National Breastfeeding Awareness Week

[ailbhe]

Breastfeeding: I breastfeed because I like it. Because my baby likes it. Because it never occurred to me not to, until it was mentioned in an NHS antenatal class - "Are you planning to breast or bottlefeed?" - when I didn't understand how anyone would plan to bottlefeed, since it obviously meant far more work - mixing, sterilising, washing... so I breastfeed because I'm lazy.

I breastfeed because I'm selfish. When I first saw Rob feed Linnea from a bottle of expressed milk, I felt rabidly jealous. It's a glorious ready-made excuse not to leave my baby when I don't want to - and, oddly enough, I don't want to. I don't enjoy socialising without her (though I do enjoy socialising when she's asleep, which isn't quite the same thing). I miss her when we're apart, even when I'm too sick or too tired to be with her. I'm unwell now, and breastfeeding her a few times a day has been a precious connection with her, going some way to make up for the fact that I can't play with her or look after her right now.

I breastfeed because I'm clutchfisted. Regular formula is expensive enough, but have you seen the cost of hypoallergenic formula? And Linnea has a dairy intolerance. And when we were out with friends, and we stayed out later than we expected, our friends would have to buy little cartons of ready-mixed formula for their babies, and they were extortionate. Wow.

And yes, I breastfeed because it's healthier for her, and for me, and because of all the health benefits it will give her now and for years to come. Sure I do. But I'm not kidding anyone - I never had to test my dedication to breastfeeding. It was never difficult, once we'd gotten over the first few weeks of chapped nipples and nipple shields and mastitis and so on. That really wasn't noticable compared to my real health problems at the time. I never found my blood in her nappies, never dreaded the agony of latching on, none of that. I was very lucky. Presumably, if breastfeeding had been hard, I would have breastfed anyway, for health reasons. But it wasn't, so they're not top of the list.

Extended breastfeeding: This is when you don't suddenly stop breastfeeding. I haven't suddenly stopped breastfeeding at a year, so now I'm an Extended Breastfeeder, which prompts frankly alarming images of racks and innovative uses for thumbscrews. I'm breastfeeding a baby old enough to walk up to me, climb onto my lap, raise my shirt, and complain when I'm not quick enough to get the goods out. That makes me an Extended Breastfeeder. Possibly even an Extreme Breastfeeder, though that makes me think I ought to be breastfeeding while climbing Canada Tower or ironing or something (I have breastfed while ironing. When she was "small", that was easy enough to do. I breastfed while washing dishes, too - and no, I didn't use a sling).

But none of this was supposed to be a political statement. I thought that's what happened - baby grows in mummy's tummy, baby is born through mummy's bellybutton (oh don't we wish!), baby feeds from mummy's milk. Baby cries, baby gets cuddles. Baby hungry, baby gets fed. Baby tired, baby gets snuggled to sleep.

It's not normal! It's a weird hippie cult middle-class spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child thing called Attachament Parenting or something, and it has its own One True Wayists and set of acronyms and everything! I'm a SAHM AP BF and my LO loves it, but I'm confused! I'm part of a movement!

You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant...

Comments

[ailbhe]

I am very lucky not to be a single mother; I've been so ill since having her that she'd have had to go into care.

But I am definitely a boob nazi. I've been called one just for saying that breastmilk is healthier than formula. It's almost impossible to be a successful breastfeeding mother and not make other women feel inadequate and defensive.

Never mind! I get to feel inadequate and defensive myself for not being able to take a shit like an adult. No-one gets everything.

[k425.livejournal.com]

*applause*

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

:)

[booklectica]

Have you read this? V interesting.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1472152,00.html

[ailbhe]

Yeah, it irritated me a bit - it's one of the things that makes me feel like a bit of a freak. Until everyone started saying "It's normal to do this, really!" I had no idea that it wasn't normal. I certainly didn't realise that some people think it's *weird* to feed your baby as long as your baby wants.

[booklectica]

My mum said the same - she fed my sister for well over a year, and still feels she stopped too early (and my sister still sucks her thumb).

I stopped after three months, but then Holly hated breastfeeding, and I wasn't that keen myself. She's robustly healthy anyway. :)

[ailbhe]

Is all about listening to the baby, isn't it?

[booklectica]

I definitely think so. In almost every area. Except nappy changing, because if I listened to Holly's views on that I'd never do it again. She appears to believe it's the work of the devil. :)

[buzzy-bee.livejournal.com]

LOL.

Thats one better than Lachlan. Getting changed is often the work of the devil. However being a damp nappy is also the work of the devil. The world should be frozen at that magical moment just after the last popper is fastened (aka about 30 seconds before pooing again). I do point out to him that he has more control over this process than I do, or at least will one day.

The *really* weird thing is he will happily sit in a *dirty* nappy stinking the place out and be all smiley and happy. I once sat up waiting for him to wake up, having heard him fill it in his sleep, for three hours. A wet one though, even slighly damp, has him screaming the place down.

