the same people who would be blase and oh-so-sophisticated at a screening of the latest Oscar-winning movie to feature female nudity.

I had a friend in Florida who gave birth to twins after a long spell of trying. One of her twins loved to breastfeed, and the other didn’t. One day we were at the mall play place. I was still nursing Spot, who was about seven months old. My friend’s twins were three months, and she was concerned about the twin who preferred the bottle.

Spot, who was the smallest of my babies, was quite plump compared to the twins. I would have been a great wet nurse, what with my natural lactating abilities. And even though I love breastfeeding, there were times I felt like nothing so much as a great big jersey milk cow, because if I am a natural breastfeed-er, my children have been world-class milkers. Ahem.

My friend’s babies started crying, and she latched on the one who wasn’t a great nurser. The other baby’s crying increased, and my friend suggested I feed her. We had talked about this before, about how my friend and her sisters had breastfed each other’s babies.

It sounded vaguely icky.

But my friend’s baby was still crying, and I was curious. How would it work? Would it feel wrong?

So I breastfed my friend’s baby. And it was a bit weird, a bit different. She didn’t smell just like mine, or suck just like mine. She latched fairly well and tugged. She stopped crying. She settled down intently, and I never forgot that she was my friend’s, in those twenty minutes that I held her so intimately to me.

Now my Spot is well-weaned. I miss my friend, who I haven’t seen since we moved to Utah. We’re facing a severe recession, and I’m afraid to bring another child into a world that scorns what should be respected and respects what deserves scorn.

But what do recession and breastfeeding (and humanity) have to do with each other?

The boy spoke in a croaking monotone. “Fust he was sick but now he’s starvin’.”

“What?”

“Starvin’. Got sick in the cotton. He ain’t et for six days.”

Ma walked to the corner and looked down at the man. He was about fifty, his whiskery face gaunt, and his open eyes were vague and staring. The boy stood beside her. “Your pa?” Ma asked.

“Yeah! Says he wasn’ hungry, or he jus’ et. Give me the food. Now he’s too weak. Can’t hardly move.”
…

The boy was at her side again explaining, “I didn’ know. He said he et, or he wasn’ hungry. Las’ night I went an’ bust a winda an’ stoled some bread. Made ‘im chew ‘er down. But he puked it all up, an’ then he was weaker. Got to have soup or milk. You folks got money to git milk?”

Ma said, “Hush. Don’ worry. We’ll figger somepin out.”

Suddenly the boy cried, “He’s dyin’, I tell you! He’s starvin’ to death, I tell you.”

“Hush,” said Ma. She looked at Pa and Uncle John standing helplessly gazing at the sick man. She looked at Rose of Sharon huddled in the comfort. Ma’s eyes passed Rose of Sharon’s eyes, and then came back to them. And the two women looked deep into each other. The girl’s breath came short and gasping.

She said “Yes.”

Ma smiled. “I knowed you would. I knowed!” She looked down at her hands, tight-locked in her lap.

Rose of Sharon whispered, “Will you all go out?” The rain whisked lightly on the roof.

Ma leaned forward and with her palm she brushed the tousled hair back from her daughter’s forehead, and she kissed her on the forehead. Ma got up quickly. “Come on, you fellas,” she called. “You come out in the tool shed.”

Ruthie opened her mouth to speak. “Hush,” Ma said. “Hush and git.” She herded them through the door, drew the boy with her; and she closed the squeaking door.

For a minute Rose of Sharon sat still in the whispering barn. Then she hoisted her tired body up and drew the comforter about her. She moved slowly to the corner and stood looking down at the wasted face, into the wide, frightened eyes. Then slowly she lay down beside him. He shook his head slowly from side to side. Rose of Sharon loosened one side of the blanket and bared her breast. “You got to,” she said. She squirmed closer and pulled his head close. “There!” she said. “There.” Her hand moved behind his head and supported it. Her fingers moved gently in his hair. She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously.  (The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, 1939)

I buy those funny twisty lightbulbs, but only because it saves shopping trips in the long run. I make most of our food from scratch, but only because it tastes better that way. And I run the washer and dryer sparingly, but that’s only because if I washed the clothes I’d probably have to fold and put them away. More energy wasted!

