Let's Be Honest About Breastfeeding

During pregnancy, women spend a lot of time weighing decisions that they will soon have to face: Will I learn the sex of the baby prior to the birth? Will I use drugs during delivery? Who will be with me in the delivery room?  Where will my baby sleep? And possibly the question that concerns new parents the most - will I breastfeed or formula feed?

Deciding how to feed a baby is a personal decision that each mother must come to on her own. Many women choose to breastfeed after doing some research on the topic. They find information about the plethora of good nutrients in breast milk and the bonding power of nursing. They read testimonials of mothers who have loved the breastfeeding experience, and they are bombarded with the new mantra of pediatricians: breast is best. These women hear the positivity associated with breastfeeding and come to the conclusion to do so without hearing the whole story.

While it is true that there is much to be gained from nursing - the health benefits cannot be denied and the time that mommy and baby spend being so physically close is unlike any other - it is important to know that breastfeeding is far from a walk in the park. What many women fail to learn before giving birth is that breastfeeding is hard. In fact, often it's really hard. If a new mom enters motherhood expecting to jump right into successful nursing, chances are she is going to be extremely disappointed.

New moms need to have realistic expectations in those first few weeks. If nursing is important to a new mother, then she should understand that there is a certain amount of commitment involved in reaching breastfeeding nirvana. There may be days when she feels like quitting. There may be many days like that, in fact. Lactation consultants can be very useful at these times, giving tips on positioning and helping baby latch effectively. It's crucial to remember that, even with their natural instincts, babies do not emerge from the womb knowing exactly how to eat. And new moms don't have any idea what they are doing either. It would be unfair to assume that two clueless human beings would be able to figure out something so complex so quickly. Some babies have an easier time learning to nurse than others. New moms should try hard not to compare their own stories to those of friends or family. Each baby is going to be different.

So, to the moms who have embarked on the breastfeeding journey, I offer you this advice. Be patient. Know that it is absolutely normal to take some time to work out the kinks, and give yourself that time. Don't be too hard on yourself or your baby. Learning a new skill never happens overnight.

And to the moms out there who are not breastfeeding for one reason or another, I want to say this: there is a lot of positive hype out there surrounding breastfeeding and its importance, but at the end of the day how a mother feeds her baby has absolutely nothing to do with how good a mother she is. Many women try the breastfeeding thing before coming to the conclusion that it isn't going to work for them, and then feel tremendous guilt about giving it up. Others know before giving birth that it is not something they are interested in and choose formula from the start. Whatever the circumstance, it is important to remember that there are thousands of opportunities every day for us to show our babies how much we love them, and there is plenty of time for bonding, with or without a breast. When it comes to motherhood, our job is to do the best we can. Only a mother in her own individual situation can know what that means for her.

A Lesson Learned in Forgiveness

I have been planning to write a blog post on forgiveness in parenting for some time. It has become one of the things I talk about most often in regards to being a new parent. I realized early on how important it is to be able to forgive yourself. When caring for a baby, it is inevitable that accidents will happen. From things as simple as getting some skin caught in the nail clipper to more frightening incidents like falls down the stairs. We certainly should take all the precautions we can to avoid situations where our children get hurt, but when the unavoidable ones happen, it is crucial to be able to forgive ourselves and move on.

I was thinking that this ability to forgive ourselves is one of the most difficult things to learn as new parents. And it is. But, what I didn't think about is the fact that I am not on this parenting journey on my own. I did not factor in the fact that I have a partner, and that he, too, may have moments where an error in judgment leads to a baby mishap. My failure to consider that possibility also means that I hadn't given any thought to how I might feel or react were such an event to occur.

Over the last nine-and-a-half months I have had my fair share of close calls when it comes to my son, Matthew. Just recently, I was using a sharp knife to cut up his food while he was sitting in his chair waiting for his dinner. I didn't realize how close I was to him or that he was reaching out to grab the food as I was cutting it. I saw his finger at the last possible second, just in time to move the knife away and sigh one of the biggest sighs of relief I've ever released. There have also been times when I have also turned my back for a quick second and turned back just in time to avoid disaster. In all of these instances, the worst-case-scenario of what could have happened plays over in my head several times, and I know that had I actually hurt him it would be very difficult to forgive myself. But, I also remind myself that at some point in the years of his development, accidents will happen. I will do my best to prevent them, and, of course, I hope not to cause them, but when they occur, I need to stay calm and do what is best for my son. Being a good parent isn't just about protecting him, it's also about caring for him when I am unable to protect him enough.

