Normalize Breastfeeding!

Check it out! A shop for all you breastfeeding advocacy needs. All profits go directly to Attachment Parenting, International! Here's the bumper sticker - isn't it cute?

There is clothing for moms, dads and babies, plus bags, hats, mugs, even a thong!

So far, all the items have the new international breastfeeding icon and the text "Normalize Breastfeeding" but perhaps new items can be added? Feedback welcome!

Monday - unbalanced

Players:
A- 2 1/2 year old baby girl
H- Husband, sick with flu
C- 7 year old daughter

8:00 Woke up, peeked at clock, wanted to get up, but A still nursing. Drifted back to sleep.
8:20 Needed to pee, told A, sneaked away
8:21 A screaming and crying while I peed. H couldn't soothe her. She only wants me in the morning.
8:22 Back in bed to comfort A.
8:30 Shower
8:50 On computer to print out shipping labels for an order that I couldn't get payment processed for last night. Hoping to find she has paid via the invoice I sent and also that I won't get side-tracked.
9:15 Got side-tracked by a few things but got the payment and another order. All packed up and ready to go.
9:16 Wake A and got her dressed. H works from home on Mondays, which is just as well because he's so sick, and C, unfortunately, winds up watching TV. That makes me feel so guilty. We just gave our big old table top TV away and bought a very small flat-screen on incredible Black Friday sale so we can hang it on the wall. Only H has found an excellent deal - just a bit more money and the screen is 3 inches bigger and much better resolution. (Last night, at the playground, he was still trying to convince me to go with this TV. He said to me, while pushing the swing, "It's 3 inches bigger and better quality", then we both paused and cracked up. We wonder what the mom pushing the next swing must have thought he was proposing.) So anyway, my plan is to get the TV wall mounted so she can't watch it at will. Only we are in limbo while he tries to get the store to honor their deal: after he ordered, they said they were out but they have it listed at full price again. I say it's the universe saying to let it go but he really wants that extra 3 inches and better quality! I don't want such a good TV! Actually, I don't want any TV, but he's not ready for that.
9:30 Off to Starbuck's for a quick breakfast with A. Normally, I'd have something at home, but my espresso machine is there because it hasn't been working well, and actually, I am looking forward to a few peaceful minutes "to myself". Well, close enough.
10:00 Stop by post office to drop off packages. All my packages that are over a pound must be delivered in person during business hours. What a pain that can be with kids in tow, especially if one is asleep.
10:15 Arrive at the mom & me class I'm doing with A. She enjoys it very much, even though she doesn't participate in much. I see she is happy playing on her own and she comes over for the stuff that interests her, or she pauses to watch and listen during certain songs.
12:00 Driving home, I get a call from a customer. I have my home phone forward to my cell phone so I don't miss sales. I wind up talking to her for a while and am stuck in my car; I can't really pack A up and our stuff and get her on my back while I'm on the phone. She is driving me a bit nutty but she loves playing with everything.
12:10 Upstairs to be met by starving TV watching C. H is sacked out in the bed. So glad he was working from home!
12:15 Try to be brief on the computer. I am supposed to call this customer back with answers.
12:20 Try to start lunch for me and the girls.
12:21 Phone rings, it's a customer. I answer lots of questions and take an order over the phone.
12:40 Try to start lunch for me and the girls.
12:41 Phone rings again. I forget who it was.
1:00 Try to have a quick look at the issues I was supposed to address for the first customer while A is on my lap nursing because she hasn't had lunch yet. C is starving.
1:10 Poke around the kitchen. The sink is filled but the dishwasher needs unloading. The groceries haven't arrived yet. It's really slim pickings.
1:15 The groceries arrive!
1:20 Am putting groceries away but the phone rings again.
1:30 Am back at the computer, try to follow up again with the first customer. C is starving.
1:40 Unload dishwasher.
1:42 Phone.
1:55 Finish unloading dishwasher, load it up. Am absolutely starving. Slap together some sandwiches. C wants ketchup on hers. Gross. A just seems to want ketchup. Disgusting. Make self a salad. Offer some to H who is up now, back working, but he doesn't want it. He's nibbled a bit of fruit. Perfect, really.
2:30 Try to get A down for a nap. C wants to go to the pool. I can't take her; A has to nap. Feeling so guilty. C hasn't been out all day. H says he'll take her "soon".
3:30 Finally get A to sleep, sneak away to follow up with first customer, make a bit of headway, hear A crying, back to bed I go.
4:00 Ask H if he'll take C to the pool. He has been taking her to the pool or park on Mondays during his lunch break. He says he has stuff he has to finish up today before end of business.
5:00 H takes C to the pool. It will only be light another 30 minutes and she'll freeze. I wish they'd just go to the park. But the pool is a shorter walk and he does feel like crap so it's his call.
6:00 Time to wake A up. She napped too late, so will be up too late, that cycle continues. Must somehow move it all earlier. Thought going out in the mornings was going to solve this but no joy yet. She's not too thrilled with me.
6:10 I try to start dinner but A is clingy and crying and loud and H is napping again, poor thing. Back to computer to make some headway with that customer's issues.
7:00 Finally A will let me go and I can work on dinner. Feeling uninspired and just make pasta. Feel guilty because it's not very healthy.
7:30 Customer calls me back and I try to work through issues. She wants me to examine a certain baby carrier and check the craftwomanship. Looks good!
8:00 We have dinner. H and I watch a bit of a movie together but I feel my work piling up and I slip away to try to catch up.
9:00 Try to process her credit card but it won't process for anything. I send her an explanation and invoice and promise myself I'll get it done in the morning even though I am not working in the mornings anymore because that is the time to have the kids out of the house so they will get fresh air, exercise, and be fit and strong and go to bed early so they can wake up early and go outside to play.
10:30 Time to start getting ready for bed. Luckily the girls are fine when we initiate and A is now letting us brush her teeth and C has done her own for years.
10:50 All in bed, lights out.

