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So when I went to the doctor a few weeks ago, she was going to give me an order for a mammogram–just a baseline mammogram, my first–because I am high-risk and should have gotten one a couple years ago. She said, “You haven’t been breastfeeding in the last twelve months, have you?”
“Well, technically,” I said, “I’m still breastfeeding.”
I swear the woman rolled her eyes–which is fine, I mean, I could tell she was trying not to, and my lifestyle was seriously impinging on her preventative care paradigm, as it’s no use getting a mammogram while your mammaries are full of milk. I assured her I was trying to quit, that I was very close, in fact, that surely within the month I would be done altogether. “How often does she nurse these days?” she asked.
“Only once or twice a day.”
I swear, at the time it was not a lie. That week she really was only nursing once or twice a day. But to continue, the doctor said that if it was that little, I should only have to wait three or four months after weaning before I could get a mammogram. But I really needed to get one because I was high risk and overdue. I said I was so very sure I was going to be done any day now because I was ready and I was pretty sure the baby was ready, or rather, getting ready–she should really be ready any day now. Any day now I was going to stop nursing her and she was going to be fine with it. It had to happen.
“Yes,” the doctor said, “but it’s a lot harder to do when they get older.”
Okay, fine. Tell me about it, lady. It’s a month later and not only is she not all done, she has gone back to nursing three or four times a day, and is it just me, or have her teeth gotten sharper? Ouch. Yes, she is nursing right now. Why do you ask?
I really want to wean her. I have things to do. A vacation with my husband to go on, a mammogram to get, a decent bra to wear–seriously, I am nothing if not highly motivated. So why isn’t it happening?
Because I’m weak and she’s evil, that’s why!
Oh, what a world, what a world. I have a confession to make: I used to say to myself on a regular basis that I would never breastfeed a child beyond eighteen months. I couldn’t even imagine doing such a thing. My first two children weaned themselves at fifteen months and seventeen months respectively, and they were so independent after that, I couldn’t see nursing them then even if I wanted to (which I didn’t). Then I had Elvis, and for a while I thought he might be my last baby because…oy. So I kept nursing him because he kept wanting to nurse, and when I actually got pregnant again, I was still nursing him because he still wanted to nurse–until it became clear that I had to wean him or die. When you know your life is on the line, you can do amazing things. Also, my mother-in-law happened to be visiting at the time, so ran interference for me a lot. I wish my mother-in-law was here right now. Instead, my husband is going out of town for four days. Oh, snap!
So I’ve been prenant or nursing for the last five and a half years. IT MUST END. I’m not interested in getting pregnant again (no offense, honey), and my mother-in-law isn’t due for another visit until May, when she comes to watch the kids while Sugar Daddy and I gallavant across state lines–and my baby has no intention of giving up her human pacifier any time soon, so…what? What can I do? I must use strategy. I just gave her a sippy cup filled with chocolate milk, and she didn’t even ask for chocolate milk. That goes against every principle I have as a parent! Okay, not really. It really only goes against one principle, which is Don’t Raise The Bar–but in this case I think we can make an exception. Except that she doesn’t want any chocolate milk! Whoever heard of a kid not wanting chocolate milk? It’s Misfits of Science hour at the Madhousehold! What am I supposed to do now? What? What???
So the other night I went shopping for a new swimsuit because I couldn’t find any of mine, not even the maternity ones (which hopefully don’t fit anymore). They are probably all buried deep within the bowels of my closet. No matter. I knew I could find a swimsuit for cheap in July. Whether I could find one that wasn’t ugly was another question. So I went to ye neighborhood department store and looked in their swimwear section, which as you might imagine–this being July and all–was very teeny-tiny indeed. They had a reasonably good selection of bikinis. Unfortunately, “bikini” is not in my fashion vocabulary, which meant that I was stuck with whatever leftovers they had for women with poor body images. Them were slim pickins indeed. Actually, there was nothing “slim,” exactly, in the selection. Not that I’m some Nicole Richie or Whatever-Olsen-Twin-Has-The-Eating-Disorder, but I am not quite large enough to fit into most of the sizes that were still available. I suppose the vast majority of women in my size do their swimsuit shopping in February, when the retail industry tells them to. I think they only make these ugly swimsuits so that there will be something still in the stores when the weather is such that people actually go swimming. But that’s just a theory.
Let me tell you what kind of bathing suits you can find in July: black suits with giant floral prints and–yeah, that about covers it. Black suits with giant floral prints. And if your suit happens to be black with a giant floral print, please don’t be offended. I’m sure yours is lovely and flatters your figure perfectly. But what if you don’t want a black suit with a giant floral print? Well, you can just go to hell, that’s what you can do. Unless this one suit that isn’t black with a giant floral print just happens to be in your size or the next size up, but oh, no, sorry, it’s four sizes too large. Next summer eat more doughnuts, dearie.
