I have carried a Palm Pilot for years. My latest one just died, causing me considerable stress when I discovered that they are passe and in order to get something similar, I’d have to either go very cheap and crappy, or get one with a phone, email and resulting expense. I’d love the email (I have a cell phone), but can’t afford that. Fortunately, J managed to find me an unused second-hand one. In setting it up and making sure all my information transfered, I came across this list, which I kept during my breastfeeding years (which numbered 7.5 in total).
Places I have nursed babies:
the rocking chair
during dinner, during breakfast, during lunch
making dinner, breakfast and lunch
in the bath
giving other children baths (including shampooing hair)
Parliament Hill on Canada Day
countless restaurants
public bathroom (once)
parked car
grocery store, while shopping
In the delivery room an hour after my niece was born (I doulaed), using 7-week-old Asher as a model to teach my SIL how to nurse
book store
mall
McDonalds and countless food courts
museums
airplanes
bottom of a ski hill
Rideau Canal during Winterlude
beach
standing on the road talking to neighbours
while holding someone else’s baby
playing board games
tour boat
in line at Costco (the guy behind me in line actually rubbed tiny Asher’s cheek while he was nursing, having no idea that he wasn’t just smushed up against my shirt)
Smithsonian
Capilano suspension bridge in Vancouver
Vancouver aquarium
in synagogue
in bed
at dinner parties
weddings and bar mitzvahs
Brises and baby namings
at a shiva
in the emergency room while hooked up to IVs and semi-conscious (J held the baby up to the boob)
In Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, PEI and British Columbia
In Costa Rica, Washington D.C. and Ithaca N.Y.
middle of the frozen lake at the cottage in winter
at the playground
in a hammock
watching TV
on a train
On a tractor at a petting zoo
while apple-picking
while writing email
in the school yard, waiting for older kids to get out of school
While building a marble run
On a TV show while being interviewed (on extended breastfeeding, where I said “I don’t think I am practicing extended breastfeeding. I just think most people in the Western world quit early.”)
Nursing while building a marble run, 4 years ago:
Me and baby Boo, snursing* on the beach, 3.5 years ago:
*what J and I called that combination of snoze and nursing babies do, where they only stay asleep while on the boob.
I’m not sure I’m with you all the way on this. Yes to nursing everywhere (must admit I never did figure out how to use a can opener while nursing!), yes to encouraging parents to realize that it is open, natural and easy. Where you lose me is the enthusiastic ‘quit early’ statement. Reason one: women who wean to go back to work don’t need to feel guilty or sad. Two: there are so many different ways that mothers/feeding babies interact that I don’t think there is an ‘early’ or ‘late’ to be defined. I’ve seen a spectrum from a nine month old who used a cup well, loved it and lost interest in the breast to a three year old who really enjoyed two or three nursing contacts a day — both worked out fine. Three: some teething babies are so savage that weaning is a fair solution. Love your list, however. It’s a classic! I have a friend who nursed on horseback more than once — anyone top that one?
When that popped out during the interview, I could see the interviewer’s eyes light up. As a journalist, I knew I’d just handed her her opening quote, and I was right. And I knew I’d get in trouble for it. I stand by it, though. Even if a woman quits happily at 6 months, with no guilt and for very valid reasons, she’s still quit early. Anyone who weans to formula (or, as the breastfeeding zealots like to call it, artificial milk) has weaned early. There isn’t necessarily judgment involved in the statement, except maybe that of suggesting that calling nursing past a year ‘extended’ is faulty.
I agree that breastfeeding discussions are loaded with guilt. It is tough, as someone who does lactation support, to do everything you can to encourage breastfeeding while at the same time ensure that if doesn’t work, mom isn’t eaten up by guilt.
Going back to work, btw, is no reason to wean, unless the mom wants to. I’ve known plenty of women who continued to nurse while working. Once breastfeeding is established, breasts are very flexible (I went to Israel for a week when Asher was two, expressed in the shower now and then and resumed nursing when I returned. He weaned at his third birthday) and will adjust to whatever schedule is presented.
Why is guilt only associated with weaning? This comes from the formula companies. We make mothers feel guilty if they don’t use carseats, refuse vaccinations, or whatever, but we aren’t allowed to talk too loud about the benefits of bf bcause the bottlefeeding mothers will feel guilty.
