Birthing Beautiful Ideas

I have a flickr page.  I use it to share photos with friends and family, and while it is public (YOU try explaining how a user name and password works to my grandmother), I don’t want to make it any “more” public by sharing it here.  I’m sure you all are nice and dandy readers, but who knows–YOU could be “that guy” who found my blog by searching for “porn with women pushing in stirrups.”

And I DON’T WANT THAT GUY (or gal, don’t want to make sexist assumptions about my creepy readers) SEEING MY FLICKR PICTURES!

Anyway.

I fear that I may have recently misrepresented myself on that flickr page.

No, I haven’t posted a cleverly staged picture of me with my life-size cardboard cut-out of Edward Cullen with the caption that I have left my husband for Robert Pattinson, who claims that he just couldn’t resist my overwhelming animal magnetism.

But I have posted a few photos of the kids playing some admittedly adorable and creative games that came straight out of this here mama’s brain.

You know.  Games where I hide a bowl filled with “jewels” in the playroom and then create a treasure map for the kids and then the kids go on a “treasure hunt” all while wearing pirate hats.  Or games where I tuck little dragons, unicorns, and fairies away in the garden, and then the kids go searching for them all while dressed up as knights.

(Yeah, I suppose those games are pretty cool.)

In any case, after seeing pictures of the kids playing these games, some of my friends are now under the impression that I am some sort of uber-creative supermom.

And here’s where I need to correct their impression of me: I’m not an uber-creative supermom.

(The term “supermom” conjures up all sorts of ridiculous perfectionist images of motherhood, and for the sake of my mental health, I give a mean and nasty “stink-eye” to any and all perfectionist images of motherhood.)

But I have found some uber-creative ways to entertain my kids.  And I do this in part so that they are entertained “enough” for me to get some “mommy time” each day.

(“Mommy time” is like happy hour, except the coffee and quiet of the kitchen replace the tequila and noise of the bar.)

How do I do it?

Two words: story. hour.

Just like our local library’s story hour, I hold a “story hour” in our home for my audience of two a few times each week.

I pick a theme.  (Pirates, knights and dragons, grandparents, and babies have been some of our more recent themes.)

I choose four books that relate to that theme.

A snow-themed story hour

*

I find a song on YouTube that relates to our theme.

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I come up with a craft that relates to the theme.

For the forest-animal theme, we crafted homes for the kids' "animal" collection.

*

I create a small game or activity that relates to our theme.

ARRRGH! THAR be the treasure!

*

And I find a movie that relates to (you guessed it) the theme.

And these story hours are, quite frankly, magical.

The kids learn.  They play.  They squeal.  They listen.  All three of us have a blast!  And by the time we get to the movie (which is always, always our story hour finale), the kids are so freakin’ entertained and educated and lavished with attention that Mommy ends up getting a good (uninterrupted) hour or two to work, clean, make phone calls, or even just snuggle up on the couch and enjoy a movie with her two little boys.

And that doesn’t make me an uber-creative supermom.

It just makes me a book-loving, game-loving, sorta-selfish, sorta-creative mom who a) loves spending time with her kids but also b) loves and needs some time to herself every once in a while.

And our story hours (and all of the uber-creativity that they encompass) let me do both.

As of today, Tim has been working full days for forty days straight.

That’s right, forty.

Four-teeeeeee.

And you know what that means?

I’ve been responsible for full-time, daytime parenting duties for (yep) forty days straight.

Because of circumstances far beyond my control, I have not had one parenting break, not a semblance of the ebb and flow of our usual co-parenting arrangements, not one guarantee of a “day off” in the entirety of those forty days.

(For those who haven’t yet felt the magnitude of my whining, that’s the same number of days that Noah and his wild menagerie spent on that ark of theirs.  And to that I ask, “Where the hell is my dove carrying the olive branch already???”)

Just give me some intravenous vodka now.

It’s not that I don’t love spending time with my kids.

It’s not that I don’t get any time to do meaningful work of my own.

It’s not even that I haven’t devised games and outings and activities and playdates to mitigate the drudgery of forty break-less days of stay-at-home parenting.