Actually, I was fortunate enough to find four suits in my size (or thereabouts), three of which were blue and one of which was not floral. I tried on one of those tankinis, which look so attractive on other people, but I’ve noticed in the dressing room that they tend to draw attention to a part of my body I’d rather people didn’t focus on. You know, when I see other people wearing those tankinis, I’m sure I don’t find my eyes irresistably drawn to their midriffs, and yet when I try on a tankini, all I can see is my midriff. So in theory I could wear a tankini and not make everyone around me grimace, but realitically speaking, I obviously lack the confidence to carry off such an outfit. So no tankini for moi. As for the other three suits, one was navy blue and rather plain–or rather, it was plain. It was a navy blue suit. Astonishingly minimalist for July swimwear, but then again, there was only one of them. The other two suits were various shades of blue, (mostly) inoffensive floral designs. Not my dream suit, but wouldn’t kill me to wear. While the colors were more flattering to my skin tone, I noticed that the cut was entirely wrong for my body type. To wit, it accentuated–if such a thing is possible in this context–the fact that I am mere centimeters away from having no breasts. So the navy blue suit it was.
But that episode reminded me that I really need to buy a new nursing bra, if only so I can finally wean the baby. It usually takes a significant outlay of money for me to make the leap from one phase of life to another. But that’s a side issue. As of right now, the baby is not weaning, and I only have one nursing bra that fits.
//ATTENTION: THIS IS THE PORTION OF THE BLOG THAT YOU DON’T READ, IF YOU DON’T ENJOY READING ABOUT WOMEN’S BRA-SHOPPING EXPERIENCES. ACTUALLY, IF YOU DO USUALLY ENJOY SUCH THINGS, I’M REASONABLY CERTAIN THAT THIS WILL DISAPPOINT YOU. CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED.//
Most nursing mothers have large breasts. I am one of about three women in the world, near as I can figure, who wears a B cup while nursing, and I only fill it out the first six months. Once the baby starts eating solid food and nursing a little less, the nursing bra gets significantly roomier. If they made nursing bras in A cups, that’s what I’d wear right now. Only they don’t, so instead I wear bras that are too big for me, which can result in unsightly bunches of excess material under my outerwear. I don’t know if you followed that. Maybe you’d rather not.
A few months ago I found a nursing bra by Liz Lange at Target that was perfect for me. It’s made out of stretchy (I think that’s the technical term) fabric, so women who are on the buxomer side of B will fill it out better, but women such as myself, who are on the “lighter” side of B, do not have this voluminous cup for their diminutive breast to swim in. And the nursing flaps open to the side, rather than top-down. I hate the top-down flaps. They make for even more of the unsightly bunchy extra stuff that I don’t need. Unfortunately, they only had one of these Liz Lange bras in stock when I was there, so that is the one I have. Target has since stopped carrying Liz Lange maternity and nursing bras, I think. They certainly haven’t gotten any more of that particular style, and certainly not in a B cup. I’ve looked online for similar nursing bras, but I haven’t found anything I like. I certainly haven’t found it for $12, which is about what I feel like investing in a nursing bra right now.
But one bra that fits is really not enough. I mean, it would be nice to wear one bra that fits while I’m washing the other one. I know, I’m such a fat, spoiled American. Anyway, so after the swimsuit selection, I went to the lingerie section to look for nursing bras, or alternatively, some bra that might be compatible with nursing. I was not successful in that pursuit. It reminded me, though, that I have even less to look forward to once I wean the baby and my anemic B-cup chest dwindles to a double-A again. You might be wondering why a woman of my particular endowments needs to bother with a bra at all. Well, let’s just say I’m old-fashioned. It’s a psychological thing. If I never wore a bra, how would I know when I wasn’t fit to be seen in public? Not that I’m fit now, but as long as I’m wearing a bra, I can pretend.
Mister Bubby has just informed me that Elvis is eating ice cream out of the carton. With his hands. So I must adieu. ‘Til next time, my friends.
Today I breastfed my baby in the Hooters’ parking lot. That was cool.
Princess Zurg studies child nutrition
Princess Zurg: When did I start drinking water?
Giraffemom: When you were Girlfriend’s age, I guess. But you didn’t like it very much.
PZ: Why didn’t I like it?
GM: Because water doesn’t taste like anything.
PZ: Breastmilk doesn’t taste like anything, does it?
GM: Sure, it does. Breastmilk is tasty.
PZ: It is? How do you know?
GM: Because I’ve tasted it.
PZ: [Confused silence]
GM: I didn’t nurse from myself–some spilled on my hands and I licked it off. It’s kind of sweet. It’s pretty yummy.
PZ: Can I try it?
GM: Eh, maybe.
PZ: Can I nurse from you?
GM: No.
PZ (giggling): Why not?
GM: Because nursing is for babies, not big kids.
PZ: Why don’t big kids nurse?
GM: Because you need to eat other foods.
PZ: Is breast milk bad for you?
GM: No, it just wouldn’t do big kids much good. It has everything babies need, though.
PZ: Does it have their clothes?
GM (thinking her daughter gets more like her husband every day): It has all the food stuff babies need. It doesn’t have their clothes or their cribs
PZ (laughing): What else doesn’t it have?
GM: Doesn’t have their diapers.
PZ (laughing uproariously): What else?
GM: Doesn’t have their car seats or their onesies or their Desitin.
PZ (so beside herself with mirth that she can barely speak): You’re…cracking me…up!
Princess Zurg on the Wall of Separation
PZ: Will Mister Bubby like [local elementary school where he's registered for kindergarten in the fall]?
GM: I hope so. Kindergarten is different from pre-school.
