Silicon Valley Moms Blog

To the Breastfeeding and Other Bad Drivers out there....

The breastfeeding, driving mom has certainly caught everyone's attention recently.  She makes Britney Spears' driving habits seem FAA-approved in comparison!  I won't go on about what a stupid thing she did; wittier minds than mine have already done that, and besides, what's the use?  She's totally unrepentant about it, so they might as well suspend her license and be done with it.

But I say, why stop with her?  There are so many other bad drivers deserving of a verbal spanking.  This bad weather seems to have drawn out everyone's worst driving habits -- and my worst moods.  Here's what I'd like to say to these people:

Operation Cry-It-Out Has Commenced

Last night marked the beginning of Operation Cry-It-Out in the Maynard household.  And boy are we tired.  But the Operation must continue and failure is NOT an option.

Our first child is and always has been a sleeping champ, so sleep training was never a necessity.  Then baby number two arrived.  Actually, she was sleeping 12 hours a night by the time she was four months old.  Then, when she was 8 months, we went on a month-long vacation.  She shared a room with us while we were away and it was the beginning of the end.  The kid has not been able to get through the night since.

Breastfeeding At Facebook - Protest at Palo Alto, Facebook Headquarter Office

(VIDEO OF THE FACEBOOK NURSE-IN PROTEST BELOW)

I had a really, REALLY hard breastfeeding my first born.  She had horrific colic and simply would not latch.  I tried going to a lactation consultant.  I spent hours listening to her cry as I shoved her against my breast.  I spoke to every friend and relative who knew anything (and everything) about breastfeeding. I even prayed to the breastfeeding Gods to make this child latch! And at the end of the day, I gave up and pumped (around the clock) for three LONG, hellish months.  After these three months of feeling like a cow hooked up to a pump, I gave up.  And yes, I felt like a failure.

With daughter number two, I was determined to learn how to breastfeed.  Yes, I NEEDED TO LEARN... since my first experience was so difficult.  And you know what, my second daughter came out of the womb, immediately latched and... voila.... I successfully nursed her for the next sixteen months. 

SUCCESS!

Two different children.  Two different outcomes.  Two completely different experiences.  But one thing in common:  I did not take one single picture of my experience breastfeeding.  I am not really sure why.  I was insanely private about nursing, covering up in public, making decisions not to go out for a while because I was embarrassed to show my nipple.  Embarrassed what other people (and society) would think. Embarrassed about exposing my body. As I look back now, I think to myself, what ashame.... because nursing and breastfeeding is so natural and so beautiful. I wish that I had a place and a community to embrace me while I was giving the gift of health and life to my babies. I certainly hope my daughters won't feel as insecure about their bodies and nursing in public as their mother and that it simply would be a natural and normal process......

OPEN THREAD: Breastfeeding - Share Your Stories

We are so excited that breastfeeding is a topic so many moms are jumping to talk about. Infact, we are even receiving emails from our readers sharing their breastfeeding stories with us. So READERS, here is your chance to share your story. This post is an open thread so feel free to share your breastfeeding experience with us by SUBMITTING A COMMENT BELOW. We would enjoy hearing from you.

Extreme Breastfeeding: Only Attempt With a LLL Friend

Before I get to deciphering the "LLL" acronym, I have to say that I am writing this post with a lot of scary backflashes.  The first four months of being a new mom were hellish for me because breastfeeding was so difficult.    I often refer to that dark passage into motherhood as being pushed past my limits, going beyond what I could handle.

It's not that I wasn't prepared to breastfeed.  Like a dutiful student, I took a breastfeeding class at the hospital.   Within two hours, I could whip that baby doll in a cradle hold, football clutch, and even cross-cradle positions, all within 10 seconds flat.   I was pregnant with my first baby when I was thirty-four, so I had witnessed plenty of nursing sessions from girlfriends who had children earlier in life.  And because my cheeks felt a bit flushed at the sight of a baby suckle at my friend's boobs, I even went to attend a few La Leche League meetings before my due date, to get acclimated to the whole nursing experience.  With nursing children all around me in a kumbaya circle, from newborns up to 3 year olds running over to lift mommy's shirt to "comfort" feed, I was quickly introduced to a community of very experienced women who were hard-core nursing moms.

So, it came as a blow out from left field, when after a very triumphant first nursing session in the delivery room (YES!), that I found myself practically nursing upside down, laying back in my glider.  Yes.  My husband had to lift and tilt my rocker off the ground and place a couple of big fat pillows on the other end, so that I could nurse, inclined at a 45 degree incline.

Reluctant Lactivist

I found out sometime last year that I'm a lactivist or at least the NY Times told me so.

Ironically when the article came out, much of my breastfeeding was a very private affair.  You see, I was almost exclusively pumping due to my son's health problems.  And there's really no discreet way to pump in public. Only Madonna wears huge breastfeeding horns in public.

