Welcome to Mama to Mama, an open and accepting space for Mamas (and Papas!) to read, share, learn and discuss the best, the not-so-great, and the downright hilarious aspects of motherhood. Got a bun in the oven? A babe in arms? How about a large splotch of spit-up on your shoulder? Here's your chance to celebrate and commiserate, maybe pick up a trick or two from Mamas who've been there (hint: only crazy people wear white postpartum).
Motherhood can be isolating but it shouldn't be. We like to think Mama to Mama is as intimate as having coffee with your oldest friend -- your oldest friend who is totally baby-obsessed and uses the hushed tones of an international peace broker to discuss parenting strategies and the cost of her sister-in-law's stroller. You know, that friend. The one who smells like rancid milk.
Mama to Mama is co-written and edited by Sarah and Svea, two young mamas with our lives full of four kids, a couple of devoted husbands and a whole lotta poop. That’s what brought us together two years ago when we met on the board of directors for a non-profit arts organisation. We started Mama to Mama in November 2011 with the aim of both understanding and sharing our parenting experiences. What if, we wondered, there was a space for us to be entirely honest about the issues we face on a day-to-day basis? Like, why does my baby's Hallowe'en costume make me feel queasy? Will I ever stop worrying about my not-so-leaky right nipple? And is it normal that my baby has started quacking like a duck?
We are both newly married, hyper-productive (and sometimes just plain hyper – we keep saying we're going to blog about ADHD one of these days, yuk yuk), recovering workaholic attachment parents. We share the aim of raising socially responsible, well-adjusted, creative kids – the kind of people who can laugh at their own foibles, stand up for others, and don’t take shit from anyone. On our better days, we endeavour to be this way ourselves. Follow our daily failings on twitter @mamatomamablog.
Check back here for weekly updates, product and book reviews, tips for staying sane in those crazy postpartum weeks (all... 938.5 of them), and interviews with wise mamas who've been there. Also, check out our projects: 'I've changed my baby...' on Mamactivism, where we agitate for change under the radical rubric that mothers are people with the right to lead fulfilling, active, adult lives; and Too Hot For Stroller: a collection of the hottest, most stylish babywearing images you've ever, well, beheld.
For the past couple of months P has been mobile. Some might say that mobility at 9 months is a little later than other babies start. I say bull pucky- every child has their own internal clock.
It just so happens P has hated the notion of "tummy time" since the first time we attempted to encourage it. At which point he voiced how ridiculous he thought the entire thing was. As he never cared much for tummy time, crawling was out of the question for him. It took him a little longer to figure out what was right for him but he's settled on sitting up and scooting across the floor on his bum using his legs as propellers. For those of you looking for a visual, its something what I would think to be akin to a baby octopus (minus a few legs) taken out of the water and placed on the floor.
With this new sense of mobility has come frequent pillaging of various lower kitchen drawers, the lower shelf of the pantry and occasionally an empty water bottle will go missing from the recycling bin....
These pillagings have in effect lead to a sense of ownership-albeit a mis-placed sense of ownership- over spoils. As far as P is concerned its a finders keepers world and losers are weepers. This means that separating scooter from "his" can of soup, or other item "he found" causes a toddler sized tantrum ending in sadness and us feeling like schmuks. Which has left me pondering the question:
Is there such a thing as balance between implementing boundaries and feeling bad for having to steal your baby's thunder? How much "baby proofing" is too much, or too little?
Part of parenting entails implementing certain boundaries especially when it comes to things that might harm our children. At the same time, encouragement of exploration and educational experiences from ones surroundings is also ideal. Is it really that bad if the baby scoots off with a can of soup or bag of cereal? Not likely if they are supervised. Then again, we can't let them have everything they want or no one would have any eyes left. So how do we as parents strike a balance?
While pondering this question I decided to do what any parent would do, I hauled out my trusty parenting manual---HA! Those don't exist!
I actually haven't quite figured this out myself. It seems to me it differs with each child. Some babies find electrical sockets fascinating, others prefer wires. Others don't think twice about any of these things and are quite happy with their blocks - or inanimate objects...
We have gone ahead with moving wires and plugging the outlets with covers, and even decided to implement a couple cupboard door latches this time around. But instead of wrapping our house in a seal proof bubble we settled on giving P his own special kitchen drawer. In it, he has his own wooden spoons, a car or two and a paper towel roll. All things he loves at an accessible height for him. So far this method appears to be working and allows him to explore and feel part of the "big people" environment. Sure, he occasionally pilfers a can of soup or something similar from the pantry when he thinks I'm not looking and sees how far he can get with it, but these things are harmless.
