Weaning Has Me Worried Sick

My son had a bit of the sniffles this entire week. Nothing major, a low grade fever off and on for a day or so, a little bit of a drippy nose, waking up with a crust of boogers all over his face. He was never sick enough to stay home from daycare, although I gave him a dose of medicine once when he woke up in the middle of the night coughing.

Miles has had the occasional cold, starting from when he was a tiny thing, only three weeks old. My husband is a teacher so he brought home a bug, I caught it and passed it on to the baby. Because I was breastfeeding, the baby got the mildest form of the cold of all of us, but it was still hard to see him sick, struggling to nurse and breathe at the same time with a stuffy nose. But honestly, that's been the worst of it. Runny or stuffed noses, fevers, accompanied with clinginess and a desire to nurse non-stop. We've never had a case of diarrhea, no puking, no ear infections. His pediatrician has even remarked that he has the thinnest medical file of a kid in daycare he's ever seen.

I was talking to another mom once about poop (what else?) and she said how the worst poop she's ever smelled is when her kids were on antibiotics. "Am I right?" she asked. "Isn't it awful?" She was totally stunned when I told her that my son has never been on antibiotics so I couldn't say.

Breastfeeding has really been the best thing ever for keeping my son healthy. And though after three years I have HAD.ENOUGH. I'm totally afraid to wean him. Because I know the second we stop nursing, something catastrophic will happen.

I've heard the horror stories from too many moms to not know how this will end. You wean your  kid, then he gets the plague and you no longer even have breastfeeding as a way to comfort him. I know women who have nursed their kids until they self-weaned and wham! next thing you know, the kid ends up in the hospital with something awful.

It makes sense, in a way. The research shows a child's immune system isn't fully formed until about age 5 and most of us don't nurse for that long (and I have NO desire to be nursing a kid who's in kindergarten....NONE). At some point you're probably going to have a child whose immune system isn't yet completely developed, who is covered in a coating of germs from his classmates and playmates and who is no longer breastfeeding. That is a recipe for disaster and I wonder how long we can make it unscathed.

So for now, although I'm ready to be done, I'm sticking it out a little longer, for the health of my son. At least through the end of flu season.  I hope.



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November Carnival of Breastfeeding: Your family history

For the November Carnival of Breastfeeding, we want to hear about the history of breastfeeding over the generations in your family. Did your mother breastfeed you?  Did your grandmother breastfeed?
Do you know why they made the feeding choice they did? Here's your opportunity to ask if you don't know!

Submissions are due by November 15th and the Carnival will be on November 22nd. We're using Google Docs to collect submissions, so please fill out this spreadsheet in order to submit your post.

As always, we're looking for posts that are:

- Well-written and grammatically correct
- Thoughtful and directly on point for the carnival subject
- Submitted by blogs that pertain to subjects of interest to our readers (breastfeeding, parenting, etc.)

If your post is selected for inclusion, you will be asked on the day of the carnival to edit your post to link back to each of the other participants in the carnival. Examples of past carnivals can be found here.



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Breast Is Best, Where's the Confusion?

I received an email in my inbox today at work, from an industry magazine, linking to some new reviews that were available exclusively online. Since I do all of the collection development for my library, I decided to scroll through and see if there was anything interesting.

Well, hold on to your hats because apparently there are still people out there who are questioning if breast milk is really any better for babies and decided we needed a treatise defending formula feeding. The book is called Is Breast Best?: Taking on the Breastfeeding Experts and the New High Stakes of Motherhood. The author, Joan Wolf, decided to expound on a 2007 essay she wrote for the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law after the US government's ad campaign from 2006 used risk aversion as a means of promoting breastfeeding ("You'd never take risks before your baby is born. Why start after?" asked the ads, featuring heavily pregnant women log rolling and riding a mechnical bull at a bar).

Now, when a certain journalist tried to parse through the scientific studies and decided they were "flawed," she was criticized by nearly everyone, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the United States Breastfeeding Committee. So I'm sort of surprised that a gender studies professor somehow thinks she is more qualified than say, Dr. Melissa Bartick, to determine whether or not there is strong science to support the case for breastfeeding.

For goodness sakes, even the reviewer, a journalist and freelance writer says, "(Wolf) seems out of her element when describing perceived flaws in medical studies of breast milk and talking about financial issues." Her review also states, "Inexplicably, she fails to discuss the price of formula, which can easily run $1,000 to $2,000 a year. Instead, she talks about what she sees as the 'exorbitant' costs of breastfeeding."

This idea of the high price of breastfeeding gets brought up again and again. Yes, pumps and milk storage bags and nursing clothing can be pricey, but there is also this argument that breastfeeding is only free if a woman's time isn't worth anything. And honestly, I'm not buying it. Do bottles make themselves? Does formula just show up at the door? (wait...don't answer that.) Do parents not have to actually take time to feed the baby once the formula is prepared? And when families are bottle-feeding, is the work always split 50/50?