It’s just that…I’m used to doing this whole parenting gig as a co-parent, and when my co-parent is MIA, I begin to feel as if I’m drowning a bit.

I perceive each whine more piercingly, each missed or refused nap with excessive dread, each second that Tim’s arrival home is delayed with increasing panic or frustration or even despair.

My toddler crushes a handful of Goldfish crackers in his hands, sprinkles the crumbs on the just-swept floor, and I feel as if he has smooshed my brain like a hunk of Playdoh between his fingers.

And yet I sit here, with a roof over my head, a heater that works reliably in this reliably cold winter, a refrigerator stocked with nutritious food, an income that allows me to purchase nutritious food, a car that I can drive to purchase that food, at-home access to the internet, an education that gives me the privilege-that-should-be-a-right of demanding transparent and evidence-based care from my health care providers, two children who are healthy and (for the most part) delightful, a partner who is respectful and loving and kind, a marriage that I enjoy, a family who loves me unconditionally, friends who support me unbelievably…

…AND A SET OF IN-LAWS WHO ARE GRACIOUSLY WELCOMING MY CHILDREN AND ME INTO THEIR CHICAGOLAND HOME STARTING TOMORROW SO THAT I CAN GET A MUCH-NEEDED WEEK OF PARENTING BREAKS!

(They’re also coming back with us to Ohio the following week so that they can watch the kids while I attend the NIH VBAC Consensus Development Conference in Bethesda, Maryland!)

I know.  I’m exceedingly, undeservedly lucky.

And if I just think about that luck for a moment, just let it seep into my perspective on my life right now, it makes my whining about these forty days seem petty, even childish.

It makes those crushed crackers seem less like an evil toddler’s brain-squish and more like what they really were:

“Oooooh, Mommy, these crackers feel so silly and funny and strange in my little hands!  Look, just look at them!  Look at me play!  Just look at how happy I am, doing something so silly and funny and strange!  And aren’t you so lucky to be so silly and funny and strange with me?!”

Yes, I know.

I’m exceedingly, undeservedly lucky.

I recently came across the following headline on The Guardian’s website:

“French philosopher says feminism under threat from ‘good motherhood.’”

Is this the sort of headline that sucks you in and keeps you riveted?

Yes?  No?

You mean you don’t give a rat’s ass about what some French philosopher has to say about feminism and motherhood?

Well, it’s the sort of headline that has an attention-grabbing effect on me, the feminist mother who is a graduate student studying philosophy.

But even if you don’t find the headline to be absolutely riveting, I still think that the article itself–its content, and what it says about the current convergence of different generations of feminists/feminism and mothers/conceptions of motherhood–is relevant to all people who give at least a partial rats rat’s ass about feminist parenting.

Just bear with me for a moment.

According to Elisabeth Badinter, the feminist philosopher to which the headline refers:

France [is] at a turning point in its attitude towards female emancipation.

Thanks to a new coalition of ecologists, breastfeeding advocates and behavioural specialists, she argued, young women are facing increasing pressure to be perfect mothers who adhere to strict guidelines for how to care for their babies.

If this “regressive” movement takes hold, French feminism could be set back decades, she argued.

“The majority of French women [now] reconcile maternity with professional life. Many of them work full-time when they have a child. They are resisting the model of the perfect mother, but for how long?” Badinter said in an interview with Libération newspaper. “I get the impression that we may now be at a turning point.”

Such views – in her new book, Conflict, Women and Mothers, published today – have seen Badinter plunged into the boiling cauldron that is contemporary French feminist thought.

Attacked by her critics as out of touch with the new generation she is ­attempting to salvage, Badinter has stuck to her guns. She says that the new image of the “ideal mother” – one who breastfeeds for six months, does not rush to return to full-time work, avoids painkillers in childbirth, rejects disposable nappies and occasionally lets her baby sleep in her bed – makes impossible demands on any woman who has a life outside of her child.

“‘Good motherhood’ imposes new duties that weigh heavily on those who do not keep to them. It contravenes the model we have worked for until now [and] which makes equality of the sexes impossible and women’s freedom irrelevant. It is a step backwards,” she said.

