1 Mother 2 Another

A friend of mine recently brought her new
son – born seven weeks early, and fresh from the NICU –
home amidst much joy and celebration. The celebration was
short-lived when she had to return to the hospital a few days later
because of blood in his stool. After a few tests, they determined
the cause: a dairy allergy.


Newborn food allergies are surprisingly common, though many people
don’t know about them. Babies subsist wholly on breastmilk or
formula, of course, but we all know how much can be passed through
breastmilk to a baby, and foods that may cause allergies are no
exception. Something like ninety percent of newborn
“colic” is caused by a food allergy, usually a reaction
to dairy or soy.

My thanks to Fats Waller for the title -



As I mentioned earlier, I weaned Cora (sort of accidentally) over
the weekend, and there I was agonizing over my tender boobs and
getting all teary-eyed at that fact that my baby no longer needed
me. And then I realized –


Hey, I could have a margarita right now.

When I first began looking at motherhood
and making decisions, I knew I wanted to breastfeed. I decided
I’d nurse for a year, and then begin weaning naturally. By a
year, nursings had tapered off to snuggle times like early morning
or naps or bedtime, and both girls were getting most of their
nutrition from food.


With Maddie, I went easy on the weaning. I had a nebulous goal of
18 months, but didn’t want to force the issue since I
didn’t have to. At 15 months, I forced the nap weaning
because we had a big trip coming up, but otherwise let everything
end naturally. Right around the same time Maddie dropped her
morning nursing, and we were down to once a day by the time I was
pregnant with Cora.

Since I’ve now nursed almost three
continuous years, stopping for a few brief glorious months while I
was pregnant with Cora and Maddie was weaned, I’ve got the
nursing thing down – no fumbling hands, no tired arms,
nothing. I can get into position in seconds – I’m
telling you, I’m a machine. I’ve got it down to a
science.


And let me say before I go any further that Cora is, for all
intents and purposes, weaned: she’s only nursing a couple
times a day, all snuggle or sleep-related. She’s got the
early morning nursing, which usually (hopefully) gets her back to
sleep for another precious hour; she has a nursing at nap time; and
finally a nursing for bedtime. I settle in the chair, draw the
boppy around my waist, nestle Cora on my lap, and pick up my
library book. My routine’s a well-worn groove, and apparently
I’m not the only one who’s got it down cold.


It seems Cora’s on to me, and knows exactly what I do while
nursing, because she’s been a bit clingy and needy the past
few weeks and wanting to nurse for comfort. How do I know this, you
might ask?


She brings me my library book.

Cora’s 14 months now, and as
misfortune of all kids with older siblings, I keep comparing her to
where Maddie was at the same age. There a deeper blog about that
somewhere out there, but today I’m thinking of one milestone
in particular – nursing.


On some levels Maddie and Cora at 14 months are much the same;
they’d both been pretty much weaned from nursing for meals by
12 months old, and it’s clear that from then on out the
nursing’s been all about routine and comfort. Somewhere
between 9 and 12 months nursing went from a mealtime thing to a
snacking/sleeping/comfort thing, with actual meals and snacks
creeping into those nursing slots. By the time we hit a year with
Maddie, she was down to four times a day – early morning,
when she’d go back to sleep for a couple more hours; nursing
when she woke up; nursing for naptime; and nursing for bedtime. On
paper, Cora’s been very similar, but in practice it’s a
bit more difficult to pin down.

Cora’s nearly five months (!) now,
and as she becomes increasingly alert and aware of her
surroundings, it’s become increasingly difficult to get her
to concentrate on her meal.


I remember witnessing this stage for the first time with a friend
of mine: she brought her 4 ½ month-old over for a playdate
with then-8-week-old Maddie, and we chatted while the girls stared
at each other on the carpet. When Lily got hungry, my friend began
nursing. After only a few seconds into it, Lily began pulling off,
looking around and smiling at everyone; only when my friend put a
pillow up to block the baby’s view did she get down to eating
in earnestness. Since I had a 2-month-old who at as if she’d
never had breastmilk before and thought it was the best meal EVER,
I couldn’t imagine competing for her attention.


Then, of course, Maddie hit around 4 months and began acting the
same way, and now it’s Cora’s turn.

Many of you have probably seen baby
bottles and sippy cups in the news recently; several studies have
come out questioning the safety of BPA, a chemical used to make the
polycarbonate plastic that makes up several major bottles and sippy
cups. Last week a medical journal published a study done by 38
scientists who believe BPA poses a “significant” health
risk.


As well, a federal panel of the National Institute of Health
recently said there is “some concern” the chemical
could cause behavioral and neurological problems in young
children.

I am allergic to poison ivy. I mean,
really allergic. I mean, a shot of cortisone allergic.