Are we seriously still asking women to believe that breastfeeding isn't compatible with feminism? Wolf seems to be. In an essay she wrote for the website Opposing Views, she says that breastfeeding promotion   "derive(s) from an ethos which presumes that a moral mother will subjugate herself completely to a culturally defined, all-inclusive notion of the needs of children. When mothers have wants, such as a sense of bodily, emotional, and psychological autonomy, but children have needs... then good mothering requires that mothers repress their own wants.  Each mother is responsible for adopting behavior that reduces even minuscule or poorly understood risks to her children, regardless of the cost to herself." Again, I would argue that the risks of formula feeding are understood and that those risks are not miniscule, but you don't have to be a martyr to breastfeed. Many women come to the conclusion that bottle-feeding was not as freeing as they were led to believe it would be. And isn't the harassment of nursing moms in public that we hear about every day, the judgment of our choices from friends, family and healthcare providers alike, the pushback to any accommodations that are made for us, just as worthy of feminist discourse? Where are the scholars writing about that?

So just be prepared come January, when all of the various media outlets and morning shows trot out this "expert" to tell women around the country that there is no reason to breasteed and sites like Mom Logic and Babble applaud her for her work. You can't say you weren't warned.

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Baby Baby Oh Baby: Breastfeeding

When my son was a newborn, one of my favorite things to do was to massage him with oil or lotion after his bath, before nursing him off to sleep. Sometimes when he was fussy or overtired, I would strip him down to his diaper and rub him down and instantly he would calm down. I learned about infant massage from Dr. Sears' The Baby Book, where he suggests some specific techniques, like "milking" the baby's legs and the "pit stop" where you rub the lymph nodes under the armpits. I could never remember exactly what I was "supposed" to do and I didn't drag out the book every time. It really didn't matter, though, as my baby enjoyed the massages and so did I. We just sort of played it by ear and it became another way in which I learned about my baby and taught him about the world. Dr. Sears has outlined some of the benefits of massage to babies on his website, but I think it was just as beneficial for me as a new mom and gave me another way in which to bond with my baby.

A few weeks ago on Rixa's blog Stand & Deliver, she mentioned a new DVD that teaches parents about the importance of infant massage called BabyBabyOhBaby: Bonding With Your Brilliant & Beautiful Baby Through Infant Massage. What I loved about her review is how the DVD stresses the relationship between parent and child, not any specific moves or techniques. The DVD's creator, David Spark, has a philosophy very similar to that of Dr. Sears: massage is something you do with your baby, not to him, and is like a beautiful dance between caregivers and babies. I think this DVD would make a great gift for parents-to-be.

And if that wasn't wonderful enough, Spark Productions is also currently filming a DVD on breastfeeding! Check out the beautiful preview below.

 


How beautiful is that? I love that this also stresses the importance of nurturing with touch and how important breastfeeding is to the relationship between mom and baby. I have to remember to keep this on my radar so I can grab a copy when it comes out!

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A Rose By Any Other Name......

Quick: what's your definition of breastfeeding? Is it a baby being nourished at the breast, receiving his mother's milk? What if mom is pumping and feeding her milk to her baby via a bottle? Is that child being breastfed? And how much human milk does a baby need to receive in order to be considered a breastfed baby? One feeding a day, which is the definition at WIC? Or at least 50/50? Some other ratio of breast milk to formula? Or only breast milk?

And while we're at it, what about exclusive breastfeeding? If your baby was supplemented in the hospital, can you consider him "exclusively breastfed"? Some moms start solids as early as 4 months but will say they "exclusive breastfed" for the recommended 6 months. This is not to downplay how difficult it is to breastfeed your baby for this long or the kudos that moms deserve. But what of the research? How we can talk about the protection offered by exclusive nursing if we can't study it because no one's really doing it?

And is it breastmilk, breast milk or breast-milk? Breastfeeding, breast-feeding, breast feeding? Why is all of this so convoluted and complicated anyway? And why can't we agree on any of it?






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Healthy Children's Certified Lactation Counselor Course

I spent the week of October 11-15 taking the Certified Lactation Counselor course through Healthy Children's Center for Breastfeeding. I knew that I wanted to take a course in breastfeeding so that I could get some basic credentials, learn more about breastfeeding and maybe begin my journey towards becoming an IBCLC. Since I don't have a healthcare background, I figured a class like this would be a good place to start to see if becoming an IBCLC was even a realistic goal or worthy of further consideration. I chosen Healthy Children's CLC class because it seemed more comprehensive than the other options available, since it was a full 40 hours.

I was lucky that the course was offered in my backyard, but many people had traveled to attend the week-long class from all over Florida and the country. We met in a classroom at a local hospital and were informed by the faculty that they are happy to travel anywhere to teach, as long as someone can offer up a space. So if you've been looking for the class in your area and it hasn't been available, find out if your local hospital is willing to host them and they will come!

The faculty for my course were Dr. Lois Arnold, who is probably best well known for her work in human milk banking, and Sheri Garner, a nurse and lactation consultant who did a lot of work in military facilities. Both women were extremely knowledgeable about the subject matter and were great speakers. There really wasn't ever a dull moment, even when the material being presented wasn't new.

