Failure

Recently several women have described themselves to me as failures. One was unable to breastfeed one of her children. One was unable to deliver her first child in the usual way, and followed the experience with an unsuccessful VBAC attempt. Another was unable to conceive a child at all.

Nothing has demonstrated to me more effectively my own impotence than my apparent success at each of these tasks. Boob Hell I survived, but my laughably excessive reflections on it leave me nothing but bewildered as to how I did so. The births of my children have revealed to me only a body beyond my control and a mind and heart full of weakness and sin. I cannot imagine using the verb phrase "I conceived." How could I claim agency for an event I did not even know was happening? It is inelegant, but I always say, "I got pregnant." That sounds more like the truth: that someone else was the effective force. If I have succeeded as a nursing mother, as a laboring mother, as a bio-mother, I have not succeeded as a person, for each of these successes has crashed out of me in an avalanche of resistance, resentment, fear, anger, and ungratefulness.

Maybe it is easy for me as someone who has nominally succeeded in these tasks, listed above in order of decreasing "controlability," to downplay their importance. I don't even exactly mean to do that, because the tasks are important. But their importance is not in some measurement they may grant of the person who accomplishes them. The important thing is that the baby gets fed. The important thing is that the baby gets born with minimal damage to mother and child (and when a C-section is the least damaging way for that to happen, my stomach is too weak to ponder the alternative). The important thing is that a woman receive what God would give her, whatever that is or isn't. The important thing is that a woman who is given the gift of motherhood make a good faith effort to do what is best for her child. At this she will fail, for goodness and faith are not natural to her.

All this failure notwithstanding, we must still be cautious. Success, real or apparent, is a dangerous gift, for it always tempts to pride, the chief of sins.

Another perspective

Child-led weaning: Once the child starts biting, I'm done.

  Die, Mommy! Die!

I can't wait for the oxytocin comments

An article of a lactational nature by me at NaturallyBorn.net, edited by the famous Pam:

You Don't Have To Love It

Hmmm, looks kinda boring. Except the London broil part.

Goodbye, Mr. Sendak

You really knew what you knew:

The good old days

Father Beisel reminds us that our great-grandparents probably knew what they were doing, even when it came to order in the pews.

Book, recommended: the one I just wrote

Well, girls, I've been holding out on you. I've been writing a book and I didn't tell you about it. Now it's done. If you want to read it, buy it or buy it or buy it with promotion code SPACIOUS305 today and tomorrow or borrow it through the Kindle lending library. My reading committee said it was good but I stacked it with yes-men. Here is the promotional website, where you, your comments, your blog readers, and your Facebook friends who are not even remotely CSPP are welcome and will not get freaked out or ticked off. Alright, alright, Facebook too. Blech.

Just So You Know: This is not an advocacy book. It is about breastfeeding, not for or against breastfeeding. As indicated above, it makes absolutely no mention of or allusion to perpetual parturition. It deals only incidentally with Concordianism. This book cannot be used as a "witnessing tool" for any cause whatsoever. I must apologize in advance for titling it Boob Hell. But some of you already totally get it, see?

Actually, it's not about breastfeeding. It is about me, because I am my favorite topic, and I am selling it because I want some ice cream money. Or maybe I could get a bubble tea. I've always wanted one of those.

Jack Gilbert did my author pic. He has skills.

Why I don't give my baby a fake boob in public or anywhere else

Because I don't have any. If I had one, I wouldn't have anything to put in it. I don't buy formula (that's one of the primary aims of nursing) and I don't have a pump. I don't have a pump because they are expensive and I have so little occasion to use it (that's one of the primary aims of staying home).

I don't get why people think pumping means Mom will get a break. It actually means the opposite. It means she will spend time hooked up to a machine getting schlooped like old Bossy before the time when the baby will need milk in her absence, and possibly again for her own comfort while she is absent from the baby. It means someone else will have to give the milk to the baby from a fake boob (more work for another person, although I know some mothers-in-law are pushy about wanting to do this work). It is totally inefficient. Pumping also doesn't work for everyone in a purely technical sense--saying, "Why doesn't she pump?" makes nearly as many assumptions about how a person's body works as, "Why doesn't she breastfeed?"