Now to be fair, I haven’t read Badinter’s book.  So anything I’m about to say is in no way intended to be a response to Badinter’s book.

What’s more, I have neither the time nor the energy nor really the desire to plunge into the history of feminist thoughts on family and reproduction and/or the particular characteristics of French feminist theory.  But I don’t think that you need to know a lot about these theories (or, let’s face it, the particularities of women’s situation in France) to get a good sense of the general argument that Badinter is making in these comments.

(I’ll give you a hint: I think it’s probably the same sort of argument that Hanna Rosin made last year when she wrote about breastfeeding in The Atlantic.)

It goes something like this:

1. There are lots of groups and individuals out there who advocate [insert your favorite parenting choice, such as  breastfeeding, co-sleeping, cloth diapering, extended maternity leave, and/or natural childbirth].
2. These groups and individuals try to scold women into choosing [said parenting choice] by using fear and guilt-inducing tactics.
3. Using fear and guilt-inducing tactics is bad for women, and bad for feminism.
4. [Said parenting choice] also keeps women chained to the home and out of professional life.
5. Keeping women chained to the home and out of professional life is bad for women, and bad for feminism.
6. [Said parenting choice] also functions as part of a constricting and damaging ideal of the “perfect mother,” an ideal that most women can never attain.
7. Ergo, [said parenting choice] either is directly bad for women and feminism, or at the very least undermines women’s professional lives and feminist goals for women.

Okay, there are all sorts of things that are wrong with this argument.  Loads of them.  Stinking HEAPS of them.

Let me tackle just a few of them.

1. Even if a group or individual uses a guilt-inducing tone to promote a certain practice, this does not necessarily mean that what they are saying is false, nor does it mean that we should necessarily reject that practice.

Sure, when people promote breastfeeding, cloth diapers, etc. by using guilt-inducing tones, they’re doing something really shitty, and there are good reasons reject those tones.

But that doesn’t mean that the all of the claims that these people make about breastfeeding, cloth diapers, “natural childbirth,” etc. are untrue!  It doesn’t mean that we have to reject these parenting practices just because someone else’s tone of voice/writing makes us feel guilty!

To elaborate, I’ll admit that the tones of some (though certainly not all) pro-breastfeeding, cloth diapering, “natural childbirth,” etc. claims can seem demeaning, belittling, or haughty.  And that sucks.  It really, truly sucks.  Not only because it’s disrespectful but also because people rarely make any super-personal choices after coming across arguments or claims that are demeaning, belittling, or haughty.  So these “guilt-inducing” tones are not only anti-feminist but also counterproductive, at least when it comes to “convincing the other side” of one’s claims.

BUT.

These poorly chosen tones do not undermine the evidence that supports the health benefits of breastfeeding, both for mothers and their infants.

They do not undermine the  fact that cloth diapering reduces environmental waste.

And they do not undermine the evidence demonstrating that using little medical intervention during childbirth in most cases is actually a healthy practice, both for mothers and babies.

So yes, it’s well and good to critique the arguments, the social systems, and the individuals who try to use guilt-inducing or otherwise coercive tactics to get us to make any parenting choice.  Let’s take our justified anger out on them.

But let’s not take our anger out on breastfeeding, cloth diapering, and “natural” childbirth themselves!

Because choosing these practices is not anti-feminist, and obscuring their benefits may very well be.

2. Choosing to breastfeed, use cloth diapers, co-sleep, and refrain from using pain medication during labor in no way necessitates that one is chained to the home, nor does it mean that one cannot have a job, a life, or even a good sex life.

Though let’s face it.

If a person decides to have a child, and if s/he wants to have a relatively active role in raising that child, then his or her life will have to change in some meaningful way.

Parenting forces one to make certain compromises and sacrifices–but not necessarily the parenting practices.  In fact, many women who work outside of the home find all sorts of ways to integrate the aforementioned parenting practices into their work and home life.

For instance, working women can (and do) use breastpumps.  (And so can women who want to go out for a night with their girlfriends.)

