Lactation Narration

Melissa K. of The New Mommy Files wrote in Prioritizing to Find Balance on the Natural Parents Network

My agreement with a cause does not equate to passion. I think gender-neutral parenting is important, for example, and I strive to raise my child without the pressure to fit into a stereotype. The reality is, however, that I am just not as passionate about that particular issue as I am about working to ensure that all women have the information and support they need to breastfeed their children for as long as is mutually desired.

It’s true: Agreement does not equate to passion.  There are many things that I do as a parent, deliberately and with thought.  But I can’t say that they have all become my passion the way that breastfeeding has.

Sweets on my back in the mei tai

I  have a friend who I would say is passionate about babywearing.  She has many carriers, is active on TheBabyWearer forums and is even a moderator, and she started her own local babywearing club.  I babywear too – I have a few carriers, I have posted before on TBW (though I’m not active), and I attend our local babywearing group regularly.  I have rarely even used a stroller except at somewhere like the zoo!  But I wouldn’t say that babywearing is my passion.  It’s just something that I do.

I know people who are passionate about cloth diapers.  Who use cloth from day one, 24/7, and who want their baby to never have to wear a disposable diaper the way I want my kids to never have to taste formula.  I use cloth diapers on Sweets, though I didn’t on Munchkin.  I use cloth at daycare, when I’m traveling out of the house, and even out of town.  But I use ’sposies overnight.  I am active on DiaperSwappers, though it’s mostly in the breastfeeding forums. I wouldn’t say that cloth diapers are my passion either.

Sweets shows off her fluffy Mutt butt

I know people who are passionate about carseat safety.  Who collect carseats the way some collect baby carriers or cloth diapers!  Who become CPST certified because of their passion.  I practice extended rear-facing and harnessing with my kids.  Munchkin RF until she was over 3.5 years old, and Sweets probably will too.  I have an account on car-seat.org, but I only use it for asking questions to the experts there.  I can’t say that carseats are really my passion either.

Munchkin rear-facing at 3.5+ years old

I know other people who are passionate about circumcision or vaccines or spanking.  And these are just the “mommy” topics!

But breastfeeding is my passion. Why?  I know people who breastfeed and it’s just something that they do.  They aren’t that concerned with exactly how long they are going to breastfeed, or whether they supplement with formula now and then, or societal issues surrounding breastfeeding.  They don’t have a desire to join a group like La Leche League to talk about breastfeeding.  It’s just something that they do and it’s part of their life and that’s it.  What turned breastfeeding from ‘another thing that I do’, to my passion?

I first decided that I would breastfeed when I was in college and I took my first immunology class. I was really interested in immunology, and it is what I later went on to study in graduate school. But that first class as an undergrad is when I first learned about how the immunities transferred in breast milk, and I was really struck by how important that was. I knew then that I would breastfeed. My continuing studies in immunology just reinforced that more.

When I became a parent, I did breastfeed. But in the beginning it was basically because of nutritional and immunological reasons – probably the reasons that a lot of people start out breastfeeding. It was for the milk, the food. As Munchkin got older though, breastfeeding became about more than just the milk for me, it became a way of life, a way of parenting, integral to my relationship with her. If I couldn’t breastfeed a future child for some reason, I feel like I don’t even know how I would parent.  It’s not that I think bottle-feeding parents can’t bond with their babies, but my whole way of life would be different, and honestly I would worry that our bond would not be like what I have with my two breastfed kids. Some see breastfeeding as just another way to transfer milk into a baby, a feeding method – I don’t anymore. It is part of my lifestyle now, part of my whole way of parenting.

Sweets nursing at 2 years old

I never knew that breastfeeding would be so integral to my lifestyle.  I had always thought of it as just a feeding method before.  It made me wonder – why didn’t I know this before?  Why didn’t anyone tell me how life-changing this could be?  It made me want to tell other people about it, to spread the good news, so that others could experience this too!  Someone once compared it to how religious missionaries feel – “My life has been changed for the better! I want to tell everyone about it so that they can experience this too!”

