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Writing About Motherhood

May 11, 2012 at 2:15 pm , by

Funny thing about motherhood—we’re all having totally unique experiences doing the exact same thing. My post about the Time breastfeeding cover earlier today further highlights that often discordant commonality.

It’s a paradox that, to me, illuminates the compulsion many of us feel to read the experiences of other mothers and to get our own experiences down.

If you’re in the latter camp, do I have the book for you. Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers just came out last week. It’s by Kate Hopper, a writer and writing teacher with an MFA in creative writing, who specializes in helping moms write about motherhood. The book addresses various parts of the writing process (chapters include Getting Started, Using Humor as a Tool and Publishing: From Books to Blogs), with exercises and example essays from seasoned writers including Anne Lamott and Catherine Newman. It’s meant to be explored at your own pace; to be dipped in and out of as inspired. Smart, no?

Full disclosure: I agreed to feature Use Your Words because I love the topic and often get asked about it. After doing so, I happened to run into Kate at an event here in the Twin Cities. Turns out our families are rooted to the same small Minnesota town. We gabbed like long-lost cousins, but I have a feeling that’s just how it happens with Kate. Her writing knowledge and accessible nature mingle comfortably in the book.

Check out this realistic pep talk (excerpted):

“My hope is that you will get started on a number of pieces as you work your way through this book, and that when you finish it, you will have enough momentum to keep going. It’s wonderful if you can write a little bit each week, but I don’t believe you need to write every day to be a writer, and as a mother, I know that writing can be difficult to fit into your day. But as you begin this journey as a mother writer, think about when and where you can squeeze writing into your life. Maybe you have one hour every Friday morning. Maybe you have 20 minutes three times a week as you wait to pick up your children from preschool or soccer practice. If you work outside the home, maybe you can go somewhere quiet on your lunch break and write twice a week. Be realistic about planning your writing time and be flexible. If you miss a day or a week, don’t worry; there’s always tomorrow.”

In other words, you can do it. And Kate can help.

If you’ve ever wanted to write about the mothering experience, or if you already do and crave a little fresh insight to your craft, I highly recommend checking Use Your Words out. Also: I fully intend to post about a writing contest where you can win the book, and possibly a consult with Kate and publication at Literary Mama, but have to get a few things ironed out. Check back if that piques your interest.

Happy Friday, all!

Time Magazine Breastfeeding Cover: Get Over It.

May 11, 2012 at 9:23 am , by

Maybe it’s just because I’m currently nursing, but I’m surprised that the Time magazine breastfeeding cover (at right) is causing such a stir. Top Google search? Newspapers across America? Entertainment Tonight? Really? This is the most-talked about topic out there right now?

First off, Time sure knows how to get our attention. I get glances while discreetly nursing my tiny three-month-old under a blanket in public. Throwing a hot young mama up there openly attached to not young child? Yes. People are gonna talk. More than even I expected. All this press, and from what I can tell, the issue hasn’t even hit newsstands yet.

That said, I’m not going to comment on attachment parenting, which is what the cover is actually addressing. (I do have Beyond the Sling, by Mayim Bialik, aka TV’s Blossom, waiting in the reading pile at the moment, so we’ll resurrect that thread when I finish it, hopefully sometime before my kids leave for college, dammit.)

But I can comment on breastfeeding past a certain age. Before I had a child, I’d decided nursing was for babies. Meaning small children with no teeth or verbal skills. It was a knee-jerk opinion based solely on the feeling I got when I saw grown children actually ask for the boob, then climb onto mom’s lap on their own to get at it. If the kid can ask for it, I thought, they shouldn’t be getting it anymore.

I’ve said this before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again: And then I had kids.

I’ve written about my own nursing experience on this blog before, most notably on my post about weaning, but to recap: Before I had my first, I didn’t even want to breastfeed. I told myself I’d give it three weeks, for the health of the baby and whatnot. I ended up nursing Roy until he was a year and a half old. By that time, it was limited to before and after bedtime, but still. You better believe he was able to ask for it.

He wasn’t as old as the kid pictured. But he was a lot older than I ever figured he’d be while still nursing. The experience pushed me into the “To Each Her Own,” breastfeeding camp. I know that’s often the theme of this blog, but it can’t be helped because it’s what I believe. We are different people, raising different kids, and no one has the one-size-fits-all magic formula. We need to quit judging and concentrate on trying to figure out what’s truly best for ourselves and our kids.

Meaning that at this point in my life, when I’ll nurse my child while getting my hair washed at a salon without batting an eye, this cover doesn’t bother me one little bit. You? If it does bother you, especially, I’d love to hear exactly why.

 

 

Finding Beauty in Dandelions Again

May 2, 2012 at 8:57 am , by

 

 

I’d forgotten how beautiful these cheery yellow weeds are to the eyes of a child. It all came flooding back as he rounded the bushes and barreled at me clutching two, their green stems in widely varying lengths squashed skinny by his enthusiastic grip. “Dandelion!” he shouted. “One for Vera. One for Mommy.” I set one on her leg for her to admire, as best a three-month-old can.

Thrill over this newfound activity propelled him across the lawn, where there were plenty more to collect, despite Clint’s recent efforts with his new full-sized weed digger. In the end, there were enough flowers to form the very first hand-picked bouquet from my son. I’d take it over a dozen store-bought roses any day.