And so I have had this conversation with myself many times about how I will respond when the first accident occurs, and how I will try not to punish myself too much. And then it happened. He fell off the bed, and no one was quick enough to catch him. Only it wasn't me who was playing with him, it was my husband, Scott. And all of a sudden, all of that knowledge I have about how I've been close to this exact scenario several times before and how any of those times could have been different and how any day now I could look the wrong way at just the wrong second - all that went out the window. Suddenly I was filled with this righteous indignation that such a thing would never happen on my watch. I was listening to my baby cry and all I could think was "How could you let this happen?"

I found myself paralyzed. I felt anger rising up in me, but I knew I couldn't let it out. I knew deep down that it was unfair and that expressing it was going to be damaging. I kept thinking about how utterly awful I would feel had I been the one near him when he fell and how much worse it would be if my partner was yelling at me. I felt these two conflicting ideas raging within me - the emotional irrational anger versus the rational cognitive understanding. I did my best to focus on the task at hand - soothing Matthew and making sure he was alright - and not on the moments leading up to his fall. Ultimately, I think I got stuck somewhere in between my two minds, choosing not to address my husband directly until after the initial anger subsided. In all the times I had thought about how I would feel if I allowed something to happen to Matty, I never once thought about how angry Scott would be with me.

The whole ordeal lasted no more than five minutes from the moment of the fall til Matty had completely stopped crying and seemed to have forgotten it had even occurred. Once he had calmed down and I had time to think, I realized that I just as easily could have been the one playing with him by the bed. Over the last few weeks, his ability to move around has increased tenfold, and sometimes these changes happen from one day to the next. It is shocking how quickly he can get from one side of a bed to the other. A mistake was made, there is no question about it, but it does not mean that my husband isn't an excellent father (he is) or that I couldn't have made the same one (I could have).

I walked away from this whole experience with a very salient lesson in my pocket. Forgiveness is an extremely important tool in parenting. We must learn how to forgive ourselves, as I have been saying for some time. But, possibly more importantly, we need to be able to forgive our partners. Accidents can happen at any time, to any of us. Aside from cases of gross negligence, we are all doing the best we can. Even the greatest parent can make a poor judgment call at one time or another. We all know this, and yet when accidents occur, we feel our entire ability to be parents has been called into question. What we need from our partners is support and reassurance. We need to be reminded that we are wonderful parents and that everybody makes mistakes. What we do not need is to be interrogated about what we were thinking and berated for our errors. A conversation about ways to avoid similar situations may be appropriate at a later time, but in the direct aftermath of an accident, forgiving our partners can go a long way in promoting successful joint parenting.

It's Not Am I Mom Enough, It's Am I Me Enough

From the moment that my delicious son, Matthew, entered my life, he has been my world. In the really early days my entire being functioned around what he needed. I slept when he slept, I ate between his feedings. I changed diapers, ran to pediatrician's appointments and prewashed about a thousand items of clothing. When I factored in my own needs at all, they were always secondary to his. Through the last nine months he has grown, and the intense burden of the newborn days has been relieved a bit, but he is still the focus of most of my time.

I have never once questioned if I was "mom enough," as the provocative Time article has done. In fact, the question that I wondered more often than any other was if I was "me" enough. The life of a new mother is intense. It is incredible, but it is also all-consuming. I struggled, and still struggle, with trying to maintain my identity as I adapt to this new role.

Part of what made this struggle so profound for me is the total confusion of what my body, and all of its parts, are for. For the first 29 years of my life, my breasts had no other purpose other than to look pretty. They were ornamental at best, used to attract men and make tank tops look better. Suddenly, I give birth to a baby, and they've become the most functional, incredible, life-sustaining organs. It is a mind-boggling turn of events, one that I have not quite wrapped my brain around, even now.

I have very much enjoyed nursing my son. I still breastfeed him at night before bed and first thing in the morning. But I can say honestly that I will not feel that I am truly myself again until my breasts are my own. It is true that parenting requires sacrifice. There are many things I am sure I will give up along the way for my children. But my identity is not one of them. Three years is too long for me to be in the midst of this identity crisis. And truthfully, my husband deserves time when he is not sharing my body with our son.

I try very hard not to judge other mothers. We are all out here, fighting the good fight, doing what we can to give our sons and daughters the best possible lives. If you choose to nurse your child through toddlerhood, that is your prerogative. But do not suggest that if I do not that I am less of a mother than you are. I am a mother with every fiber of my being. Where I fear I may be lacking is as a wife. As a friend. Maybe as a daughter. But as a mother? Don't be ridiculous.