No one can make you feel guilty for weaning. If you had to wean, fine. No one else can make that decision. If you weaned because of incorrect information or bad support, you should feel angry or regretful, not guilty.
By the way, I like your list. But I’ve never nursed in McDonald’s. Love “snursing” and your line to the interviewer.
This whole question of guilt. I think mothers as a genre feel guilty — a mother wants to do a ‘perfect’ job, and gets loads of conflicting advice about how this should be achieved. No matter what you do, or don’t do, you get told you do too much or too little of it. I recall my grandmother coming down on me for ‘brightening the baby up too much’.
Breastfeeding is so obvious a thing to criticize. I am convinced that long before formula was available, mothers who had trouble nursing were sent on big guilt trips by those for whom it was easy, and the formula providers have just jumped on the bus. I think we’ve all had our share of bad advice — and getting good information out is the remedy. The people who make me angry are the ‘breastfeeding is disgusting’ gang.
Re: working and nursing. I am presently on a small crusade to get good breast pumps available at some of the rural locations the board I sit on serves. The woman who inspired me in this is a mother of five, all nursed for several years, a teacher, whose first problem was with her fifth. She was given a cheap pump and the mess the thing made of her nipples had to be seen to be believed.
“Breastfeeding is so obvious a thing to criticize. I am convinced that long before formula was available, mothers who had trouble nursing were sent on big guilt trips by those for whom it was easy, and the formula providers have just jumped on the bus.”
In the 20s and 30s the doctors began to be convinced that formula was better so there was nothing to feel guilty about. Before that you needed a wet nurse, and most women didn’t have that option. Besides, women didn’t have problems at the same rate that they have today thanks to birth and hospital interventions. And formula advertising. During WWII in Europe everyone breastfed. I believe that while BF guilt may have existed before, it is mainly a phenomenon of the last 20-30 years.
God luck on your crusade.
Hey mother in Israel, thanks for popping by!
Breastfeeding guilt *is* a very short-lived phenomena, given that before the last century and the invention of formula, there weren’t many viable options. Nurse your baby or s/he’s likely to die. Sure, wet-nurses if you were rich, but even finding a healthy and trust-worth one of those was fraught with problems. But motherhood guilt – well, that’s been around as long as mothers have.
I did a Master’s thesis on mothers and infant mortality in 19th Britain and what it came down to is this: whenever a baby died, everyone blamed the mother. Wrong wet-nurse, wrong diet, wrong medicine. Bad mother. Nothing changes.
Nothing has changed, huh.
My grandmother had a friend who was ‘raised with a spoon’ when her mother died. This would have happened in the 1880’s in Essex County, Ontario. According to my grandmother ‘she was never strong’ — I don’t know what was in the spoon. Probably cow’s milk and ‘gruel’. I have a lot of stuff like this on tape, as I did a course in Social Anthropology and this was some of my field work. I would love to see your thesis, justmakingitup. Maybe the guilt has switched from not being a good nurser to being a bottle mother? Mother-in-Israel, I got a lot of evidence of women having problems pre formula, but I agree that the medical profession (and big business) have pushed formula far too much.
Here is a pretty comprehensive article:
http://theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp?content_id=586
Lots of good stuff in that article! I wish there were more citations for the studies, etc., to which the article refers, but that’s me. Footnotes put a lot of people off.
My own experience in Canada in the 1960’s would lead me to say that the 30-40 years for the ‘formula’ push is pretty close, but that the low point in the graph of breasfeeding would be the 1950’s. In 1967 my local hospital provided ‘rooming in’ where the baby was left with its mother to be fed on demand, my doctor supported my unmedicated childbirth, and there was a strong La Leche league. I think there was a big surge in breastfeeding in the late sixties and early seventies here, triggered by young women who wanted everything as natural as possible (*hippies*).
I was aware of the ‘third world’ powdered formula problems, but not of the situation in GB. And I have lost touch with the young mother world — those I do know or know of breastfeed. Thanks for the info — I am feeding it forward to our ‘Early Years’ program.
Yeah, that was a very comprehensive article. And while I, like Mary, also like citations, that is a big failing of the web. However, what I already do know jibs with what I read here.