They can also make the decision to breastfeed while they are at home and have formula offered to their infants while they are at work.

Working women can also (and do also) ask and/or teach their childcare provider to use cloth diapers.

They can (and do) co-sleep.  (And these women can also have sex with their partners.  Maybe not as much sex as before the kid was born, but hey, that happens even if the child is sleeping at the other end of the house!)

And working women can (and do) research and plan for the way they want to birth their babies.  (Seriously, if they have enough time to research a car or a laptop or a camera they are planning to purchase, then they have enough time to research the way they want their baby to come into the world.)

And if they face obstacles to these practices or choices in their professional lives?

It seems to me that the optimal feminist pursuit would be not to force women to accommodate corporate practices but to require corporate practices to accommodate working mothers (and fathers)!

3. Although the model of the “perfect mother” is certainly damaging and anti-feminist, rejecting all of the components of the “perfect mother” ideal seems to be…well, throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Yes, yes, a million times yes, perpetuating any myth of the “perfect mother” is damaging to women.  (And those myths of the “perfect working mother” who “has it all” are just as damaging.)

What’s more, choosing to breastfeed, cloth diaper, co-sleep, have a “natural” childbirth, etc. because one wants to attain the ideal of the perfect mother is, at the very least, misguided.  And also ridiculous.  And in direct defiance of almost any feminist value that I can imagine.

But as with my response to point #1, just because this myth “requires” woment to breastfeed, use cloth diapers, avoid pain medication during labor, etc., it doesn’t mean that these practices themselves are damaging to women.  (I feel like a broken record here, folks.)

What’s more, choosing these practices doesn’t make women more “perfect mothers.”  They don’t make women better than other mothers or even better than all other women.

They shouldn’t even reflect upon any “competition” between women at all!

Simply put, there are good health and ecological reasons to breastfeed, use cloth diapers, and strive for a low-intervention birth, where possible.  This doesn’t mean that one must do these things.  It shouldn’t even suggest that these practices are somehow duties that women must undertake.

But there are good reasons to practice them.

And if a woman makes a decision to do x, y, or z after reflecting upon “good” reasons in support of x, y, or z…

…then isn’t that a “good” feminist decision?

Some days, the kids really kick my ass.

I mean sledge-hammers over the head, sucker-punches to the gut, I-will-melt your-brain-into-Gruyere-and-neuron-fondue ass-kicking.

All you parents out there have those days, right?

Right.

Today’s ass-kicking was a byproduct of teething (the work of the devil, I tell you) and potty-training (the work of a choir of SAINTS).

Mixing those two is kind of like mixing bleach and ammonia.  EXCEPT THEY’RE MORE TOXIC!!!

Seriously dudes and dudettes, I think I actually ended up sporting a Jack-Nicholson-from-The-Shining-esque grin on my face today after trying for two fa-reakin’ hours to get my two overtired kids down for two too-much needed naps.

Whining reached all-time highs, meltdowns reached all-time emotional lows, and ways of expressing frustration or sadness or exhaustion reached exasperating levels of weirdness.

(Yeah, if I haven’t mentioned it before, A likes to LICK things–like carpet, walls, toys, etc.–when he is upset.  It’s bizarre.)

And I was all like, “WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO OPEN UP MY SKULL SO THAT YOU CAN DIP SOURDOUGH IN MY BRAIN-MELT, MY LOVELIES?”

So by 5:45 p.m., when the proverbial fondue was bubbling out of my eyeballs, I started crying.  I just sat down on the couch and sobbed, and when M (four-years-old) asked me what was wrong, I just said that “sometimes it’s really, really hard to be a mommy.”

And both kids lumbered up on the couch next to me, M covering my legs with a blanket, A wiping away my tears, and I was all like, “SERIOUSLY?!  All I had to do was bring out the WATERWORKS to get you kids to calm down?!”

(Don’t worry, I didn’t diminish the moment by saying those words out loud.  I kept ‘em deep inside the mushy, squishy contents of my skull.)

Once upon a time, there was a little kid who would eat most anything put on his plate.  Anything.

