Kathleen, Queen of the Desert

What could I not know? From teacher to mother.

admin — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:35:20 +0000

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.

The really, really well-made frame carrier

admin — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:34:15 +0000

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

There is no baby monitor like keeping baby next to you all the time. And, although I had infant pouches and Over-the-Shoulder slings throughout my little-boy-raising career, another useful carrying tool for me was the frame “backpack” carrier. My husband and I were both committed to raising an outdoorsy family in our home along the Pecos River in southern New Mexico, a treasure of caves, mountains, and deserts. The carrier joined that commitment with keeping our babies close.

The frame carrier was high quality with thick adjustable padded straps, a steel frame, and a comfortable, adjustable fit for both the short wife andthe tall husband. You could pull out a steel stand, set the carrier on the ground, and baby could continue sleeping sitting up.

Sometimes mothers feel tied to a house with a clean floor for their crawlers and toddlers. I found that a variety of pouches, slings, and carriers freed me to wander the dirtiest, prickliest, and muddiest ground while still caring for my little ones. Through cleaning garages, camping in snow and rain, and walks through forests and prickly deserts, the carrier helped me be the mother I wanted to be.

Shift-work parenting

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 15:27:01 +0000

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

Parenting doesn’t always split into daytime and nighttime. My early parenting challenge was my husband’s shift work at a New Mexico potash mine. “Shift work” means rotating shifts, not just one shift throughout. Tom would work day shift for a week, have a day and a half off, then work swing shift for a week, then have a day and a half off, and then work graveyard shift. We’d get a glorious four days off before day shifts began again.

This took some marital and parental adjusting, but I found that I liked graveyard the best. I’d prepare Tom’s “breakfast” at 10 PM, welcome him home for “dinner” at 8 AM. We installed ceiling fans to make sure there was white noise during Tom’s sleep times. Once Tom left for work each night, I found having Sam in bed with me seemed the most natural nursing/sleeping arrangement. For the other shifts, however, I used our nursery crib for Sam so I could continue sleeping with Tom. I’d even installed little springs on the crib feet to help bounce Sam to sleep. That worked occasionally for Sam, but I was a wreck.

After a year of La Leche League meetings where I kept hearing about family beds and co-sleeping, I finally found the courage to tell Tom this is what I needed to make sure everyone in the family was getting more sleep. Our bedroom was big enough to lay a queen mattress next to a double bed mattress, and Sam and I were happier and sleeping no matter what shift Tom worked. The nursery became the play room.

I am embarrassed that it took me a year to figure out this family sleeping arrangement. That I was too timid to admit how tired I was. I am embarrassed that my sweet little first son had to be experimented on and get less sleep. (His two brothers slept in large family beds as soon as they came home from the hospital.) But regrets are part of a mother’s journey. I hope I will be able to encourage my sons to surround their future wives and babies with calm and many mattresses, no matter what shifts they work.

Nursing a toddler in traction

admin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 15:14:40 +0000

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

My little two-year-old nursling Eddie was in traction and a spika cast for six days. He had a spiral fracture of the femur from jumping off a friends’ couch in Albuquerque while we were watching the Rose Parade on New Years Day 1988. Taken to the emergency room with our friends’ paperback books lashed together for a splint, Eddie had to endure too much handling, too many X-rays, and too many doctors and nurses.

What he did not have to endure was separation from his mother or a break in nursing.

The hospital bed was narrow, but I nursed him on that bed while Eddie’s leg and hips were attached to weights and cords, and then again after his spika cast was added. I was allowed to eat whatever I wanted from the cafeteria because I was a breastfeeding mother, and I made sure Eddie got the foods he wanted (such as Cheerios at midnight). I am sure my attention, nursing, and communication made our stay and his recovery go really well. I created a series of 20 cartoons portraying how Eddie had broken his leg, and I taped these all around his room. The doctors enjoyed the cartoons and asked Eddie to further describe his accident.

Among the gadgets that went with his hospital bed, Eddie found the NURSE button which patients are to push when they want an attendant’s attention. (Those patients who didn’t have a mother 24/7, sleeping in the next bed, monitoring intake and output, and entertaining said patient.) Assuming that button was a BREASTFEEDING button, he pushed it frequently with glee.