I would like to do my part for Earth day though, especially since the Seattle Mom Blogs and Goodies for Mom ladies seem really earnest about everyone doing their part, though every time a “green product” is promoted, I get just a bit skeptical.

Here’s the one thing I’ve done very conscientiously and consistently in the past seven years, and all for the good of mankind:

Breastfeeding. It’s natural, it’s healthy, it’s downright biological. And it’s cheap. And easy, once you figure it out and it stops hurting like a mother (get it?). There’s a lot of misinformation out there about breastfeeding though, so I thought I’d list a few of the Myths of Breastfeeding. If you think I don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re probably right, but I have nursed three kids until they were 11 months 3 weeks, 14 months, and 18 months old. And my first kid? Sally? She was 9 lb 3 oz at birth and 10 lb 14 oz at 10 days old. Beat that, Enfamil!

(If you can’t or don’t breastfeed, don’t feel bad. We’re only talking about saving the planet, after all. Ah, ah, I joke! I jest! Just don’t look at me and my disposable diapers like that, ok?).

Myths of Breastfeeding

1) Baby knows how to breastfeed. Reality: Baby is freaking clueless and so are you. Get a consultant, read books, watch youtube.

2) Consultants know how you should breastfeed. Reality: If any one lactation consultant knew how every mother should breastfeed, she would be a millionaire. Talk to a mother or sister or friend.

3) Breastfeeding only hurts if baby is not latching on correctly. Reality: Take a sensitive organ. Any sensitive organ. Attach a gnawing, clamping, totally self-involved, bloodsucking parasite to that sensitive organ for approximately 7 hours at a time 23 times a day for one year. Oh yes, that feels good.

4) When you’ve finally mastered breastfeeding, you’ll have years to enjoy this incredible bond with another human being. Reality: Sooner than you’re ready, it’s time to wean. No matter how much you hated it at first, or felt like a dairy cow the entire time, or wallowed in the sublime connection, baby will move on to Sippy Cups and 2% milk (hopefully from recycled materials and your local dairy goat farm).

I hope the tree huggers appreciate all the mommy breastfeeders! Sometimes I wonder, especially whenever there is another brouhaha about breastfeeding in public. Please. Can we talk about something more socially significant, like whether or not teenagers should be allowed to breathe in public or adults to talk politics in non-trans-fat-using restaurants?

Breast-feeding: Anytime, Anywhere

And that’s what works for me.

I ran (in the minivan) to Walmart right after walking with Shalece today. While I didn’t shower or anything, I did change out of my exercise clothes.

But if the same kind of people shop at your Walmart as do at mine (people like me), then you know that I was NOT the most frumpy person there.

That didn’t stop Susan from saying to the (surprisingly well-styled) cashier “You have pink lips.”

WHOSE MOTHER NEEDS LIPSTICK?

This is what I looked like (Susan wondered why I was taking a picture of the mirror. Finally got her to be quiet by working her into the shot).

I wanted to get a picture of my back because that’s the subject of my Fight the Frump tip today: Hide the hunchback.

Now, I don’t know if this is a common woman problem, or if it is specific to my family, but I have to say that I think I get it from my mom. We just have a bit of a hump at the top of our spines. So I feel weird wearing shirts cut low, even a little bit, in the back.

It’s for sure not a calcium deficiency, ’cause we drink enough chocolate milk (Nesquik with added Calcium: we’re healthy like that) to float your boat (literally).

So when I went shopping with Tara for spring dresses, I kept my hunchback in mind. I picked her out a cute pink-y Easter dress and found a rather Autumnal (flattering darker colors) ensemble for myself for $15.50 at Ross. I love making Dick guess how much I paid for clothes. Perhaps he’s humoring me after ten years of this game, but he always guesses outrageous amounts ($35? $25?) and then acts all relieved when I say “$15.50″ “for both the skirt AND shirt.”

