In case you’re a new reader (< 2 weeks–please feel free to delurk!), there’s something you should probably know about me.
My entire parenting philosophy for the first 12 months of my baby’s life can probably be boiled down to the following statement: Nurse the baby.
The next 12 months? Keep them safe, guide them, limit them, love them. Oh, and nurse the toddler.
The next 12 months? Introduce limits. Again. Teach about sharing. Try not to tear your hair out. All this–and, if they want to, nurse the toddler.
The next 12 months? Not out of the woods yet on this one. So far, it’s been negotiate, say please, pee first, snuggle in bed in the darkness before dawn, and nurse. Realize that it is bigger that two minutes a day; it must be, to be so precious to a little red-haired girl who talks, hops, wears Curious George underpants, writes, and paints.
Dani’s post today tipped me off to something that I (shamefully) did not know about–the Great Virtual Breast Fest. You go, moms!
Sometimes I have to get all snarky and political.
Sometimes I get overly involved when it’s really not my business.
Sometimes I get frustrated that breastfeeding is something that I cannot share with anyone else–but five minutes later, even in the depths of the night, I realize that I really don’t want to. Poopy diapers, bathtime, reading, feeding, discipline, potty training, sibling relations…now for those I would like help, please. Allowing my body to nourish and comfort my children? No help needed. It’s primal. It’s beautiful. It is, frankly, the one thing I can say with confidence that I was born to do.
Unlike most mothers, I did not struggle with nursing in the beginning. I had loads of help. I had full-term babies. I had a nice glider. I had champion nursers. I had, apparently, breasts that could stand up to the task from the get-go. I was mentally prepared for a hard road but got a walk in a leafy glen.* Sometimes I feel like I haven’t earned my stripes because I didn’t suffer.
Remarkably–or perhaps not, with my penchant not to appear in pictures but rather to take them–I have no pictures of myself nursing. Not on purpose, but really, do you have pictures of yourself putting on socks? Washing your face? Paying bills? Doing dishes? I don’t mean to demean breastfeeding at all, but by now, for me, it’s such a basic, given part of every single day that I am not that surprised that I never captured it on film.
Someday the years of my children being babies will just be memories. I think breastfeeding will be the sweetest among them–especially once I have a romantic getaway (just one teeny-tiny night) with Taxman. Maybe 2008 will be our year?
* My labors, however, will not vex anyone.
5 comments
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October 10, 2007 at 3:51 pm
niobe2
When I read something like this, it occurs to me that nursing a child is one experience that I will never have. It’s not that the thought makes me sad, it just seems another mark of separation between me and the rest of the world.
But I’m not in the best of moods today, so feel free to ignore this comment altogether.
October 10, 2007 at 4:33 pm
onetiredema
Niobe, I am not saying that it is the be-all and end-all of parenthood. Obviously men can’t do it at all, and it doesn’t make them any less treasured as parents. Or most people who became mothers in the ’60s and ’70s.
I don’t want to patronize your experience or your plans–there are ways to nurse (not for 100% nutrition, but for comfort at a minimum) children who come into a family via adoption or a gestational carrier.
Over and above the physical, though, there is a lot of nursing that is the emotional bonding. Cheesy but true. That is certainly available to anyone who is involved in any child’s life–it just requires more work and more creativity than a nursling-mother unit.
I sound totally patronizing, and I really don’t mean to. Let me just say this–in the canon of beatific motherhood experiences, this is the only one that’s living up to its billing for me personally. That’s probably why I blog about it so much–in an attempt to drive the other parenting demons to the corners.
October 10, 2007 at 7:02 pm
DaniGirl
I only have one pic of me nursing. It’s of Simon and I about 10 minutes after he was born. Both of us look kind of sweaty and perplexed… but vaguely relieved.
I loved this post, and not just because of the linky love. Very beautifully put.
October 11, 2007 at 1:49 pm
ccw
Will you think I’m awful if I say that breastfeeding for me only remotely felt like this with Nonami?
I think with Kid L it had to do with the fact that I was 20 years old and had not a single family member or friend that had breastfed. I felt like a human cow.
With NSBH it was such a struggle, beginning at the hosptial because she was so yellow. Poor little thing looked like a banana. When my supply died after 3 months it was a relief.
Nonami gave me such satisfaction. I would have bf him much longer had I not gone crazy.
I do have pictures of me bf all 3, so maybe one day I feel differently.
October 12, 2007 at 6:29 am
onetiredema
ccw, not at all.
I was surprised to find out that a cousin of Taxman’s nursed each of her daughters for almost a year and hated pretty much every minute of it. She did it because she felt like she had to–although one of her sisters breastfed five kids and the other one bottlefed three, so I am not sure what script she was reading from, exactly. When her son was born she developed an infection in the hospital and (IMO) used it to bow out of her sense of obligation in this regard and bottlefed him from day 1.
It’s not shiny and happy for a lot of moms. That makes me sad–but I think that with more support (in the community, in the workplace, legistlatively) women would feel less isolated and more likely to ask for help when they need it…and it would be a nicer experience for more.