back to work

The real work starts up again today. I've done some quick checking in with school work and my students over the past two weeks, but today the real work starts--I have a shiny new batch of papers to grade. Fortunately, my class is very small this semester--only fourteen students (not counting the disappearing student who is still on the roll but has not materialized in months--there's one in every class). I meet my students one last time on Monday. They are supposed to do evaluations. I wonder how many will actually show.

I'm recovering well (though I still use the progressive verb--there is recovering yet to do). Today I'm wearing some non-maternity jeans, which makes me feel better. Of course, I only have one pair of non-maternity jeans that fit right now, but I don't mind wearing them every day. It is no fun wearing maternity clothes when you're not pregnant. And breastfeeding is now going well--no more blisters, no more scabs. Which is good because as of this weekend, there is no more Vicadin!

Many things are on the horizon. Life changing things (as if my life were not changing enough already). There will likely be lots of blogging-things-out.

Birth story

Fair warning: this post is just what the title claims.

As I informed the blog many times, I was miserable pretty much throughout the whole pregnancy and especially in the last few weeks. Like I did with my first pregnancy, I had frequent Braxton Hicks contractions early on and other less pleasant labor symptoms for weeks before Annabelle was born. On the Friday before she was born, I felt like I might be going into labor and I went to the doctor. I was dilated to three and fifty percent effaced, but no baby coming. The pressure was pretty bad--I felt like she might just fall out any time. So I went home and continued to feel worse, and by Saturday morning I was having contractions 5-6 minutes apart. All day long. Saturday night I was up all night because in addition to the contractions I had a really bad ligament pain in my side that I could not talk through. But for me the worst thing is to go to the doctor and be sent back home, so I was not anxious to go anywhere until I knew I was having a baby. Sunday morning after egg hunting and candy and no way was I getting dressed to go to church feeling the way I did, my mother, who had been here all weekend, made me go to the hospital. That's right. Twenty-eight years old having my second child and my mother made me go to the hospital. And I went begrudgingly because I just knew I would be sent back home. I told my husband to go on to work and my parents took me to the hospital and we brought RB right along with us.

A nurse examined me and I was STILL dilated to three and fifty percent effaced and having all kinds of painful and regular contractions. But when the doctor arrived and she could feel the baby's hair through the amniotic sac, she granted me a reprieve and broke my water. I had hoped to have her on my own without induction, but when it came down to it, that was the best news I'd heard in weeks. Even better, they ordered the epidural right away, so by the time the hard contractions started, I already had pain relief. Hooray! After about an hour they gave me a Pitocin drip, and Annabelle was on her way FAST. The time between when the doctor broke my water and when Annabelle was born was about four hours--much better than my first delivery which took twelve. The epidural was perfect--no pain but I could feel every contraction--and I suddenly had to send my mom to get the nurse because I needed to push. When I started pushing her head was there right away, and I had to stop to wait for the doctor--not a fun ten minutes. Finally the doctor got there and Annabelle's head was out in no time. Shoulders were another story. Just like RB, Annabelle got stuck. Last time I was able to push her on out, but this time the doctor grabbed the baby by the head and the nurse stood up over me and pushed down on my belly with both hands to get her out. Thanks to the epidural, that didn't hurt, although it was a bit surreal, but I certainly felt it (feel it) later. Ouch.

Annabelle cried right away, and I got to hold her as soon as she was out. Shannon (husband) got to cut the cord, and then I nursed her for a few minutes. We missed all of those things with RB because she didn't cry when she was born and they took her away for hours to observe her breathing before bringing her back to me. The whole thing went very well and I even got on the phone myself to tell friends and family that she was born. I was elated that the labor was so fast and relatively painless. The first few days of recovery were rough, but I am doing much better now, except for very painful breastfeeding. Blisters, scabs, bleeding--bad stuff. I'm trying to work it out myself. I went to a lactation consultant for the same problems with RB and she said that I was doing everything right and there didn't appear to be a problem. Except, of course, for the scabs and bleeding, right? So we'll just press on and hopefully things will get better in the next few days. Thank heaven for Vicadin.

lactation room

My university just established a lactation room in my building. It's certainly not convenient for everyone in the (very very large) university, but it's a start. And not a bad place to start--the English department has been producing babies at an astounding rate lately.

