Breastfeeding Toward Enlightenment

Aug4

I have a book called The Tao of Motherhood. It is literally the Tao Te Ching for mothers—a translation of the ancient Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu, but reworked slightly so that every “chapter” is about mothering and mothering well. It has 81 one to two page “chapters” just like the classic book. A quote from the end of the chapter on selflessness:

“You can sit and meditate while

your baby cries himself to sleep.

Or you can go to him and share

his tears, and find your Self.”

I’ve been thinking lately about writing an article about breastfeeding as a spiritual practice and have been using the same technique lately when nursing Alaina as described in this Mothering article by the same name: “breathing in, I am nursing my baby. Breathing out, I am at peace,” etc. (It also reminds me of my own How to Meditate with a Baby poem.)

On Monday, I was lying in bed nursing her and thinking about the intensity and totality of the breastfeeding relationship—it requires a more complete physical/body investment with someone than you will ever have with anyone else in your life, including sexual relationships. While I don’t like to lump the breastfeeding relationship in the same category with sex, because it feels like I’m saying breastfeeding is sexual, when it isn’t…though, I since lactation is definitely part of a woman’s reproductive functions, I guess maybe it is…but basically my line of thought was that if you nurse a couple of kids through toddlerhood, odds are high that you will have nursed them many more times than you will end up having sex with your husband in your entire lifetime. (This question of function reminds me of a quote I saw today: “Breasts are a scandal because they shatter the border between motherhood and sexuality.” ~Iris Marion Young)

I calculated that so far in my life I’ve put a baby to my breast more than 12,000 times. Even if I only experienced a single moment of mindful awareness or contemplation or transcendence or sacredness during each of those occasions, that is one heck of a potent, dedicated, and holy practice 🙂

In the book Tying Rocks to Clouds, the author interviews Stephen Levine who has three children and he says:

“Talk about a fierce teaching. It is easier to sit for three years in a cave than to raise a child from the time he is born to three years old.” This was in response to a question about whether serious spiritual development is possible when having relationships with others (spouse, children, etc.) I do believe that without having children, I would be less “developed” than I am now—I’ve said before that having kids can be hard on the self (ego), but great for the soul.

“Perhaps we owe some of our most moving literature to men who didn’t understand that they wanted to be women nursing babies.”

–Louise Erdrich, The Blue Jay’s Dance

Nursing Johnny Depp

Aug3

While planning posts for World Breastfeeding Week, I realized that I’ve never posted the essay for which I am most “famous” on my own blog! “Nursing Johnny Depp” originally appeared in Literary Mama in 2009 and an excerpt was used in the 2010 edition of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding in the section about nursing toddlers.

Nursing Johnny Depp

by Molly Remer

As I put his head to my breast, I feel a distinct thrill of the forbidden.”Na-na, Jack Sparrow, Mama,” my two-year-old son said, and I put the action figure to my chest without much thought.

As I look down at that tangled mop of dark hair and braided beard, and touch the slightly sneering lips to my nipple, I suddenly feel a bit dirty. Illicit. Inappropriate. As if perhaps I shouldn’t tell my husband what I’ve been doing in my spare time. In nursing that plastic Johnny Depp, I’ve crossed a line that maybe a good girl wouldn’t cross. Or, at least, I’ve surely violated some social norm or standard of propriety.

Previously an equal opportunity nurser, from that point on I begin to place more limits on what I am willing to nurse. Yes, to the tree frog. No, to the pink rubber rat. Yes, to the hungry-looking little piglet. No, to the Shrek Pez dispenser. I’m teaching my son about limits, I think: Body boundaries, personal space, self-respect, common decency. These are good concepts to master. Or, as I reject nursing a large red monster with a mouthful of sharp-looking teeth, am I teaching him to discriminate on the basis of personal appearance? To withhold love and to be stingy with affection? Or, perhaps more simply, that grimy, but appealing men are more worthy of attention than large blue stag beetles?

Sitting on the living room floor, my little son rocks back and forth with two small toys singing, “Rock, baby. Rock, baby…” I look closer and see that Obi-Wan Kenobi is tenderly cradling Yoda in his arms.