Lucky me, we’ve got a thoughtful back-yard neighbor who has
trained it to grow over our back wall and it cascades luxuriantly
down, intermingling coyly with our English ivy. This year’s
crop is especially lush, spanning a good ten feet and sporting
roots as thick as Brian’s forearm.


I try to avoid the stuff, but since a few years ago when I had to
get two cortisone shots in four months and my dermatologist tersely
ordered me to not get within 20 feet of that $#@# (his word) wall,
I really try to avoid it. Mostly I just stare and seethe.


But since Maddie’s become mobile that poison bouquet just
taunts me. I’m paranoid a stray leaf will blow towards the
lawn and my baby will be miserable for weeks. And now that
we’ve got two kids and a wading pool, I decided enough was
enough. It was gonna be me, or that stupid poison ivy.


And by me, I mean my husband.

Keeping breastfeeding in the national eye,
a Maine woman just received a settlement from Fossil Inc. after
they banned her from breastfeeding on their New York showroom
floor. They offered the woman $3,600 to avoid a lawsuit they would
most certainly have lost, since New York laws protect a
woman’s right to breastfeed “in any location, public or
private, where the mother is otherwise authorized to be."
Apparently they’d removed her from the showroom where she was
meeting with a salesperson when she began to nurse, refused to
allow her to return to the showroom, and cautioned her when she
scheduled a later return trip that breastfeeding was forbidden.

You know how, when you have a second child, you think about how much money you’ll save because you’ll be able to use all your old stuff again?

Ok, set that thought aside for a second and think about this: remember how, when you stopped nursing your first child, you swore you’d gleefully burn all your nursing bras, so much did you hate those stretched-out, fugly, sour milk-stained things?

See where I’m going with this?

Let me start with the one thing I DIDN’T forget about nursing: at first, it hurts. And all those books that talk about the joy and peace and easiness of nursing forget to mention that fact. I’d even go so far as to say that most of those books actually make it sound like you’re doing something wrong if it hurts. And sure, there’s lots that can go wrong that causes nursing to be painful. But I have yet to meet a woman who didn’t go through a week of sore, cracked nipples with a newborn, proper latch or not.

So believe me, I was prepared for the pain, since I’d vowed the first time around to never forget that tidbit. But there was plenty about nursing I didn’t remember, including:

Two things:


1. Colic


2. Mastitis


Let the good times roll!

I think Maddie’s weaned, and it just
sort of happened.


For the past few months Maddie has been pretty much weaned anyway;
she’s been only nursing to go to bed, and then if she wakes
up crying in the middle of the night. She’d been a rather
good sleeper this fall, so it was only a nursing once or twice a
month in the wee hours.

So all jokes about weaning plans aside, I did something “unscheduled” recently.

I weaned Maddie off of her nap nursing, cold turkey.

I’ve been wanting to let Maddie wean naturally – lose interest, transition to other rituals, etc. But with a vacation looming (read – no guarantee of ritual availability) it seemed prudent to make sure Maddie didn’t need to nurse to go down for a nap.

So last Monday, I went through everything up to the nursing, hugged her tightly, and put her in her crib.

She started wailing, of course, looking at me with confusion, betrayal, and hurt. At least, that’s what it looked like to my mommy eyes.

Whereas she used to be put in her crib still awake and go to sleep without a fuss, she rolled over, stood up, and ran screaming towards the door where Mommy was beating a cowardly retreat. I stood outside the door and began watching the clock.

Yes, I know, been-there-done-that moms everywhere are probably still laughing at me for my naïve expectations that Plan 1 or Plan 2 would actually work.

Or, for that matter, that I still hold out hope of Maddie following any plan at all.

So here I am, back at the old drawing board, but I swear, some of it’s not my fault! For one thing, it turns out my daughter has a cow’s milk allergy. For another- well, I guess that’s the only thing I had no control over.

Where am I now? We’re down to three nursings a day – early morning, naptime, and bedtime. And since it’s not a requirement nutritionally and doesn’t interfere with any part of our day, I almost consider her weaned.

Almost. 

This week is World
Breastfeeding Week  and the subject seems to be everywhere. The
morning shows, the evening news, nighttime newsmagazines, all seem to be
talking about breastfeeding.

Granted, there are a few hot items
to cover right now. Babytalk, a magazine for parents, ran a
picture on the cover of a mother nursing and had 25% of its readers,
mostly parents, complain and call the cover offensive. CNN ran an article 
about it, if you’re interested, or you can simply hit pretty much any
parenting blog – try Dot
Moms or Daddytypes 
to read a couple takes on it – and get a good summary. One magazine
subscriber was so offended she ran the cover through a shredder, lest
her 12-year-old son see it and be inflamed with lust.