PZ: It will be really different for Mister Bubby because it’s not a religious school, and he’s used to a religious school.
GM: That’s true.
PZ: But what if he raises his hand and starts talking about religious stuff?
GM: I don’t think he’ll do that.
Mister Bubby: Can I raise my hand and talk about religious stuff?
GM: Is that what you’d like to do in kindergarten? Raise your hand and talk about religious stuff?
MB: Yeah.
GM: What will you say?
MB: Um…I’ll say, “Jesus really lived again.”
PZ: But what if the teacher laughs at him?
GM: Oh, I don’t think she’ll do that.
Now my children can’t find the infamous video of Harold and the Purple Crayon. I swear I never touched it!
!!!SHAMELESS PLUG!!!
Sugar Daddy is talking about an evolution on his site. On his site he’s talking about it. The site itself hasn’t evolved much from the day it came into its existence. You’ll have to wait millions of years for that to happen.
My friend was telling me about her sister, who just had a baby–after 49 hours of labor and no meds. I say she wins the prize. I don't know what prize, but she's got it, whatever it is. The poor woman had to push for three hours because her son had A FOURTEEN-INCH HEAD! Do you know what a 14-inch head looks like on a baby? Forget what it looks like. Imagine what it feels like to push a 14-inch head out of a 3-inch–oh, never mind. I'm sorry, I'm still reeling. Fourteen-inch head and 49 hours. The longest labor I ever had was ten hours, and if I'd gone two minutes more I would have asked someone to kill me, if I wasn't already dead.
Anyway, now she's trying to recover from that ordeal, and the hospital staff is giving her a hard time about breastfeeding. I don't consider myself some hard-core lactivist, but it really frosts my cookies when hospitals claim they're pro-breastfeeding and encourage breastfeeding, but only as long as there are no problems. In this case, the baby wasn't latching on. Well, duh, if I'd just spent three hours in a birth canal, I wouldn't be that hungry either. But instead of taking this in stride, they're making the mother pump colostrum, and they're supplementing him with formula. Well, that should teach him how to latch on, shouldn't it? Argh!
When you consider that a woman's milk doesn't even come in until the third or fourth post-partum day, I don't know why they're so insistent on supplementing with formula so quickly. The same thing happened to me at the hospital where I had Princess Zurg. Fortunately, the doctor who delivered her told me, as they were wheeling me to the recovery room, that I shouldn't worry about the fact that she hadn't latched on yet because a) she was tired, b) she wasn't hungry yet, and c) she wasn't going to starve in the first few hours after birth because she was still living off the nutrients she got in utero. That was the only thing that gave me the courage to stand up to those nurses who told me my baby was going to get dehydrated and jaundiced if I didn't give her a bottle. (For the record, there was no lactation counselor at this hospital–just several unsympathetic nurses who kept popping in and saying, "Are you still trying to breastfeed?" Grrrr….)
I sound bitter, but I'm really not. I just wonder how these people think the human race managed to survive before there were medical personnel micro-managing babies' diets.
Talking of which, I have a baby to feed. Ciao.
NEWS WHILE NURSING
I was disappointed with the cover of this week's Newsweek. I mean, it's good, but it could have been better. I'm surprised they didn't do like Time did with O.J. and darken the image to make Cheney look more sinister. Anyway, to make up for Newsweek's bungling, I'll give you the link to the REAL story behind the story:
I highly recommend the movie Sugar Daddy and I saw this weekend, End of the Spear. If any of you have seen this movie, I'd like to know what you thought of it.
In other news, I've made two discoveries this week:
1) My waist has returned. In a sense, anyway. I mean, you can discern a waist on me again, though it's not the waist I had pre-baby. Actually, what I think has happened is that the fat that was filling out my waist before has simply migrated to my hips. Gone south for the winter, as it were. Still, I'm glad to have a waist again, even if it isn't the one I know and love. Since I am still in the early weeks of nursing, this means I have an hourglass figure for perhaps the first time in my life. Bad news is it's kind of a funky-looking hourglass, but hey, these are the days of our lives.
2) I can wear my old jeans again. I just don't want to. And I suspect no one else wants me to either. When even my husband is encouraging me to put my maternity pants back on, I know I'm going to have to actually do my Denise Austin Bounce Back After Baby Workout instead of just, you know, thinking about it.
Which brings me to my current dilemma: Do I buy SD a Playstation so I can get back in shape via Dance Dance Revolution? Hmmmm. (SD kicks my butt at this, by the way. When it comes to video games, he is nothing if not a Renaissance Man.)
SD: I was serious when I said if I get a raise this year, I'm buying myself an iPod.
Mad: That's fine.
SD: You can have two or three hundred dollars to buy something equally frivolous for yourself.
Mad: I'll just save mine and invest it.
SD: Invest this, chump.
"If you don't have a baby in your belly anymore, why is it so big?"–Princess Zurg
Princess Zurg should be the expert on my belly. When the baby was still a good excuse for my expanded girth, she used to come up and kiss my belly and tell the baby inside that she loved it. She's still doing that. "The baby's not in there anymore," I say. "I know," she says. "I'm kissing the eggs."