At dinner, eating grapes, my boy picks out a large grape and a very small grape. He is delighted with the small grape, “baby grape! Baby grape!” He holds up the large one and announces, “Mama grape.” He sets them on the table and carefully pushes the small grape towards the large one until they are touching. “Dat baby grape have na-nas!” he reports with obvious satisfaction. Later, he eats them both.

Skin contact is a requirement of nursing the inanimate. I used to try to get away with putting the toys to my breast on the outside of my shirt, but that was unacceptably less-than-genuine.

“Dat frog crying, Mama!” he implores. Later, he asks, “Where my frog go?” and I realize it is still snuggly tucked inside my bra, its purple rubber face nestled comfortably against my nipple.

I’ve seen a number of snapshots of other people’s little girls and boys “nursing” their own dolls, stuffed animals, or dump trucks, but neither of my own sons have been interested in nursing their own toys.

I have suggested it and was met with utter contempt–“Mom, we’re BOYS! We don’t have na-nas.” I am well aware that I look somewhat less than adorable at the park with a plastic alligator latched on.

Playing on the floor with my dad, my son picks up one of my husband’s childhood He-Man action figures. Evilyn has bright yellow skin and a revealing metallic bikini.

“Hey!” Zander exclaims, “Dat lady got na-nas!”

He fingers them approvingly and my dad comments blandly, “Well, yes, she does.”

Several months prior, at my older son’s insistent request, I lovingly fashioned a cloth baby carrier for Evilyn to wear on her back. Her baby of choice is a tiny crocheted “button buddy” monster with googly eyes.

“Look, Mom! She can hold her baby!” The five year old announces. Evilyn’s yellow hand is tucked completely through the button hole in the middle of her baby’s chest.

I begin to consider that perhaps I am the chief toy nurser because my sons lack enough appropriately endowed female toys. Indeed, my little one is greatly distressed by trying to get one of our Playmobil women to hold her baby. Her stiff plastic arms hold the baby by the wrist at arm’s length and this simply will not do.

He holds the baby to her plastic bump of a chest (she has a “uni-breast”) crying and fretting, “Hold baby! Na-na baby!”

Eventually I solve the problem by taping the baby sideways across her chest like a bandolier, its head now appropriately positioned at breast level. (Lest it appear my son is only concerned about proper nursing access, earlier this same month I also carefully taped a tiny plastic knife into “Baby Froggie’s” beanie baby paw. “Look, Daddy! Baby. Froggie. Got. Sword!”)

So, yes, I am still nursing and not only do I nurse my toddler, I sometimes nurse a big orange robot, assorted earth-moving vehicles, Ewoks, squirrel puppets, the occasional pretzel or grape, and more. I turn down an offer of nursing Luke Skywalker (would I have turned down Han Solo, I wonder?) and also of some guy with a half-metal face. “Sorry, honey,” I say, “I don’t nurse that kind of guy.”

Molly Remer, MSW, ICCE is a certified birth educator, writer, and activist. She is a professor of human services, an LLL Leader, and editor of the Friends of Missouri Midwives newsletter. She has two living sons and an infant daughter and blogs about birth at https://talkbirth.wordpress.com

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Postscript: In the Literary Mama version, the editor decided to take out my last line, which was originally this: “Next time we watch Pirates of the Caribbean and that roguish face fills the screen, I can’t help but feel as if Johnny and I share a little secret. And, hey, if my son brings me Orlando Bloom to nurse next time, I definitely won’t say no… ”

I couldn’t decide whether to leave it in this version or not and ended up deciding to take it out here too (but then not, since I’m including it in this little postscript!). As a special bonus, this version includes pictures of the actual toys! (I took these last night and amazingly, three years post-events-described-in essay, Evilyn is still wearing her baby carrier and the Playmobil baby is still taped in place!)

Listening Well Enough

Aug2

In honor of World Breastfeeding Week this week, I am planning a series of breastfeeding posts. The following is a modified version of an article that previously appeared in a journal for support group leaders:

Listening Well Enough

by Molly Remer

When I was training to become a breastfeeding counselor, I practiced four helping situations as telephone role-plays. I was very anxious about receiving the first practice call. In fact, I confess to being so anxious that when one of the women I was working with called for the first time to practice and I missed her call, I actually cried.