The number of stars in my eyes about breastfeeding is zero. I have had a plain rotten time of it. I do it because it is free and healthier for the baby and me. My commitment to it is strong, but purely utilitarian. I am sorry if this makes me a monster or something, but not sorry enough to feel even remotely like a monster.

Despite and because of this monstrous utilitarianism, I despise pumping. I have had to do it, what with the plain rotten times. While I prefer a little space when I nurse, I would prefer to be on another planet to pump. A pump makes me feel like some sort of inferior biological cog in a dystopian future; like my brain wasn't good enough to be connected to the Central Thought Reservoir so the alienbots settled for my lacto-glands instead. Nursing is meh. Pumping is mortifying. I could never pump without asking myself, “Is this really worth it?” When it was the only way the baby could get milk, it was worth it. If it was so I could leave the baby for a length of time so great that the baby would need a fake boob . . . not worth it. If someone walks in on a mom nursing, there's a very good chance he'll just think she's holding a sleeping baby, and she will almost certainly let him keep thinking that. If he walked in on her pumping, they would both die of embarrassment.

This means that occasionally I have to risk it. If the baby and I go somewhere, I can feed her before we leave and hope she doesn't want to nurse before we're home again. But it's complicated, because nursing doesn't always happen just because the baby is hungry. While we're out, I may need to find some way to keep her occupied and quiet because babies are squirmy and noisy. Nursing is the least obtrusive way for me to do this. It is immediate and quiet and still. I do not have to get up and walk out or shake a jingly toy or whisper-read a book. She is used to it and it is how she is most comfortable. Unfortunately, it is also nursing, which some people find inherently obtrusive. The best part is that you don't know who the obtruded upon people are until someone else tells you what the obtruded upon person said in some other time and place about how gross nursing is. 

Why don't you just carry one of these around?

While we're on this exciting topic, the obtrusion problem is why the nursing cover is mostly a ruse. Those who wish to be covered are usually able to nurse in such a way as to not need a cover. Those who don't care that much may use a cover unsatisfactorily to the critics. The real trouble is that using a cover tips people off to what is going on, such that those who find nursing inherently obtrusive will feel obtruded upon even if they see no skin at all. They don't really want you covered. They don't want you nursing; at least, not where it might cause them to think about it in some non-abstract way, and especially if the baby is of a certain age (ie older than two days).

So, ye obtruded upon, sorry. Sorry these aren't good enough reasons for you. Sorry I don't carry a fake boob around because I know looking at fake boobs stuffed into babies' mouths doesn't gross you out at all. Try not to think about the fact that you don't know if it's nice, clean formula or gross boob milk that the baby is slurping out of the fake boob because that might gross you out if it were gross boob milk. May all the boobs in your life be fake.

Yet another thing I can see no reason not to post

It's been way too long since we've had a Vanity post. Besides all of them, I mean.

Postpartum again! I'm trying not to be so vain this time. Maybe I'm just getting too old to care so much; that would be good. Anyway, in a manic moment I found a great deal of humor in the fact that I'm carrying around on my person a plurality (at least) of the food my baby is going to eat this year. What a goofy system. What do I expect to look like? It's got to go somewhere.

I could tell the moment was manic because I then began imagining what it would look like if I weren't nursing but still had to carry a year's worth of baby food on me. I have no idea how much formula a baby goes through in a week. A can? Three cans? Let's call it  one can. We won't count little Gerber jars, just formula. I am now picturing myself with 52 cans of formula affixed to my body. Sheesh, I'm huge! This formula takes up a ton of space! I'm also really loud with all these cans clanking around me every time I move. I look, like, SO silly. I can't get comfortable enough to sleep, either. I'm exhausted.

I think we've all learned an important lesson here.

Some inflammatory rhetoric, because I'm getting bored

It would appear that, generally speaking, one who detests the more normal functions of a woman's body, even if she who detests such functions is herself in so-called possession of that body, is fundamentally un-poetic. Which is to say, out of touch with the metaphysical, with who Woman is as She was created and as She exists even now as the Bride of Christ.