So I still haven't come up with a Xanga alias for The Baby. For now The Baby will just have to be The Baby. (It does remind me of the Veggie Tales movie "Babysitter in De-Nile," when the Hebrews are trying to keep baby Moses' gender a secret from the Egyptians, and everyone keeps saying, "Isn't the baby adorable?" "Such a strong-looking…baby." It's funnier when vegetables say it.) She has not yet asserted her personality enough to give her a more suitable name. In those first several days of nursing her, I did consider "Razorgum" and "Nipple Killer," but ultimately decided against saddling her with that characterization for the rest of her life. That last one seems a little too Native American for a white Mormon baby, her 1/16 Cherokee blood notwithstanding.
Incidentally, a good way to guarantee that you will have breastfeeding issues is to arrogantly assume that since you've previously nursed three children for a combined total of fifty-six months, you couldn't possibly run into trouble the fourth time around. Disregard the possibility that the womanly art of breastfeeding has changed drastically in the seven months since you last gave suck, and be shocked and humiliated when the lactation counselors inform you that you are indeed doing it all wrong. Fortunately motherhood has not aged me so much that I'm incapable of learning new technologies, but it's taking an awfully long time for the injured parties to recover, if you catch my meaning. (If you don't catch my meaning, never mind. You don't really want to know.)
Sugar Daddy votes for calling her Bradshaw, due to her striking resemblance to Terry Bradshaw. Personally, I think she looks more like the actor Terry O'Quinn. It's the hairdo, mostly, but not entirely. Sometimes the likeness in both look and manner is so uncanny that it's downright creepy. I've also noticed, however, that from the left she looks a bit more like Patrick Stewart. Which is equally creepy–especially when your husband accuses you of having some "thing" about bald guys. Which I don't. (Shut up.)
Of course, you shouldn't infer from this that my daughter is anything but the most stunning beauty in the nursery. What have you got against Terry Bradshaw, anyway?
The good news is that I find myself far more relaxed this time around than the previous three. Largely because I've finally accepted the reality that children, even newborns, have free will, and none of them is that proverbial tabula rasa just waiting for me to screw him or her up with whatever egregious parenting error I might at one moment or another. Also, this baby (i.e., The Baby) has her own room–the first in her family who doesn't have to bunk with Mom and Dad for the first several months of her life. That does wonders for a parent's nerves. Unfortunately this little chunk of serenity has not stopped me from hearing Phantom Baby Cries every time I put her down for a nap and walk away. I hear the shower, the washing machine agitator, the fan over the stove, and I'm convinced that there's a baby screaming in there somewhere, but it isn't always the case. However, the hum of the computer has not muffled the Actual Baby Cry that is currently telling me to get my fat, unpregnant rear end off the internet and feed her already. I'll see you cats later.
I don't ordinarily consider myself an Angry Breastfeeder. I'm pretty indifferent to how most of the world chooses to feed their babies–unless they're giving them Coca-Cola in their bottles–and I just go about my merry way nursing when and where I choose and not getting too bent out of shape about anything but infants with very sharp gums. And mostly I just shrug my shoulders at people who are offended by public breastfeeding because I'm not about to tell people what they should or shouldn't be offended by. I see (and hear) a lot in public that offends me, but I don't go running to the authorities to see what can be done about it, unless it threatens my or other people's safety. I pretty much expect anyone offended by something I may do to wrinkle their noses or make nasty comments behind my back the way any civilized person would.
I suppose what this really means is that I'm apathetic and cynical. To which I say, eh.
What I don't like is the suggestion that breastfeeding is a less valid or respectable form of nourishing an infant than is bottle-feeding. Bottle-feeding, in my view, is a perfectly acceptable way to feed a baby, and many people are more comfortable doing it and/or seeing it in public, which is totally understandable. However, that doesn't change one simple fact of life, which is that breasts make milk, and that milk is specifically designed for feeding babies–not fertilizing vegetable gardens or making cheese or sitting around until it sours and dries up. If breast milk grosses you out, my advice is don't drink it. (With all due respect to The Grapes of Wrath, it really wouldn't do you that much good anyway. It's for babies, you see. Like I was saying.)
I am not going to argue that people have no right to be disgusted by some woman stripping to the waist, ostensibly so she can feed her baby. Obviously, that's gratuitous. I'm reminded of the time this woman came into our nursing lounge at church and, not having planned her wardrobe to accommodate a nursing baby that morning, proceeded to take off her dress and nurse her baby in her undergarments. Completely inappropriate, really, even in this semi-private setting. I can also remember the time my husband and I were in an insurance broker's office and this woman at a neighboring broker's desk revealed her naked breast so she could nurse her baby. That was slightly unsettling as well, because as you should all know by now, most nursing mothers don't strip to their underwear or draw undue attention to their nipples when they go to feed their babies. Also, there's the simple fact that women with attractive breasts don't usually show them off for free. It's Al Rantel's old adage, "The last people you want to see naked are always the first to take their clothes off in public." Any "gratuitous boobage," as I think Anothermad puts it, is usually exhibited by someone who really, really ought to keep themselves covered at all times. So of course you feel traumatized. Who can blame you?
What I don't buy as traumatizing is the sight of a woman discreetly breastfeeding her baby, whether she's using a blanket or a nursing shawl or the size of her baby's head to shield her breast from curious onlookers. If you stare long and hard enough, and get really close, yes, you might eventually see something shocking. But that would be your fault.