After that missed call, I had a dream. In the dream, the woman called to practice. I said “hello,” and received no response. I said hello again. No response. “I’m not able to hear you,” I explained, “you have reached a breastfeeding counselor. Do you have a breastfeeding question?” Silence. I tried again, “Let me tell you a little bit about our services…our services are free, do you want to ask me a question?” Still there was silence, though I was positive that the woman was still on the other end of the line. Finally, I said, “I am not able to hear you, so I’m going to hang up now. Please feel free to call me back if you need to talk.” Finally, the woman spoke. She told me that I had not handled the call well. I asked her how I was supposed to know what to say if the mother wasn’t saying anything. The woman responded, “that mother told you everything you needed to know, you just weren’t listening well enough.”

Obviously, this dream reflected the anxiety I was feeling about being able to “perform” during helping calls. It also showed the fears I had about being judged by the other women as not being warm enough or informative enough (though I was assured by my trainers that the practice calls were to help me feel comfortable, not to judge and test me!). Aside from this analysis of the practical reasons behind my dream, I feel it reminded me of several relevant points:

A breastfeeding counselor is not a mind reader. While we can ask skillful questions, read subtle cues, and encourage explanation, we cannot intuit everything!
A helping call is a partnership—no matter how well we listen, the mother must still give some information in order to receive information.
Breastfeeding counselors do not have to have all of the answers—we listen to what the specific mother tells us, ask for more information if we need it, explore further if we sense it is necessary, and share information with her.
Breastfeeding counselors need to listen well and respond sensitively to the individual mother, not take a “cookbook” approach and think we have the answer right away.
Breastfeeding counselors need to listen for the questions not-asked, because they are often the most important. It may take some “detective” work to get to the real question behind her request for help. The first question a mother asks is rarely her real question.
For in-person interactions, nonverbal communication can tell you so much—“listening” to her body language and other cues is as important as the words she speaks, or doesn’t speak.

Before becoming a mother, I worked in domestic violence shelters answering the crisis line and providing short-term crisis intervention services to women who had experienced domestic violence. Interestingly enough, I find that those types of helping calls were in some ways “easier” to work through than breastfeeding help calls, since there were fewer variations in women’s stories and experiences. With breastfeeding questions, there are an infinite number of variables and an infinite array of mothers, babies, families, and mother-baby dyads. Just as there is no one way to be a good mother, there is no perfect way to help mothers. Breastfeeding is not a by the book procedure—it is an intimate relationship with different dynamics from one nursing couple to the next. Individual mothers and babies respond differently to the same things.

Our main message to each mother is how important she is to her baby and how breastfeeding can be a wonderful part of this. We want to help mothers feel good about being a mother, about meeting their babies’ needs in the way that feels best for them, and to trust their own instincts. We wish to leave mothers with a feeling of self-confidence, acceptance, and encouragement.

Maternal-Fetal Conflict?

Aug1

“You will have ideas, options and paths to ponder, but you will also have a sense of possible directions to take as you consider midwifery, childbirth education, or being a doula or an activist. Your path may be circular or straight, but meanwhile you can serve motherbaby while on the path, with a destination clearly in mind.” She also says, “I use the word midwife to refer to all birth practitioners. Whether you are a mother, doula, educator, or understanding doctor or nurse you are doing midwifery when you care for motherbaby.” —Midwifery Today editorial by Jan Tritten

Mamatoto is a Swahili word meaning “motherbaby”–reflecting the concept that mother and infant are not two separate people, but an interrelated dyad. What impacts one impacts the other and what is good for one is good for the other. The midwifery and birth communities have used this concept for quite some time and more recently some maternal health researchers have also referenced the idea of the “maternal nest”–that even following birth, the mother is the baby’s “habitat.”

Critiques of homebirth sometimes rest on a (flawed) assumption of maternal-fetal conflict (which is also invoked to describe situations with substance abuse or other risky behavior). In the Fall 2007 issue of CfM News, Willa Powell wrote about maternal-fetal conflict in response to an ABC segment on unassisted birth. She wrote:

[quoting the expert physician interviewed for the segment] “The few hours of labor are the most dangerous time during the entire lifetime of that soon to be born child. Because of this, I would argue, all soon to be born children have a right to access to immediate cesarean delivery, and women who insist on denying this right are irresponsible.”