Now, as I said, I don't work in healthcare, but the majority of the women in the class with  me did. I'd say about half of the participants were nurses, mainly in Mother/Baby, but a few who worked in the NICU. The other half seemed to be WIC Breastfeeding Peer Counselors. I was literally the only person who had no connection to healthcare or working with breastfeeding moms at all (there were two registered dietitians in the class and one speech pathologist and a couple IBCLCs there for continuing education credits.) Still, I'd say that I already knew about 85% of the material that was covered in the class.

There was a lot of discussion about the promotion, protection and support of breastfeeding in this country, the WHO Code, infant formula, hospital best practices including Baby Friendly, how to talk to moms to encourage them to breastfeed, etc. All things that we talk about on this blog and my Facebook fan page and Twitter on the daily. So for me, a lot of this was review. Thankfully it's a topic I just can't get enough of, so it didn't bother me, but of course, your mileage may vary.

What was new for me was the science stuff: how milk is made, the hormones involved in lactation, the medical terminology, the diagrams of the various body parts and systems involved. I have never been very good with these sort of left-brained topics so for me, a lot of this felt rushed. I was struggling to remember my 9th grade biology and had a hard time remembering what all of the terms meant.  For everyone else it was probably review. And strangely enough, everyone else seemed to know very little about things like the WHO Code and formula marketing.

So while I enjoyed the course, there are a couple of caveats. I think the course really caters more to folks who are already working with moms and babies, and that makes sense. Nurses, lactation consultants, midwives and RDs are taking the class for continuing education credits. And to that end, Healthy Children recently added a new competency to the class. Before, participants were expected to do a brief homework assignment each night which included role playing with a partner and answering some short essay questions. Now, in order to pass the course and become a Certified Lactation Counselor, you must not only turn in the homework assignments and pass the 100-question exam offered on the final day, you must also pass a LAT competency.

The LAT is the Lactation Assessment Tool, created by Healthy Children, to help with assessing breastfeeding. It is a sheet that a CLC or IBCLC could use while observing a mom nursing her baby and determine whether or not the baby is nursing well. It asks questions about the latch, the way mom is holding the baby, the baby's behavior, etc. For the CLC course, you are shown a short video of a mom breastfeeding a baby and have to fill in the LAT. This portion of the class is pass/fail, meaning if you get anything wrong on the LAT you've failed and will not pass the overall course, even if you ace the multiple choice exam. I don't know how I didn't know this new competency  had been added to the course, but I didn't know. Many of the people in the class with me didn't know and much freaking out ensued. So if NURSES WHO WORK WITH MOMS AND BABIES EVERY DAY were freaking out, you can imagine how yours truly felt. I've never in my life helped a mom to breastfeed. And while I've read a lot of breastfeeding books, I would never say that I feel qualified to do so and I don't think the hour or so we spent on this was sufficient for someone outside of the medical profession to pass this portion. So if I pass, ya'll, it will truly be a miracle.

Overall, I can say that I enjoyed the course and it did help me to solidify what I'd like to do in the future and gave me a better understanding of what working with moms and babies is like. If I pass, it would be really cool to be able to call myself a CLC and  I'd love to start teaching some breastfeeding classes in the community. If I don't pass I'll definitely be disappointed and at this point, I'm not sure if I would bother retaking the LAT competency or just chalk it up to a fun experience and move forward.

Has anyone else taken the CLC or another lactation education class? What are your thoughts?


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Black Mothers Breastfeeding Association Conference

On October 25th, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Third Annual Black Mothers' Breastfeeding Association conference. BMBFA has been on my radar for a few years now, and I've written before about how I think the founder, Kiddada Ramey, is one of the top black movers and shakers in the breastfeeding world.

Now, when Kiddada asked me to speak I was scared out of my mind. I speak all the time in front of groups for my real job, but I've never done a presentation for a breastfeeding conference. I knew that lots of amazing women were going to be presenting (including Bettina Forbes of Best for Babes, Napiera Loveless of MamaTotoMatema and researcher Dr. Paula Meier) and I didn't want to disappoint anyone. But I figured this was a good place to get my feet wet because it was a smaller, more intimate conference and I would be amongst friends. I already knew that some of the moms from BMBFA that I communicate with on Facebook and Twitter would be there. I just couldn't turn down the opportunity to meet so many wonderful people in person.

I presented on one of my favorite topics: how I use blogging and other forms of social media to connect with other black breastfeeding moms online. I think the presentation went really well. People asked some great questions afterwards and a couple even come up to me afterwards to tell me how much they liked my presentation. It was so nice to get such positive feedback. I was really feeling the love, ya'll!

Kiddada was so inspiring and I really want to be like her when I grow up! I'd love to start a chapter of BMBFA locally or use the power of social media to raise some funds for the organization because she is doing such amazing things for moms in Detroit. I'm already looking forward to going back next year!


*FYI, I've decided to participate in National Blog Post Month AKA NaBloPoMo. The point is to improve your writing skills by blogging every.single.day. throughout the month of November. I'm going to give it a whirl. I can't promise that all of my posts will be good, but you WILL be hearing from me every day for the next 30 days. Hopefully I'll be able to keep it interesting and fresh.


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