Vacation

*Written September 9

Last week we went on our first full out vacation since Ian was born. We spent the week in the outer Banks with some friends. I didn’t really know what to expect from a vacation with an almost 18 month old. Would it be relaxing at all? Would he enjoy himself? Would we accidently do too much and end up with a cranky overwhelmed toddler?

Well, Ian loved it! We definitely have a beach loving baby on our hands!

Right from the first day, Ian loved the ocean and the sand. He giggled every time a wave came in and loved playing in the water. Even when he got a wave in the face, he still loves it.

Exploring sand was another adventure. I thought he might dislike it because he had a while where he was afraid of grass because he wasn’t used to walking on it. Sand, however, he loved. He dug with his shovel. He dug with his hands. He threw it and played with it. And when he was done with playing in the sand, he would point to the ocean to go back in the water!

The beach brought even more fun because Ian discovered that playing with the hose to wash sand off our feet was also heaps of fun! I don’t know why it never occurred to us that he might enjoy playing with a hose, but he does.

We managed to balance nap time with adult activities pretty well, and there were only a few times when we pushed Ian a bit beyond what we should have. We had slow lazy wake up/breakfast time, and then usually went to the beach mid-morning. We came back, had lunch, and let Ian nap. Some days our friends went off and did something while Ian napped and others they just relaxed. By late afternoon we were all ready to do something and eat yummy dinner.

It turned out to be an awesome and relaxing week. Sure, it would have been more relaxing without the need to run toddler interference in a non-toddler-proofed beach house, but being able to watch Ian explore the beach for the first time more than countered that. Plus, Ian got quality time with two of his uncles, and we got a whole week with some of our closest friends J

Creating community

I have amazing friends. Some of them are scattered up and down the east coast, and others are around the DC area. Before having Ian, it didn’t seem too difficult to see out of state friends a few times a year. Our local friends, none of which really live in our area of DC, were easy to meet up with once we managed to mesh our busy schedules. I definitely complained that juggling schedules was annoying, and that we would have loved to see more of our friends. But over-all, I never felt that I was missing out on something by not having a neighborhood community of friends.

Everything has changed since we had Ian. Bennett and I knew we wanted parent friends that lived nearby, but we weren’t sure how to make that happen. With all of our challenges last year, we didn’t have a lot of time or energy reserves to invest in building a neighborhood community for ourselves. So now here we are, with an almost 18 month old, and still no local community. The fact that we have such amazing friends is still great, but it takes so much energy just to see our friends in the area (metro time traffic, dragging kids around on those commutes) that we truly do not see them enough.

When I chose to stay home with Ian, I knew that I would need neighborhood friends. I knew meeting people the way everyone suggested, through activities, just going to the park story time, would be very challenging for me. To meet people in those types of settings, you need to be able to see the people around you and recognize them the next time you see them somewhere else around the neighborhood. You need to be able to say hi and walk over to chat. If you are blind and can’t see them to do that, then the other person needs to intuitively understand that and do all of that for you. This almost never happens. So, although I have made some casual friends through play group and music class and such, I haven’t had the right environment for friend making.

The other week, Bennett and I decided that the neighborhood friend things weren’t just going to gradually happen; we needed to step it up and make it happen! We sent an email out over our Capitol Hill parent’s listserv seeing if anyone wants to make friends. Bennett and I jokingly call it our classified or dating profile because that is what it feels like. So, here is hoping that we will meet some new people soon that can become new friends!

Toddlerhood

Toddlers are exhausting! Please tell me that I am not the only one who feels this way!

I honestly feel like the last couple of months have been far more challenging than any time when Ian was an infant. Maybe this is because I know more about infants than toddlers…or maybe toddlers are just more of a challenge for me…I don’t know.

But I am tired…physically and emotionally. Between the crying tantrums, throwing things, and hitting, I am tired and the energy it takes to set gentle, firm, and consistent boundaries is exhausting. I know this is a phase. I keep telling myself this is a phase. I look at things from his perspective, and I completely understand his frustration and emotions he doesn't know how to control. But oh the exhaustion!

Why should breastfeeding be easy?