Black bean chili?  Curried chickpeas and tomatoes?  Berry medley?  Couscous with steamed carrots, broccoli, and spinach?

Bring it, baby, this kid liked good food.

Once upon a time, this kid also had a mother who had the really stupid idea that kids were only picky because their parents didn’t offer them enough of a variety of foods.

Ha.

Haaaaa haa.

Yeah, she was a first-time parent with all sorts of first-time-parent lofty (and misguided) ideas, so cut her some slack.

(I’ll stop talking about my hypothetical, third-person self…now.)

I don’t know where it all started, but somewhere along the line, M (who is now four years old) gave up on veggies.  Just…gave up.  Refused to eat them.  Refused to allow a single one of them (with the exception of plain steamed broccoli) to even grace his plate.  Thought they were the devil.  That they tasted like dog poo.  And all that anti-veggie jazz.

Without turning mealtime into an all-and-out battle (’cause I don’t happen to think that’s a healthy way to prepare a person for a lifetime of eating), Tim and I did try the occasional “bribe.”  (Here, kiddie, kiddie, here’s a cookie for just three bites of that spinach!)

We tried “reasoning.”  (Yes.  We tried reasoning with the kid who can fire back with this.)

We even tried pureeing roasted yellow peppers and/or carrots and “hiding” them in the melted cheese of his quesadillas and grilled cheese.  (Funny thing, those veggies.  Kids can actually taste them.)

(As an aside, I should mention that M’s diet still includes some healthy foods.  The kid can eat his weight in channa masala, black beans and rice, and blueberries.  And while he enjoys the occasional chicken nugget, he’s not going to “turn into one,” as the saying goes.  But I have this strange fascination with making sure that my kids get their veggies, even if they get lots of vitamins and minerals through their daily multivitamin.  I dunno, perhaps I’m weird that way.)

In any case, when bribery, reasoning, and hiding didn’t work, I resorted to the bottom of the barrel: trickery.

One morning, I peeled a sweet potato, sliced it into 1/4 inch circular slices, set them out on a cookie tray coated with cooking spray, drizzled some olive oil over them, sprinkled some brown sugar on the tops, and baked them for 15-25 minutes at 400F.

And that was the morning that M thought he had died and gone to heaven when he got to eat a dozen cookies for breakfast.

And I laughed all the way to the vitamin A bank.

Sometimes we even put sprinkles on top of the "cookies!"

A few days ago, M asked me what the word ‘damage’ meant.

Now, M’s an inquisitive four-year-old who loves books and who wants to know the meanings of the words in those books, so I thought nothing of his request.  I offered up some synonyms (like ‘harm’ and ‘hurt’) and gave a few examples (like that awning at the Easton Town Center doing damage to our car) and then sent him off with a new member of his vocabulary.

And then I heard him use the word.

It was after A (nineteen months) had knocked down one of M’s recent  block creations.  And upon seeing his blocks crumble to bits, M exclaimed, ”Oh, DAMAGE, A!  My tower!”

Yep.  The exact same intonation that I use when I say the word “damnit.”

It certainly wasn’t one of my proudest parenting moments.  Obviously, I had said a big bad word in front of my kid (perhaps on numerous occasions), and he was now repeating it (or at least he was repeating what he thought I had said).

But I also don’t think it was a moment of absolute parenting failure either.  I mean, M and I still had a talk about how grown-ups sometimes say “angry words” when they are upset, and these words aren’t always nice words, so we grown-ups should be more careful about using “angry words” and should try to use other words instead when we’re upset, words like ‘thunderbugs’, which up until the DAMAGE was done had been M’s favorite exclamatory word.

Was that all clear?

In any case, I do believe that this was only a minor transgression on my part, and no transgression at all on M’s part.  We’ll live and learn, and Mommy will try harder not to mutter “damnit” under her breath when her toddler dumps his lunch off of the high chair for the gazillionth time, and M will resort back to saying “thunderbugs” when the world throws him a curveball.

But so often, I find that people think that parents have REALLY FUC…I mean REALLY MESSED UP when their kids say bad words.  As if these words represent the worst possible smelling shi…I mean poop that has ever spewed from a person’s mouth.