Notice how the Mandarin-ish collar hides the hunchback, but it vees in front so I don’t feel choked to death. My breasts look kinda saggy (who’s still nursing?), but I promise I am wearing a bra in this picture, one of two I own; maybe I shouldn’t have thrown them in the dryer.

Speaking of bras, and nursing (anytime, anywhere), I loved Fussy’s post this week on Nursing with STYLE. The only thing I’d add is that great longer-length camisoles can be found at ‘modesty’ stores like Shade and Down East Basics. They’re sometimes a bit shrink-wrapped for this body, but that’s not necessarily a drawback for an underlayer.

Can’t wait to see what the other Frump-Fighters tackle this week, though I am trying to keep my participation secret from Dick. Don’t want to raise any unrealistic expectations.

Huh? (So many things wrong with that question; not least of which is assuming that my kids’ pediatrician is male.)

Actually, no, I didn’t ask the doctor. I decided on my own that it was okay.

He looked pretty disapproving but rang me up anyway. I wondered if he would feel better knowing that I still breastfeed Spot 2-3 times a day. But then he might feel worse if he saw Spot drinking out of my 55-cent Coke fountain drink. Or really worse if he knew what I was contemplating two short days later, in a crappy hotel just far enough from the Grand Canyon to be cheap. Where we had two queen beds for the five of us.

Dick got kick-you-in-the-head Susan. I got teeth-grinding, nose-picking, knee-you-in-the-face Sally, and Spot, who, when she wasn’t sitting on my head screeching, was doing her best to gnaw my nipple off. Remind me again why you like to co-sleep? And nurse until your kids are seventeen?

As I lay there I wished for a fifth of whiskey which I would have fed to Spot from a chipped, dirty jelly jar if only I knew how to procure whiskey and knew why anyone would only want a fifth of it. Wouldn’t a whole whiskey be a better value?

I think we can only be grateful to that cashier’s mother for breastfeeding him (which I assume because I too like to make snap infant-feeding-method judgments about complete strangers, though I usually try to be slightly more discreet) as he is obviously making good use of every bit of those two extra IQ points. Similar to how Dick likes to tell me just think how smart you’d be if you didn’t have Downs Syndrome.

Here’s a picture of poor, underfed, neglected Spot.

And here’s another one where you can see how that missing 2% of milkfat has led to a serious dearth in cute creases on her neck and arm. That is one starving child!

And the Grand Canyon? Merely a footnote to a great trip Tara has documented so well here and here. You can even read about what great guests we are. Do you want us to come stay with you too? We’d be happy to grace your guest bedroom. Anything to avoid more cheap hotels.

I thought we’d hit the nadir with that awful hostel in London during Spring Break 2000, but even strangers having sex in a single bed across the room (while we, the cheap marrieds, kept to our lonely berths) wasn’t as bad as sleeping in unfamiliar environs with three children.

Sally said she was sick of looking at the Grand Canyon after ten minutes. Susan liked it a lot too, as you can tell from her rapt expression here.

I guess I should be glad that Costco cashier didn’t see all the DVDs and fruit snacks we took on the trip. Our kids will be lucky to have any brain cells left after multiple viewings of Blue’s Clues Shape Searchers. But then maybe he would be glad to know we coached our kids well before the Easter egg hunt. Don’t let the boys take all the eggs. If they’re there first, fine, but If you’re reaching for it, you get it.

Or maybe he thinks Easter egg hunts are pagan and inappropriate. Aaack. What to do? Maybe I’ll have to go back to get his advice.

—

I submitted this to Tickle-Me Tuesday, because it actually was Tuesday when I wrote this, despite my computer’s intransigence, and also, it really tickled me.

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?”