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a friend about how challenging breastfeeding can be and our try to breastfeed culture. My friend had a 4 week old at the time, and remarked to me that breastfeeding was hard. I agreed, but pointed out that how you contextualize the challenges within your over-all view of breastfeeding affects your perception of those challenges. Someone who believes strongly in the importance of breastfeeding, who sees the long term pay offs, is more likely to see a challenge as something to be worked through rather than something that might end breastfeeding.

Later that day when I was trying to settle Ian for a nap, I thought back over the conversation. It struck me that the point I should have made is: why do we think breastfeeding should be easy?

I’m not saying it should be difficult every step of the way. I’m not saying women should endure pain while breastfeeding. But, why should it be easy?

So many worthwhile things in life are not easy. Marriage isn’t always easy. Parenting is rarely easy. Breastfeeding is a relationship. It’s so much more than feeding a baby…so why should it be singled out from other relationships and be easy?

Certainly our modern birthing and parenting trends make breastfeeding more complicated and difficult then it should be. We tell people breast is best and then set them up to struggle with misinformation and unsupportive policies, providers, and cultural norms. We have lost the community of women and mothering that use to inform woman about babies and breastfeeding long before they became mothers.

Most of us become parents with no idea what a new born is like. Even those who have experience with babies, rarely have the intimate knowledge that really teaches you about infants. For many their own child is the first baby they have held or been around for more than an hour here or there. If you are lucky enough to have actually seen mothers confidently breastfeeding, and not just heard stories of trying and not being able to breastfeed, you probably haven’t heard a full account of what breastfeeding is like. We leave parents to tease out what are breastfeeding challenges and what are adjusting to new baby challenges with little guidance and compassionate support. We focus so much on breastfeeding in the early weeks that we fail to contextualize early problems, or any problems, within the long term breastfeeding relationship.

So, back to my original question: why do we think breastfeeding should be easy?

Having thought about this, I realized that my own view of breastfeeding as essential to my approach to mothering leads me to smooth over my own challenges when I speak about my breastfeeding experience. When a woman brings up a specific problem, I share my experiences and challenges, but when I talk about the big picture, I often say “we had a pretty easy time with breastfeeding”. But is that even helpful? My definition of easy breastfeeding is probably not the same as another woman’s.

My definition of easy includes a week of sore nipples, engorgement, latching challenges in the first week due to me being blind, a biting faze, a hitting while breastfeeding faze, blocked ducts, and now a baby that insists on breastfeeding while in down dog. And that’s not even including challenges related to breastfeeding like bottle refusal and disinterest in solid foods until around 13 months. All of these challenges were manageable to me so they have simply become part of our breastfeeding narrative.

I have had friends with much more difficult challenges, and I have had friends who seemed to me to have less challenges than I did, but to them, the challenges were much more difficult. Easy is relative. Problems are relative.

Breastfeeding is not just about feeding your baby; it is a relationship. Like all relationships, it takes work. There are good times and bad times. Sometimes, all we need is persistence and other times we need some outside help.

While breastfeeding shouldn’t be hard, there will likely be challenging times. The early weeks or months are for learning, and learning a new skill is often difficult. There are challenges beyond the new born learning time, but they will be interspersed with times where everything feels right and natural. But ultimately breastfeeding is a relationship and relationships aren’t easy.

A quick update

It has been too long since I've had the time and mental energy to write a post. I've needed the few hours that Ian naps during the day to either nap myself or relax. Chasing around a toddler is exhausting, and requires a whole new depth of patience. I keep waiting for a time when I will have a few hours to start writing posts on substantive topics outside of our everyday life. Finding the time for research, however, is much more difficult than I had anticipated.

Ian is quickly turning into a little boy on us. He will take a few steps now, though largely still does not show much interest in walking full time. His first steps were actually 2 months ago, April 22, and I keep waiting for him to decide that walking is better than crawling.

He has quite a few words including mama, bye, ball, again, yay and woof woof. We had a bit of a debate in early May whether he was actually saying words so I'm not actually sure if bye or mama came first.