I think back to when I was a kid, and it always seemed that BAD WORDS would get you in REALLY BIG trouble.  Like, they were the WORST words.  The absolute WORST.

Let one of those words slide on the playground, and you got to go and “stand on the wall” (which back in elementary school meant standing next to the school building and facing the bricks for half-and-hour, not that I would know anything about that).

Let ‘em slide at home, and you got sent straight to your room.

Let ‘em slide in the classroom, and you got sent to the principal’s office.

Parents would be notified (and perhaps judged), punishments would be meted out, and stern voices would be raised.

There always seems to have been such moral outrage over those instances where kids (unwittingly) repeat the bad words the adults in their lives may have said, even when these words get uttered in pretty benign (i.e. no name-calling, no ill will, etc.) circumstances.  BECAUSE THEY ARE THE WORST WORDS.

Except they aren’t.

I don’t believe I’m alone in thinking that the REAL WORST WORDS that kids can use–that anyone can use–are the mean words: the taunting and teasing and bullying words, the words that spew forth shitstorms of cruelty to other people. 

And I don’t want my kids to be mistaken about this.

I don’t want them to use “bad words,” but I also want them to see my fiercest word-related moral outrage appear over mean words–not curse words.

Because making fun of the way another kid throws a ball?

Calling another person “fat” or “stupid” or “smelly”?

Resorting to name-calling or general mean-words when things don’t go their way?

Damnit, that’s where the real damage is done.

On my 29th birthday, I posted a list of 29(+) accomplishments I hoped to tackle before turning thirty.

Within hours of creating that post, I was able to cross one of those accomplishments off of my list.

I took the kids on more sled rides than I did last year.

(If only all of my to-do lists could be met with so little procrastination and so much fun.)

Last Thursday marked the second day that I took the kids sledding this year, which means that I have already taken them sledding more than I did last year.

And I think they enjoyed it.

tandem sledding

In fact, I think they enjoyed their afternoon of being pulled around on the sled by Mom even more than they enjoyed the mega-watered down hot cocoa that I offered to them after our fun-yet-frigid adventure.

(Yes, I gave a nineteen-month-old watered down hot cocoa.  Oh the humanity!  And it wasn’t even organic!)

And I think we’ll do it again.  (Well, maybe not the hot cocoa.  I think that stuff was laced with PCP.  Or at least that’s the effect it had on my kids.)

Because welcoming the snow with the joy of a child is so much better than whining about it, right?

For the most part, I am the family cook.

It’s a job that I took on well before the kids were born, back when Tim and I were first divvying up house chores.

And it’s a job that I enjoy, though I won’t deny the fact that it has become more difficult since my children were born.  For besides the obvious fact that parenting simply takes up a whole lot of time that once could have been devoted to leisurely and/or hours-long meal preparation, my kids (at ages four and nineteen months) have developed discriminating palates and sensitive digestive tracts that prevent me from preparing whatever the hell I want to each night.

Put more simply, I think I face a lot of the meal-prep difficulties that many family cooks face.

For example: three of M’s favorite foods are black beans, blueberries, and blackberries, yet the three foods that often give A the worst diaper rash are black beans, blueberries, and blackberries.

Or then there’s the fact that the only vegetable that M will eat (when it’s not “hiding” in a soup or a smoothie) is broccoli, while the only vegetable that A won’t eat is (you guessed it) broccoli.

And then there are those days where A despises pasta even though (or perhaps because?) he ate three helpings of it the day before, or those days where M wants nothing, and I mean nothing, other than peanut butter sandwiches.

There is one meal, however, that pleases all four regular diners at our table. 

It’s almost embarrassingly simple, but it’s also healthful and filling. 

Black beans and rice.

black beans and rice night

Yep.  Black beans and rice.

Steamed rice + a can of black beans.

Does it get more simple than that?

It’s a meal I can throw together in minutes, yet it doesn’t contain any food that has been shaped into a nugget or deep-fried into oblivion.