I suppose the big unknown about parenting is, well, just that-unknown. Not until our kids grow into adults and begin to carry on lives they think are independent of us parents, will we know for sure if all the boundaries and things we tried to teach them were relevant.
So I guess my question is more one for the broader reading audience - what works for you? What are your strategies if you have any?
Last Tuesday night found Sweet Baby James and I sitting on the living room floor of a very nice apartment in the foggiest part of town. The room was crawling with babies, lactating women, and their relatives. Our first ever La Leche League meeting!
The La Leche League (LLL) is amazing. It was started in 1956 by a bunch of friends who were not convinced by their doctors' opinion that breastfeeding was bad for their babies. Only 20% of American babies were being breastfed at that time, and it was considered so uncouth to discuss nursing in public that they had to call themselves 'The Milk' League in Spanish. Code milk!
LLL was renegade, radical and revolutionary in its time; now it's a soft, welcoming place for people who want to learn more about breastfeeding. They have a book, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, a magazine, a website, and groups meeting weekly in 68 countries.
In the Western world's reckless rejection of lactation in the 1930s-1970s (a squeamishness that accompanied the medicalization of birth and the rise of corporate interest in infant formula), an entire generation was raised without the nipple. While a woman could once turn to her own mama for support and knowledge about breastfeeding, that's not possible if she didn't breastfeed her babies and wasn't breastfed herself. So going to a LLL meeting is a bit like reaching back through the centuries to find a bit of knowledge that you kind of knew already.
Yes, I paid $25 for a one-year membership to a club where I listen to people tell me things I already know. It's strange but wonderful, sitting in a room full of the squeals of children and squalls of babies and feeling, "Oh yeah, I knew that" about something that, frankly, I didn't.
Like biting.
I had been being bitten by Sweet Baby James on a semi-regular basis for the past few weeks. His teeth came in all of a sudden (six teeth over the course of two weeks, both top and bottom in the front. wowza!) and it's as if he didn't quite know what to do with them. And so, as always, he did whatever he liked. Unfortunately for me, whatever he liked included something very sharp and something very sensitive. Ouch.
So I asked about this at the meeting. The leader, as she is directed to do, reflected the question back to the larger group -- had anyone else experienced this? There was one Lactation Consultant-looking woman there (yes, there's an LC look. It involves being well-groomed, doing yoga and wearing handcrafted silver jewelry -- you know who you are) who suggested I de-latch the baby as soon as my milk had stopped flowing, since biting happens when the nipple is further forward in the mouth than when he's really gulping milk down.
Someone else suggested raising the angle of the baby's head, since they most comfortably latch when they're looking upward; and another lady commiserated, saying that she is doing extended breastfeeding with her daughter and not to worry, he would soon grow out of it.
That middle suggestion -- that the angle of the latch might be causing him to bite -- was actually new to me. But as they described it, I really felt like it wasn't. I felt like it was something I had known and forgotten, or maybe could have figured out on my own. A feeling not unlike the one you get from assembling a piece of IKEA furniture without the directions, only to find them hidden under your (also IKEA) couch.
There's much ado these days about how 'not instinctive' breastfeeding is -- the LLL magazine New Beginnings is full of stories from new moms who had terrible difficulties establishing the "breastfeeding relationship" after their baby was born. Thalia says,
"I wondered what could be so hard about something so natural. Hadn't we as a species done this from the beginning? I thought it was going to be easy. Not only was I wrong, but I was woefully unprepared for how wrong I was."
Diane says,
"Looking back now, both... [my husband and I] should have read a lot more and given a lot more thought on the subject."
But this non-instinctive stuff seems *ahem* counter-intuitive to me. How could we possibly survive as a species if the womanly art of breastfeeding wasn't hard-wired? And how come, given that I'm not a 100% insufferable jerk, do I feel like I 'know' this stuff already? Anthropologist Meredith Small asks the same question in her excellent book Our Babies, Ourselves: How biology and culture shape the way we parent.
She tells the story of a captive gorilla (Small doesn't say, but I'm assuming she was raised in isolation). This lady gorilla was able to carry and birth her cute little gorilla babies, but they kept getting taken away from her because she didn't know how to nurse them. She had the idea to connect her nipple with something on the baby's head -- but she didn't know that she needed to turn it around to face her. So the keepers got a bunch of human mothers to nurse their babies in front of her. She watched. She learned. She was able to feed her next baby!
So there is a strong learned aspect to breastfeeding. And perhaps this is the essence of intuition -- it's a combination of instinct and learning. It's important that we have good prenatal and prelactation classes available. But maybe, in our drive to be the master of everything in our domain, it's possible to be over-prepared, too. Might we, in our drive for self-education, run the risk of extinguishing the instinctual aspect of the nursing process?