[k425.livejournal.com]

Of the 8 letters in this Saturday's Weekend magazine, 6 were about the article, all supportive of extended BF.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I started writing a bit about the CN Tower, assuming that that's what you were talking about when you said the Canada Tower, but then it occurred to me that maybe there *is* a Canada Tower somewhere. I went to do a google image search, and discovered a huge office-building looking thing called the Canada Tower with hits mostly in the U.K. Do you know anything about what it is, or why it's called that? That's wacky!

[ailbhe]

http://www.aviewoncities.com/building/canarywharftower.htm

It's an office building. It's big. I used to work near there. Canary Wharf / Docklands is a very IT area. I think it's the highest building in the UK but it might not be any more.

It was vacated, generally without permission from bosses and so on, pretty rapidly on 9/11.

[vatine]

Canada Tower has the street address of 1 Canada Square (it's not anywhere near Canada Water, that's across the river from Canada Tower). It's smack in the middle of an old wharf area (aptly named "canary Wharf" after a nearby wharf where tehy unloaded goods from the Canary Islands). I guess it had warehouses from one or more brokers dealing mostly in Canadian goods, but that is pure guesswork.

Re breastfeeding. I think it's probably good. I wasn't breastfed for too long, but I was born with front teeth in both gums and thus it rapidly became unsafe to breastfeed me. I had breast milk from a bottle, though and from memory, my younger brother was breastfed.

[lovingboth]

Jo Anna had her last breastfeed aged around about two.

With lactose intolerance, you're faced with the horrible choice of soya formula, and the effects of soya on babies doesn't look great.

Part of me liked the way would never accept a bottle of expressed milk. It meant I never had to feed her in those first six months.

[buzzy-bee.livejournal.com]

The dairy intolerance is what has kept me going. I've had a rough first 10 weeks of breastfeeding, though things are improving finally. However about 6 weeks in we figured out Lachlan was, like I was at the same age, dairy intolerance. Probably casein, from experiments so far, again this is the same as me. I still have health problems which are starting to be linked to soya formula, so no way in h*** was I stopping.

[buzzy-bee.livejournal.com]

Yay.

I'm with you on so much of that. Despite everything thats made BFing tough for me I would miss the connection with him terribly were we to stop (or move to exclusively pumping, which has at times been considered). And at times like now when I am sick, its well worth not having to deal with the alternatives.

Speaking of which, I believe my boobs are required.

[pne.livejournal.com]

I thought that's what happened - baby grows in mummy's tummy, baby is born through mummy's bellybutton (oh don't we wish!), baby feeds from mummy's milk.

/me agrees.

I rather enjoyed this post; thank you.

[sierra-le-oli.livejournal.com]

So, do you "co-sleep"? ;-)

I hadn't realised there was a movement out there 'til I ran across a blog post about it a month ago. I knew it was serious because I couldn't understand half of it on account of the acronyms. There was jargon.

[ailbhe]

Yes! We co-sleep! At least, we do sometimes. When we all feel like it.

*I* don't understand the jargon, and I *do* all this stuff. Augh!

This is like when I realised that not everyone fancied people of both genders.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

I'm a SAHM AP BF and my LO loves it

Heh. OK, I got SAHM, AP and BF, but what's LO?

I've no plans to stop breastfeeding Oisín. Learning to breastfeed may be the hardest thing I've ever done, and I'm not about to give it up lightly! My workplace is pretty family-friendly (nice public service, have a biscuit), and last year the Irish government, in a rare example of perfect timing, introduced a law allowing working mothers an hour a day without loss of pay to facilitate expressing or visiting their child to feed. I might start to feel differently in a few months, but at the moment I can't imagine deliberately setting out to upset my baby by weaning him. (It was bad enough deciding to stop the night feeds ... although five nights on, that seems to be going OK.) Not sure how I'll react when the social pressure kicks in - probably go underground, because I'm cowardly that way.

What annoyed me about the Guardian article linked above was this sentence: Once a radical feminist, she is now deadly serious about the business of being maternal.

Because obviously, someone who identifies as "maternal" couldn't possibly be a radical feminist. Argh.

"Premature weaning" is a good phrase, though :-)

[ailbhe]

"Little one". And the whole article irritated me, on so many levels, that I'm not rereading it.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Good for you, my dear. (I also breastfed because it was just _easier_, if we ignore the first few weeks...). I remember going out once when Weegirl was about a year old, to visit some friends who had a three-month-old bottle-fed baby. It was really interesting. First they told the baby he was hungry, then they made up a bottle, then they tried (and tried and tried, ultimately unsuccessfully) to get a decent amount of formula down him, then they told him that he was Just Being Silly, and they'd Try Again in a few minutes, etc. At one point Weegirl walked up to me, pulled on my shirt, was picked up, had a feed and a cuddle then asked to be put on the floor again. I know what looks like the better deal from here.