My husband's grandmother, who is a lovely woman, once had a conversation with me about public breastfeeding, which she was against. Even when a woman covered up, she said, you could still have curious kids staring and saying, "What's that lady doing under that blanket?" Well. I've nursed in front of lots of kids not my own, including children who were not raised in breastfeeding homes and had absolutely no idea what was going on. Yes, some of them were curious to the point of asking their mommies, "What's she doing?" To which the mommies–including the ones who exclusively bottle-fed all their children–replied, without a touch of awkwardness, "She's feeding the baby. See, babies can drink from bottles, but they can also drink from their mothers, because their mothers' bodies can make milk." To which the children said, "Oh." Then everyone went back to playing Legos or eating crackers. No harm, no foul.
The thing is, yes, one could theoretically feed her baby with a bottle when she was in public so as not to offend anyone, but she shouldn't have to when she doesn't need to. Because breasts make milk, and that milk is specifically designed to feed babies. Feeding babies is a perfectly legitimate usage of breasts, even in a public setting. (Of course, certain public settings call for more discretion than others. Most people don't enjoy making spectacles of themselves at a funeral or on the dais at a President's swearing-in.) This attitude that if you're all fired up about feeding your baby breast milk, you should just be sure to pump some milk for public outings–well, it seems reasonable enough except that
a) not every baby will take a bottle;
b) not every woman can express milk with a pump; and
c) a mother doesn't freaking have to feed her baby with a bottle if she doesn't want to! She's got breasts!
That's all.
If you, like Barbara Walters, are uncomfortable with women breastfeeding in public, you know what? That's okay. We're all uncomfortable with something. I'm uncomfortable when people let their toothless toddlers walk around chomping on graham crackers in public. I'm uncomfortable when people eat Cheerios in front of me. I'm uncomfortable when people say "myself" when they really mean "me." I'm uncomfortable when people discipline their children in public. I'm uncomfortable when people talk about politics in church. Am I right while everyone else is wrong? Well, duh, of course I am. But none of these issues is anything like another of them.
I understand why people are uncomfortable with public breastfeeding. It doesn't upset me that they're uncomfortable, even though I think they might want to mind their own business, just as I do when the girl standing in line in front of me is wearing jeans that remind me of that old SNL sketch with Dan Aykroyd as the repair guy. When people tell stories about women who just take their shirts off in the middle of restaurants so they can feed their babies, I can understand why that would make someone uncomfortable. I do think that if you're not experienced enough at breastfeeding to do it without disrobing, you probably need to practice more at home before you take the baby out anywhere. I have never actually seen this phenomenon for myself, so I won't comment further, except to acknowledge that nursing mothers do tend to think of their breasts as being a lot less sacred and holy after they've been used as a milk bar. A friend of mine once said that after nursing four children, she was pretty sure that if a stranger came up to her on the street and grabbed her breast, she'd respond with, "Yeah? And what do you want?"
Still, there are some analogies that anti-public breastfeeding folks use that just annoy the hell out of me. Hence this blog.
Why Breastfeeding is not like urination
1) Which would you rather drink from–a bottle that once held human breastmilk, or a toilet? Both cleaned and sterilized, of course. I'll give you a few minutes to decide.
2) Who would you rather have serving you food–a woman with a nursing baby on one arm, or a person holding a specimin cup while he/she is filling it?
3) When was the last time someone walked past a spot where a woman had just breastfed her baby and asked, "What is that godawful smell?"
Why Breastfeeding is not like sexual intercourse
Scenario #1: Imagine your spouse or significant other comes home one day and says, "Honey, I've solved our contraception dilemma. From now on we will not have any more sex, we will just have breastfeeding. I mean, it's practically the same thing, only with antibodies. Everyone wins!" How do you respond?
Scenario #2: Oh, never mind.
Well, there it is, my rant for the day. And look, it's fine with me if you still don't like public breastfeeding. I won't stage a nurse-in in front of your home or place of business. Just don't tell me I may as well pee on you. That makes me think you're kind of nuts.
I need to wean Elvis, or I'm going to die. I know it's possible for women to nurse children while they're pregnant, and it's possible to do tandem nursing, just as it's possible to have twelve children and homeschool and then adopt twelve more and do daycare on the side–it just isn't possible for me. I've got to stop breastfeeding, or I'm going to die.
If I don't see any of you all again, goodbye. You've been great. I must stop being vertical now.
I don't know what it means when I get more lovey-dovey comments on my site while I'm on vacation than when I'm actually blogging, but I want to thank you all for supporting me in my self-imposed exile. I now have three finished manuscripts and three clean bathrooms, and I couldn't have done any of it if I hadn't bragged to you all that I was going to leave this podunk town and make it in the big city and hadn't been too ashamed to show my (type)face around these parts until I could come back with a slain dragon or bring home the bacon or go blueberry picking in the morning or whatever random cliche you want to stick here. Yeah, that's right. I just cleaned my third bathroom and I'm in no mood for pretty words.
Speaking of which, whose idea was it for everyone and his dog to write multiple awesome blogs while I was gone? I go away for three days and now I've got 478 blogs to go through. I'm never going to catch up on my reading and inane comment-making if you all don't take the weekend off yourselves. (At least give your dogs the weekend off, for Pete's sake.)