Wait. Pacifiers Actually Promote Breastfeeding Now?

May 1, 2012 at 10:28 am , by

Did you catch the latest study calling the idea of “nipple confusion” into question?

In an effort to promote breastfeeding, OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Oregon literally put its pacifiers under lock and key. To get one, nurses needed a good reason, such as soothing post-circumcision. And they were required to enter a code as well as the patient’s name.

This practice did not promote breastfeeding rates. On the contrary. Breastfeeding rates declined by 10 percent.

“Despite the common belief among medical providers and the general public that pacifier use negatively impacts breastfeeding, we found limiting pacifier use in the Mother-Baby Unit was associated with decreased exclusive breastfeeding and increased supplemental formula feeds,” explained Kair [a resident in pediatrics at the hospital].

Well.

In an article on the study at Today Moms, The World Health Organization and United Nations Children’s Fund sticks to its guns.

“The primary reason for WHO’s policy on pacifiers is the potential for interference with suckling and establishing lactation,” says Dr. Chessa Lutter, a senior advisor in food and nutrition for the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization.

“There is some evidence to suggest that giving pacifiers or bottle nipples can interfere with suckling and getting a good latch on. It’s very important that the baby be able to properly latch on, which evolves over baby’s first week of life. Establishing a good suck is extremely important for the mother as well, so her own nipple isn’t irritated or damaged,” Lutter says.

Confused yet?

I confess to being a rule-follower, especially when it comes to my kids. If prevailing knowledge says to hold off on the pacifier for about a month to prevent nipple confusion, I hold off on the pacifier for about a month to prevent nipple confusion. Which is what I did. My 12-week-old now digs her pacifier. She also digs the boob. And the bottle. She’s quite equal opportunity, nipplewise.

I want people to continue to examine issues relating to my children, even if—especially if?— doing so shatters previously held beliefs. But it does get maddening when it’s drilled into your head to do things one way, for the clear health and well-being of your child, and then someone comes along with an, “Oopsie! Scratch that. Reverse it. Now carry on!” Tummy sleeping and drinking beer to promote nursing both come to mind.

My takeaway: Go with your gut. Even when experts are telling you one thing, if your built-in mama instincts are pulling you in the opposite direction, go there. (Within reason, of course.) Those instincts truly are worth trusting.

Were you a rule-follower like me, or one of those rebels that used a pacifier out of the gate? How’d that go for you and the kid?

Also: Check out my fellow Parents blogger Jill Cordes’ thoughts on the matter. (Hint: She’s less of a rule-follower than I!)

 

Image: Face of Adorable Baby with Pacifier in Mouth Looking at Camera via Shutterstock

The Unique Pace of Baby Bonding (Or Love Letter to My Two-Month-Old)

April 24, 2012 at 12:41 pm , by

With Roy, it hit me like a truck. A big ol’ bulldozer. Like a hungry young prizefighter, or a grand piano whose pulley-rope snapped twenty stories directly above. Bam! I was done for.

A fierce protectiveness expanded inside me so quickly it seized my heart; pushed a boulder into my throat; forced tears from my eyes. I was blind, dizzy, sick in love with this nameless tiny boy, who took his first breath mere moments earlier. Mine, I thought. I can’t believe that he is mine forever.

With Vera, it happened differently. Not to say that I didn’t love her immediately, because I did. I loved her before that, even. Maybe that was part of it. The first time around, I didn’t fully comprehend the connection between baby in tummy and my son until I saw him. Held him. So when I did, the reality of that connection, and everything that comes with it, exploded like a Fourth of July finale.

With Vera, the floodgates were already open. I knew her name. I felt her personality. I had no trouble connecting the thumps jostling my tummy to the little tiny feet kicking from within, connected to roly-poly legs, which I would squeeze and gobble one day soon, which would carry her across a room way too soon after that. I got it. And I could not wait to meet her.

So when she arrived, she was just here. Finally here. There was crazy excitement and pure joy, but not exactly trucks and pianos.

Friends had told me not to worry about loving kid number two. They had worried; didn’t know how that surprising, expansive, all-encompassing love for your firstborn could possibly leave room in your heart for anything else. It grows, they told me. Somehow, it grows.

So I didn’t worry. I just loved her and waited.

I bathed her and slept next to her, with my lips touching her head. I wore her in a sling, pulling up the sides so she could sleep against my chest in darkness and resting my hand on her back to feel the steady rise and fall of her breathing. I took her on walks and named the things that made her eyes wide: Birds. Leaves. Flowers.

I listened to her, too—to the trilling coos directed at stuffed animals dangling above her bouncy chair, to the happy grunts and gulps as she suckled, to the throaty groan-sighs that accompanied whole-body stretches as she woke from deep sleeps. I locked eyes with her and smiled. She smiled back, all slick gums and glossy baby-blue eyes and cheeks so chubby they run seamlessly into second chin.

And then, it happened. I’m not sure exactly when, I just know that I feel it. That crazy-powerful mama-bear love; the I-would-throw-myself-in-front-of-a-bus-for-you love.

My friends were right. My heart grew. Not in one big, painful bang, but in a happy succession of pretty little fireworks.

I can’t believe that she is mine forever.

How did it happen for you, my fellow mamas? Papas, too. Fast or slow?