I chop an avocado here, slice an onion and a tomato there, shred some cheese and/or some chicken, set out some salsa and perhaps some spices (and reserve some plain rice and veggies for our black-bean sensitive child) and I have a meal that is surprisingly nutritious, especially considering that one of its main ingredients comes from a can.

And the fact that it takes mere minutes to prepare and is a relatively healthy way to feed myself and my family?

That’s something that makes this family cook pretty darn pleased.

In the past few days, two recent conversations have gotten my mind venturing beyond Christmas and house-guests and struggling to get two overtired and overexcited children to bed when all they really, really want to do is take one more hit of the Christmas Spirit and ride out the high until way-past-bedtime o’clock.

One was a real-life discussion with a real-life friend, and the other was an online discussion over at The Feminist Breeder’s blog.  And both discussions (like many great ones elsewhere) revolved at least in part around kids, toys, gender, and feminism.

I’ve probably mentioned a couple (hundred) times that I have two kids–M (4) and A (19 months).  They are biologically male, or, as I like to abbreviate, boys.  (They also have full names, but I’m sort of protective of their identities because when you write about riding crops, vaginal birth, inverted nipples, and funny stories involving hernias, you get some REALLY WEIRD PEOPLE searching for REALLY WEIRD THINGS to get to your blog.)

In any case, for the most part I’ve tried not to assume much of anything about my kids based on the simple fact that they arrived on the planet with male sex parts. 

I’ve tried not to assume that they are inherently “more aggressive” than their female playmates.

I’ve tried not to assume that they are hard-wired to like playing with dump trucks and cars and to dislike playing with dolls and toy kitchens. 

And I’ve tried not to assume that their particular ways of playing are specifically boy ways of playing.

These efforts aren’t simply a matter of trying to practice feminist parenting.  For in addition to wanting my parenting to be informed by my feminist values, I also want the decisions I make as my kids’ mother to be informed by my very real respect for my children.

For just as I “listened” to my children’s needs when they were infants–when they needed to nurse, when they needed to cuddle, when they needed to sleep, etc.–I’m trying to listen to their interests and unique personalities as they grow older.  And part of that effort involves making a conscious effort to “de-gender” their interests and ways of playing.

My four-year-old son, for instance, has an enormous verbal strength and loves to arrange and organize and “make up movies and plays” with his toys.  Sometimes he’s setting up an array of pirates in his pirate ship, other times he’s talking about his love of ocean animals, and still other times he’s “making up movies” about fairies and unicorns. 

My 19-month-old son, on the other hand, tends to favor more physical play that involves building and constructing and using tools.  Sometimes he’s playing with the plastic hammer and drill at the kids’ workbench, other times he’s pretending to use a vacuum cleaner or a broom, and still other times he’s playing with my make-up brushes. 

As I see it, M and A’s general interests and ways of playing seem devoid of any gender-stereotypical significance.  Sure, the objects they play with are often associated with “girls’ toys” or “boys’ toys.”  The objects represent socially constructed gender roles and they illuminate the various socially constructed gender cues that send little boys (and their parents) down the TRUCKS AND WAR GAMES aisle and little girls (and their parents) down the VOMIT-OF-PINK-PRINCESSES-AND-PONIES aisle at the toy store.

But as I see with my own kids, a boy who loves arranging and organizing can do so with pirates and fairies, and a boy who loves playing with tools can do so with a toy hammer and with his mom’s make-up brushes.

My own boys have ways of playing that they like and prefer, and I try to give them the space and freedom to explore these ways of playing with lots of different objects, whether or not they are traditionally associated with “boys’ toys”

And allowing them to be themselves in this way is one of the best things I can do to respect who they are and what they like.

There are countless barriers to breastfeeding in the United States and other countries, but one that I don’t often see addressed often is the disjointedness of breastfeeding-related care.

In fact, for most women giving birth in the US, there is no continuity of care when it comes to breastfeeding.

And because of this, I think that woman who plan to breastfeed their babies (or who would breastfeed their babies if given accurate information) get ”lost in the lactation shuffle.”  They find themselves swimming in a sea of individuals who a) have jobs in which they give pregnant women and new mothers advice and information about breastfeeding but b) most likely do not communicate with one another about breastfeeding in general and about specific women’s breastfeeding needs in particular and c) have varying levels of breastfeeding expertise.