Anyway, I don't know if it is still technically Xanga Attachment Parenting Week (see Nina_Williams' site to read her week of awesome blogs and links to other awesome blogs), but to commemorate it I thought I would blog about parenting today. Because my children are currently all being quiet and well-behaved and I'm not feeling such a strong desire to detach from them right now.
I can't say I subscribe religiously to any particular parenting philosophy. I don't think any parent does. As my best friend (mother of five) likes to say, "Parenthood is an exercise in hypocrisy." I don't know if she's right, but it sure feels that way sometimes. The fact is, when you become a parent you find out how much you didn't know. More specifically, you find out that so much of what you thought about parenthood before was just a load of crap. Childless (or, if you like, child-free) people don't like patronizing comments like this, but that's too bad because until you have one of your own, you just don't know what you're talking about. And I would say that even if you do have one, you shouldn't get too cocky because every child is different, and if yours is a perfect angel, you probably just got lucky, so shove it. Oops, too much Heinz ketchup in my fries today. Sorry.
This is not to say that if you have no children, your opinions about child-rearing can never possibly be right. Au contraire. You can just never be so arrogantly confident that they're right, or that they apply to all children in all situations.
Let's face facts. If a piece of parenting advice supports what you're doing, it will make you feel vindicated; if it contradicts what you're doing, it will make you feel like crap. No one likes the suggestion that their parenting style is inferior, and even less the suggestion that the inferiority stems from a lack of backbone, or worse, from a lack of love. I think my parenting style generally follows the ideals of Attachment Parenting, but my personal philosophy about parenting philosophies comes from a guy who is definitely not an Attachment Parenting advocate, the infamous John Rosemond. He says, "If you disagree with an 'expert' on some aspect of childrearing, give yourself the benefit of the doubt." I couldn't agree more.
When Princess Zurg was still a baby, I got some very wise, albeit corny, advice. PZ had just started solids and I was fretting over how frequently she "should" be nursing, so I asked a woman at church who had five kids what she did with her youngest, who was exactly PZ's age. What she ended up telling me was, "Mad, just do what's in your heart. If you think she needs to nurse, just nurse her. Just do what's in your heart."
Well, that was an extreme oversimplification, don't you think? I mean, we all know that if you don't feed your baby the exact right things at the exact right intervals, she's going to be saddled with serious, life-long eating disorder, right? Right?
At the risk of looking like a John Rosemond groupie, I'm going to quote him again. (Say what you like about the cat, but he's darn quotable.) "Stop worrying that you're going to traumatize your child for life if you make a bad decision. Bad decisions don't do long-term damage. Bad people do."
And so, because I'm not in the mood to write one of my namby-pamby, I'm-okay-you're-okay, kum-ba-ya blogs, I will now kick out an abstract of my upcoming scholarly journal article, "What Constitutes Bad People As It Relates to Key Parenting Issues."
Feeding
The rant Understand this–I love breastfeeding. I think breastfeeding is the best thing before or after sliced bread. Yeah, even better than that. There's lots of good reasons for a woman to breastfeed–it's free, it's convenient, it's nutritious and delicious–but the only one that really counts is that the woman really, really wants to do it. If you really want to breastfeed and are just having a rough go of it those first few weeks, please don't give up. Get support and keep at it; you'll be glad you did. On the other hand, if it just doesn't work out or you just plain don't like breastfeeding but feel guilty giving your baby formula when you ought to be giving him the magic elixir that will make him stronger, smarter and sexier than all those other babies, then you just need to get over yourself and give the baby his bottle already because he's hungry. If you don't feed your baby anything, you are just a terrible human being. Nope, I am not going to mince words about this one.The semi-pertinent personal aside My father was bottle-fed formula made out of nothing but corn syrup and motor oil, or whatever they used in those days, and today he is a world-reknowned scientist at the top of his field. (In the interest of full disclosure, he also voted for Perot in 1992, but there's no accounting for taste, is there?)
Sleeping
The rant Good sleep habits are important, but if you're one of those parents so obsessed with instilling good sleep habits that you will let your newborn child cry it out in his crib for hours on end because you don't want to "spoil" him, you're a heartless creature and I don't understand you. (I'm not talking about brief, necessary breaks from a chronically fussy or colicky baby so you don't throw him out the window, but prolonged periods of forced separation from a baby who is merely tired and having trouble getting to sleep.) I'll let others debate the relative merits of Ferberizing, or Baby Whispering or letting older babies cry it out, but if you can take a brand new baby who doesn't know night from day or up from down or himself from his mommy and abandon him in some other room because you can't be bothered to comfort him, you need help because there's something wrong with you. Hopefully it's post-partum depression and not the absence of a soul, but you don't know unless you ask.The semi-pertinent personal aside I always sleep with my babies when they're newborns, but only one of them took to it long enough for it to be considered a "problem." Actually, I kind of grew to like having him (Mister Bubby) there with me. One morning, though, I woke up to discover that I had rolled on top of him. In retrospect I think I must have just done it–and woken up as a result–because if I'd slept on him all night, he would have been in a lot worse shape. Nevertheless, since I felt guilty about indulging this "bad" habit anyway, I freaked out and swore I would break him of it. So what if neither he nor I ever slept again? At least I wouldn't be smothering him. Well, that resolve lasted about 20 hours, until around 3 a.m. when I was so exhausted and tired of his crying that I just figured, eh, screw it, we're going back to bed. And there we stayed for the next few months. Then he started sleeping in his crib. I don't remember how or why, but he did.