In Memory of Ayelet

I often wonder if the technological advances of the last ten years are really beneficial. Particularly with all the social networking, it sometimes feels like we are too connected. No one needs to pick up the phone anymore because so much vital information is communicated publicly as status messages or tweets. The younger generations have literally grown up on the internet. Privacy requires an incredible amount of hard work and sometimes I worry about the impact it's having on all of us.

But then there are the times when I realize how amazing it is to be instantly connected to a world of people. The opportunity to get back in touch with friends and acquaintances with whom I've lost contact is an incredible thing. I am actively involved in the lives of people I knew over a decade ago solely because we have found each other online. There is no question that these relationships would have petered out completely if not for Facebook reintroducing us. It is really quite special.

But nothing, absolutely nothing, can compare to the way the cyber-network of the world brought together a community in prayer and in hope for Ayelet Galena. A beautiful 2-year-old girl, who I never had the privilege of knowing personally, Ayelet engaged in an epic battle for her life after receiving a bone marrow transplant in August 2011. Through blog entries, status updates and photos, Ayelet's family kept a world of admirers in the loop as to all her ups and downs.

I can only imagine the impact these posts had on Ayelet's family - being able to share their highs and lows with thousands and thousands of people all at once. But I don't have to imagine to know the effect these posts had on those of us on the outside. Never before have I seen a greater coming together of people for a common goal. Regardless of religious affiliation, gender, race or ethnicity, people around the globe were pouring out their heartfelt wishes and prayers for Ayelet every moment of the day. Sharing status messages and "liking" positive updates - people were inspired every day by the strength of this little girl and her unwavering will to live.

And then, this morning, the unbearable news was shared. The status message that so many have feared for so long. After months of holding on, of doing everything she possibly could, Ayelet's body finally stopped fighting. It is incredible to feel such a profound sense of loss for a family that so many of us don't know personally, and yet we do. By letting us in to their lives, the Galena family has created a united community. We celebrated their successes and now we mourn their great loss. In a world that is so divided, this one little girl has united so many.

May Ayelet's legacy live on and inspire the fight in all of us.

This Virus is Ruining All Our Hard Work!

I want to start off by saying I hate the term "sleep training." I hate it the same way I hate when women talk about training their husbands (though I hate that a little more). To me, training is not something humans do to other humans. When discussing the process of helping our children develop healthy sleep habits, I would much prefer the words teaching, guiding or encouraging. With that said, I would like to discuss a bump we've hit on the road to guiding our son to a full night's sleep.

By the time my son, Matthew, was four months old, he was sleeping through the night. I think our success is a combination of choices that my husband and I made and the happy fact that Matty happens to be a good sleeper. Whatever the reason, it did not take long for me to get used to having a baby who was sleeping nine to ten hours a night. There were still nights when he might wake up around midnight or one and whimper a bit, but a quick visit to pop a pacifier in his mouth usually did the trick. I was so glad to say goodbye to middle-of-the-night feedings and hour-long rocking sessions to calm him down and get him back to sleep.

And then he got sick. And we're not talking about a quick, two-day bug that was miserable while it lasted but then made a swift exit. We're talking about a fever-filled, stuffy-nosed, coughing-fits-in-the-middle-of-the-night virus to end all viruses. And it was awful. To tell you the truth, I was caught a bit off guard. I know that babies get sick, especially babies who are in daycare with other babies all day long. I was expecting this. And yet, I was unprepared for the havoc it would wreak on our nights.

The hardest thing for me was that my poor little guy was just so unhappy. A nose-breather, as most babies are, Matty's biggest problem was that with his nose so stuffed, he was forced to breathe through his mouth. This meant no pacifier, which meant that he was at a loss for how to soothe himself to sleep. At the height of his sickness, he would wake up every hour and each time need some real TLC to have any chance of falling back to sleep. Under normal circumstances, I am happy to let him cry in his crib for a bit, hoping he will find a way to fall back to sleep on his own. On those healthy nights, I know there is nothing wrong and that he is just tired, so allowing him to figure it out on his own is my version of "teach a man to fish." On these sick nights, however, allowing him to cry is different. He is crying because he is sad, because he is sick and needs his parents, and so to leave him there seemed wrong and counterproductive. And so we began going in and holding him and rocking him and making sure he knew we were here and he was loved and telling him, though he can't understand, that if we could make it better, we would.

And for one night this felt fine. And even for two and for three. But then this thing didn't go away. And though he was no longer waking up every hour, he was waking up in the middle of the night coughing and crying for three weeks. And I still felt that I needed to go to him because he still sounded so sad. And yet, I worried that all the nights he spent teaching himself how to go to sleep on his own had been undone by this virus that sent us moving backwards instead of forward. I worried that he would begin to see this new routine as normal, and expect us to help him to sleep every night since that's what we'd done for him throughout his illness. I was afraid that we were making a very big mistake.

