Wet Feet

2 3/4 Years

It doesn't seem that long ago that I was finishing my LLL certification.

Today is the first Tuesday of the month, thus it is meeting time. Every month I almost forget to go. Every month I am at least ten minutes late.

It's been on my mind for a long time that I'm not living the LLL lifestyle anymore. Since I got divorced, since I weaned, since I started sending a child under 2 away every weekend, these are things that are not compatible with the LLL way as most people within the organization see it. There are many things about LLL that I love, but there are many more things that annoy me. The fact that we have a healthy membership but no leader prospects speaks to the inflexibility of the organization to accept lifestyles divergent from the 50's style nuclear mold.

I stuck with it for a long time because I love the new moms. I love the new babies. I love the excitement of the group when I say something that resonates with them, that perhaps they hadn't thought of before. I love the women who come back month after month, bringing their babies that grow into toddlers before my eyes.

I decided during today's meeting that I was going to be done. When I brought it up with another group leader, we decided that before my official retirement I'd get Jo through her last stages toward certification and I'd lead one more meeting. The meeting is April Fool's Day (ha!!) and the topic will be Myths and Truths about breastfeeding. We meet at Essene Natural Foods at 4th and Bainbridge at 10 am, and if you want to stop by and introduce yourself, or just spy on me, that would be awesome.

It would also be awesome if you'd like to leave some myths (funny, damaging, benign, weird, or whatever) you've encountered about breastfeeding in the comments. Help me make my last meeting a good one.

I'm still going to be an advocate of breastfeeding, I'll still help any mother who needs it, I'll still smile whenever I see a mother whipping it out in public, and I'll feel a little wistful that I no longer can use that method of shocking people.

The Reader Participation Post (from shallow to serious)

1. I am in a hair-related quandry. My Libran indecision is in full flower. My blue hair is fading, and is beginning to take on that look of jeans that should only be worn while painting or cleaning; the fading has moved beyond fashionable distress.

I have several choices before me:

a: dark, dark brown. the dye I have is reddish to counteract the coolness of the blue underneath. Not so red as to repeat the chocolate cherry fiasco of yesteryear. (actually, in digging up that post to add the link, I found it's from exactly a year ago. October 9. Do I sense a pattern here?)

b: black. I have a box of blue-black, but I don't know if my skin tone is quite ready. I need to be paler, and I"m still holding on to some summer color. But, it just occurred to me that it might turn out to be more navy blue, which could be kinda cool.

c. fuschia (don't ask me why I have this. I just do). I wouldn't be doing all-over fuschia, just some ends.

d. blue again. Keep the party rollin, yo.

Bear in mind my 30th birthday is Friday, and there will most likely be pictures taken. This makes me lean toward brown. It is the safest option. But I don't know. All options are on the table. I want to know what you think. So comment, and vote.

2. Speaking of my birthday, I'll be out all weekend. If you're local, you'll be able to find me. Liquid Charm on Friday, Tattooed Moms on Saturday. If you really think you might come out, email me for my phone number. The picture on the left is the flyer for where I'll be Friday night. My old friend Jeremy (and ex boyfriend, circa 1996) will be spinning some techno.

3. I'm on the LLL hotline this week. How do I know? I just got a phone call. But it wasn't the usual Day 5 Panic phone call, it was from a woman at a methadone clinic wondering if LLL is a safe place to refer these women, if they would recieve any judgement, etc.

I said I had no experience with methadone and breastfeeding, but I would read up on it so I could be a valuable resource for them. She started talking about how there's less withdrawal symptoms for the baby, and she took down my address and is sending me some recent research. When I get what she's sending me, I'll do a post summarizing what I've learned, so we can all learn about methadone and breastfeeding.

By the end of the conversation, I had decided to do a book drive for her clinic. I'll be announcing it at the next LLL meeting that I lead, I'll be telling all my friends, and I'm telling you. If you have any books you'd like to donate to a library for new mothers getting back on their feet after heroin addiction, email me and I'll tell you wehere to send em.

Seriously, they have about three books, and one of them is What To Expect. They really need our help!

why messy people should not bottlefeed

Ew.

And the smell was even lovelier. I wish I could say that this backlog of dirty bottles was something unusual. But that's just the way I do things. I do laundry when I run out of clean underwear. I wash bottles when I can't find any more clean ones.

What the hell is an LLL leader doing with so many bottles, anyway?

At first it was just bottles at night: to make custody issues easier, and also because I couldn't face the thought of nightnursing again. Bottles at night turned into bottles whenever I couldn't deal with all the touching and needing and sucking. Breastfeeding can be beautiful, but with my resources stretched as thin as they've been this year, it was more often a source of agitation rather than love. If I can't nurse with love, I'd rather fill an Avent and go for a walk.