Sequel to the semi-pertinent personal aside I tried that Baby Whispering thing with Elvis because darn it, I was so determined to have a baby who was a Good Sleeper. Other women had them! I knew they existed! And most of them said they had read the Baby Whisperer book, so I did, too. Well–phooey on the Baby Whisperer. After a good two weeks of spending an hour and a half trying to whisper little Elvis to sleep rather than nurse him to sleep, I suddenly remembered that I'd nursed both of my other kids to sleep, it took a hell of a lot less time and hassle, and neither one of them stopped sleeping once I weaned them, so I said, eh, screw it, and nursed the poor kid back to sleep–and I've been doing it ever since. B.S. Analysis of these two anecdotes, using a less personal anecdote I knew a couple who were as obnoxiously crunchy as crunchy could be, but contrary to stereotype they were not into Attachment Parenting at all. When their son was born they never let him go to sleep anywhere but in his crib, on his own. Moreover, they would not let anyone else put him to sleep anywhere but in his crib, on his own. If he started to fall asleep on someone's chest or shoulder, they would freak out and wake him up so they could put him down the "right" way. This struck me as just a wee bit overboard, not too mention just a wee bit sad. I realized at that moment that I couldn't imagine entirely depriving myself of that sweet, precious experience of a baby falling to sleep in my arms. Which may be why my babies all slept like hell and theirs didn't, but oh well. I mean, screw it.
Discipline
The rant I should hope that it goes without saying that anyone who regularly beats or intentionally humiliates a child is a sadistic bastard who deserves punishment not available on American soil. But just in case it doesn't, re-read the previous sentence. Yeah, that means you, Bad Person. Now I'm going to put the gloves back on as I obliquely address spanking. I'm not some crazy anti-spanking nut. I don't happen to think it's an effective or necessary punishment, but my parents spanked me, so I know you don't have to be some kind of monster to swat one of your children on the behind. Lots of good parents spank. In fact, if you've never done it, hats off to you for your super-human self-control. I have to confess that one very important reason that I don't spank my own children is that I'm not temperamentally suited for spanking in moderation. And frankly, I don't believe in this "don't spank in anger" crap. If I'm not angry, what am I spanking them for? If you spank your children but truly believe you are not angry while you're doing it, I suspect that you're either delusional or a filthy sadist, but I could be wrong. As a parent, I often am.
The semi-pertinent personal aside You probably would have to go over my site with a fine-tooth comb to figure out that my oldest child has high-functioning autism, but that is the case. Before I started reproducing, I never intended to spank my kids once I had them. I was going to do all that self-esteem-enhancing, proactive, positive discipline crap, or whatever you want to call it, but with the many trials and frustrations of raising my first-born, I screwed up plenty of times, and ended up going through a period of spanking her for misbehaving and feeling guilty about it afterward (not a productive or happy feeling), until I finally paid attention to what my gut parental instinct was telling me, which was this: She doesn't understand what she's doing wrong, and she doesn't understand why you're hurting her, so stop it, for heaven's sake, before you turn into a sadistic bastard. I'm not talking about disciplining a baby, mind you, but an older child–someone who theoretically should have known better about a lot of things and whom many people (mostly strangers) thought could benefit from a good beating, if only her mother wasn't such a pushover.
Lots of people (family members especially) saw how high-maintenance Princess Zurg was and assumed it was because we indulged her too much. It's too complicated to get into here, especially since this blog is already 42 times longer than it needs to be. Suffice it to say that we indulged her in some ways because it allowed us to live our lives with a minimum of drama–which was still quite a bit by many people's standards. I had to stop caring what other people thought about her and me and us and just fight the battles I thought were worth fighting in the way that I saw fit. When we were undergoing the evaluation process to get her special education services, we described her past behaviors and how we had dealt with them, and the woman interviewing us said, much to my pleasant surprise, "You are good parents. You intuitively figured out what she needed and you gave it to her. Many autistic children are not that lucky." I discipline her brother differently because he's a different person, but that experience with Princess Zurg solidified my belief that as a mother, I know my children better than any "expert" does, and if someone doesn't like the way I'm raising them, they can probably just kiss my butt.
Enough said. Now I'm going to be a Good Person and fold some laundry. On second thought, eh, screw it. I'm going to read some blogs.
What summertime is not a good time for, I've heard, is weaning. Elvis is pushing 16 months now, and is showing no signs of giving up his favorite beverage–and sipper cup–moi.
When I was very young, I thought breastfeeding was kind of gross. My mother breastfed all of her children. It was not quite the rage in those days, but she was a big believer in it, if only because of the bonding issue. I asked her once (as she was nursing my little brother and I was thinking, "Will I really have to do that someday? Ew" 
if all babies needed to be fed that way. She said no, but that it really helped her to feel close to her babies, and she couldn't imagine not doing it. I thought, "Hmm. Maybe I won't need to feel that close to my babies."