I paid attention in the lactation section of our prenatal class at Montréal's (incredibleamazingawesome, cannotrecommenditenough) Côte de Neiges Maison de Naissance. I knew I wanted to breastfeed my baby and I knew it wasn't going to be easy. The videos showed us how we should hold (but not assault) the baby's head, how we should slightly compress our breast/nipple into the "hamburger shape" (hungry?), and how to tickle the baby's chin or cheek so that he would open up wide and I could shove that nipple in as far as it would go.
And when the baby came, I did all this. My nipples were sore, and there was a blood blister on one. I used a lot of Lanolin (a nice word for sheep grease) and cursing... I did everything they had told me to do -- but he didn't seem to be born with the open-up-wide-so-you-can-shove-your-nipple-in reflex.
I'd tickle his cheek or his chin and he'd open up a little bit, but not as much as he would at other times; or he wouldn't open up at all, preferring instead to suck heavily on his own hands, despite the fact that he was wailing with hunger only a moment before. I had a hectic, heavy letdown reflex (which is when the milk sprays out of the nipple like a sprinkler -- or Niagara Falls, as the case may be) so I'd be sitting there getting madder than a wet hen as the baby's fresh onesie got drenched, too.
And I was in pain. That blood blister developed into two. One of the tough things about starting to nurse is that you still have to continue to nurse on both breasts, even if one of them has a damaged nipple. Sometimes I would end up making it worse, since because it hurt like hell whether I was getting a good latch or not. I had no way to tell if I was on the right track!
One day, I just gave up. Not nursing, but trying. I gave up trying.
Baby was at my nipple, we were doing our usual three-round latchfight, and I just let him win. I didn't touch him or my breast. I watched. He didn't open his mouth wide like the babies in the video, but he sucked the nipple deep into his mouth, closed his eyes and gulped away. A perfect latch.
This was just my experience. But I hope that as we start to accept breastfeeding as an important aspect of childhood and maternal health, we can relax a little and give the formulaic nursing methods a break. I'm glad that I attended prenatal classes, but a class could never really prepare me for my baby knowing more than I do.
Comments like the following -- which I've arranged for your convenience from the least to the most lascivious -- arrive unbidden from the mouths of strangers.
"That looks so comfy."
"Now that's the life."
"I wish I could be carried like that!"
"I'll trade places with him!"
"I want the baby's food!"
It happens when I wear Sweet Baby James in the sling. Which is every day.
I get the middle one the most: "I wish I could be carried like that." There's nothing wrong with the sentiment in and of itself -- don't we all wish for free, reliable transportation? -- but the fact that it comes from men (only men!) has got me wondering.
I told my husband about this during our five minutes of quality time last night. He was unzipping his fly. "Three guys said they wanted to be in Sweet Baby James' sling tonight," I said. He laughed as he lifted up the toilet seat (gotcha there, didn't I?). "Well," I said, "Do you have anything to say about it?" "Hmm... I'll rip their eyeballs out." He answered, referring to the street-fighting skills he acquired with other ass-kicking Buddhists at Leriken in Montreal. "Ha ha," I said, "But really, what do you think is going on there?" "What's going on there is that they're confusing my wife with their mother." "Yes," I said, "The old I-want-my-wife-to-be-my-mother thing..." "No... I said my wife. Not their wives." "Oh, I get it. So, like, 'excuse me sir, but it would behoove you to make the distinction between my wife and your mother, sir.'" "Yeah," he said, reaching for the dental floss.
But I can't quite believe that there is salacious intent behind this comment. In my experience, when men are saying something they know to be naughty, they're a little sly about it. Or they stutter, or blush. They're quieter. These guys, on the other hand, want the world to know that they wish they could be carried around like an 8 month-old baby. And when I told Mr. Artist that he was the THIRD man at that opening to make the comment, he didn't act all proud to be Mr. Dirty Scandalous Artist; he walked away to get another glass of wine.
Like it was I who had made the faux-pas. *sigh*
What is it about that kind of carrying that is so appealing to men? Is it the boobs? SARK, in her (fecking fantastic) book Succulent Wild Woman describes how men (and some women) love "big boobs" because they see them as big soft pillows they could curl up against. And in this short article from ivillage, written by men about breasts, it mentions a desire to return to the "...halcyon days when our mothers protected us from all the world's evils."
I don't think I'll ever quite understand the (predominantly male) fascination with breasts, especially now that mine have become utterly mundane and not particularly private food delivery banks (how's that for sexxxay?). But the fantasy of returning to the womb, or the warmth of the mother's arms does makes sense to me.