Mary, I think you were very lucky to find that hospital. My mother found herself with a doctor who told her I was unable to suck and insisted she top up, just as the article described. Understandably, she didn’t last long.
It is still so hard, tossed out of the hospital after a day with no support – most women don’t realize that they need more help than that. I am all for getting out of the hospital, but if a woman doesn’t get the support they need, she’s doomed.
I was up at our cottage this summer when a neighbour commented on how her friend’s daughter was up with her 3-day old baby and having trouble feeding – “She should just give him a bottle and get some sleep.” A friend (after whose birth, I drove to Montreal one morning with Abby and stayed in her room all day to help her establish breastfeeding after a tough c-section, then drove home at night) and I were over there like a shot, introducing ourselves to this 22-year old. When we came in, her grandmother was telling her that she needs to express some milk, place it on the fridge overnight and if it doesn’t curdle (or does, I can’t remember), then it is good. Turns out she was nursing beautifully. She needed a little help with how she held him and to hear that what she was doing was right. I felt like an inoculation – ignore your husband, you can’t spoil an infant; ignore your grandmother, your milk can’t be bad; ignore your friends, breastfeeding isn’t gross. Up there this winter, we found they are still nursing, phew.
At least if you get out of the hospital asap the nurses are not feeding your poor hungry infant in the nursery. Henderson Hospital went from horrible for nursing mothers to great in 15 months. Don’t know who caused the change, but a medal should be issued.
Talked to the GP at our Health Centre to-day. We have a New Mothers’ support group, well baby clinic, Early Years program. Lots of stuff. Doc. says that our ‘grown women’ nurse with minimal support but that the teenagers are a big problem. They don’t want to be tied to the baby, which they think they will be if they nurse. Or they think it is ‘gross’. Or they can’t be bothered to ask for help and just head for the bottle and powder on the grocery shelves. We have a scary number of teenaged single mothers, too.
I’ve got to think about this. For one thing, we have a contaminated water problem in the village.
Thanks, guys, you have just started me off on another project.
I recently saw a list of ideas about how to talk to teen mothers about bf. The idea was to emphasize the benefits to the mother, like financial savings, weight loss, oxytocin release and good feelings around the baby, lactation amenorrhea, cancer prevention. Another successful idea is to bring homemade cookies and storebought cookies to a class, asking hte participants to choose. They always choose the ones that are homemade and you could talk about what formula contains. You could also talk about how each mother’s breastmilk is specific to her own baby and prevents illnesses that the baby has been exposed to. If you can find a bf teen mother who can talk to the moms before they give birth (hopefully with baby in tow) that will be the most effective. Good luck!
Thanks!
This is a crazy old post – I was looking for examples of all the things you can do while nursing (the “I don’t have time, so someone else can give the bottle” argument) for our upcoming LLLC meeting.
I had Dr. Jack Newman release my son’s tongue tie in 2008 – later I was talking to one of his co-authors, Teresa Pitman about how tongue ties seem really common right now. She said that he did a trip to Africa to work with mom’s there, and that in a rather isolated tribe he found that tongue ties were not that rare. What he found was that women there – who didn’t have formula as an option, and had tongue tied children – nursed anyway. Some women had deformed nipples from years of ‘improper sucking’, but this was not an issue of guilt, or a reason to quit – it was just a fact of life.
Our exposure to a choice (despite the fact that the choice is not as healthy, and potentially damaging) does feed women the idea that if breastfeeding was right it would never be hard. I know that is something I wondered about (although I DO believe that it is better…). What I was able to connect was that a lot of things are better – like exercise, that aren’t easy.
I have had considerable issues with my various children. I no longer view those as problems, but instead as difficulties, and when you overcome those difficulties you can be satisfied that you accomplished something significant, and you and your child are better for it…
Hey Dreamom, thanks for the comments. I haven’t been writing lately, but just popped on out of curiousity and found your comment. The tongue-tied thing is interesting. My son was born tongue-tied but we never had a problem nursing. The doctor offered to cut it, but I refused, given that he was nursing fine. (It stretched on it’s own, btw, and now looks normal.)
I agree that a lot of it is perception – for me, nursing was not really an option and it would have taken an *enormous* amount to get me to give up on it. I knew people who gave up on it for stuff my kids did that I didn’t even view as a problem (frequent feedings). It’s all a matter of how you view it.