This was the only professional opinion in the program on unassisted birth, and he set up a typical expression of an obstetric community belief: the “maternal-fetal conflict.” The notion is that there are two “patients”, where the mother’s desires are sometimes in conflict with the well-being of the baby, and that the obstetrician has a moral/professional obligation to abandon the mother in favor of the baby.

I have to remind myself that Dr. Chervenak is setting up a false choice. In fact, this scenario is a “doctor-patient conflict”. The mother wants what’s best for herself and her child, but she disagrees with her doctor about what is, in fact, best. Women are making choices they believe are best for themselves and best for their babies, but those choices are often at odds with what doctors consider best for both, and certainly at odds with what is best for the obstetrician!

In the book Birth Tides, the author discusses maternal-fetal conflict:

According to obstetricians, the infant’s need to be born in what they have defined as a safe environment, i.e. an obstetric unit, takes precedence over the mother’s desire to give birth in what doctors have described as the comfort of her own home. It is a perspective that pits the baby’s needs against those of the mother, setting ‘overriding’ physical needs against ‘mere’ psychological ones. It is rooted in the perception that the baby is a passenger in the carriage of its mother’s body–the ‘hard and soft passages,’ as they are called. It is also rooted in the notion of the mind-body split, in the idea that the two are separate and function, somehow, independently of each other, just like the passenger and the passages. While women may speak about ‘carrying’ babies, they do not see themselves as ‘carriers,’ any more than they regard their babies as ‘parasites’ in the ‘maternal environment.’ If you see your baby as a part of you, there can be no conflicts on interests between you.

I previously linked to a book review that explores this concept of the more aptly described “obstetric conflict” in even more depth.

I think it is fitting to remember that mother and baby dyads are NOT independent of each other. With a mamatoto—or, motherbaby—mother and baby are a single psychobiological organism whose needs are in harmony (what’s good for one is good for the other).

As Willa concluded in her CfM News article, “...we must reject the language that portrays a mother as hostile to her baby, just because she disagrees with her doctor.”

An example of a mamatoto 🙂

I just want to grind my corn!

Jul29

If you know me in real life (or if you are my husband), you’ve probably heard me use the phrase, “I just want to grind my corn.” I’ve been meaning to write a blog post about this idea for quite some time and when I posted my essay about “playing my music,” I received a comment from a friend saying, “I worry I’m not accomplishing what I’m capable of doing, but I know that ditching my kids and simply pursuing my ‘own thing’ would not be fulfilling.” When I read that, I knew that the time for my corn grinding post had come. When I use the phrase, I’m envisioning some kind of ancient tribe in which the mothers are working together grinding corn, while their babies are tied to their backs, and the older children play nearby. While I do not literally want to live in primitive times (those corn grinding mothers also probably had a lifespan of 35 years!), I feel as if mothering is “meant” to be a communal activity rather than a solitary one and I feel like babies and children are meant to coexist alongside their mothers as they go about their daily work. Rather than intensive, child-focused, total-reality mothering, I think babies are happy watching their mothers work and participating in the daily rhythms of the home and world with no need for the mother to be “rolling around on the floor in the glitter in her sweatpants” (see the book Perfect Madness) while serving as a one woman entertainment committee. This age of individual mothers caring for individual children in isolation from the larger “tribe,” is a social and cultural anomaly when we look at the wide scope of human history. Likewise, meeting for playdates isn’t what I mean either—I mean more task-oriented, corn grinding work, than that.

In the book Perfect Madness, the author articulates what I mean when I say I want to grind my corn—the need for something in between staying at home and working full time (basically, that working and mothering simultaneously is the most natural and fulfilling approach, but our society does not make that combination often feasible or comfortable):

Which means that ‘natural’ motherhood today should know no conflict between providing for our children (i.e. ‘working’) and nurturing them (i.e. ‘being a mom’). Both are part of our evolutionary heritage; both are equally ‘child-centered’ imperatives. What’s ‘unnatural’ about motherhood today, if you follow Hrdy’s line of thinking, is not that mothers work but rather that their ‘striving for status’ and their ‘maternal emotions’ have been compartmentalized. By putting the two in conflict–by insisting on the incompatibility of work and motherhood–our culture does violence to mothers, splitting them, unnaturally, within themselves…For they show that the so-called ‘choices’ most of us face in America–between more-than-full-time work or 24/7 on-duty motherhood–are, quite simply, unnatural. They amount to a kind of psychological castration: excessive work severs a mother from her need to be physically present in caring for her child, and excessive ‘full-time’ motherhood of the total-reality variety severs a mother not only from her ability to financially provide for her family but also from her adult sense of agency…