After the six days at the hospital, we drove Eddie five hours south to our home, where he slept with us, lay on the table to eat, and took sponge baths. But he never had separation from his mother or a break in nursing. I’m sure that saved both of us.

In touch with the ancients

admin — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:46:13 +0000

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

As the family genealogist, I have always had a strong sense of personal history. Not just the Dutch, German, English, and Scottish names on the charts I’ve filled out since 1963, but the living, breathing work of families. The struggles and migrations. The arguments and separations. The marriages and divorces. The babies who lived and the babies who died.

Breastfeeding for me was a connection back into my bloodlines. I connected with the many, many women who bore children and nursed their babies. Women perhaps with no marriage or baptismal church records. Women in Bavaria, the cattle herders in the Black Forest, the farmers of central England. Far back beyond the Napoleonic Wars, my Dutch ancestors who were so poor they had no surnames.

I felt a prolactin of knowing that I was connecting with those maternal bloodlines–a community of women even the Family History Center may never be able to help me trace. I carried on the biological and historical function of women as breastfeeding mothers in my ancestral family. Like they were all watching and encouraging.

Six hours apart won’t hurt, will it?

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:19:41 +0000

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.

What could they have been doing to my little boy that afternoon for six hours? I’d just given birth four weeks early, his little almost six-pound body slithering out of me like a magical fish. Those blue eyes staring out at us. Twenty-seven years later, I can see them still. Our Indian doctor cooing and chirping about how good baby looked. My husband crying in his wrinkly blue paper clothes.

What was I not supposed to see? What was I not supposed to know? Swallowing my anxiety, I let the nurses wheel me to my semi-private room without my precious little Sam. For those six hours, my husband and I talked like mad people with our hair on fire about baby’s future, our future, the world’s future. Our previous lives had disappeared.

At last a nurse brought Sam in, all wrapped and capped. I was given a bicycle horn nursing pump and told to wipe my nipples with an alcohol toilette. How I survived all that I do not know, but I was determined to nurse him no matter how early he was, how separated he was, how engorged I was, how sore I was, and how ignorantly treated by the staff I was.

Even with all that reading during pregnancy, the things I didn’t know! With only one La Leche League meeting under my belt, the demands I didn’t make! The experience I missed! The birth plans I didn’t expand to include first-nursing instructions! How much more easily nursing would have gone with my first son if I’d said “I want to nurse him right away!”

Sam’s little brothers were nursed right after birth in delivery rooms warmed up so I could breastfeed immediately without all that wrapping and capping.

Separation at birth does matter. Nurse early. Spread the word.

Do I need fancy nursing clothes to nurse in public?

admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:56:15 +0000

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.

Fancy? A $40 camisole from Motherwear? Some $50 fancy-flap blouses? A $120 nursing dress? Well, no. You can nurse quite successfully in many kinds of normal clothes, like a T-shirt, a stretchy camisole, or a tank top and a light shirt for a bit more coverage. I found, however, that a few specially designed nursing tops and nightgowns helped me feel pretty, special, and comfortable during my nursing career.

Nursing clothes? It’s very possible you already have all the “nursing clothes” you need already in your closet. Maternity tops can often be adapted for nursing. Many of your tank tops and T-shirts may do just fine. A seamstress (and that may be you) can also make flaps, slits, or other adaptations to an existing wardrobe. Some moms just add the discretion of a sling or light blanket for public nursing circumstances.

Which public? Are you at your in-laws’ home or at a mall? At a swimming pool or at your best friend’s house? At a fast food place or in the grocery store? All public places are not the same, and you may want to limit yourself, especially at first, to those public places where you feel most confident. From experience, I’d say that anytime there are younger, inexperienced and young nonparents working (say, a fast food place or a public pool,) you are more likely to encounter confusion and ignorance about the legal right of a woman to nurse wherever women are legally able to be.

From the top or from the bottom? Nursing from the top seems less discreet for many women as it exposes the shoulders and chest. Nursing from the bottom, however, can include a blanket, boppy, or sling for support and modesty. I found it enormously helpful to nurse in front of a mirror at home and assess what was hanging out and what different ensembles worked best.

But how can I get baby to latch modestly?. Getting baby latched on is often the trickiest move and can reveal the most skin. After that, you can often face back towards your public and be quite discreet. Try all your moves in front of your home mirror–or in front of your partner or a friend–and find what clothing and positions work best.