And then I remembered. I remembered a promise I made to myself the day Matthew made his entrance into this world. I promised that I would do my best. I promised that I wouldn't get bogged down with the 'right way' and the 'wrong way' but rather I would do what seemed right for us at the time. And during those weeks that my baby was sick, it felt right to go to him. It felt right to hold him and to kiss him and to make sure he is learning that even if we can't make it go away, we can provide comfort. And if that means a minor setback in our "sleep guiding," so be it.

It's Okay to Enjoy Being Away

It's been four months since I gave birth to my son, Matthew. Thinking back over the the time since he was born, I feel incredibly fortunate to be reflecting on a long list of moments that made me smile, and only a few where I felt frustrated or unhappy.

That said, there is one morning that stands out in my mind as the most difficult: the first time I dropped Matty off at daycare. I don't think I realized just how attached I had become to him over the twelve weeks of my maternity leave. Since the moment I brought him home, Matty and I spent close to every minute of every day together. I had left him with his dad or grandma for an hour or so when I needed to run an errand or take a nap, but for the most part, we had been together since the second he entered the world. I knew he needed me for all of his basic needs, but it didn't occur to me that I needed him, too. Being with Matty provided me with a sense of comfort. Any worry or anxiety I had as a new parent was put at ease when I was holding him. I knew he was okay, and I didn't have to worry.

Dropping Matty off at daycare was the first time I was going to be away from him for an extended period of time. I was a ball of different emotions - sadness, fear, loneliness, not to mention all the feelings I had about going back to work. I walked in and handed my baby to the staff and he immediately started hysterically crying. He was not quite 3 months old, and I am positive that he was crying because he was tired and not because I had handed him off, but it was still excruciating to hear. I started crying as well. I decided I needed to get out of there and let them do what they are trained to do. I knew Matty would be fine once he slept, and at his age he didn't really know if I was there or not.

I went to work and tried to stay busy, keeping my mind focused and not thinking about Matty and how much I missed him. The end of the day could not come fast enough. As soon as I was finished seeing my last client, I ran to pick him up as quickly as I could. The feeling of elation I had when I walked in and saw him is impossible to describe. The unparalleled joy of seeing him after our time apart actually made me feel like the separation was worth it.

It has been six weeks since that first day. While it is still slightly sad for me to drop him off in the mornings, I have also come to enjoy our time apart. For one thing, it really does make me appreciate our time together in a way I never could when I was always with him. Additionally, as he gets bigger and more active, I can do less and less of my own to-do list while he's awake. I try to drop him off a little before I need to leave for work or to get home a little before I need to pick him up. Knowing that he is in good hands means I can take care of a few things - errands, housework, etc - that I can't do when I am entertaining him.

At first I felt terrible about not rushing to get him the second I could. But as time has passed I realize how valuable this time apart is to our relationship. Becoming a parent does not mean I've completely become a different person. What it means is that the old me - the one who likes to jog along the Schuylkill or write a blog post - has to fight a little bit to survive. By taking some time for me when I am able to, I am actually enhancing the quality of my relationship with my son, because I am ensuring that I don't feel even the slightest bit resentful when I am with him.

Of course, most of the time Matthew and I spend apart is when I am at work, so I am still trying to find ways to do the things I enjoy. But putting Matty in daycare has helped me realize that it is okay to want some time apart, and that I shouldn't feel guilty for enjoying my time away from him.

Welcome to My New Blog :)

As some of you may know, I recently started writing for Examiner.com as a "Philly New Mom." I have been wanting to write more seriously and I came across the Examiner opportunity on careerbuilder.com. It was a good experience because it helped me realize exactly what I want - and don't want - from a writing gig. The Examiner is really looking for reporters - people to investigate stories, get new information, survey the local population, etc. I, on the hand, am looking for a forum to voice my thoughts, feelings and observations on being a new mom. The Examiner requires that their writers write objectively in the third person - a perfectly legitimate requirement for a news source. I am much more interested in writing in the first person. I want to share my knowledge, discuss everything I'm learning along the way and maybe even provide some advice when I think I have some to put out there.

I am very grateful for my brief stint as an Examiner. It got me more active on twitter, helped me discover that there is a world of mom bloggers out there and made me realize that I'm really excited about this as a writing opportunity. And so, I have left my post as an Examiner and have created this blog to share with anyone who's interested in reading. I plan to post both personal experiences and general parenting thoughts as well as continuing to recommend helpful parenting info in the Philly area.

More to come soon. Hope you'll come back and visit!