This year, in retrospect, has been life altering and huge in terms of identifying and developing my practice in the world of birth, birth advocacy, and making good arguments for women having babies on their own terms.
A few years ago, when I decided that I wanted to work in birth but not pursue it through the route of the nurse, I had also decided to venture into lactation as a possible profession. It had very little to do with my own adventures in feeding my kids. To be honest, there never really was adventure. It was mundane, really typical and I would say normal and natural to me. Not to say that I didn't fill my cup with ways to handle things and the stories of others. I went to La Leche League meetings with my second child, about 8 months after she was born - mainly, to connect with other moms and to see if lactation was something I'd like to develop that passion in.
It almost was an uphill battle to even get off of the ground with lactivism. Not necessarily an old boys club or exclusive, but guarded in the community being that it is a precious commodity. That seems really odd, saying that lactivism and milky helpers should be guarding their world and protecting the practice. Exclusion reminds me of the sand box. It also felt as though the old guard was almost discouraging a freshie perspective? Or that it would take too much time to open the wing? I don't know, I spent a lot of time de-constructing what went wrong because I am a sensitive person, and I really thought I had found a good fit, and a place that needed more help. Maybe it was timing, my approach, or just the fact that I truly wasn't ready like I figured.
Off I went, back to my career and looking for another rainbow to chase. I really thought it was and is best practice to just lay back and support the mother who does either. Amongst my peers were many mothers who did not nurse their babies for various reasons. I even became turned off by lactivism for a short while. It seemed mean spirited, and I saw an upper crust and consumerist element to nursing babies. Snobbery? Perhaps, but a barrage of "breast is best" mixed with the angry hipster mom-blogger rants and I really felt like I wanted nothing to do with lactivism. I felt like I would fit into a moderate group of mothers better, all things considered. It's not like I lived my life with my breasts out and a perfect-mom badge anyway, right? (Lactivists are truly hairy-armpitted, broom skirt-wearing Ina May wannabes right? right?) I felt like my voice carried no weight, and that I should go back to my little house in north central Regina and my dented SUV and 9 to 5 job. To stop worrying about the outside world because mine was truly "fine".
(This is really quite interesting to blog, because in retrospect I was still nursing my toddler. With much less enthusiasm at that point)
So, then we enter into the midwifery activism and birth community rhetoric again. So - I wasn't necessarily lactating or living my suburban iPhone life anymore. I was a card carrying pregnant hipster now. I was being denied home birth (then awarded it and then denied again), and listening with intent to the stories and experiences of other mothers. I also started to delve into marketing practices and my tune was changing. I had received exactly two cans of free formula in my previous pregnancy, and it really bothered me to know that not only could that happen again to me, but that somewhere in my own neighborhood was a desperate mom, at 3 am, who cracked the can instead of looking to more support.
I really wanted to just "get mad", but it became so obvious that guilt was really interfering with the ability to fully rage. I didn't want to make my friends feel guilty or obligated. I didn't want my family to pay for their comments and looks and energy. Even though I have been vocal about how it hurts - in the end I have to respect those around me. Even though not only had I never really quit being a lactivist, but I continued to post links and pay for it with long, drawn out strings of comments. I had to be careful and be respectful of those around me, on my OWN social networking pages. You can avert your eyes from a nursing mother in a shopping mall, but I guess you can't look away from the nagging article popping up on your facebook feed. I'd pass up many opportunities to share stuff, but I never stopped clicking and reading beyond the rhetoric and drama. It's never about our own experiences, yet every single blog and news article about feeding babies turns into "this was my experience, so there". I don't want it to be about that, so respectfully slowed down and internalized more of my thoughts.
But I do NOT have to be a respectful consumer. It is within my right to demand quality products in my marketplace. It's within my right and I would think that on behalf of my fellow mothers who both nurse and use formula that it's a duty to expose awful marketing.
The other practice that is true to me is the practice of sustaining relationships with our babies. Our instincts to parent has already been handed to our health care professionals and dr. Google - so, how are we to know how to relate to our babies? Even our lactation instructions are muddled and confused. I love my midwife, but I was so flustered when she said I needed to pump engorged breasts that I totally ignored my own 3 year old who was really quite skilled at emptying her mother's breasts!
I hear many stories from mothers who don't know what to do. They are tired, frustrated, hurting... The answer is often complex or directed away from nursing. To one health professional their child is at risk of losing precious time and health without formula, to the next the answer is supplementing. But rarely is donor milk ever considered or suggested. This leads mothers to milk sharing networks and begging their lactating friends to don pumps and containers. And non stop doubt and guilt floats around her in the air!
Lactivism, to me, is about preserving a normal practice. Since when did the 24 hour drugstore or free backpack of coupons and powdered substance replace calling a lactation professional? There are card carrying women right down the block from most of us with breasts and some of them may be carrying a precious commodity. In a perfect world, we'd be more interested in milk donation and protection of the normal function and less concerned about bothering others for help.
I'm asking and begging of those who are reading to NOT comment on why they couldn't breast feed. Your story is important to mothering pedagogy, however this isn't about that. That's in the past, and it's done.
This is about moving forward from this day, this moment in 2011 and looking at what our new world citizens are being offered as nutrition when you consider what the alternative is. To one mother, it means asking her fellow women to spend 20 minutes to help her fold laundry so that she can sit down to feed her baby. To the next, it means dropping off a warm meal and a bottle of breast milk to her sick newborn. Maybe it just means leaving your phone turned on at night so that she isn't crying alone. Or, lending her $40 to hire someone to come and help.
In any case, 2012 is the year that you can lactivate. You don't need a drop of milk to ever have left your chest. You could be a husband or father, son, cousin, neighbor or stranger. It might make a difference to someone you love, today or 30 years from today.
That is what I do... It isn't making me millions, but I would say that every blog post, comment, and thought ripples and reverbs somewhere. It's not a simple solution, and there is no answer to formula that is easy. To say to someone that it's okay to have a choice... Well, choice isn't fair when you can't choose the safety in what you are putting into your child's mouth. It's not a supermarket of health out there in Similac land. Those milking cows aren't the same ones you see munching on grass behind a barb wire fence.
Yes, we have to do what we gotta do. But if you can do it with style? With grace? With afterthought? And most of all, without guilt. That is why I lactivate.
No comments:
Post a Comment