Extended nursing in public? It’s true that nursing an older child can be easier at home, since extended nursers are often more active and distracted, making nursing more difficult to manage in public. But that’s entirely up to you and your baby. The emotional ups and downs and boo-boos of an active toddler often require nursing sessions for calming. Just be aware that the two-month-old who lies fairly passively while you nurse at Olive Garden on a date with your partner may turn into quite the acrobat months later and cause concern and embarrassment at that same Olive Garden. Do notice that weaned or nonbreastfeeding toddlers at restaurants also require lots of attention: the attention and embarrassment can be more about the challenges of managing toddlers in public, not nursing.

Public nursing as public outreach? Nursing our babies in public is a beautiful opportunity for continuing sex education, mothering outreach, and advertising good health. Especially at the gynecologist’s or pediatrician’s office! Take every opportunity to nurse at your health practitioner visits. I nursed my sons many times during shots, examinations, and doctor-patient discussions. Even during my own gynecological visits. It shows your confidence and competence, plus it opens a dialogue about the normal course of breastfeeding. Other mothers’ pacifiers and bottles shouldn’t be the only parenting tools your doctor sees.

The baby-friendly community vs. the deserted island

admin — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 18:45:59 +0000

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

Mothers sometimes say they wish they could just go to a deserted island while they’re nursing their babies. How could this be? Wouldn’t they be lonely? Wouldn’t they need other people to help them? Wouldn’t they want to talk to everyone about their beautiful babies?

Yes, mothers would get lonely, but being alone often appeals to mothers because so often they’re criticized and reprimanded. Told to nurse in a bathroom stall. Asked to leave a restaurant or use a blanket on a plane or pressured to wean when they and baby are not ready. Made to feel unwanted in social settings. Embarrassed for feeding their children in the most natural and healthy way every known.

Yes, mothers need other people, but sometimes other people are not always helpful. From mothers and mothers-in-law to sisters, aunts, female friends, and perfect strangers, a nursing mother might get real and perceived criticism and pressure.

Yes, mothers would miss talking to other people about their beautiful babies, but they certainly wouldn’t miss the unsolicited advice, criticism, and ignorant comments from people who have never breastfed or have forgotten what hard work young motherhood can be.

Mothers don’t really want to be marooned or cast away on a deserted island. What they really want is community celebration of baby. Starting with their own families, a nursing mother needs support and appreciation. She needs to be fed good foods and drink healthy drinks. A breastfeeding mom wants love and affection, help with life chores, and a “paycheck” of affection and attention.

A baby-friendly community surrounds its youngest citizen–and the mother who nurses that citizen–with love, care, compassion, and practical help. A mother-friendly community protects and supports women doing the most important job of their lives.

Women sitting in cars

admin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:13:56 +0000

Have you recently been on the road with a useless woman? A woman who thinks she never has to serve the driver, clean a window, check the oil, or pump gas herself? Was it because I was alone on my latest 1,300 mile road trip and noticed how most women sit like sticks in the passenger seat at a gas stop? If there’s one man on a road trip, is he somehow mandated to be the one outside pumping gas? Is it me, or do most women in cars sit like queens while the man is out in the weather taking care of business?

If you’re a man, this is what you need to teach your daughters and expect your girlfriends and wives to do. If you’re a woman, this is what you need to teach yourself and expect your daughters and girlfriends to do.

PIT STOP 101
* Learn where the release latch is for the gas cap door . . . no matter whose car you’re in.
* Know the grade gas the car owner (and that might be you) thinks best for the vehicle.
* Pump the gas.
* Pay the bill.
* Check tire pressures.
* Inside at the mini mart, buy snacks and gum, coffee, good maps: whatever the driver needs.
* Be friendly and courteous with mini-mart clerks. You need these people.
* Wash the windows, front and back headlamps, and license plates. Evil, dark streams of residue may drip from your cleaning, but maybe rain will take care of that later.
* Get a blue (don’t know why they’re always blue) paper towel and clean the side and rearview mirrors. Better, carry some Windex sheets.
* Learn how to pop, keep open, and drop a hood safely.
* Check the fluids. Buy a quart of oil if you need to. Buy some windshield washer fluid if you need to. Better, carry some of both in the car you’re riding in (and that might be yours). A roll of paper towels is useful for checking the oil and cleaning everything.
* Walk the dog, check on the cat, take children to the restroom whether they say they need to or not. Everybody needs to start each driving leg with an empty bladder.