Feminism and breastfeeding

After I wrote my post early today, a friend directed me to a new article by Jacqueline H. Wolf in the most recent issue of Signs, titled “What Feminists Can Do for Breastfeeding and What Breastfeeding Can Do for Feminists.” This is a great article that makes different but well taken points from the article I cite below. The emphasis of this article is not the questionable research methods leading to widespread breastfeeding advocacy but the interesting fact that although breastfeeding advocacy and ostensible support for breastfeeding is so pervasive on paper, the reality is that numbers of women actually breastfeeding in the United States remain low. This, Jacqueline Wolf argues, is due to a lack of actual support for breastfeeding women. This is a problem that deserves attention, and feminists should be heading up the charge to support women who choose to breastfeed. First, I want to elaborate a bit further on the argument in the previous post, and then I will whole-heartedly agree with some of what Wolf says.

Wolf cites many of the well-known studies that declare breastfeeding’s benefits for mother and child, and she makes the important point that long-term breastfeeding (about a year) is often necessary for those benefits to be seen. There still remains the problem of responsible science (which Wolf does acknowledge). Yes, children who are breastfed often have fewer health problems and grow to become healthier adults, but it is also true that (as mentioned below) women who choose to breastfeed based on health benefits are likely to make many other health-conscious choices for their children, all of which work together to contribute to a child’s health. Also, statistically women of higher socioeconomic status and higher education are more likely to breastfeed—those factors also contribute to a person’s physical and emotional health. To make truly informed choices, women need to be aware of these variables.

To agree with Wolf’s larger argument, feminists do need to act to help create more support for women who are breastfeeding or want to breastfeed. More lactation consultants should be available, and insurance companies should cover those services for new mothers. Pediatricians should support and encourage the decisions of mothers to breastfeed and should help women to understand the realities of “supply and demand” milk production. Many women believe inaccurately that they have low milk supplies (a real but actually pretty rare condition) and feel as if they can’t breastfeed because doctors fail to adequately explain to them the physiology of breastfeeding and the many methods of increasing milk production. Employers should recognize the importance of a woman’s choice to breastfeed and should make workplaces conducive to breastfeeding and pumping mothers, offering options like on-site daycare, pumping rooms, flexible hours, and paid maternity leave to support breastfeeding mothers. (Problems exist with the ways these policies are used already, though, as more women than men take advantage of part-time work and family leave, reinforcing gender polarity—it’s happening in European countries with such national policies.) Also, as legislation already protects women’s rights to breastfeed in public, changes in cultural attitudes need to follow so that women can actually feel comfortable nursing their children when the need arises without being ridiculed or kicked out of public places.

Finally, the formula companies who say “Breast is best” while they pass out free samples of formula to expectant mothers, should not have as much financial, and as a result, political sway as they do.

Whew—that’s as much as I can handle today. I’m sure there is more to come as this topic is of undeniable personal and social importance. Thanks so much to the women of iVillage who are reading and commenting on this topic here and on the message board.

What I have to say about breastfeeding

This post was inevitable on a board dedicated to issues of motherhood, so I am going to get to it right now. This past fall I met an amazing woman doing research on the politics of breastfeeding and when I heard a talk she gave and read some articles that her website directed me to, I felt a wave of gratitude and motivation to share my story. My first thought specifically was, I wish someone had told me this before my daughter was born. I'm not going to rehearse her arguments here, but her thesis is that many claims about the medical benefits of breastfeeding are based on irresponsible research practices, and the reluctance to criticize them is based on a politics of "hyper-maternalism." Her most important argument, I think, is that in the research that finds benefits to breastfeeding over formula feeding, researchers fail to control for some pretty obvious variables--specifically, if a woman chooses to breastfeed her child based on health benefits, she is most likely to make many other parenting choices based on health benefits. What I want to do here is to tell my story and to express why I felt so grateful for this professor's research, which I think every mother needs to hear.

Before I even got pregnant, I decided to breastfeed my child. I read article after article, book after book, took a class, visited a lactation consultant, all of which further convinced me of my choice. I expected a struggle because I had never even seen a woman breastfeed, and I had no one to go to for help and advice. And I was right-it was hard at first, but I found assistance at my doctor's office and in online communities that helped get me through that learning process. Things were going great! I knew that I was protecting my daughter from ear infections, allergies, and respiratory illnesses, and that her I.Q. would be 8 points higher because of my magic milk! At four months old, she had her first ear infection. By the time she was one year old that number had reached seven or eight or nine--I lost count! At six months old, she was hospitalized with pneumonia for three days, and I was terrified. It's the hardest thing I've gone through as a parent, watching my child struggle to breathe. Breastfeeding, I believed (and still do in a lot of ways) , was the most important parenting choice that I had made, and I was wholly committed to it. When I worked I pumped faithfully so that my daughter never had a drop of formula. My understanding of myself as a parent was wrapped up inextricably in breastfeeding, so that every time my child gained weight it was my personal achievement. And every time she got sick, it was my personal failure. I wasn't doing it right--maybe because I was pumping--she needed more time at my breast. Maybe I wasn't eating the proper foods myself--it's hard to work and care for an infant and also take care of myself at the same time. Why was she sick with exactly the illnesses that my milk was supposed to protect her from? The feelings are still so strong that I feel myself tearing up as I type this.