Apparently adoption applications give parents the opportunity to choose which disabilities they are capable of handling. Spina bifida had not been on this couple’s list. They were offered, by the adoption agency, a replacement baby. Because they felt that they would not have rejected a baby with these problems had she been born to them, they took Natalie home.

Natalie had a seizure their first day back in the States. When she was examined in the ER, the parents were told that Natalie also had an atrophic brain and would be mentally about the same as someone with Down Syndrome. The next day a neurosurgeon looking at the CT scan ordered an MRI and the parents asked him to look at her spine also.

Turns out, Natalie doesn’t have spina bifida, or an atrophied brain. She had had a tumor (and malnutrition and neglect), and would need some extra help, but she would probably be fine.

Natalie walked at 21 months, and laughs, dances and sings at age 3. I know another mother who didn’t tell her husband that her third child had Down Syndrome during her pregnancy because she knew he would encourage an abortion. (They obviously have other problems, but I can only admire her).

Today I found this blog through my blogroll. It’s written by a mother/family physician in Illinois who delivers babies. It’s super-interesting, and I am wondering why on earth my (otherwise wonderful) OB with Sally let/encouraged me to push lying down for over two hours so futilely.

I’ll just quote from one of her earliest posts:

At the moment of his birth, K reached for him and cried, and called out “Oh, I love you, I love you.” Her husband cried openly, and K’s mom who had been in the room, but hiding in the corner because she was overwhelmed, sobbed and hugged her daughter, the husband, and the baby. I can never take that much emotion at once – so I shed a few tears, too, and had to have the nurse wipe my eyes so I could see what I was doing.

Baby was very pink and healthy right from birth, very content, and hardly cried at all. He immediately started rooting and mouthing his hands, but this mama did not want to breastfeed because she just didn’t think she’d like it. After a few minutes of holding the baby, she passed him off to be rewrapped, and then didn’t want him back saying she wanted to rest while her husband and mom got to hold him.

When I called back tonight to check on everyone, she was just feeding him (a bottle) for the first time 9 hours post delivery because they’d had so many visitors she hadn’t had time yet.

I have a lot of mixed feelings when I attend a family like this. On the one hand, I am reminded at every birth how powerful the moment is. I feel so bonded to a woman receiving her baby into her hands for the first time, and crying from joy. The moment tends to be the same for so many women. And yet, I don’t understand how the focus then shifts to a social occasion, and a chance to receive gifts, while the star player’s most pressing needs are ignored. Having a baby is not just an opportunity to design a nursery and collect baby equipment. The baby doesn’t give one hoot over whether he has matching curtains, or that all 46 friends are called with his weight and length – his mother has previously been his entire world, and all he cares about is being with her.

It wears me out.

This made me feel ashamed because I think I kind of ignored Spot today. She is so undemanding that she makes this possible — my other kids start misbehaving to get my attention. And Sally knows how to turn off my computer monitor if I’m really in the zone. But Spot, she just keeps playing/sitting happily. So I think I only nursed her 4-5 times today, instead of 6-7. Dickorrow will be better, I promise!

I feel like someone is missing from this picture — oh right, Dick.

Never fear; Dick and I had some very quality sleeping time before this debacle. Spot came in at 6:30 to nurse. Susan had a nightmare and came in around 6:45 (after Dick’s consoling attempts had only temporary effects). Sally joined the party at 7.

Confession — I didn’t try out the older-child nursing; somehow I just have a feeling about that one.

At the 4-month visit I said that I’d be breastfeeding, exclusively, until 6 months. This was ignored: “Well, when you do start solids, remember that it’s a 1/4 jar at a time at first.” A quarter jar of what? Jet-Puff marshmallow creme? They did have a pamphlet, produced by the baby food makers, of what jar foods were recommended when. At Spot’s 6-month checkup, the information that, so far, I had introduced her to … Cheerios, was not well-received.

That same week my sister-in-law and her daughter spent the day with us. The plan was for me to watch Cousin Rachel while Liz got some work done on her laptop. At our house. Right next to her daughter. Guess who baby would rather play with: Mommy and the shiny machine, or Aunt Jane who has a baby attached at the breast and a 2-year-old dragging her potty behind her?