ON THE ROAD in the PASSENGER SEAT 101
* The driver is god, serve the driver. Navigate, find and change CDs, pour coffee, slice apples, or manage the driver’s hamburger so god can keep his/her eyes on the road. Whatever god needs.
* Clean up and organize the front seats, foot wells, door side pockets, and dashboard. No errant golf balls, food wrappers, water bottles, wads of old gum, or friendly dogs should distract god.
* Check, clean, and maintain the glove box. Is the registration there? Insurance card? Some actual gloves?
* Maybe the passenger seat isn’t where you’re most useful to god. Sitting in a back seat can be enormously helpful to a driver, especially if there are children (and they can be any age), contentious or high-maintenance adults. If you’re not driving, you’re not god or the queen.
* Bring maps, use a compass or GPS, learn to navigate, communicate well to the driver.
* If god is a car slob, leave god’s car better than you found it.

No more useless women on road trips. There’s lots to do and lots of place to go.

103 minutes of Eastern drek

admin — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:01:24 +0000

Film review: GERRY

“A triumph!” “Provocative!” “Visually spectacular!” “One of the year’s 10 best!” (best what is not specified) were the blurbs on the back of this film I got from the library. The exclamation points alone should have tipped me off that this was going to be outrageously bad, and famously Bostonian Matt Damon and Casey Affleck should have been ashamed to have had anything to do with this crap. Shame on them that they shared writing credits with director Gus Van Sant. I’m guessing the three of them were driving out to Wendover one July with beers in their laps, looked around and thought, “Wow! A guy could get pretty lost out here!” and then somebody started writing stuff down, and voila, this drek.

Plot: Uncommunicative Eastern idiots, apparently in good enough shape to survive without water for several days, get lost and make lots of bad decisions (like hiking away from wood and water sources onto salt flats) in an unnamed hostile Western wilderness

Film title: Gerry (supposedly after the pet name they each they call each other, but that wasn’t too clear)

Theme: Eastern US men’s idiocy

Setting: A nameless western wilderness that includes Elko, Nevada, and the gorgeous wastes of Death Valley and Bonneville flats, Utah.

Genre: Hikers being incredibly stupid noir (and I’m being generous with the noir part)

After a lot of sitting silently in a car, Damon and Affleck inexplicably start hiking a trail marked “Wilderness Trail.” Why the BLM or a state or national park or wilderness area would post that generic title on some trail which probably had a perfectly good actual name I can’t say. They might have had maybe a bottle of water when they started, but otherwise no backpack and maybe one sweatshirt between them. I could have watched this disaster a second time to catch more details, but I didn’t want to writhe in twisted agony a second time.

I wondered if this was Van Sandt’s first trip beyond New Jersey or wherever he’s from. I promised myself I wouldn’t Google him or look at any information about Gerry before writing this.

After walking through high desert scrub (maybe the Elko, Nevada, part) and then leaping to Death Valley barrenness (I recognized those dried popcorny mud hills immediately), and then venturing out onto our iconic Bonneville Salt Flats, these two Eastern ignoramuses realize they’re pretty, well, lost. Why they left the areas where they could get lots of dry wood I don’t know. I kept waiting for a Blair Witch-kind of scene going nuts with each other when they realize how screwed they are, but no. How they knew how to build a fire I don’t know. Maybe that’s hardwired into even an Easterner. Maybe they’d been Boy Scouts. Not great Boy Scouts, but. Why they walked out onto barren land when they were already dying of thirst I also don’t know. Why nobody was looking for them after finding their car parked at the trailhead . . . well, you get the dismal cinematic picture.

The end has a Brokeback Mountainy kind of scene where I guess Matt Damon was choking his friend to death rather than dying together on the salt flats. Damon then walks away from Affleck’s body, sees I-80, gets picked up by a guy and his son in an SUV, and sits expressionless in lots of sunburn makeup till the end credits. That’s when I saw that the scrub brush hiking must have been near Elko.

I end this pan with the words written on the film case by the three men’s agents or maybe their girlfriends, “. . . this uncommonly compelling and starkly visualized film is a must-see motion picture that has earned the overwhelming praise of critics nationwide!” Again with the exclamation point. I’d never felt like more of a Westerner looking down my nose.