Welcome to The Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival!
This post was written as part of The Breastfeeding Cafe’s Carnival. For more info on the Breastfeeding Cafe, go to www.breastfeedingcafe.wordpress.com
Like many young teachers, I thought caring for young children was pretty much the same whether you taught them in a classroom or raised them at home. I loved parent-teacher conferences where moms asked my advice and I welcomed encouraging them to strengthen educational practices at home. After all, I’d studied early childhood education, had taught in a preschool, I’d studied Jean Piaget, and was an experienced primary classroom educator. I was also 34 years old and had been to Europe three times already. What could I not know?
Then came Sam.
I’m not sure any amount of Piaget PowerPoints, developmental stages workshops, roomfuls of squirmy first-graders, or tours of London, Paris, and Rome, could have prepared me for my little four-week-early bundle of love. His birth connected me to generations of my own grandmothers, from Ohio and Michigan to rural Holland and the dark forests of southern Germany. Breastfeeding connected me to my peasant stock throughout northern Europe.
It was if becoming a mother woke me up from a deep ancestral sleep, reached back to my grandmothers, as my mother had not nursed me or my brothers. Now, three sons later, I’m fully awake and dedicated to helping mothers around the world breastfeed.
But PowerPoints, workshops, classes, and tours weren’t there for mothering. It was breastfeeding that showed the way. From trusting my instincts to soothing emotional storms, nursing my babies taught me everything. The memories and nursing instincts teach me still. I didn’t know the intensity of mothering, but my own body and my mothering ancestry took me to school.