Liz has embraced motherhood with all of her usual enthusiasm and high-achieving-ness. Soy is bad; co-sleeping and babywearing are good (don’t care about the first, don’t get me started on the second; enjoy the last on occasion, but, do you know how much Spot weighs?). Liz was telling me about the great organic baby food that is available nowadays — “Even Wal-Mart is selling organic stuff now, Jane.” At least she knows her audience.

I pulled some sweet potatoes out of the fridge to show her what I planned to feed Spot, someday (I think those sweet potatoes are still in my fridge. Hmmm, what’s for dinner?). Liz said, “I don’t have time to make my own baby food.” Neither do I, Liz, neither do I.

Susan’s pediatrician was an old Jewish guy; he retired when she was 1. His baby-feeding strategy was this: “At 6 months, give the baby Cheerios for a week. Then give her Ritz crackers (bad carbs, eh?) for another week. Then feed her table scraps. Use common sense and avoid obvious allergy and choking risks.”

We did buy a lot of “baby food” for Sally; I went back to work and Dick, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, is awesome but (and?) clueless. We followed Susan’s doctor’s advice about her feeding. Now we’re on round three, and I’m happy to report that Spot loves bananas, but she gives me that look when I try applesauce. That look that says, “Who are you kidding, Mom? This stuff is YUCK!” Sally used to give me that look about ice cream; she grew out of that pretty quick-like, and I think Spot will too.

Melinda (let me know if you don’t want me talking about you anymore ) wrote me last week to say that, after researching and talking further with her doctor, she has been able to resume breastfeeding. I am so glad! Isn’t knowledge a beautiful thing? And blogs, and commenters on blogs — they are beautiful too! Good. That’s one addiction I won’t be needing to overcome any time soon.

In an attempt to re-engage with some of these baby and child-rearing issues, I’ve recently met with (online mostly) proponents of Attachment Parenting (AP), Alternative Parenting (AP!) and the Natural Family Lifestyle (NFL).

I’m in complete agreement with many of the AP practices, and in sympathy with many of the AP! and NFL practices. But sometimes I differ in thought and practice, and this has lead me into a couple of heated discussions. I respect those who make informed, reasoned choices about what they do. It is always good to examine why we do what we do, but, too often, the final argument for some of the proponents of AP, etc, is that “‘x’ practice is ‘instinctive’ or ‘natural’ (or some other variant).”

I think this is a poor rationale, because (1) if applied broadly to the human experience, it would embrace behaviors that I consider undesirable, and (2) “instinct” is at once universal and highly personal. What is “instinctive” to me might not be to another, so how do we decide whose instinct is more innate (not to mention better)?

Perhaps we could end the discussion here and say that, if mothers have different instincts about raising children, that’s great, they are also different people with different children, and so each should follow her instincts and everything will be rosy. That might ruin the livelihoods of a whole industry of parenting experts though.

In the hope of keeping all the mommy wars alive, here is my argument against “instinct” as the final arbiter of what’s best for baby.

Some things that are instinctive in humans:

a) eating, b) sleeping c) eliminating (I’ll use the EC term because it is nice and genteel), d) fighting for territory/resources, e) mating, f) dying. (I thought about adding taxing, but I’m not positive that there haven’t been societies where this was evaded).

All of these things are better when informed by experience and wisdom, but let’s look at just two:

d) fighting for territory/resources. I could point to literature (Lord of the Flies), pop culture (LOST), children (the playground), current events (the war in Iraq/conflicts in Africa), history (uh, …just about all of it). I think it would be better if we could overcome this instinct towards greed and instead share, like the people in the City of Enoch in the Old Testament.

e) mating. The instinct to be sexually active is well documented–just look at our politicians. When children hit puberty they become sexually curious and have the instinct to experiment. Some follow this instinct; some of those who do become pregnant or contract STDs. Some children are taught to curb this instinct. I think it would be better if everyone practiced abstinence or fidelity. Here, the instinct itself is not bad, but it does need to be tempered by knowledge and principle.