My son would breastfeed once a day but only in the most private of circumstances.  A dream (not a wet one) of those who would ban breastfeeding from public places.

But I never felt dirty or embarrassed breastfeeding. I've never received any comments or dirty looks or been asked to stop. Most of the time the world seemed oblivious to the fact that I was breastfeeding. With my daughter who has always been healthy and focused on food, we breastfeed anytime anywhere she was hungry.

Maybe it's living in Silicon Valley. Maybe it's because my Burmese mother taught me that breastfeeding was normal and natural and I watched both of my siblings breastfeed. Or maybe it's because I'm

The breastfeeding cheerleaders

My youngest child stopped breastfeeding about seven years ago (he's nine now), so, for me, breastfeeding is a distant, though fond, memory. Back when I was breastfeeding, however, I was also writing a weekly newspaper column about motherhood, and the subject came up. A lot. Here's one of those columns, revisited for breastfeeding topic day.

Congress recently approved legislation allowing women to nurse in public on all federal property, including parks and museums. This was inspired by outraged tales of harassment of breast-feeding mothers. One mother, for example, was reportedly told that she couldn’t nurse a baby in a federal park because the breast milk would attract bees.

I’ve tracked breastfeeding rights legislation since the landmark New Jersey food court case several years ago—a woman in a mall was asked by a security guard to leave the food court, where she was nursing her baby, and go nurse in the bathroom. She responded that she wouldn’t expect the guard to eat his lunch in the bathroom, so he shouldn’t expect her baby too eat in the bathroom, either. For several years I was hoping to be confronted in California so I could use that line myself and, maybe, get my name in the law books.

California passed its breastfeeding legislation a few years ago, and I still haven’t had an opportunity to stand up for breastfeeding in righteous indignation. No security guard has asked me to close up my shirt, take my baby, and move on. Instead, I attract the breastfeeding cheerleaders—they buzz around me like the bees that park ranger was so concerned about.

The cheerleaders are typically older women who nursed their babies at a time when it was distinctly unfashionable. I admire them for that and would love to hear about their time in the trenches when breastfeeding was a guerrilla war. But they don’t want to go there. Instead they go on and on about how

Breastfeeding Legislation Is The Answer, Not Warning Labels On Formula

The post below was published on June 2006, here is another link on the same topic. I thought it was relevant to look at the past and also celebrate the present breastfeeding support legislation. Here is a link to a post called "California Working on New Bill to Support Breastfeeding" and here is another link to a summary of Breastfeeding legistation across states. The most interesting as SB 22 Senate Bill that included providing breastfeeding education, support and access to breast pumps for low income women.

As my twins were napping, I made my cup of tea and thought I would have a relaxing moment while reading the New York Times. Instead, I felt those feelings of mom guilt all coming back to me. Then I started to get mad.

The article I was reading, called "Breast-Feed or Else", was in the NYT Science Times section. It began by discussing a “two-year national breast-feeding awareness campaign that included a television spot of a pregnant woman clutching her belly as she was thrown off a mechanical bull during the ladies night at a bar – and compared the behavior to failing to breastfeed”. And the article mentioned a “proposed warning label on cans of infant formula similar to those on cigarettes by Senator Tom Harkin”. I have one thing to say to Senator Tom Harkin: "You just try pumping breast milk in a public bathroom". Maybe we should look at putting warning labels on public bathrooms to notify moms of the dangers of breastfeeding in them.

Let me start by saying that I do agree with the article's premise that breast-feeding is the ideal method for feeding and nurturing infants. I also agree that breast milk is more beneficial to infants then formula. What I don’t agree with is 

Breast is Best - But can I have mine back now?

Before I had kids, I never thought I would breastfeed. On second thought, I never really thought about what I would do when it came to feeding my child until I was close to 8 months pregnant with our first daughter.

Like it so often happens in life, I found myself pregnant at the same time as 5 co-worker friends of mine who were also expecting a child. For four of us, it was our first. Naturally, since we were all professionals who were all due around the same time, we kept each other abreast of all of our lastest findings: the safest car seats, the best rated cribs, the "must-read" pregnancy books, etc. And in our search for "the best" we all were in agreement that the best nourishment for our new bundles of joy would be breastmilk. And so each of us was committed to giving it a shot.

To Nurse Or Not To Nurse…That Is The Dilemma

I don’t know about you but nursing my babies was not my forte. Now, I know it takes two to make this work (the baby and me) but still. One of us was only a few hours old! She certainly didn’t get much instruction and had to totally rely on instinct alone. Couple that with a new mother who had only read books and gone to traditional birthing classes and well, it’s no wonder I did not experience the legendary euphoria I’d heard so much about.

Latching on? Pumping? Football holds? Double nursing pillows? After reading what I could find on breastfeeding, I arrived at the conclusion that none of the potential issues I’d studied would make sense until I had baby (babies, in my case) in arms propped onto my breast. After all, wasn’t most of this instinct on the baby’s part?