For instance, a birthing woman in the United States will most likely encounter the following breastfeeding-related care providers throughout her pregnancy and postpartum period:

• The nurse(s) in her OB-GYN or midwife’s office
• Her OB-GYN or midwife
• Her labor and delivery nurse(s)
• Her postpartum nurse(s)
• An in-hospital lactation consultant
• Her child’s pediatrician

And notably, with the exception of the lactation consultant, none of these care-providers are trained in treating and addressing all issues related to breastfeeding.  Some are trained to treat the mother, some the newborn.  Some are trained to discuss breastfeeding prenatally and in the immediate postpartum period, while others have further expertise in offering treatment and advice throughout the later stages of breastfeeding.

With such a disjointed “system” of breastfeeding support, I think that it is often the case that many women with resolvable breastfeeding problems (such as most issues related to latch, positioning, supply, tongue-tie, pumping, inverted nipples, and even those issues related to a misunderstanding about the benefits of breastfeeding) do not receive the right help at the right time and/or from the right person.

For example, a woman who may have benefited from discussing the health and financial advantages of breastfeeding during her prenatal appointments  may not hear about those advantages until she learns about them from her labor and delivery nurse, after which she has already decided to feed her baby formula.

A new mother who could have developed a strategy (in conjunction with her OB-GYN or midwife) for breastfeeding with inverted nipples may not even learn that she has inverted nipples until her postpartum nurse identifies them.

A woman recovering from a cesarean section might not learn about the football hold (a position which helps to relieve pressure on a tender incision site) until she meets the in-hospital lactation consultant, who might not be available until the day after her baby is born.

A new mother who begins formula-feeding her newborn after her obstetrician incorrectly informs her about the nutritional and immunological value of colostrum may not learn about how important it is for newborns to receive colostrum until she speaks with her pediatrician days after her child’s birth.

Moreover, even if a woman seeks additional assistance with nursing, either during pregnancy or after the birth of her child, she must wade through yet another sea of breastfeeding professionals and advocates, such as:

• A breastfeeding class instructor (such as a lactation educator or lactation consultant)
• A WIC peer counselor
• Her doula
• An independent lactation consultant
• Her local La Leche League leaders

What’s more, the above-mentioned individuals are often only available to women who have the means, the time, the knowledge, and the access to seek additional breastfeeding support.

Finally, in addition to birth professionals, lactation consultants and educators, doulas, and other breastfeeding advocates, new moms must also filter through the advice given to them by friends, family, spouses, partners, and even strangers, whose breastfeeding support (or lack thereof) can have a significant impact on one’s attempts to begin and continue breastfeeding.

I suspect that having a “thread” to connect the dots between all of the breastfeeding-related care providers and advocates would help not only to increase the numbers of women who choose to breastfeed but also to assist those women who want to and can breastfeed but do not receive the proper continuous support. 

Sometimes doulas can function as this sort of “thread,” giving breastfeeding information to women in the prenatal period, offering support with latch and positioning in the immediate postpartum period, and being available for questions and referrals in the later postpartum period.

Other times, knowledgeable family members or friends can also take up this role.

But not everyone has access to these individuals.

So in my ideal world, there would be someone in all OB-GYN and midwives’ offices who could meet with women prenatally and postnatally to discuss, troubleshoot, and support a mother’s breastfeeding efforts. 

Someone who could refer women to lactation consultants, educators, doulas, and breastfeeding support groups when needed.

Someone who could talk about the benefits of breastfeeding well before a woman gives birth.

Someone who could respectfully support mothers who choose to formula feed, including (and perhaps especially) those who planned on and wanted to breastfeed.

Someone who would be able to communicate with in-office nurses and OB-GYNs and midwives and labor and delivery nurses and postpartum nurses and lactation consultants and doulas.

Someone whose services would be included in the prenatal and postnatal care that a woman is already receiving. 

Available.  Accessible.  And continuous.

Wouldn’t it be nice?