Miriam isn't totally weaned, but nursing is rare enough to be a treat for both of us. I am making very little milk. My time as a lactating mother is winding down.

Because it's been too long since I've shown you my boobs

In the bleakness of Janurary, where if I write one more adoption post I might off myself, where the best thing I can think of is to link you to this so you can giggle with me. (Link via The Manolo. Love that guy).

I could tell you about my trip to H&M with Naomi, where she decided that I absolutly must have the most ugly thing in the store. With some pinking shears, a glue gun, and a some magenta fabric paint, Molly Ringwald might have been able to whip this into something funky to wear to the prom. But...Naomi's idea is that I should wear this "in the kitchen. And to the drugstore". But that does not a Friday post make.

Time to start digging around at the bottom of that barrell. This might require your participation.

Since this post (which garnered me so many hits from so many places) where I exposed myself inapropriately, I have planned to do a post celebrating the most unacceptable breastfeeding photos: yes, the toddler/preschooler nursing pics. Pictures from behind the closet door. Especially pictures where absolutely no care is taken to protect sensitive eyes from unduue sexual confusion. Yes, I want to see you feeding your nurslings "old enough to ask for it", or if you prefer- "old enough to chew steak". I confess, it's been so long since I've bothered to nurse discreetly, I don't know if I remember how. I wear shirts that I can access The Girls from the top. I wear underthings that make this easy.

You have all weekend to collect and take your pictures, and I will post them all on Monday, along with any captions you want to include. So, folks, write next week's post for me. I'm depending on you!

In in the highly likely event I have no picutres to post on Monday, I will be forced to blather on about why I don't have a blogroll anymore, and how the only blogs I still read with any regularity are 1. people I know in real life, 2. people who I may or may not have crushes on, and 3. people who are fluffy and diverting, like Go Fug Yourself. Okay, that's an exaggeration, I have 240 bloglines subscriptions and I do occasionally spend a few hours catching up. But still. Not post worthy.

This long weekend I am off to the mountains, where I plan to ski for the first time in 3 years. Alone. Blessedly alone.

The Last Snackie

For six months I've been telling Naomi that four-year-olds are too old to nurse. Not because I believe that, but because it was a firm deadline that she could understand. The girl does not handle ambiguity well, and the birthday deadline was set well in advance and much discussed.

I needed the firm deadline as much as she did. As her birthday approached, I found myself wondering if I had left loopholes that would allow me to hold onto her babyhood for one more day, one more nursing session. No. Four year olds don't have snackies. I repeated the refrain to myself. For all the "I'll never do this again I'm weaning Miriam at 2 what the fuck was I thinking" talk I've been doing lately, you'd think I could have nursed her for the last time without choking up and blubbering (I kept a lid on it, though. Didn't want her reacting to my reaction. Yikes.)

The morning of her birthday I let her nurse as long as she wanted, both sides, no counting down.  She popped off, wanting to talk about her party and going to the zoo with her daddy and the presents she was going to get and the trip to Broadway her Nana promised her. She was so excited about turning four that the loss of snackies was only a small blot on the landscape. At her party, she blew out her candles and held very still, as if she believed she could feel herself turn four in that moment.

Before bed last night, she asked me to get the snackies out, and she kissed them goodbye and rested her head on my chest. As I do hundreds of times a day, I nuzzled her hair and smelled her little girl smell. There was no baby, she smelled of birthday cake and sunshine, crayons and chocolate. We sat like that for a long time, saying goodbye.

I will get to that post I promised, but I have to talk about this first

Responding to some comments:

Okay, not formula bashing or anything - but I guess I have to give a little tsk and remind you that you should pump WHEN she's with her dad, right? I mean you did say you were all dressed up with no where to go - K meet pump, pump meet K. Now go do naughty things to each other! And, um, do you have a freezer, super-spoily-milk-one?? If you were at a LLL meeting and someone asked about this what would you say?

I have been lactating for four consecutive years. It's going to take a lot more than a few hours without pumping for my breasts to close up the milk factory.

The longer you lactate, the hardier your milk supply is. If a new mom of a four month old came to a meeting and said she'd be away from her baby for 4-6 hours three nights a week, I'd tell her to please try to pump during that time to maintain her supply. The newness of her lactation and her inexperience with supply would lead me to advise her to err on the safe side and pump.

Because I've been lactating for so long, and because I know my breasts and their patterns so well, I don't feel like I have to pump while I'm gone. I don't often feel empty, and conversely I almost never get engorged, even when I go all night without nurisng. Nursing fo-evah has it's benefits.