This, of
course, is coming hard on the heels of the national ad campaign that
likened not nursing to riding a mechanical bull while pregnant, so
harmful is formula for your baby. And it’s in the midst, too, of some
pretty high-profile protests by self-styled “Lactivists” staging
nurse-ins to promote breast-feeding in public. There's a great article
profiling the whole "nursing in public" thing; click here to
read more.

And as the battle of the boob heats up, I can’t help
but feel sorry for the people caught in the cross-fire: the new mommies.
On the one hand you’ve got moms telling you it’s going to cause your
child irreparable harm if you don’t nurse, and that you should be proud
of nursing and willing to flaunt it in public; on the other, you’ve got
people with the legitimate complaint that the recent baby boom in major
metropolitan areas like New York has resulted in the takeover of, well,
everywhere by new families; it’s not enough now to have a kid-friendly
space – it has to be kid-centered. (Click here 
to read a good article on that tangent). Stroller Manifestos banning
babies from bars at 2 a.m. are being posted in local clubs (well, duh, I
say) while defiant mommies are sitting down in the middle of Victoria’s
Secret to protest the removal a couple months ago of a nursing mother
from a store. 

Ok, remember how I said I had a weaning
plan ?

New plan, for a couple of reasons.

On
the introducing cow’s milk front, I was having no luck last week. I was
offering it before, during and after a meal, either in a straw cup or a
“grown-up” cup. I offered it cold, not wanting her to expect Mommy to be
heating her milk every day for the next seven years. She’d take a few
sips, grimace, and that was it for the rest of the time period.

I
then tried offering it cold, in a bottle, right before a traditional
nursing time. I thought she’d be sleepy, used to drinking white stuff
from a bottle . . . and just putting it in a bottle was a compromise for
me, let me tell you. I’m reluctant to get her associating cow’s milk
with a bottle – she only takes two bottles a week as it is, and I’m not
too keen on keeping her on a bottle at this age anyway. But I thought it
was worth a shot.

Alas, it was not. 

I realize that experienced mommies everywhere are laughing simply at the
title of this entry – as if I can make a plan for this sort of thing and
stick to it. And more importantly, make Maddie stick to it.

But
she’s a year old now (I can almost say that without stuttering) and
we’re at the date we planned to begin weaning, way back when we were
young and innocent and thought babies cared about plans.

Our
pediatrician said at her one-year visit that we want her to be getting
most of her nutrition now from solids, not liquids, and gave her
blessing to both introduce cow’s milk and wean Maddie off breast milk.
She cautioned us against giving her too much milk, not wanting her to
fill up so much on cow’s milk that she didn’t eat a balanced meal. But
otherwise, we’re good to go. 

Last week’s poll focused on breastfeeding: how long you did or didn’t
breastfeed your child. Most moms answered in the “12-18 months”
category, while the rest were all over the map. This was one of the
least-voted polls so far, and I’m guessing it’s a combination of two
things: first, many of us (myself included) are still in the early
stages and haven’t weaned yet. And second, a lot of women feel exposed
talking about how long they breastfed; they fear judgment and lectures.

I’m
not here to lecture anyone on her breastfeeding choices. It’s no secret
from my website that I support breastfeeding and believe it’s superior
to formula in terms of physical benefits, ease of access, and financial
cost. Doctors strongly urge you to nurse your child for at least six
months to give your baby the most benefits as far as allergy resistance,
a strong immune system, the list goes on. Since doctors also say that
baby’s primary nutrition for the first year should come from either
breastmilk or formula, my goal with Madeleine was to never need to
supplement with formula; I’d nurse her until she didn’t need it for
nutritional reasons, and assumed I’d be weaning around one year.

In an ideal world, you spent the nine months before your baby was born
staying in shape, keeping your heart strong, keeping your muscles
stretched, and learning good posture for nursing, holding an infant, and
so forth.

But let’s say we’re too late for preventative measures.

No, let’s be more honest than that. Let’s say you spent the nine months
pre-baby working 12-hour days like a maniac, convinced you will never be
a part of the paid workforce again. You ran yourself ragged finding the
exact right shade of red gingham crib sheets, walking through miles of
malls despite your aching back and swollen ankles. You reveled in the
fact that it was the one time in your life you could gain weight and no
one would think worse of you, so you stopped caring if your hamstrings
were both strong and supple; who would notice under that pregnancy
schmata? At the end of the day, faced with the choice of hitting the gym
for 50 laps in the pool or hitting the couch for 50 re-runs of Friends,
guess which one won out. When you dragged yourself home at 10 o’clock at
night, the last thing you wanted to do was spend twenty minutes
stretching. And Kegels? Frankly, you never could figure them out and
they don’t seem to matter much since you’re peeing every 20 minutes
anyway.

Stop me if this sounds familiar.