This is what I’m talking about. There needs to be a third, realistic option (and not just for women. For men too. For families!). I have often expressed the desire to find a balance between mothering and “personing.” I’m seeking a seamless integration of work and family life for both Mark and myself. An integration that makes true co-parenting possible, while still meeting the potent biological need of a baby for her mother and a mother’s biological compulsion to be present with her baby. Why is the work world designed to ignore the existence of families?

So, returning to my friend’s remark, I truly feel as if there is another option between “not accomplishing” and “ditching my kids.” And, I feel like after a LOT of work and trying, I’ve found somewhat of a balance in my own life between “personing” and “mothering.” It is possible to mother well AND also do some other things that feed your soul. It doesn’t have to be an either/or arrangement. And, we don’t do our kids any favors by not pursuing some of our own passions when they can watch and observe us being vibrant, active, complex, complete human beings (not saying that it isn’t “complete” to be a SAHM, but that if you DO want to pursue some other non-kid projects, kids learn good things from watching that happen!) I used to feel like I was going to die–-metaphorically speaking…like my soul was getting squashed—if I wasn’t able to pursue some of my personal goals. I don’t feel that way anymore (and I still spend roughly 90% of every week with my kids and 99% of my waking and sleeping hours with my baby!).

At one point when my first son was a baby, I was trying to explain my “trapped” or bound feelings to my mother and she said something like, “well what would you rather be doing instead?” And, that was exactly it. I DIDN’T want to be doing something instead, I wanted to be doing something AND. I wanted to grind my corn with my baby. Before he was born I had work that I loved very much and that, to me, felt deeply important to the world. Motherhood required a radically re-defining of my sense of my self, my purpose on earth, and my reason for being. While I had been told I could bring my baby with me while continuing to teach volunteer trainings, I quickly found that it was incompatible for me—I felt like I was doing neither job well while bringing my baby with me and I had to “vote” for my baby and quit my work. While I felt like this was the right choice for my family, it felt like a tremendous personal sacrifice and I felt very restricted and “denied” in having to make it. With my first baby, I had to give up just about everything of my “old life” and it was a difficult and painful transition. When my second baby was born, it was much easier because I was already in “kid mode.” I’d already re-defined my identity to include motherhood and while I still chafed sometimes at the bonds of being bonded, they were now familiar to me.

I become fully certified as a childbirth educator in that year after my second son’s birth (provisionally certified in 2005 and he was born in 2006) and another feeling I struggled with was the sensation that I had all of this change-the-world birth energy that was being stagnated or blocked somehow. I felt like I had become a birth educator in order to change the birth world, to transform the birth culture in the US, and in my own small corner of the world I could not make the kind of impact I envisioned making. That is when I started writing and found satisfaction in reaching out to the wider world in that manner (I explored how that benefited me in the music post already).

Now, with Alaina, while I do feel overloaded or overbooked at times, in general I feel like I have found a better balance than with any of my other children. I continue to teach college classes in person (a total of 10 hours a week) and online and while it is tricky at times, so far it is working pretty well and we’re all happy (thanks in no small part to my mom who has been willing to come to class with me to take care of her in between my breaks, so that we experience only small amounts of separation once a week). As she gets bigger and more energetic (read: sleeps less), I’m definitely finding that I will probably have to let something else in my life go in order to continue to be available to her, to my boys, and to my own need for “down time” in the manner in which I wish to be without hurting myself (by staying up too late, not eating well, having stressed out “freak out” moments, etc.). Sadly, I think it is going to be my birth classes that I put on hold and possibly this blog as well (more about this later) .

