The last several nights have been doozies thanks to a combination of teething, growth spurt, and a cold. My 9-month-old has woken multiple times in the night, and sometimes required settling twice before I have even gotten back to sleep once! So, I thought it would help me keep my sanity perspective to take a moment to celebrate one teeny tiny sleep milestone.

You see, my firstborn did not fall asleep without nursing until she was over two years old. My second mastered that glorious skill a little sooner. My third, ever-proving that each child is different, often refused to fall asleep by nursing at all, and would instead require me to pace the floor, holding her just so, facing outward, never in. But last night, even as I knew I was facing an endless night of wakings, I celebrated one wonderful moment. My daughter nursed as usual, then popped herself off and rolled around on the bed. When it was clear she wasn’t going to settle on her own, I picked her up and gave a brief thought to pacing the floor, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead, I tried to get her to rest on my chest. She thrashed a little but I rubbed her back and said, “It’s okay. It’s okay.” That’s all it took. She rolled off my chest into the crook of my arm, her head resting on my shoulder, and drifted off to sleep. Thank goodness for small victories!

You know how when you are trying to get pregnant, suddenly you see pregnant women everywhere? Well, it’s the same way when you write a breastfeeding blog — suddenly you see references to breastfeeding all over the place. Today I read an interesting MSNBC.com article entitled “Recession F-Bombs: Why Cursing Feels Great” by Diane Mapes. Not exactly a place you’d expect to see a reference to breastfeeding, right? But Mapes spoke to Thomas Jay, professor of psychology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, who said:

“Swear words are almost always about sex or religion in every language,” says Jay. “It depends on what the [cultural] taboos are. In countries where religion is more powerful, phrases such as “Sacred mother” or “Holy mother’s milk” are typical.”

Now “Holy mother’s milk” was not what I said this morning when I accidentally sat on my peanut butter toast. I’m not proud of myself, but I said, “Oh crap!” Unfortunately, my four-year-old heard — sort of — and asked, “Mama, why did you say ‘Oh tramp?’” Feeling no need to correct her, I explained that I had sat on my peanut butter toast and had gotten peanut butter on my new blue jeans. “Oh,” she nodded wisely. “That is so trampy.” Yes, my dear, I suppose it is.

Today’s Dear Abby column “New Mom Reluctantly Uses Bathroom as Pumping Station” missed a fabulous opportunity to educate breastfeeding women and their employers about pumping at work. Here’s the response I will be submitting to columnist Abigail Van Buren.

DEAR ABBY:

You are absolutely right to tell “PRIVACY PLEASE” not to be ashamed of pumping at work. I hope you take it one step further and let her and your readers know that California law requires an employer to make reasonable efforts to provide a location other than a toilet stall for the employee to express milk in private (California Labor Code Sections 1030-1033). An employer can be fined $100 for every violation of the law!

Please encourage all breastfeeding mothers and all employers to check the 50 State Summary of Breastfeeding Laws compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures: http://www.ncsl.org/programs/health/breast50.htm. Even if state law does not require employers to provide a place to pump, it’s an excellent business practice to do so! Not only does providing a pumping room boost employee morale and company loyalty, but breastfeeding also reduces healthcare costs for mother and child and results in fewer work absences due to a parent having to care for a sick child.

The United States Breastfeeding Committee reports that employers save $3 for every $1 invested in breastfeeding support! The Committee provides an excellent resource on Workplace Breastfeeding Support which details the components of adequate, expanded, and comprehensive breastfeeding programs for the workplace. I hope mothers print out the resource and take it to their employers as a way to open the discussion about sanitary and private options for a pumping room.

Sincerely,
Angela White, volunteer breastfeeding counselor and breastfeeding blogger at Breastfeeding 1-2-3

When a book requires a page of the family tree to illustrate the relationships of all the characters, that raises a red flag that it might be a little complicated for me right now! However, the community of women described in The Red Tent by Anita Diamant fascinates and inspires me. The novel is a re-telling of the biblical story of Jacob and his sons through the female perspective.

It’s a complex and somewhat disturbing book that is more like four books in one. The thing that keeps me reading though is the relationship of the women. In the red tent each month they celebrate their femininity and their abilities to create and sustain life. Take this passage describing the birth of the narrator Dinah:

After Rachel wiped me clean, she handed me to Zilpah, who embraced me, and then to Bilhah, who kissed me as well. I took my mother’s breast with an eager mouth, and all the women of the camp clapped their hands for my mother and for me. Bilhah fed my mother honeyed milk and cake. She washed Leah’s hair with perfumed water, and she massaged her feet.