As I sat in the hospital room with my little baby hooked up to machines, I felt duped. I wanted to yell, "All of you told me this wasn't going to happen! I am doing everything I was told to do! What am I doing wrong?" I finally came to the understanding that breastfeeding was not the guarantee that literature on the subject promised, and that it was not the most important part of caring for my child. There were so many other things that I did for her that were also essential to her health and development. And it was not my fault that she was sick. I had to rethink all my reasons for breastfeeding and decide whether or not to continue.

I realized that when I removed the anxiety and the frustration of watching her get sick over and over, I really loved feeding her. When my baby was at my breast, we were the only two people in the world, and the love and connection between us was profound and unbreakable. I loved nursing my child. So I decided to continue, but for totally different reasons than when I started. I had learned to enjoy the experience of nursing and the bonding that came with it, with the anxiety of preventing illness removed. Her health became a separate concern, and I no longer felt as if I had failed her somehow.

So what I want to say to other mothers and those who want to be mothers is that breastfeeding is wonderful and rewarding. If I have another child, I will breastfeed him or her, too. But it is not a guarantee against illness. It is not essential to being a good mother. If you choose to bottle-feed, you are not a bad mother and should not feel guilty. And if you choose to breastfeed, you should understand that the science is not perfect--in fact, it is definitely flawed in a lot of ways. The decision should be one that is satisfying to the mother and the child and should not be based on guilt or unreasonable expectations.

Edited to add:
For reading on this issue, see Jules Law, "The Politics of Breastfeeding: Assessing Risk, Dividing Labor," Signs 25.2 (Winter 2000): 407-450.

Demeaning breastfeeding analogy

Breastfeeding mothers are not like cows. It is not okay to make that comparison. People do it all the time. Just to clarify, I am NOT a breastfeeding activist. But I am a mother who breastfed. And a human being.

This post was incited by a highly offensive and grossly ignorant article printed in a Canadian women's magazine. The article had the potential to make a positive statement about the real demands of breastfeeding and to offer support for women who choose not to breastfeed and who might be feeling guilt about that choice. Instead it made ridiculous generalizations and the frequent and very insulting comparison of mothers to milk cows. This is something that friends and family have actually said to me while I was breastfeeding--"Don't you feel like a cow?" No. I did not feel like a cow. Neither did my child look like a calf. Nor was I selling cartons of my breastmilk at Kroger.

I do not think this is an innocent comparison and it is not acceptable. The connotations of a milk cow are too closely related to the construction of motherhood in our culture to allow this. A cow is a working animal, a possession. It's value exists solely in the products of its body and the capacity for those products to sustain human lives. It is anonymous and expendable.

In The Bonds of Love, Jessica Benjamin addresses the problem of traditional cultural images of women that deny women subjectivity. The image of "mother" is one who gives up the autonomy of her body through pregnancy and lactation for the life of another. Susan Bordo, in her collection Unbearable Weight, has an essay about how once a woman becomes pregnant her body, her life, her desires all take second place to the life of the fetus. She is no longer a person with value as an individual. She is an incubator. Those currently in political power are passing legislation federally and in states across the country that remove all autonomy, subjectivity, and value from a woman once she becomes pregnant. This is all part of the same problem, and it is getting worse under the current leadership of our country.

I am a mother, and I am also Sarah--I am both at the same time. When I was pregnant I was both. When I was breastfeeding I was both. I give my child what she needs to thrive. I do the best I can to give the best care and all of my love to my child. But in that role of mother, I do not give up my identity and my agency as Sarah. And I want my daughter to grow up to understand that she is in possession of her body and her desires and that if she becomes a mother some day, she is still in possession of her body and her desires. The commitment and responsibility and experience and love of motherhood do not detract from that but become a part of the person that I am. That I am.

Never, ever compare a mother to a cow. It is never okay.

Edited for correction: The article I mentioned was printed in Maclean's, which is a news mag, not a women's mag.