Speaking of the difference between parenting and personing—I also do not view being a mother as my job. Mothering is a relationship to me and not a job that I perform. Just as it is unhealthy for me to be defined by work responsibilities, it is also unhealthy for me to be defined by relationships. I would never describe my job as being “Mark’s wife” or “Barbara’s daughter,” that gives them too much responsibility for my identity. We are in relationship to each other, but that is not a duty I perform. And, just being in relation to them is not enough for the full expression of my personhood, I need other aspects and elements to my identity. Why am I surprised that I feel the same way about parenting? I want to be with my children, but I wish to be engaged in my own pursuits at the same time. When our lives feel happiest and most harmonious is when exactly this is occurring—when we are all together, but each working on our own projects and “doing our own thing.” I envision a life of seamless integration, where there need not even be a notion of “life/work” balance, because it is all just life and living. A life in which children are welcome in workplaces and in which work can be accomplished while in childspaces. A life in which I can grind my corn with my children nearby and not feel I need apologize for doing so or explain myself to anyone.

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Continuing my birth art and life theme, I made two new sculptures a couple of weeks ago to express my corn grinding spirit. The first one is a corn goddess sculpture:

The second is a mama literally grinding her corn and holding her baby 🙂

They both make me happy when I look at them and I added them to my living room side table altar/sacred space.

Footnote: I started this post on June 17 and am now finishing it over a month later. Simultaneous corn-grinding and mothering can be very sloooooow…..;)

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Footnote 2015: I’ve added a whole new baby since I first wrote this in 2011! I also created a whole new sculpture about the experience:

Book Review: In Search of the Perfect Birth

Jul28

Book Review: In Search of the Perfect Birth
By Elizabeth McKeown, 2011
186 pages, paperback.
ISBN-13: 978-0615481708
http://www.theperfectbirth.com/

Reviewed by Molly Remer

Written by a mother of three, In Search of the Perfect Birth is an unassisted childbirth manifesto. It chronicles the author’s journey through the births of her children—the first born in the hospital, the second a planned homebirth ending in hospital transport, and the third an unassisted birth. Elizabeth is strongly convicted that unassisted birth is the right choice for most women, though I feel she is also fairly respectful that other women’s experiences may or may not lead them to the same conclusion. This book is not a do-it-yourself guide to UC, but is an exploration of one woman’s experiences in healing from birth trauma and taking full responsibility for the birth of her next child. I was fascinated by her conclusions that her own birth trauma wasn’t healed through unassisted birth itself, but through the decision to take charge of her own birth care.

The book is pretty rough around the edges and could use some more editing and polishing. There is a stream-of-consciousness feel to the writing style that can be a little confusing and disjointed.

The author makes some excellent points with regard to the restrictions that can be placed on women’s birth freedoms by midwives also, noting wryly that if you choose the “middle ground” you may well end up with all the downsides of being told what to do with your own body, but “without the opiates that make it bearable!” Elizabeth’s homebirth turned hospital transport experience was pretty horrific and it was difficult to read about. She also writes with candor about the degree and intensity of pain she experienced during all of her births (including the UC).

In Search of the Perfect Birth will be of particular interest to women who already support unassisted birth and to women who have experienced birth trauma and are seeking resolution in future natural childbirths. It is an honest and heartfelt story.

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Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes.

Separation Anxiety?

Jul27

Who is that looking at me?

I’m starting to notice some signs of what is traditionally called “separation anxiety” with Alaina—she starts to call/complain if she can’t see me, turns away from other people if she doesn’t want someone else to hold her, flops around at night until her hand is touching me, that kind of thing. Anyway, it made me think of the following quote that I had saved to post about it. From an article by the same name by Naomi Aldort in the May/June 2011 issue of Natural Life:

“By nature, there is no such thing as ‘separation anxiety.’ Instead, there is a healthy need of a child to be with her mother. Only a deprivation of a need creates anxiety. If we honor the need for as long as their child needs it, no anxiety develops. The concept ‘separation anxiety’ is the invention of a society that denies a baby and child’s need for uninterrupted connection. In this vein, we can deprive a child of food and describe her reaction as ‘hunger anxiety,’ or we can let her be cold and call her cries ‘temperature anxiety.'”