The two practices of AP that I think benefit from a helping of experience and wisdom are breastfeeding and co-sleeping. I love the first and can’t stand the second. Both are better off if their sole reason for being promoted is not “instinct.”

Of course, breastfeeding is instinctive. It’s actually biological. The milk comes in, around 2-5 days after birth and fills the breasts until they’re full to bursting. Baby provides relief from this nearly painful sensation by latching on and drinking her fill; ahhhhhhhh. Breastfeeding is also confusing and difficult, AT FIRST.

I wish someone had told me, “you know, it would really help if you educated yourself about breastfeeding; there are books to read, videos to watch, lactation consultants to consult.” Instead, people told me, and I thought, “breastfeeding is instinctive.” When I left the hospital three days after a difficult labor with my 2-week-overdue, 9 lb 3 oz baby, I had not yet accomplished a feeding on my own (nurses kindly came in and assisted).

I was filled with anxiety–the well-being (even life) of this tiny person was entrusted to me. I was practically alone in a large city (NYC) and my husband, while well-intentioned, is/was pretty clueless. If I had not felt so strongly about breastfeeding (maybe that’s where my instincts were working), and if I hadn’t had internet access to La Leche’s site and my mother (who breastfed 5 kids) to call, I might not have persevered.

I kept a chart detailing every feeding and every diaper change. At Sally’s 10 day check-up (I was too nervous to wait 2 weeks) she weighed 10 lb 14 oz. I was a good mom, and I tucked the chart into her baby book so she would always know how much I cared that she thrived.

If we tell mothers that they should breastfeed because it is instinctive, and then they have problems and feel their own instincts telling them to panic and run out and get formula, which you can measure and watch going into the baby’s mouth, how can we say they are making a mistake? The scientific evidence on the benefits of breastfeeding are a better, or, at least, a necessary complement, to the instinct argument.

Co-sleeping (or, as Dr. Sears says, “Bedding close to baby”) is not instinctive to me at all. Maybe someone could educate me about the benefits to mother and baby of co-sleeping (but I think this would involve some sort of training, and most co-sleeping advocates are unequivocally against sleep-training). That 9 lb 3 oz baby I brought home snurgled in her crib in our bedroom. I heard each and every snurgle. And when she stopped, I shot upright, certain she had stopped breathing as well (she hadn’t; at least not the 29 times she did this that night). We moved her crib the next day.

She slept 5 hours straight at night those first nights, and by six weeks, she slept for 8 hours, almost without exception (and I slept, too). My second child was a little different (slept for shorter periods at later ages), and my third different again. I do nap/nurse with my babies sometimes, and have brought each into my bed for the first feeding of the day; it is a lovely snuggling time, but the quality and quantity of sleep for both of us at those times is seriously compromised.

I love Dr. Marc Weisbluth’s book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Not only does he say (at least I think he would agree) that my instincts are okay to follow, he makes sense to me! He tells me I need to make sure my baby’s naps are a priority (rather than running around with my life), and that’s tough love at times. Dr. Weisbluth talks about the importance of uninterrupted sleep, and my kids have always been a little ahead in how uninterrupted their sleep is.

So, nutrition and rest. I want my kids to have the best of each, and, for me and my kids, that is breast and a bed of her own. My instincts tell me that. So do my research, experience and whatever wisdom I can claim.

Other moms, with their own unique blend of instinct, research, experience and wisdom, may/will find that other practices are best for them. I just don’t want to be automatically banned from the AP club (who doesn’t want to be “attached” to their kids?) solely because co-sleeping is not for me. At least tell me it’s because I stink at crochet or something.