Besides, I'd look awfully silly taking my pump into a bar to play Quizzo.

Which brings us to:

You know about lipase and scalding, right? Of course you do, you're a leader.

Yes. And I should have linked back in that last post, but I was being lazy. It turns out, scalding only works about half the time. Which half is determined randomly by someone other than me. Maybe sometimes I don't let it get hot enough. I've lost precious ounces because I turn my back for a minute and the milk that barely covers the bottom of the tiniest saucepan ever has boiled away.

I don't find out until it's defrosted whether it's usable milk. The day I broke down and padded the bottle with a little free hospital formula about half of the five needed ounces had spoiled in less than 24 hours in the freezer. Miriam takes the milk/formula combo without complaint, but she will spit back anything sour. As would I.

The other problem I have is with the pumping itself. Don't get me wrong, it's a great pump. I don't leak or let down easily, so I don't produce much for the pump. If I am very lucky, my full breasts will produce 3 ounces on the right and barely an ounce on the left. Scalding reduces these numbers a bit. Bedtime by itself requires five ounces. If I am going to stay out past bedtime, say, until 12 or 1, I need to leave an additional 3 or 4 ounces at least.

Some of you might be thinking I shouldn't be staying out that late. All I can say is bite me I have a need to blow off some steam lately. I am hardly painting the town red. Yes, there's some drinking and carousing going on, if you must know. All very sedate and responsible. Mostly.

So, that's the story about the formula. I choose to give formula rather than curtail my time away from the baby. My reasons for this are both selfish (I need to get out!!) and practical (the only way Josh is going to learn how to be a caregiver is by giving care). I am aware that I may catch some heat for this. That's okay. I'm not sure that I would have understood it either when I was in a different place with mothering and marriage and the rest of it.

Boobie Talk *Links Added!*

(Originally posted 7/28, but I bumped it back up to the top)

I saw the cover of BabyTalk magazine the other day, I forget where. I saw the boobie. I was SHOCKED, I tell you. UTTERLY SHOCKED that they would put a NAKED BREAST on the cover of a magazine that CHILDREN MIGHT SEE. The should have at least put it in that opaque plastic that the Playboys are in.  Don't they know that breasts SHOULD NEVER BE SEEN? Unless, of course, they are poking up out of a tiny string bikini on the cover of FHM. Or they are selling beer or cars. Breasts are SEXUAL, people. Let's keep them in context. No CHILD should ever be in the same frame as something so BLATANTLY SEXUAL. That's GROSS. And SICK. And UNNATURAL.

Oh. Wait a second. Wrong personality.

Now, really people. The naked spherical mass on the right of the page is clearly a breast, but it's been as de-breastified as much as a breast can be. There's no hint of a nipple. There is nothing marking it as sexual, no bra strap dangling over a shoulder, no other breast meeting in the middle to form seductive cleavage. NOTHING. Take away the rest of the picture, and it could be anything. A bowl laying on it's side. A piece of peach paper.

Is it any shock that women don't nurse longer, as the cover queries? If 25% of BabyTalk's readership (25 fucking percent!) is this opposed to seeing an airbrushed debreastified breast uncovered, can you imagine the uproar that goes on in their heads when a women whips it out at storytime? And even if no one says anything, that woman tensely trying to breastfeed is going to remember the furor over this, and she's going to know she's offending someone.  Do you know how hard it is for a baby to nurse from a mother who is feeling so much tension and insecurity? Do you know how hard it is to relax enough to have a letdown when you think you're offending someone? It's damn near impossible. You might as well try to have an orgasm in front of a judge.

And if you think that picture is bad, if you think that's indecent, look at this picture. This is me, nursing as I normally do at home. Want to make a statement? Leave this indecency where your children might see it. Want to be a real rebel? Post your own indiscreet nursing picture.

*UPDATES!*

Boobs from around the net...

afrindimum

Bridget

Emmie

Deirdre

Beth

Breanna

kenya

Lillian

Lisa

Jody- she also has a great roundup of relevant links.

Leah

Katie

Tracey

Ally

CCW

Casey

MomSquared

Giselle

Kristin

kiwi

Chris

Kori

Meg

Karen

Y

Angie

Rachel

Emily

Alpha

Vanessa

Heather

Jenifer

Queen of Spain

StacyG

Chele

Mary Tsao

Shoshana

Jody

CityMama

ccap

Korin

Penny

Tressa

Lousli

And check out this topless news report on the subject at hand. You'll notice there are two nipples visible in this one.

**If you posted a picture and I missed you, email me and I'll put up a link. If you'd rather not have the extra traffic, email me and I'll remove the link.**

Lighten up, it's just Fashion

There is a great mystery in the world of breastfeeding support. How can so many women fail? How can so many women have such problems with pain and supply? We know that this isn't normal, women in other cultures don't have the problems we do.

