Chicago Moms Blog

Loving Mama, or Dirty Slut? You decide.

Here's the scene: our car is parked near a residential playground.  I'm sitting in the passenger seat, nursing my infant; my husband and toddler are playing in the park.  Its a warm day (finally!) so I've got my door open to keep from stifling.  There's not many other people around.  

"You're a Dirty Slut!"  

Did that seem to come out of nowhere for you?  Yeah, I thought so too.  I looked up and saw that the loud, aggressive male voice had come from a vehicle that was now receding in the distance.  I looked around to figure out whom he had been addressing.  

Probably not the handful of kids at the park.  But there was no one else around.  Was he just yelling those ugly words for the fun of it?  

It really took me this long to consider that there was another person nearby.  Had he been directing those choice words toward me?!

All Bottled Up

I have written before about my love-hate relationship with pumping.  It feels so unnatural, so mechanical.  Everything nursing is not.  But as mothers, we do it because we know that giving our babies breast milk while we are away is what is best for them.  I hate to pump, but I want my baby to be sustained and nourished while I am at work.  So I do it.  For him.  But what happens if he won't take it, won't take the bottle at all?  What is a pumping mom to do then?

When I went back to work after my older son was born, it was a battle to teach him to use the bottle.  I think I bought ten or more different kinds of bottles, praying that I would be able to find the one that was just right and he would take it and suck that milk down.  It took weeks and lots of crying from us both, but he learned how to do it and drank from a bottle like a champ from then on.  So when my 6month old was born, I was determined to start earlier to hopefully avoid the bottle-training battle.  The first time he was introduced to the bottle, he didn't even hesitate.  It was like, "wait, this isn't mama but it is yummy milk so why not?" And with that he gulped down a few ounces and looked up as if to say "that's all you got?"  I was thrilled, ecstatic!  Hooray!!  No battle!  Boy, was I wrong.

He did great for the first two months or so, taking bottles from daddy or grandma or just about anyone.  And then one day, something changed.  Someone flipped off a switch in his little brain, or maybe switched it on.

Facebook, you confuse me!

I’ll be honest, I’ve heard about the hoolabaloos on Facebook not allowing breastfeeding pictures anymore but I didn’t really pay that much attention to it. Maybe because I am somewhat torn with this issue. I often wonder what makes people feel like they have to share their breastfeeding pictures to the world.  Actually I’m a big supporter of breastfeeding and even breastfed my 3 kids. But breastfeeding for me is a very private moment I shared with my child and could not imagine people looking in on my moment.  But that’s just me. And this is a personal issue, so if you want to share your breastfeeding photos then do so. Just not on Facebook’s turf. 

Somehow I get Facebook. I get that there are certain places that are inappropriate for children. And I get that there are appropriate topics on certain instances. So with my conscious effort of making sure everyone is comfortable around me including myself and my family, I basically just go with the flow.  If it is not allowed, then I just don’t do it. Whether that is right or wrong, it is how I roll.

I Nursed My Baby in a Pumpkin Patch

Yep!  It's Autumn, and that’s me, sitting on a pumpkin, nursing my 8 month old. In the last 2 ½ years, I’ve nursed in restaurants, parks, parked cars, museums, airplanes, church services, kiddie concerts, and music classes, but this is the first time I’ve ever fed my baby sitting in the middle of a pumpkin patch.

The sun was shining, the air was crisp, and it was wonderful to just soak it all in while my toddler and her daddy wandered through the pumpkin patch, choosing the next jack-o-lantern to-be. How comfortable it is to me now. These moments in the middle of the busy-ness where I’m forced to stop and nourish my little one, at the same time getting a much needed rest that I wouldn’t normally grant myself. I love the normality of it now, the naturalness, and the chance to “check in” with my baby.

Not that it’s always so easy and, um, painless. She’s got these 4 teeth that bite and scrape, no matter how strongly I react to it. (Sorry if that makes anyone squeamish!) She can’t sleep without a nipple in her mouth at all times, and screams bloody murder if I move away in the night. (Yes, I’m still putting myself through that. It’s my own fault, I know. There are going to be some big changes in our bedroom. Soon.)