Anyway, they’re super-cool and super-interesting, intelligent and incisive people (see why I hesitate to claim a friendship?–these people work in France every summer, for crying out loud). Before Christmas last year, I spent some time googling people I wanted to send a card too, and Rixa & Eric were easily found (If I might boast, we did receive a reciprocal card).

Eric is teaching and writing (did I mention Dick sold out to the technical communication world 3 years ago?) and Rixa is now a PhD candidate in American Studies (did I mention I dropped out of the MA program I was in in Cairo and have since spent way too much time reading trashy novels?).

One thing I do know is a bit about raising kids, at least to the ripe old age of 6 1/2. Now, I admit that we eat at Chick-fil-A twice a month and Sally says that she hates me sometimes, and Susan is addicted to Elmo’s Potty Time (more on that later), and Spot is (still!) not crawling or sitting yet. But we’re all here, aren’t we?

For the past couple of months I’ve been furtively (lurkatively?) reading Rixa’s blog: The True Face of Birth: Raw, Powerful, Ecstatic. Rixa’s dissertation is on UC (unassisted childbirth) and, despite Dick’s feeling that the recent unassisted birth of Zari (2 1/2 weeks after Spot) was an academically-motivated gimmick, I find her views completely compelling.

I’m even thinking of not having an epidural next time (gasp!). On the one hand I want to cheer, tears streaming down my face: Go Rixa! Suck the marrow out of life (for me). And on the other, I want to run screaming to the nearest staph-ridden maternity ward.

But I digress. I’ll add Rixa’s blog to my blogroll, and encourage all women to at least give her views some thought. It can’t hurt to think more deeply and more critically about our assumptions. Mothers of boys (you know who you are), I wish, I wish I could have expressed my reservations on circumcision to you as eloquently as Rixa does. And all her advocacy of breastfeeding is spot-on (but she is on notice; if I see any hint of nursing past age 2, I warn you…).

There are, however, two points (so far) on which I feel like banging my head against the wall (which seems to me about as productive as the practices in question). The first is EC. I had to google “EC” with “parenting” to find out what it is. It’s Elimination Communication. It’s where you “pee” or “potty” a baby (starting as early as one week basically) over a receptacle and thus… Actually, I’m not sure what the ultimate goal is–fewer diaper changes, earlier potty-training, environmental less-impacting-ness, cleanliness-in-pottyness-is-next-to-godliness, ?

I looked on a few message boards, and the most intriguing thread to me was written by parents who were disenchanted with ECing because, as one parent feared, the practice had convinced her 3 1/2-year-old son that his mother was responsible for his Es. That is, he felt no need to get to a potty when he had to go; he waited for his mother to take him to the place and make the right sound, which led to many accidents. Other parents concurred with their own experiences.

The other practice is co-sleeping. I think I’ve made my feelings on that pretty well known. These two practices intersect in Rixa’s latest post (actually, in her comment responding to my comment–in which I blame co-sleeping for…well, everything up to and including the apocalypse).

Rixa thinks her daughter’s recent relapse into waking every hour during the night is due not to the co-sleeping but to her needing to be “peed” in the early hours of the morning. That’s right, this 5 1/2-month-old baby can’t get back to sleep at night until Mom takes her over to the potty and makes the noise and lets the baby relieve herself.

Apparently, it is more important to control a baby’s elimination than to allow her to get a good night’s sleep. I find it odd that this extremely regimented form of potty-training would be desirable and yet sleep-training is anathema. I understand that co-sleeping may be filling an emotional need in both mother and child (though I don’t know how to prove it either way with regards to the child), but it seems to me that, perhaps, EC and CS may be getting in the way of a very important physical need: the need for sleep.

It’s not surprising (to me) that sleep deprivation is a torture technique and that sleep is necessary for cognitive development and physical growth. I read about a study recently (can’t find it, still looking, just trust me, ok?) that said that one extra hour’s worth of sleep a night brought as much added happiness as an extra $60,000 a year. How on earth would you compare something like that? Maybe I dreamed that study up. I certainly try to get as much dream time as possible. (except when I’m blogging, of course).