UC San Diego Lactation Educator Counselor Course Review

I chose the UC San Diego Lactation Educator Counselor course for several reasons. I needed an on line course, and since it was attached to a university, I figured there would be resources for making the materials accessible for use with my screen reader. If anyone who doesn't know me is reading this review, I am blind.

Although I needed an online course because of Ian, I really do not like online classes. I miss the face-to-face interactions with classmates and the instructor. That, however, would be a problem in any online class, and was a necessary evil.

This is a 10 week class that combines video recorded lectures with homework assignments. Beyond the start and end dates, the class is self-paced. There is a textbook that you use for references on the homework, but there is no official reading beyond what is needed for the assignments. For someone used to graduate level work, I felt there was something lacking without extra reading, and I had a tendency to over think the assignments. I had to remind myself that this class is geared to a range of backgrounds, and as the material is straight forward for the most part, straight forward assignments were appropriate.

Over-all, this is a very good class. The instructor is knowledgeable and has experience working in a range of settings. Both the instructor and teaching assistant were very responsive to email communication. I definitely feel like I learned a lot of information!

I have a few critiques of the class, however. The video recorded lectures are from an in-person teaching of the class. Since they have been teaching this class online about 4 times a year for years now, I feel like they could design a version specifically for the online students. I realize that this requires resources, both time and money, and that those resources might not be available. I did expect a class designed for online, however, and so I was a bit disappointed.

Additionally, the instructor focused a lot on post-partum in a hospital and WIC clinics. This is important information to know, but I felt like she could have spent a bit more time on how to teach a breastfeeding class. It was discussed, but not as much as I had hoped. I still have some work to do on my breastfeeding class curriculum before I am actually ready to teach.

I’m glad I took this class, and I feel prepared and knowledgeable to teach so it was definitely worth the money.

Ian’s first birthday

I’ve wanted to write a blog post for the past several weeks, but life around here has been very busy.  Between family visiting for Ian’s birthday; a crazy scramble to finish my lactation educator class (review in the next blog post); and an out-of-state baby shower…there has been no time for writing. 

Ian’s first birthday was fun, exciting, sad, and somewhat surreal.  The past year went by so quickly, and it was hard to believe he was really turning 1!  Our little infant turned into a toddler!  I’m proud of the little boy he is turning into; excited for the phases to come; but sad that my little baby is growing up. 

Beyond all of that, his birthday brought back all the memories of fear, grief, and lack of control surrounding his birth.  All of the negativity pared with the joy of actually meeting him as a separate being made for an emotional turmoil a year ago and somewhat of one in reflection and memory.  I had planned to go back and read my write up of his birth, but I still haven’t made myself do it.  I’m sure doing so will be an emotional process, and I need the space to feel comfortable doing so. 

Despite the emotional complexity, Ian’s birthday was a great day.  Bennett took the day off so we could all spend it together.  My mom was here as well.  Since Ian’s actual birthday was a week day, my dad just flew in for his party.

The day was relaxing and peaceful.  We played with Ian, watched him unwrap and play with a few presents, and relaxed mostly.  My mom made sure it was part treat Ian day and part treat me and Bennett day by treating us to both a yummy lunch and dinner.

Bennett and I took Ian to play in the park playground for the first time.  He loved going down the slide and checking out the playground equipment!  It was really windy, so we couldn’t stay out too long, but he loved it!

We decided to have cupcakes on Ian’s actual birthday since he was getting a homemade birthday cake from Erinn for his party.  Really it was an excuse for me to have cupcakes, but we decided to get him one to do with as he pleased…  We got vegan since he still hasn’t really had eggs.  We put the cupcake in front of him, expecting him to maybe play with it a little bit, but he grabbed it and started deconstructing it right away!  Once he got some chocolate icing on his face and tasted it, he discovered his chocoholic gene ;)  It was pretty funny!  He was really not impressed with the cake part however. 

His party that weekend was fun as well.  We felt incredibly loved as Ian had several of his aunts and uncles as well as my parents and Bennett’s mom to celebrate with us.  Ian, of course, got more presents then he can play with any time soon.  I’m guessing that most little babies have that happen. 