The Bride feeds her children from her Body. So, then, because this is what Woman does, this is also what women do, insofar as they are given to do so by God. To do otherwise when it has been given you to do is to deny your existence as a woman, and to become Something Else.

There are really but two choices for a woman who desires to be fully a woman: to remain a virgin and thence serve her neighbor out of love for Christ; to marry, chastely submit to her husband, and serve her own people out of love for Christ. Either choice is equally good, for the Woman is both virgin and mother, and thus, to have Woman reflected among us today, we need both virgins and mothers in our society, all working in their given roles to the best of their abilities as they have been blessed by God.

However, to try somehow to be both is aberrant and plain weird, because, then, what exactly are you?* There has been but one perfect reflection of the Virgin Mother: Mary, who bore unto us Christ, our Lord. The rest of us can't have it all, because "all" hasn't been proffered to us. We must choose. And if you are married, then you have chosen to have children insofar as they are given to you (Wives have the option of not having children? What does that even mean?). And once you have borne a child, then you have chosen to feed that child from your own body and to pour yourself out as a drink offering over the child, because this is what your Mother does for you. You cannot continue as if you were a virgin, just as the virgin cannot feed a child from her body. And yes, we live in a veil of tears, and it's difficult to die to yourself and to become your child's mother. I daresay, that very exercise is much of the point, for it is this exercise which makes a mother more like the Woman. As such, it is God's gift to women, further evidence that He loves us and counts us among His children. As if we needed any evidence beyond Christ's blood! But see how our cups overflow! Do you see?

Carry on.

*My friends, I know there are Hard Cases. I am sad with you.  

You awful hospitals it's all your fault!!

Look, CNN, just don't publish stories that annoy pregnant ladies. They might spend way too much time when they should be sleeping writing long and pointless rants they'll wonder why they bothered posting as soon as they hit post.

But hey, what else is going on here today? So: this story contains claims I have a lot of trouble believing. The headline itself is indicative of its outlook on responsibility: "Hospitals need to do more to encourage breastfeeding," handmaidens that they are of leviathan state (where breastfeeding is in esoteric vogue right now) rather than private businesses free to offer whatever services they choose. Sheesh.

As for the claims: "nearly 80% of hospitals were giving babies formula, water or sugar-water." I've had newborns in four different hospitals. As soon as I tell the nurses I'm breastfeeding, they slap a sticker on the baby's bucket that says I'M BREASTFED. What it means is, DON'T GIVE THIS BABY ANYTHING IN A BOTTLE. And they don't, because if they did I could (and would) go medieval on their hineys for violating my instructions.

I suspect that the real trouble is not hospitals sneaking formula into babies (in fact I have never seen a hospital do anything; they are quite inanimate), but mothers not saying, "I'm breastfeeding." What mothers say is, "We're going to try breastfeeding. Where's the pump?" They are uncertain that they'll be able to breastfeed, whether they really want to, and with regards to all the stupid things some anti-breastfeeding great aunt told them. Moreover, virtually no one breastfeeds using only their breasts any more. So suddenly, it's not an I'M BREASTFED baby. It's a DO WHATEVER YOU CAN TO GET SOME NUTRITIONAL SUBSTANCE INTO ME, IDEALLY BREASTMILK BUT REALLY WHATEVER WE CAN GET TO WORK OUT OK baby. And the dear nurses, bless their baby-loving, new mom-pitying hearts, do.

Another one: "Only one-third of hospitals allow mother and child to stay in the same room." I'm curious about the "allow" here. I don't doubt that at many hospitals, rooming in is not actively offered or encouraged. I have a hard time imagining it prohibited. At least one of our babies was born in nursery-normed hospital. When a nurse came in to wheel my baby off I just said, "Oh, she'll stay with us." And the nurse said, "Oh! Well . . . OK. Call us if you need a break." The hospital administration did not barrel into the room demanding that we give the nursery our baby. No one cared. Again, I wonder if this isn't a matter of mothers simply not knowing their options. Otherwise, I guess I'm just really lucky that out of four hospitals none of them "disallowed" rooming in when statistically 2.667 them should have.