When Munchkin was 5 weeks old, I was told by a store manager that I couldn’t breastfeed her in his store. That set off an anger in me that led me to research my rights, and it led me to a community of other mothers who breastfed too. In that community, I heard stories over and over from women who were told that they couldn’t breastfeed, not only in public, but because of medications they were taking or because they were going back to work or because their baby was low on the growth charts, etc etc.

And over time, I saw that so many of these mothers were really being misled. There are rights to breastfeed in public. You don’t have to choose between breastfeeding and working. There are meds for most conditions that you can find a way to breastfeed with. Babies come in all shapes and sizes – they are not all 50 percentile. I heard so many stories of moms being sabotaged in their efforts to breastfeed.

And still, I hear more stories. Women are told that birth interventions don’t affect breastfeeding rates, that they should send baby to the nursery to get some sleep, that there is no such thing as nipple confusion, that formula is necessary to fix jaundice, that colostrum isn’t enough in baby’s first days. Women are told that they shouldn’t let their baby suck for comfort or they should only nurse every 3 hours or that they should always stick to 15 minutes per side. They are being told that their milk has no value after X months, that they can’t nurse while they are pregnant, that they shouldn’t nurse a toddler. And, they are told that it doesn’t really matter, that formula is just as good.

Because of the health implications of breast milk feeding, but also because of the value that I place in my own nursing relationships with my kids, I feel so frustrated that so many mothers’ nursing relationships are being subverted in this way. It makes me want to dispel the misconceptions and help other women to breastfeed. It has fueled my passion and led me to become a breastfeeding advocate.

What is your passion, and how did it come to be more than just ’something you do’?

I think that Sweets is night-weaning herself.  It’s odd, because this is not how it happened with Munchkin. I got pregnant when Munchkin was 27 months old, and I felt like I had to night-wean her at that time.  Munchkin would just sleep latched on all night!  It was a somewhat long process, but she responded well which helped me feel that she was ready.

Sweets is almost 26 months old, so almost the same age Munchkin was when I night-weaned her, but I haven’t even tried to do anything to encourage night-weaning yet.  She basically started to just sleep through the night without nursing, all on her own!

Our normal routine has been that Sweets would go to bed in her own room around 8pm, and I in mine around 10:30.  At some time in the night, she would wake up and call for me.  I’d go in her room at that point, and sleep in her bed the rest of the night while she nursed at-will.  It was the same with Munchkin, but Munchkin would nurse many times, sometimes almost constantly, when I was next to her.  Sweets typically nursed once in the middle of the night, and then once again soon before it was time to get up.

7am and still asleep!

One day about two weeks ago, she didn’t wake up to nurse at all until 6am.  I was very surprised, and even wondered if she might not be feeling well!  I didn’t expect it to happen again though, and wasn’t surprised when the next night she woke up at 2:30am.  But the 3rd night she slept through again, all the way to 7:30!  The next night she woke, and the next she slept through again.  For the first week, she slept through all the way to morning about half the time or more, and this week she slept through almost every night!  Maybe not all the way to 6:30 (when I get up), but until at least 5am.

I have no idea what prompted this sudden change.  My only guess is that she is having a developmental spurt – she is attempting more words and learning more signs rapidly – and that this spurt is affecting her sleep as well as her vocabulary.  And while I wasn’t trying to night-wean her at this time, I’m certainly not complaining!  She is now only nursing 2-3 times per day on weekdays – when she gets up in the morning, when I get home from work, and sometimes again before bed.  On weekends when we are together all day though, she tends to nurse more often.

I know that many of my peers have babies who will sleep through all night far before a year and would think that it was awful to have a 2 year old still waking to nurse nightly.  And I have other peers with 2+ year olds who really wish for a night without nursing.  But it really hasn’t bothered me so far, which I guess is why I haven’t done anything to discourage Sweets from night-nursing yet.

I recently saw that there is a new children’s book about night-weaning – Nursies When The Sun Shines.  The website claims that it is the first children’s book to focus on night-weaning.  I think that’s a great idea for a book, and I think it’s a brilliant addition for this demographic.  I think it will fill a niche, just as books like Adventures in Tandem Nursing, Mothering Your Nursing Toddler, and Maggie’s Weaning have done.  And I’ll probably end up buying it, even if Sweets night-weans all by herself without intervention, just to have it in our library.