Erinn made an amazing cake for the party.  He played with it, and ate a bit, but sadly for everyone’s watching entertainment, he was much more tentative with his cake escapades than he had been on his actual birthday.  I think it was stage fright with so many people staring at him.

The US Infant Feeding Culture

When I started my lactation course, I tracked down some of the breastfeeding groups to follow on Facebook, figuring it might help me stay on top of new relevant studies and issues.   Earlier in the week I read these two blog post, are the Benefits of Breastfeeding Overstated and Shame, guilt and the search for common ground.  Both of these posts are powerful commentaries on infant feeding choices in the U.S., and were prompted by a recent breastfeeding study publication.  My goal in this post is not to discuss the study, but both of these posts spoke to something I’ve been grappling with for a while.  

How do we fully support women in breastfeeding without judging women who either do not want to, or cannot, breastfeed? 

The U.S. is in a cultural transition, an ambiguous phase where we are no longer a true formula feeding culture but neither are we a breastfeeding culture.  Breastfeeding has become powerful in public health rhetoric and policy, but our societal structure lags far behind in true breastfeeding support.  In fact, our society fails to support new families period, regardless of infant feeding method.  We are simply not a culture that values structural support for families; we are just a culture that likes to talk about it.

Breastfeeding is the biological norm, and in my opinion, a healthy society should hold it as the norm for infant feeding.  But this should not mean that formula is poison, or that feeding your baby formula makes you a bad mother.  Feeding decisions are not made in a vacuum.  There are many competing elements that influence what is the best choice for any given family.  Breastfeeding is one way to give your baby a healthy start, but it is not the only way.

Our culture is in transition, however, and our formula feeding biases are still strong and pervasive, as are breastfeeding rules dating back to a time when we knew far less about breastfeeding mother baby dyads.  Many people aren’t even aware of their infant feeding biases.  Uncovering bias and changing cultural norms are both uncomfortable processes.  Pushing public health policy without real societal change is a challenge, but how else to you start?  

Women are caught in the middle, being told to breastfeed but with little support or accurate information. Often time’s parents have no idea that the advice they are given, even from healthcare providers, is unintentionally undermining their breastfeeding goals.  No one wants to find out that the reason they could not breastfeed had nothing to do with their own biology and everything to do with a system that failed them.  

That system needs to change.  Biases and norms need to change.  Maybe we can’t fix all the factors that create barriers to breastfeeding or supporting families, but educating people, especially the healthcare system, is a big part of that process.  But change is uncomfortable and people get defensive.  That is true no matter the topic.  So, is it any wonder that infant feeding choices have become contentious?  

There are still too many breastfeeding barriers that are completely preventable.  These challenges can cause anyone to perceive problems, or in fact have problems, that would not have occurred with accurate information and appropriate support.  Although women of all socio-economic and education levels struggle with many of the same breastfeeding barriers, there is also a large breastfeeding disparity in the U.S.  Until preventable problems are tackled and there is breastfeeding equity, there is a need for advocacy surrounding breastfeeding.  

But what about women who can’t, or don’t want to, breastfeed.  Why does pushing society to make room for breastfeeding mean stigmatizing formula?  I don’t believe it has to do so. 

But for that to happen, we need to try and respect all feeding decisions.  We need to find ways to correct inaccurate information, without projecting judgment.  Parents need to be supported and informed so that whatever their feeding choice is, they can be confident in their decision.

Maybe I’m showing my bias by saying that I would love to see a culture where breastfeeding is assumed and supported, and if you are not breastfeeding, it is assumed that you had a very good reason not to do so. 

If you'd like to share your infant feeding experiences, or thoughts on our feeding culture please comment below!

Reflecting on Newborn Ian

As Ian’s first birthday approaches, I’ve been reflecting on our experiences since he was born. 

I remember the first few weeks after Ian was born.  We were tired, of course, but not as tired as we had expected.  We were enjoying getting to know our baby on the outside, and learning his little quirks and needs. 

I spent most of my time breastfeeding, and being waited on by my mom and Bennett.  Ian was held pretty much non-stop.  Holding him was relaxing for everyone, and I felt strongly that I needed that bonding time with him after missing out on the normal physiology of labor and immediate skin to skin (he was born via a caesarian because he was breach).  