Now that is how we were meant to give birth, to be initiated into parenthood, to receive the support necessary to care for ourselves and our children. Imagine how wonderful it would be if each new mother were attended to by some combination of her mother, grandmother, sisters, aunties, and midwives! Imagine if each breastfeeding mother had the on-going support of other mothers experienced in nursing! The La Leche League model of mother-to-mother support has filled in some of the gaps, but I still wish such support were passed from generation to generation within each family as well.

Concerns about milk supply make up the majority of questions posed to me as a breastfeeding counselor. While some of those concerns are legitimate, some are simply unfounded. The wonderful new book release The Breastfeeding Mother’s Guide to Making More Milk helps mothers troubleshoot, taking them through the evaluation process to determine whether there is indeed a legitimate concern, what might be causing the low milk supply, and how best to proceed to increase the milk supply.

Lactation consultants and authors Diana West and Lisa Marasco have written a must-have guide for breastfeeding mothers and lactation professionals alike. The book expertly packs a wealth of information into an easily readable format. Starting with “How to Know If There Really Is a Problem,” the book then proceeds to detail the physical, hormonal, and psychological causes of low milk supply and how best to address them. It also offers practical information about how to establish a good milk supply in the first place, and, if supplementation is indeed necessary, how to supplement without decreasing the existing milk supply.

This is the one book I wish I could press into the hands of every woman who has ever asked me, “Are there some women who just can’t make enough milk?” (My answer is that sadly some women do not get the support they need. Very few women simply cannot produce enough, but many women receive erroneous advice from family members and medical professionals). It would be a blessing if delivery nurses, obstetricians, midwives, pediatricians and family practitioners — anyone in a position to advise the breastfeeding mother — had a copy of this book.

For more about The Breastfeeding Mother’s Guide to Making More Milk, resources on low milk supply, and information on breastfeeding after a reduction, see the authors’ website Making More Milk.

The results of the poll on allergies and breastfeeding were quite telling and the comments were helpful and insightful, especially for all those dealing with allergies in the breastfed baby. Frankly I was surprised at the number of nurslings with known or suspected allergies and the number of mothers coping with an elimination diet. An even 1/3 of respondents said that yes, their nurslings have food allergies. These pyramids (in honor of the USDA food pyramid LOL) illustrate the distribution of the 148 votes.

Let’s be clear though — breastfeeding is wonderful for babies with food allergies. Do not interpret these results to mean that breastfed babies are more likely to have food allergies, because in fact the opposite is true! To learn more about the protective effects of breastfeeding, read “‘A’ is for Food Allergy Prevention and Reduction.”

In light of the controversies about breastfeeding photos on Facebook, MySpace and LiveJournal, I am wondering how you feel about the appropriateness of having breastfeeding pictures taken of you and your nursling. Do you have them taken?

Leave a comment!

If you have had breastfeeding photos taken, what do you do with them? Have you shared them with friends, posted them on a blog, or used them for avatars on web sites? Is there an age of the nursling after which breastfeeding photos are no longer appropriate? What about this news story (via Blacktating) that tells how a family’s children were taken away by child protective services when the photo development service saw pictures of the baby nursing?

Poll removed; please leave a comment!

Just a quick note to say I’m starting to dip my toe into the Twitter pool and if you’d like to follow me on Twitter, I’m Breastfeed123.

Have any tips for the newbies on using Twitter? Leave a comment!

A while ago when two of my daughters were in school and I “just” had my six-month-old at home, I tried to take advantage of the time to get out this post on the Denny’s nurse-ins. At some point my baby started to fuss and I attempted to nurse her to sleep. No dice. She wouldn’t settle by nursing. Now how exactly did I go from a first-born who would only go to sleep by nursing, to a third-born who often won’t go to sleep by nursing?! Anyway, it became apparent that I would need to take my baby for a walk. I found socks and shoes and put them on (I mention that only because a few of you will recognize how hard it is to put on socks and tie tennis shoes when you are carrying a 17-pound fussy baby), popped my baby in the sling, and headed out the door. It was a little awkward because I had wrapped my left arm around the baby so she could rest her head on me, and with my right I was carrying my keys (no pockets) and an umbrella to shade us a little from the sun.

As I walked around the neighborhood I came upon an older woman who was walking her chihuahua (that 4-H report my daughter did on “How to Choose a Chihuahua” came in handy for that little detail, see?) The woman looked at me and exclaimed, “You have your hands full!” It’s a comment I hear a lot lately, whether I have one child or three in tow. I gave my standard reply, “Yes, she’s great!” even as I was juggling the baby, the keys, and the umbrella. The woman nodded and said wistfully, “You’re lucky. I wish I was younger.”

Intellectually I know that when the house is quiet someday, and my hands are free, I will miss these intense baby days. But in the thick of it, it didn’t hurt to have that little reminder to appreciate this time.