Nurse-in in response to Delta's error

I went to a nurse-in last week, as did many women around the country.

Here is a photo of my lovely friend Rosie with her baby peacefully snoozing in an Ergo Baby Carrier (which she bought from me - ugh - made the poor girl meet me at my daughter's music class and she had the darndest time finding the place, bless her).

This is not the first nurse-in I've been to. I've been to about four now.

When my older daughter was born, I was very, very shy to nurse in public. It took all my resources to actually manage it. At first, I made my husband go around with me and block my breasts from view with his body. Of course, I had a lot of issues and was using a fake plastic nipple to manage it at all. I literally jumped through hoops to get nursing to work. I suffered months of sore, cracked, bleeding nipples and paid out of pocket hundreds and hundreds of dollars in costs to a lactation consultant who finally got us going.

My initial goal, while pregnant, was to nurse for years. Once the baby was born, it dropped down to a day by day thing. Eventually, we got through the rough patch and little by little, I was able to get attached again to my daughter nursing long-term. She did.

Anyway, I developed a fierceness which helped embolden me to nursing in public. As I educated myself about nursing and about my rights, I did get a sort of, "Yeah, just you try and say something, buddy," kind of attitude. Luckily for the world, no one ever did. Sometimes, I saw someone try to catch my eye and when I made eye contact, it was to get a wink, nod, smile, or thumbs-up. Gradually, I lost my defensiveness. But I never forgot the promise I made to myself. I told myself that if anyone ever said anything about my right to nurse where I was, I'd show up the next day with 20 women in tow, all ready to stand for our right to nurse. Or, actually, more for our baby's right to be nursed. It's not actually my desire to nurse. I'd still prefer to keep that as private and discreet as possible. It's really, for me, about my baby's needs.

So anyway, when I started going to nurse-ins, I had a fresh vigor and enthusiasm. I thought, yeah, this'll do it. After we go stand strong for this, well, all set then! The people of this country will come to realize what I've realized and all will be okay going forward.

Sadly, I've lost some of that freshness. I still go to nurse-ins. It's still important. But I have lost the patina but not the knowledge of how important it is to help educate people. I'll share a story that I am not proud of, but it's true and honest.

I was working in a downtown of a major city before I had kids, out for a lunch-time walk on a brisk, sunny day. I passed a Starbuck's and saw a mom nursing her baby in the window. I was stunned, shocked, repulsed, horrified, offended. It's a little tricky to get back into the headspace I was in in those days, but I believe I felt it was a sexual act. No one in my cirles ever seems to identify with this feeling. It seems they all showed up on the planet enlightened. I did not. While I had no issue with the fact that she was breastfeeding, I did not think it was something to flaunt. I was offended that she was sitting in the window for all to see.

Have I done the very same thing myself hundreds of time since? You bet!

So, I'd like most to reach the me of back then - the single working woman, shocked by openly public nursing a baby - and help her realize a few things.

Nursing is not a deviant act. It is something the baby needs, just like breathing. The mom does not do it for her own pleasure. A baby can never be forced to nurse. Nursing can be very discreet. Nursing older babies and toddlers helps them maintain a strong connection to their mother, the rock of their world, and grow into strong, balanced, independent people.

There is no easy way to prove all this with words, but look at the peaceful mama in the photo. Look at her baby, contentedly asleep against her, having just had a discreet nursing session.Life is so much easier and natural when mamas and babies travel as a unit and nurse whenever, wherever baby needs.

'Tis I!

I've been meaning to do a blog that's just me for the longest time! All the stuff that doesn't really fit into any of the other areas. I read a book once - was it Doris Lessing? It baffled me at the time. I was just a teenager. Long before the days of blogging.

In this book, she separated herself into four different notebooks. Ah. Here it is. The Golden Notebook. I couldn't at all grasp how she could write this way. Reading the sections separately was such a strange experience for me. It was so difficult to piece together one person when you could only read one section at a time. Well, being a sequential kind of person, that's how I read it, anyway. Now I know you can cheat and skip around so I might reread it like that some day.

But my blog has definitely become that, as has my life. I see it now. There are pieces of me that are fragmented. I carry that I am a mother with me into everything I do but other pieces are held up one at a time. It's a strange way to be, really. Not real, somehow.