I myself sometimes wish I could be once again ensconced in the cradleboard my father made for me when I was a baby. There's a part in all of us that never really grows up, right? This basic craving for closeness, however, doesn't explain the gender divide. Why do women say, "He looks so comfortable there!" or "What a great way to carry your baby!", while men immediately insert themselves into the carrier's warm folds?
Sometimes when I have just gotten out of the bath with Sweet Baby James and we're nursing in bed, drifting off to sleep, I am struck with the intimacy of our bond. I know his body so well. And he knows mine. He trusts me to look after him, to protect him not only from the outside world but also the inside one -- to respect his boundaries, which he is too young to know he has. He gives his complete surrender, because he has to. And I, lying with my nipple between his über sharp newly erupted teeth, trust him to respect my body in the same way.
Except that sometimes he hits me in the face for no reason, because he is a baby.
So anyway, I realize that this intimacy is unusual in our lives, especially in the West, where we have the largest 'personal space' zones in the world. I'll never forget the first time I saw some Moroccan dudes all thugged-out and caressing each others' shoulders as they stood chatting at the port of Tangier. It's just the way people relate to others of the same gender there. You touch someone when you're talking with them, maybe go get naked at a Hammam together, nothing unusual about it. But here we don't and it will not likely be until Sweet Baby James gets into a sexual relationship that he will feel this kind of physical closeness with someone again.
And then it will be different. He will be expected to return the intimacy, to give back -- not only sexually, but also in the form of hugs, caresses, tenderness. To me, this give and take is the ultimate joy of sexual intimacy, but clearly it's not everybody's idea of a good time.
Maybe that's what these guys are really saying when they express a wish to be carried like Sweet Baby James. Maybe they're saying they wish they could be on the receiving end of unconditional love, without having to expend any effort. Jerks.
((and as I was writing this post, at this very juncture, my husband came home with a smile on his face, $200 worth of groceries and a bouquet of flowers. Win!))
And finally, perhaps it's an inversion of that genius idea that mothers are sexless creatures, the classic madonna/whore complex. But if so, it's the inverse: sexualizing the mother, the young woman with a diaper kit in her backpack, the bags under her eyes... and the lucky little baby nodding off to sleep at perfect nipple eye level.
It's 11:30pm. I just got up from nursing Sweet Baby James down (again), and although there are people -- beautiful people, people I love, people who live in other countries -- I should be writing to, I just wanted to share this: Sweet Baby James is sleeping in a glow-in-the-dark skeleton shirt that I bought at Chloe's Closet. And he's lying there, sleeping in his little fitful way, and he's my little skeleton.
There's something bizarre about a little baby wearing a skeleton costume. It's overly intimate, like he's more than naked; he's showing his bones. Maybe that's why this costume isn't actually meant for an 8 month-old baby (it's for a 4 year-old. srsly). I love the costume (he's cute! it's cute!) but I also find it mildly disturbing. Especially at night.
Especially when it glows up at me from above the bed covers.
When I think about babies (particularly this one), I think of fat, roly-poly, chubby little monsters. It's difficult to think of a baby's skeleton, that frailty underneath. It reminds me of the horror of starvation, disease. Famine, both real and fictional (Cormac McCarthy's The Road, anyone?). Prospects scarier than any child's hallowe'en costume.
But though I don't like to think about it, I'm also more aware of Sweet Baby Jame's skeleton than anybody else's. I felt it form within my body, after all. I used to lie awake at night as he kicked me from within and now I listen at night to make sure his own ribcage is rising and falling. I massage his little body after the bath, running my hands from forehead to toes, casually feeling for irregularities just as new mothers examine their babies' fingers and toes in the first few minutes after birth.
I would never want to see his skeleton, but I know his bones.
And babies' bones are amazing. Here are five reasons why:
1. They are many: Babies have almost a hundred more bones than adults do (Babies: 300. Adults: 207).
2. They aren't real: Babies' bones are mostly cartilaginous. And since cartilage doesn't break like real bones do, babies are more likely to survive falls and other impacts that would be serious for adults. Doesn't that make you sleep better? They literally bounce back. Do you remember the terrifying/miraculous story of the baby who got dropped from the Capilano suspension bridge in Vancouver? The baby survived. The baby was fine! Holy sh*t!
4. It's impossible to bang a baby's knees: There are a bunch of hysterical postings on the internet from concerned parents wondering why their babies don't have knees. Fortunately, babies don't have knee-caps. Girls get knee-caps around age 3, and boys around age 5. All the better to tummy-time with.
5. They never grow up: We all have baby bones. Human bones regenerate, in their entirety, at least every 20 years.
Happy Hallowe'en, everyone. Have you hugged your skeleton today?