I loved this. What a strange society we have that defines a baby’s normal and wholly biologically appropriate need to be with its mother, as “anxiety.” I always call a baby that wants to be with its mother a smart baby, not a baby that has “separation anxiety.” 🙂

Book Review: Doulas’ Guide to Birthing Your Way

Jul27

Book Review: Doulas’ Guide to Birthing Your Way
Authors: Jan Mallak & Teresa Bailey, 2010.
ISBN: 978-0-9823379-7-4
$15.37 – $21.95, 188 pages, softcover
Hale Publishing: http://www.ibreastfeeding.com/

Reviewed by Molly Remer

Geared towards pregnant women, Doulas’ Guide to Birthing Your Way is written in a simplistic manner using short, direct sentences. While in some ways this approach makes the information readily accessible, it can also feel unsophisticated in places. However, while the writing style is basic, the content is not. The Doulas’ Guide is a book that really “goes beyond” the information traditionally offered in birth preparation books, covering topics many parents typically may not have considered prenatally such as natural birth vs. birthing naturally, physical comfort preference styles, visualization, being a savvy consumer, blessingways, and taking pictures of the placenta. The information is refreshingly practical and hands-on. Chapters cover the critical importance of the human environment, “five arms of doula support,” birth preparation, one chapter for each stage of labor including separate chapter for immediate postpartum, a section about cesarean birth and VBAC, and a breastfeeding chapter. There is an excellent section on postpartum care including a PPD symptoms chart. I was a little taken aback by a blithe comment, “Just think of it as an alternate birth route!” regarding cesareans.

Doulas’ Guide contains good, helpful snapshots throughout the text. Dads will like the plethora of labor support skills and ideas and the accompanying photographs. The book advocates preparation of a “birth vision” and includes examples at the end of the book (including cesarean birth options).

The variety of checklists, key questions, tables with reference information, bullet points, and pictures keep the pace of Doulas’ Guide to Birthing Your Way snappy and digestible. This book covers lots of ground and packs a lot of information into under 200 pages!

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Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes.

Book Review: Ben Behind His Voices

Jul22

Review: Ben Behind His Voices: One Family’s Journey From the Chaos of Schizophrenia to Hope
By Randye Kaye
ISBN: 978-1442210899

Rowman and Littlefield Publishers

Hardcover, 320 pages, $26.95; Kindle, $9.99
http://benbehindhisvoices.com/

Reviewed by Molly Remer

Ben Behind His Voices is a mother’s poignant memoir of her young adult son’s struggle with paranoid schizophrenia. It was instantly engaging and kept my attention throughout. The author, Randye Kaye, is a radio personality and voice actress and the mother of two children. When her oldest child, Ben, is 17 he begins exhibiting increasingly strange, confusing, and disturbing symptoms. After being shuttled through a variety of diagnoses and treatment providers while steadily becoming worse, he is diagnosed at age 21 with schizophrenia. Randye is obviously a devoted parent to Ben and a committed advocate for her son and the book chronicles a roller coaster of experiences with psychiatric hospitalizations, medication challenges, bright spots of hope, relapses, group home placements, and readjustments of expectations. Perhaps most touching are her struggles to accept the “new normal” of her family’s life and to let go of her old expectations and hopes for her son, while still celebrating the caring and worthwhile person he is, albeit one who is coping with a formidable disability.

A particularly nice feature of this book are the textboxes inset throughout containing facts and information for family members of those with mental illnesses. Much of this information is based on Family-to-Family peer support materials from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (Randye becomes a trainer for this program).

Though written about very emotional events, there is a dispassionate quality to the writing that kept me from feeling fully connected to the narrator.

A fascinating character study as well as an exploration of family adaptation and coping skills, Ben Behind His Voices would be a particularly interesting read for students in psychology, social work, or human services as well as anyone who has a family member with a mental illness. As a mother of young sons, Ben Behind His Voices was a difficult book to read—Randye’s thoughts and reflections about her own son as a young boy, made me look at my own little guys with a pang of “what if.”

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Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes.