Many years later, when I was in college, I had a friend with three children who was nursing her youngest, still an infant. When the baby cried to eat and my friend wasn't able to nurse him immediately, she or someone else–often one of the other kids–would stick a finger in his mouth to pacify him for a couple minutes. Once I was holding him, and he started wailing for his mommy, who was cooking dinner. I thought, well, my finger is at least as clean as the kids' fingers, so I stuck it in his mouth for him to suck on and immediately thought, Holy crap! Imagine someone doing that to your nipple! Weird! And I pulled my finger back out again. Too crazy.
Still, I think I always assumed that I would end up breastfeeding. It was the norm in most Mormon circles (so many kids, so little money), and it seemed to be the natural choice. The question was how long I would do it. A friend of mine was talking about her nephew, who was nearly two and still breastfeeding. We agreed that when the kid was old enough to walk up and ask for it, it was time for him to seek out other beverage options. That seemed reasonable. I mean, who wants to breastfeed someone who can lift your shirt up in public and demand "booby"? Ew. I asked my mother how long women usually breastfed, and she said, "well, in my day, the general consensus was, 'when you're bit, you quit.'" That seemed reasonable, too. I mean, who wants to breastfeed someone with teeth? Ew. Ow.
Well, Princess Zurg started biting long before she got teeth. And by the time she did get them, my breasts had been so desensitized to pain, it really didn't matter that much. I don't want to scare anyone off of breastfeeding by any means, but if you're going to do it, take a class while you're pregnant. If you can't take a class, be sure you give birth at a hospital that has lactation counselors on its staff. Get the number for La Leche League. Whatever. Just be better prepared than I was. And get support. The hospital where I had PZ was adequate on many levels, but it was not the place for any woman who wanted to nurse her newborn child. If my midwife and the doctor who delivered PZ and the delivery nurse hadn't all assured me otherwise beforehand, the recovery nurses would have convinced me I was going to starve my child, give her jaundice, or worse by insisting on using my own inadequate breasts to feed her. Only one of the nurses who tried to "help" me breastfeed seemed not to resent it. Most of them would pop in every so often and ask, "Are you still trying to breastfeed?" Lactivists they were not.
About a week after giving birth, I managed to contact a breastfeeding clinic at another hospital and get some advice I could use. Unfortunately, a week of using inappropriate breastfeeding techniques had resulted in severe, shall we say, discomfort. Sure, I can say "discomfort" now. I have no feeling left in my nipples. (Just kidding!) But seriously, folks, word of my misery spread fast around the family. One of my brothers-in-law, who was still single, was especially curious and wondered exactly how it felt.
"I went boogie-boarding one time in a wet suit without wearing a t-shirt underneath, and my nipples got really chafed," he said. "Is it kind of like that?"
"Well," I said, "imagine that your nipples are really chafed and someone has also taken a pair of needle-nosed pliers, clamped them to your chest and is twisting them for twenty minutes at a time."
"Oh. I see."
By now you're probably wondering not only why I'm telling you this, but why on earth I continued breastfeeding. I have no answer for the first question, but I can tell you that the reason I continued breastfeeding was simply this: it was worth it. Not because I believed that strongly in the nutritive value of breastmilk but because every time I fed my baby food from my own body, I fell in love all over again. Yes, I really was that much of a sap.
You should know, of course, that after a few weeks the pain was gone entirely, and I nursed Princess Zurg for a total of fifteen months. I nursed Mister Bubby (without any problems whatsoever) for seventeen months. This may not sound like much to La Leche Leaguers, who recommend that you nurse your children until they're old enough to hold their own liquor, but I assure you that in my uptight suburbanite crowd, it is positively bohemian. Weaning has always happened naturally, anyway. At some point we would both start tiring of nursing but not be quite ready to give it up–actually, in Mister Bubby's case, I was pretty sure I would still be nursing him in college if I didn't get some divine intervention–but one day, out of the blue, the child in question would stop all on his own. I was lucky that way. I always fretted about timing, but the angst always turned out to be for nothing.
So as it happened, I never weaned any of my kids before they bit me. I never weaned any of my kids before they started lifting up my shirt in public. I have tried to make it a goal to wean before they started calling it "booby"or "num-nums," or something else equally disgusting. Mister Bubby learned to say, "Nuh nuh nuh," as has Elvis, but that doesn't count. Because that's adorable.
Anyway, the other night I was trying on swimsuits at the Fred Meyer because the only one I own that isn't for pregnant women is ten years old is a little, um…yeah, it doesn't fit anymore. So as I was trying on swimsuits and thinking, "Damn, I look good for someone who's had three kids" (I mean, don't we all say that?), it occurred to me that if I buy a suit now, it will probably only fit me for the rest of this summer. If we continue to follow the reproductive schedule we have thusfar, I am due to be pregnant next summer. Which means I will probably be breastfeeding the summer after that. And possibly the summer after that one. And after all that, who knows what my body will look like?
So I thought to myself, considering how little time I spend in bathing suits regardless of my reproductive state, this week may not be the best time to buy a swimsuit. Then I thought, Holy crap, am I really going to be pregnant again in a few months? Elvis isn't even weaned yet–he's still a baby! But I know that to me he will seem like just a baby right up until the day he stops nursing–walking and talking and biting and "nuh-nuh"-ing though he may be. I'm not ready for that day to come yet. Fortunately, neither is he.
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