Also regarding the "allow," if there's one thing I've learned from delivering in hospitals it's that, at least on the relatively minor questions I've had come up, hospital policy bows to fear of lawsuit. We've had nurses opt out of assisting in our room because of my weirdo demands like "Don't stick that pointy thing full of creepy juice in me." "That's hospital policy," they say. "Don't stick it in me," I say. "I'll have to go ask Dr. Important," they say importantly. A different nurse comes back, nothing gets stuck in me, and we all go on our way.

Let's see, what else? Oh yeah--want skin to skin contact with your baby immediately following birth? Say, "Hand over my baby." You can even be polite about it if you want because it turns out that being the person who gets to hand a brand newling over to its mom for the first time is a really awesome job that humans, including evil hospital doctors and nurses, like doing. (My only baby who didn't get immediate contact and nursing was the one who wasn't born in a hospital--freakin ha ha.) What if I need breastfeeding help after leaving the hospital? Well, there's a case to be made for the fact that I've, um, left the hospital. I don't expect Pizza Hut to keep supplying me with pizza after I've driven home. Etc.

Much of this "oh those horrible hospitals" report also strikes me as a bit optimistic with regard to mothers. The stories I hear from real live moms who called off breastfeeding usually go something like, "I was just so tired!" (this is before their 24-72 hour hospital discharge, not after three horrific weeks of trying to nurse at home) or "The baby liked the bottle better" (of course he did; he didn't have to work for it).

They honestly don't get it, and how could they? Few baby-free people in our comfortable society have any notion of how much a newborn needs. Asking one significantly injured person to deal with all those hitherto unknown needs is objectively sobering, and contextually insane. One hospital where I delivered DID actively encourage rooming in, and offered extensive breastfeeding services. The nursery was full, and the babies chowed down Enfamil without scarceness. When I availed myself of its breastfeeding assistance in the dark weeks that followed, it didn't help in the least, because breastfeeding problems are one of the main things that cannot be helped, but only endured.

I've got no shortage of objections to hospitals. The extremes of my delivery-related complaints and praises, though, are never for hospitals, but for a horrible doctor or a saintly nurse. Of far more relevance than the hospital are the individuals who happen to be on duty during one's stay. A hospital is not evil. It is too big and stupid to be evil. Its only motive is to attract my business again. The real potential for good or ill lies with the nurse in my room and the doctor or midwife I've hired. Bad ones ruin everything. Good ones make everything as good as possible.

I'd contend that whether or not a woman ends up breastfeeding is in most cases consistent with her previously held ideas about breastfeeding, and that in those cases where her intent is thwarted, it has a lot to do with a circumstance no hospital could have changed.

In an old girl's brain

I weary of the mysticism attributed to various parturitional phenomena. Why does it have to be magic*? These things just make sense. Call it hormones if it makes you happy, I guess; I'd rather imagine that I still have some capacity for a valid analytical response to stimuli.

1. Nesting: a completely rational reaction to knowing that one's house will be mostly neglected for something like a year after the baby is born. No, this shape I'm in is not the most practical for some of the random projects I find myself undertaking in trimesters 2 and 3. But if I don't do them now, they absolutely won't get done later.

2. Post-delivery "high": again, a totally reasonable and predictable reaction to having a healthy baby, having L&D over with, and not being gordo pregnant any more. Freakin duh. (Not to mention that if the alleged nursing "high" were more widely or meaningfully experienced, more people would nurse for longer than three weeks. Oxytocin, the least effective miracle hormone in the universe.)

3. Pregnant/postpartum brain: The BSG "33" sleep schedule alone accounts for this; why even mention the other variables?

*I know, it's not magical, it's brain chemistry. Magical brain chemistry!