Of course this was a time of adjustment and learning, but it was much easier than I thought it would be.  I expected to be tired, to dedicate most of my time to breastfeeding, to have a baby that needed to be held…so my perceptions of these activities were normal and manageable.  My theory is that this is because the reality of having a baby was pretty close to my expectations.  What was truly difficult, and still is, was his birth, where my expectations were so far from reality that I was left with a dissonance difficult to incorporate into my life narrative comfortably.

As a side note, I do know that I also had a very high level of support, and that this greatly contributed to my lack of baby related stress.

It would be interesting to study how first parent’s expectations of a baby match with the reality of the baby and how that relates to their stress levels.  From Facebook posts and conversations with mothers in my neighborhood, it seems like many parents have unrealistic (in my opinion) expectations of baby behavior, or have no idea what to expect.  Add in our culture’s belief that babies should be independent from a very young age, and that you can spoil an infant, (both points I disagree with) and parents are stuck struggling to fit their baby reality into our mainstream baby construct.  I believe this gap between expectation and reality is a source of stress, frustration, and self-doubt. 

During my practicum for my MPH, I observed a breastfeeding class in which the instructor taught a very excellent point that still sticks with me today.  In reference to holding a baby, she tried to get the class to look at it from the baby’s point of view.  When you are in utero, you are warm and held close and rocked all the time.  Then you are born.  If your family holds you even half the day, that’s still half as much as you are used to.  Many people refer to the first 3 months of a baby’s life as the 4^th trimester, acknowledging that birth should not mean an independent baby…but that’s a whole other post and I’m digressing. 

We need to do more to prepare expectant parents for the reality of a new born, with all the normal variations…to help them look at the world from the perspective of their baby…to try and teach them to read their baby’s individual needs…to help lesson that gap between expectation and reality…

What is normal?

As parents, we all spend a lot of time wondering if our baby’s behavior is normal.  We ask around in our network or online, is it normal for my baby to (insert behavior?)  Do other people’s babies do this?

Of course sharing is normal; we are social beings.  Discussions with other parents are a great way to compare strategies and exchange information.  It can be empowering and a relief to find other people struggling with the same problems you are. 

But by focusing so much on normal behavior, do we forget to listen to our baby’s individual needs?  Has normal come to mean average rather than variation?

Of course parenting is a constant learning process, and part of that process is learning from other parents, but why are we so unprepared for the normal variation of infant behavior?

I blame the mythical perfect baby.  This baby eats every 2-3 hours and takes a set number of well-timed naps a day.  She naps in her crib nicely while her parents get lots done.  She can sleep through the night by six months, and around that time, happily starts eating solid foods.  She hits her developmental milestones right about when her timeline says she should. 

I know I’m exaggerating, and most people don’t expect this perfect baby, but there is still this ideal out there that is very powerful.  People are very concerned when their baby doesn’t conform to the mythical baby timeline or their own expectations of normal.  From listening to new parents I know, health professionals do little to alleviate the concerns and teach normal infant variation. 

But is this ideal baby based on normal baby physiology?  By talking about the average baby, are we failing to teach that there is a wide variation of normal baby behavior and needs? By seeking to validate our baby’s behavior as normal or not, do we forget to follow our baby’s cues?

Rather than teaching in averages and schedules, I wish expectant parents were taught how to read baby cues, and that normal is a range of behaviors and timings.  I remember telling my mom at some point in the first few weeks that if I had followed the nurse’s advice and fed Ian every 2 hours, I would have had a much crankier baby.  But I fed him when he was hungry, and before he cried, resulting in his happy personality coming through.  I wasn’t worried if it was “normal that he ate every 45 minutes at certain parts of the day or that he needed to be held in order to sleep.  It was what worked for him, and he was growing and happy.  For him, it was normal. 

I was able to do that, because I knew that no one told babies that they should eat on a schedule and sleep by themselves quickly.  Crying is true frustration, not a hunger cue.  If parents were taught how to see and understand their new baby’s behavior and cues, would some of the stress of a new parent be eased?  I think so.