What do we do? We blame the women: "She should have called the lactation consultant sooner! She should have called more than one! She should have gone to LLL while she was still pregnant! She should have danced naked in counterclockwise circles while spreading fenugreek on her doorstep and rubbing oatmeal on her breasts!" We blame those that should have been supporting her, we blame bad advice given at the wrong moment, we blame lawsuit-phobic nursery staff that pushes the canned food at the merest sniff of an elevated bilirubin level, we blame the high rate of c-sections that makes high bilirubin that much more of a common occurance.

But, we never answer the central question: WHY IS BREASTFEEDING SO FUCKING HARD?? It shouldn't be. If evolution worked the way it's supposed to, feeding our young would not be something that involves some of our tenderest bits getting bloody and scabbed. It would something relatively surefire.

Clearly, it's not. And there's no predicting which women will have serious problems and which will sail through with a little discomfort.

My completely unsubstatiated theory is that because we don't expose our nipples to sun and air, they are more tender than they would have been in a culture that doesn't sexualize and hide the breast. The very act of covering our breasts and shaping them with bras as soon as they make their appearance in adolescence might cause the kind of subtle structural changes that would result in the problems that are common here and rare in other places; low milk supply, flat nipples, high sensitivity, plugged ducts, bleeding, scabbing, PAIN. 

So, there's nothing to be done, short of burning our bras and letting our breasts be seen* for what they truly are. And, uh, good luck with that. I can love my real-life working breasts until I'm blue in the face, it's not going to make a shred of difference to the readers of FHM, or to the industry that tells us what parts of our bodies can be deemed attractive.

As a breastfeeding educator, I have come to accept that there are unseen forces at work that make our success rates lower than they should be. I do what I can to help women mother the way they want to, but sometimes there's nothing I can do.

ps- this was the gist of the Lost Post, but the Lost Post was longer, more linky, and all around better.

*Edited to add a very relevent link to Shape of a Mother.

1+2=3

1. I bought a nursing bra at the Gap. What, you say? Yes the Gap has entered the nursing bra market! They have a simple softcup style with straps that don't look ridiculous with tank tops. I have a black one, and I love it. While it's a little restrictive when I'm full, it's nice for when I'm going out and I don't want to look schlumpy.

2. By far the simplest thing to do this summer would be to wear tanks with built in support and nurse with the pop out the top method. I wouldn't have to yank anything around when the baby's in the sling (which, believe me, is kind of a pain) and my flabby tummy would never have be exposed. Not only would certain members of my family drop dead at seeing so much exposure, I'm sure I would get hassled a lot in public. Pisses me off. Because of the Western sexualization of the breast, I have to wear two tank tops (hike one up, pull one down) or buy a special tank top that allows for discretion. Maybe I should just do what's easiest and suggest to objectors that they should buy me one of these if they would like to see less of my breastual skin.

3. Actually, I hate bras. All kinds. Even this one, which is only a bra in the very loosest definition. Especially in this phase of lactation. My boobs want to be free! I make milk better when they're free. I have less nipple pain, no duct pain, less risk of clogs and mastitis. But free boobs let the whole world know that not all boobs are bra shaped. We can't have that.

Pumped!

Miriam takes a bottle like a pro! Hooray!

Naomi never took a bottle.  At LLL I tell moms that bottle refusal is a temperment thing, and there's very little you can do to convince a baby whose dead-set against bottles to take one readily. I've known a lot of babies who reverse cycle when their moms go back to work, nursing constantly at home and at night and taking only a minimal amount during the day. In Naomi's case I think part of her bottle refusal was my ambivalence about her having one. Of course I regretted it later when she was 7 months old and I needed a haircut, and wished I had just gotten over myself and allowed some rubber to pass her lips on a regular basis.

Of course, she may have had a problem with the taste. I have a rare problem with my milk souring after a day in the fridge or a week in the freezer. I fussed with my freezer settings, personal hygiene and storage methods and nothing helped. Turns out it's caused by an excess of lipase. I found this out when Naomi was tiny and I threw away eleven ounces of painstakingly hand expressed milk because it all tasted and smelled like spit-up. All my LLL resources and training has not offered a solution to this problem, until Marta! She told me that if I scald the milk before storage it neutralizes the lipase and goddamn she's right! I pumped and scaled an experimental few ounces and it's still sweet after two days in the fridge! Yay! And she said that the sour milk won't hurt Miriam so if she doens't reject it, I don't even have to scald it! Double yay!

I can taste the freedom already! And, no, it does not taste like spit-up.