Writing and Nursing

Sep18

Today, I came across an old quote I had saved from the book The Writer’s Life. Essentially a collection of quotes from the diaries of famous writers like John Steinbeck, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, Mark Twain, etc., the compilers of the book went through authors’ diaries and put together a new book—it is organized in to chronological sections starting with excerpts written in youth and then thoughts about the writing process, fame, ambition, and so forth, and then concludes with thoughts about death, life’s work, and immortality.

From Rosellen Brown, this quote felt particularly relevant to me:

“I know that for me, writing has something in common with nursing the baby. I can’t do it if I don’t do it all the time. Put it aside to build up strength, the flow will dwindle and finally disappear. When the baby was at my breast ten times a day, I had a rare secret feeling that we were violating a law of nature, defying a form of entropy…One cannot hoard some things. The more I gave the baby, the more I had to give her, and had I tried to conserve myself, I would have found that I conserved nothing.”

I once read somewhere else that after you have been writing a blog for some time, you will discover that you have generated a significant body of work. I love that. I can think about blogging as “wasting time” or as something to do only when I have a few extra minutes, or, I can look at it as an opportunity to contribute to my body of work in the world. This is my 469th blog post here! Anyway, this is why I decided not to completely quit blogging, but instead to set aside some dedicated time on Wednesdays to write a post (even if it is a short one). I do find that I need the “proper” time to write, or the flow just isn’t there and can’t be forced. That isn’t true of nursing—I can do that anywhere, anytime! (Well, though it, too, can’t be forced!).

I’ve had emails from several readers wanting to read more about homeschooling and how I “structure my day.” I told my husband that and he asked, “did you say, ‘I’d like to know that too?'” ;-D I’ve also had a request to write about elimination communication. I plan to write about both these topics soon. My nursling will be 8 months tomorrow and my biggest boy will turn eight years old on the 21st, so I’d like to write about both of those occasions before tackling homeschooling and ECing.

This SO isn’t an exciting or earth-shaking post, but here it is anyway…!

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.

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:

The Rhythm of Our Lives

Jun18

This article was originally published in New Beginnings magazine (publication of La Leche League International) in 2007. As I’ve noted, I’m making an effort to “centralize” my written pieces into one location—bringing things here that I’ve written for other blogs or for other publications.

The Rhythm of Our Lives

Nursing & Reading, 2007

by Molly Remer

2007

When I became a mother, many things in my life changed. I was startled and dismayed by the magnitude in which my free time diminished and one by one many of my leisure pursuits and hobbies were discarded. The time for one of my favorite hobbies increased exponentially, however, and this was a very pleasant surprise. That hobby is reading. As a child I was a voracious reader—my mother had to set a limit for me of “only two books a day.” In college and graduate school, reading for fun fell away and I spent six years reading primarily textbooks and journal articles. In the years following, I began to read for pleasure again and when my first baby was born in 2003, I once again became a truly avid reader. Why? Because of breastfeeding. As I nursed my little son, I read and read and read. I devoured mostly nonfiction with occasional fiction as “dessert.”

At first I scoured The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding and the Sears’ The Baby Book to try to make sense of my new life and then began to gobble up books about motherhood and women’s experiences of mothering. Reading did actually help me adjust to motherhood. Subtitled “Breastfeeding as a Spiritual Practice,” an article published in the fall 2003 issue of Mothering magazine was immensely meaningful to me. My baby was about two weeks old when the magazine arrived—the first issue I had received after his birth. This article was in it and it was exactly what I needed to read. Breastfeeding can be a meditative and spiritual act–it is actually a “practice” a “discipline” of sorts. The author, Leslie Davis, explains it better:

I realized I’d never before devoted myself to something so entirely. Of course I’ve devoted myself to my husband, to my family, to friends, to my writing, to mothering, and even to God and other spiritual endeavors at various points in my life…I’d completely given myself to this act of nursing in a way that I never had before. Nothing was more important than nursing my son. Nothing was put before it. There was no procrastination as with exercise, no excuses as with trying to stop eating sugar, no laziness as with housecleaning and other chores. Nursing had to be done, and I did it, over and over again, multiple times a day, for more than 800 days in a row. It was the closest thing to a spiritual practice that I’d ever experienced.

Viewing the act of breastfeeding through a spiritual lens like this was a lifeline to me as a vulnerable, sensitive, and bruised postpartum woman trying desperately to adjust my pace as an overachieving “successful” independent person to one spending hours in my nursing chair attached to a tiny mouth. I marvel at the uncountable number of times I spent nursing Lann and that I now spend nursing my second son, Zander. I calculate that I’ve probably nursed Zander about 3,000 times just lying down to go to sleep (nap or bedtime, plus waking up times too). That is just the lying down times, not the sitting in the chair or standing in the Ergo baby carrier times. This is the key to my reading success–I’ve had over 3,000 opportunities during the last year to pick up a book or other reading materials!

In 2007, I read approximately 150 books. I lie in my “nest” with my baby nursing and my older son resting near my back. The baby is nourished by me and in this pause in the busyness of life I am in turn nourished by the access he allows me to the printed word. As he grows bigger with my milk, I also “grow” intellectually and in the opportunity for spiritual and emotional renewal. As the baby drifts off I read to myself and when he is asleep I read stories to my four year old. This is the rhythm of our lives—suck, swallow, read, and consider.

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With my current baby, my reading “landscape” has changed again, since I now have a Kindle! 🙂