Random thoughts of a lactational nature

Nursing BabyOne was difficult for me, physically and psychologically. While the mechanical difficulties were trifling compared to what others have experienced, they were sufficient and persistent enough to make me regularly threaten (albeit emptily) to give over the whole endeavor. I also felt quite keenly what I perceived at the time to be the solitary burden of the experience and the restrictions it placed on my activities and schedule (said baby being averse to a bottle--which was a terrible nuisance anyhow-- and quite attached to nursing on a schedule—his schedule). People would sometimes reference the “magical moments” of breastfeeding and I would do my best to smile and nod, hoping no one noticed that a mere earthling had accidentally landed on Planet La Leche League.

Here’s the thing about breastfeeding: No one else can do it for you. When your infant nursling is hungry, you must feed it. It doesn’t matter if you yourself are hungry, or tired, or in a very inconvenient public place, or in the very crucial middle of making supper. You must stop what you are doing and feed the baby. And if this is your first baby, or if the baby is newish, or you are shyish, even the “publicity” of a room containing friends and relatives may be too public for you, and you must withdraw to the solitary confinement and possibly painful appeasement of an impatient, ungrateful guzzler. (And if you are at times employed away from the baby, you must still make provision to feed the baby, likely necessitating that your breaks are consumed by quality time with uncomfortable apparatus.)

But! Here’s the thing about breastfeeding, that over the course of three subsequent nurslings, I’ve come to discover: No one else can do it for you. No one else gets to see that contented curve of her cheek, just so, in the moonlight. For you alone is reserved that first amazed look when, at several weeks of age, she finally becomes aware that she is not exactly dining solo: “Hey! You’re here too?! ” You get to see the chubby legs kick in excited anticipation of a satisfying meal. Yours are the little sideways glances and quick grins between gulps. When she’s tired or strung-out and no one else can comfort her, you can have her nestling in shuddering contentment within seconds. If you feel like she’s been passed around enough at a family gathering, or if you need a break from the family gathering, you can plead baby’s nutritional needs and seek a quiet corner of escape.

No one else can do it for you. As with so much of motherhood in this mortal vale, the burden is joy; and the joy, burden. Some days, the balance tips toward joy, and some weeks, the burden seems likely to break the balance altogether. Often, it’s just pretty darn hard to tell the difference, but grace gives us enough glimpses to keep us going until the Day when things are finally sorted out for good. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!

SAVE THE OBESE BABIES

As the mother of an obese baby and four formerly obese babies, I find this news offensive and chilling.

He eats premium, dude! PREMIUM!

HT: My Own Brother-In-Law, once again.

Motives, multiple and mixed

Babygirl has passed the seven-month mark. (What?! When did that happen?)

Babygirl has yet to be offered so much as a spoonful of rice cereal.

In light of the rather surprised reaction I got from someone who inquired about Babygirl’s eating habits the other day, I was just musing on the potential interpretations of this situation. Why might I have a seven-and-a half-month-old who’s yet to taste “solids”? Here are just a few of the motives that suggest themselves:

1) I’m some sort of lactavist who’s trying to make some sort of point.
2) I’m one of those holistic earthy (glossing “wacko”) types who sincerely believe in the mom-and-baby benefits of exclusive breastfeeding for the first year.
3) I’m too cheap to buy baby food and too lazy to make it.
4) Breastfeeding is my hobby.
5) I’m reluctant for this sweet stage of my daughter’s babyhood to end.
6) I’m concerned about potential food allergies.
7) I’m struggling with one of the following vices:

a)Gluttony, since a largish parasite makes the skinny jeans a lot more likely during the Christmas season.
b)Sloth, since those first few months of force-feeding solids are nothing but a messy hassle that adds yet another task to the daily routine.
c)Cowardice, since the more the baby nurses, the less likely she is to have a sibling anytime soon (in my humble experience. Not true for everyone, as we are all well aware).

I wish my motives were simply and sweetly multiple, rather than severely mixed, but was there ever a CSPP whose mind didn’t stampede anxiously on ahead, no matter how sternly she bid it be still? On most days, were I to untangle the web of motives behind that empty highchair tray, all of the above would be among the sticky strands. Excepting #1, because I’m really not interested in using my baby’s nutritional needs to try to make some kind of dramatic point that nobody is really interested in anyway. ‘Cause you know what? Everybody else is also busily caught up in the drama of her own multiple and mixed motives.