Telling About It…

Jul19

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

-Mary Oliver

I saw this quote on another mother’s blog yesterday and loved it. To me, it sums up the reason why I continue to write this blog. I have so many things going on in my life and I often wonder why I bother to continue writing blog posts. Does it matter at all? Aren’t I just adding to the general cacophony of voices and wild, information overloaded chaos of the internet (and even of the birth activist sphere in general). I feel almost compelled to do so though. And, really, the reason why is to tell about it. There is a lot to be astonished by in one’s everyday life. While I can get distracted and frantic and lose my present moment orientation, I do pay attention a lot. To a lot of things. A friend told me at my blessingway that I live my life with more intention than most people she knows. I considered that to be a great compliment—and, I also think I live my life with a lot of attention. Sometimes that attention may seem like excessive navel-gazing and very often it is excessively self-critical (and, isn’t that being self-centered, she says critically and self-evaluatively?), but I feel like I am a generally observant person, paying attention to my place in the world and the manner in which I walk through my day. And, the paying attention is intimately involved with then wanting to tell about it—here, on my blog 🙂

Here’s what feels astonishing about my life today. Six months ago today I gave birth to a little treasure. I feel like every day for the past six months I’ve experienced astonishment that she’s here—where did you come from, I ask her. She’s magic. I can hardly believe it has been six months already and yet, it also feels like she’s been here forever. And, guess what? My friend who has been waiting for her rainbow baby to be born, gave birth to her own precious daughter this morning. So, now our journeys share one more point of connection.

I really, really wanted to write an effusive blog post about my baby today in honor of her sixmonthabirthday. However, the end of the summer session is wrapping up and I had many papers to grade instead. I spent naptime working on them with the plan to reward myself with a blog post after finishing my grades (though, since I planned to grade 22 papers and 11 exams, you can see that something was awry in my calculations!). She woke up of course, after my only having graded 11 papers, and needed me to hold her rather than to write about her and so now I am here at almost midnight, needing to go to bed rather than to gush. Anyway, my happy, BIG, smiley, adorable, friendly, charming, unflappable, cooperative, sitting-up-and-working-on-crawling-and-pulling-up girl is six months old today. Her head smells like apricots and flowers. She loves watching her big brothers. She loves watching chickens and cats. She loves watching me. While I’ve written a lot about what an easy baby she is, she also likes to be held and toted along pretty much everywhere I go—maybe some people would define that as “high need” (i.e. “I can never put her down!”). I, however, think that is biologically appropriate baby genius. She is very grabby and reachy lately. My mom described holding her like “holding a bag of snakes,” because she is constantly on the lookout for something to snag. She has begun pushing up on surfaces so that her legs are standing (but her hands are still on the surface—so, not pulling up exactly, but pre-pulling up). She LOVES to find and eat paper and tear up catalogs. She laughs like crazy if I make monster noises on her belly. We tried to give her some solid food, but she gags and spits it out, even though she appears captivated by other people eating food. We still do EC (elimination communication) and she sleeps all night with a dry diaper. She always wakes up with a smile. She thinks Zander is hilarious, but isn’t very comfortable with him holding her. When Lann holds her, she snuggles down on him with total trust (even though he staggers under her weight—she weighs almost 18 pounds now and he weighs under 50). I love having a baby while also have a 7.5 year old. He carries her to the car for me. He watches her while I take a shower. He can hold her while I cut up vegetables or do something food-prep related that needs two hands. It is awesome.

Despite grabbiness, she strokes and pats faces very gently. It is very sweet. She likes to ride in a pouch on my hip checking out the action. She likes to nurse best while lying down in bed—she tucks her feet up on my legs and puts her hands on either side of my chest. She has beautiful skin and beautiful eyelashes and her eyes sparkle with the delight of life. She is chubby and not petite. She is my most relaxed, settled baby—she rarely gets scared, hurt, or upset by things. She’s tough! When something makes a loud noise, she jumps, but then looks at me (to gauge possible severity) and then gives a big grin (the boys would both cry). If she tips and bumps her head or gets bonked or scratched by something, she usually doesn’t cry about it—my older son would have screamed and my younger son would have had a fit of rage. Her temperament is very steady and even. She has started to get more displeased if you take something away from her that she wants though—sometimes that provokes a protest. She also growls to herself while she plays with toys lately—she loves to empty a basket of toys and will sit on the floor working on this task for about 30 minutes. We think the growling sound is from listening to the boys play. I cannot believe how fast she is growing and changing. I try to take mental snapshots every day—her soft hair, her round cheeks, her little neck when her head is bent looking at something, her dark watchful pools of eyes, her careful and still clumsy hand movements and swiping grabs, her big gumbly smiles, her eyes fluttering closed at the breast. I pay attention. I am astonished. And, I tell about it.