I'm hanging up the horns

Today I didn't pump.

I. Just. Didn't. Pump.

I'd planned to, I just let the hours slip by, thinking about the breast pump in my desk drawer, peeking at it, and closing it away. Part-weaning on a whim, you could call it.

Why? Well, I really don't care for the grimy, distant, sink-less mothers' rooms at my new place of employment, but I know women have pumped in much more undesirable locations (supply closets, airplane bathrooms, conference rooms).

A little connoisseur of milk

My daughter is nearly 6 months old and frankly I'm tired of pumping twice a day at work. I've resolved to drop a pumping session and provide just two 4oz bottles of breastmilk for her to enjoy while I'm away. I figured Daddy or her daycare provider can give her a bottle of formula once a day as a supplement. Sounds like a plan, right?

Not when your daughter can smell the Enfamil a room away. We've tried giving her bottles made up of half expressed milk and half formula, but she gags, bawls and pushes it away. Today my husband called me to report she'd refused a bottle made up of 3/4 breastmilk to 1/4 formula. I could hear her wailing in the background. We're dipping into my frozen stockpile of milk to get through this transition, but my hopes of part-weaning her at 9 months so that I can give up pumping altogether are fading fast.

Have any other mothers dealt with this?

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.

Five Lessons My Breasts Taught Me

1. You can’t please all of the people all of the time. Whether you are still breastfeeding your three-year-old, or you did not breastfeed at all (for whatever reason), someone is disappointed with your decision. And that person(s) will surely share their disappointment with you, even though it is completely inappropriate for them to do so. Maybe it will be a friend who says, “Wow, you are still breastfeeding him at nine-months?” Or a pediatrician who comments, “Oh, so you didn’t keep going until twelve months? That's too bad.” As hard as it was for me, I learned that I didn’t have to defend my informed and thoughtful decisions to other people. And this skill has actually come in quite handy in all sorts of contexts in my life

2. Some things you just have to do alone. I don’t mean to suggest that it isn’t worth the time to read the books, go to the training, and get as prepared as you can when you are planning on breastfeeding. But at 4:00 a.m., breastfeeding really just comes down to you, your boobs, and your babe. Sure, your partner can support you (although in retrospect, it probably was not necessary to make my husband attend the “How to Breastfeed” seminar with me). And the twenty minutes with the lactation consultant before I brought my first baby home from the hospital was well spent, if only for the big boost of confidence it gave me. But if you are going to make breastfeeding work, you eventually have to figure out how to do it yourself. Also a good lesson.

Breast feeding is a fundamental right for both mother and child

I don't want to get into the politics of breastfeeding in public (I support it, I've done it) or whether you are a bad mom if you use formula (done that too). I do want to get into what I think is at the base of many of the arguments and that is not whether mothers should breastfeed, but the idea that breastfeeding is a fundamental right. If we saw it that way, we wouldn't have to fight to keep formula out of our goody bags at the hospital, stand tall after 20 hours of labor when the nurse insists on giving the baby a "little something", or to discreetly nurse while on an airplane.

Because if we were really a world of people who cared about children & cute lil babies, we wouldn't deny an infant their sole source of nourishment.

Breastfeeding Unplugged: my real story

When I was pregnant, a lot of people asked me "do you want to breastfeed, if you can?" This question always struck me as odd. "If I can?" Why would I not be able to? I had researched breastfeeding quite a bit, and it seemed to me that except in very rare instances, a woman who had given birth would be able to breastfeed. Granted, the road might be fraught with difficulties. Granted, she might weight the various aspects of nursing, and of her life, and legitimately choose not to. But that wasn't really the same as "can't."

Plus, I did want to breastfeed - very much actually. I had told my husband that if we couldn't have children of our own, one of my key regrets would be never experiencing breastfeeding. I fully expected it to be difficult on many levels, but I had chosen that I would would remain committed, come what may. After all, if this was something mothers frequently could not do, the human race would not have gotten very far.

I still believe all of that. But one year later, I have a story to tell. And it is a story much more complex than I thought it would be.