So. Feeling ever more Adventish, we pray ever more fervently. Come quickly, Lord Jesus. And while we wait, tease out the snarls of our knotted, fearful foolishness. Left to ourselves, we tangle, we fray, we come undone. Weave our loose threads securely into the grand tapestry, until the Day when we can finally, finally, finally see the intricacies of the Master pattern for ourselves.

Chemical despondency

Should the day come that no other person is forced to metabolize everything I consume, I can't promise not to become a junkie.

I biss you so buch.

Pain

Pain is isolating. It cannot be divided and shared, it cannot in its present moment be truly understood by even the most sympathetic friend. To bear it without complaint is a costly virtue, because what the sufferer craves most after relief is tenderness and compassion. To assume an appearance which belies suffering is to deny the depth of tender compassion longed for.

While we may denounce the selfishness which drives human flesh to avoid the gifts God would give, we children of dust are feeble as frail. The woman who feels she cannot have another child is likely not thinking first of her figure, her career, her cobwebby ski equipment. Those excuses are funny and easy because they are less intimate than the truth. She is likely thinking, I don't want to be sick any more. I don't want to be crazy any more. I don't want to get more broken. I CANNOT HURT any more.

Lord, have mercy on us daughters of Eve.

"An inordinate fondness for beetles"

As we all know, breast milk is a magical substance which can dissolve goiters, sharpen pencils, clean up oil spills, and grow absolutely anyone a head of curly blond hair. Today's news brought us more evidence of its unfathomable powers:

Abbott Laboratories said Wednesday that it has issued a recall of approximately 5 million cans of certain Similac-brand powdered infant formula due to the possibility of the presence of a beetle . . . . The FDA said that this type of beetle, if ingested, could cause discomfort and irritate the gastrointestinal tract, causing the infant to lose appetite.

I have witnessed first hand evidence proving that a breastfed infant is perfectly capable of digesting a beetle with no discomfort, irritation, or loss of appetite whatever. So, mothers of the world, if you don't want your baby set back by such trifles as the intraintestinal beetle, breastfeed.

Discretion

Wouldn't want to actually post these. Wouldn't want to offend anyone.

Fine, whatever, just not where anyone has to see it, OK?

Baby Jesus: a real baby

The Guardian of our Lord approves.

The Saints John ask, "Well what else would they be doing?"

St. John the Baptist and St. Andrew hang with the fam.

SS Peter, John, Cosmas, and Damian are totally handling it; what's your problem?

"You don't have to leave!" say SS Peter, Paul, Catherine, and Margaret.

St. Luke draws a picture!!!

Hmm, these angels don't look embarrassed at all.

Once they can walk up and ask, they're really too old. Everybody knows that.

Lutheran sympathizers are all for it.

Grownup Jesus suffers the little children to live their lives.

Keep it in the Cry Room though, right?

Be still, thou unregenerate part

I am often at my craziest when the baby is fixin' to wean. Why? I can't really say, because I'm Crazy.

Sister we are, yea twins we be,

Yet deadly feud 'twixt thee and me,

For from one father we are not.

Thou by old Adam wast begot ...

Quasimodo geniti

Here's something I wish someone had told me before my first baby was born: you can't nurse a newborn under a blanket. Depending on the skill level of the newborn, you may not be able to nurse a newborn wearing much at all. Even the ones who know what they're doing don't know that well. They have to be helped and watched. You'll have to add your neck and back and arms to your Sore list (even though I suppose you "shouldn't"). There's no holding a book in the other hand or carrying on a conversation for at least the first week or two, and not much for the first month. Those visions of picnics at the park or hanging out with everyone who comes to meet the new baby while Baby happily nurses away under the culturally mandatory blanket will happen, but not at first.

This is one way the postpartum experience is completely different for nursing moms than for formula moms, and probably a big reason many people give up. It is so lonely. And it's the hardest for first time moms, who are having to learn their end of it in addition to teaching the baby, and likely to be at home alone all day.

BUT--absolutely worth gutting it out.