Bed-Sharing

Milwaukee is on a campaign to stamp out bed-sharing. Several babies have died when sleeping in bed with Mom, Grandma, or Mom's boyfriend. The city officials want to convince people that they ought never ever ever ever ever sleep with a baby. Some people are talking about passing laws to make it illegal, charging parents with murder if a baby should die in the parents' bed.

Now, I don't think a baby should be sleeping with Grandma or Mom's boyfriend. I even wonder a little about Baby sleeping with Daddy alone. Under no circumstances should a drunk or high mom be sleeping with her baby. But those scenarios are quite different from a sober breastfeeding mom sleeping with her baby.

Cassie tipped me off to a news report on bed-sharing. And the findings certainly ring true. Although alcohol has been implicated in many of the recent deaths, although there have been a disproportionate amount of deaths in the poverty-stricken areas of the city, there is only ONE 100%-consistent factor in these deaths. The babies were formula-fed. None of the babies were sleeping with a nursing mother.

That's critical.

And it's why bed-sharing must not be made illegal.

Different Approaches to Parenting: How Do the Kids Turn Out in the End

Three babies have died in the last six weeks in Milwaukee. They were sleeping with someone instead of sleeping in a crib. The city is now trying to convince families that it's unloving to let a baby sleep in bed with its mother. (If I've got the different stories straight, one died sleeping with a grandmother, and one died sleeping with a drunk mother. I haven't heard details about this week's death.) Although there are loads of people who know co-sleeping is usually a safe and healthy practice, our society has lost so much common sense that we now have people saying that it's child neglect/abuse.

And then today we hear the story of a mother who was arrested because she stopped the car, told her bickering daughters to get out, and made them walk home. Some people are aghast that a mother could put her children in such "danger" as to make them walk home. They say it's child neglect. There are other parents who think that it's child neglect to allow the kids to squabble and sass and be unrestrained in their selfishness.

The Perfect New Grandma

When I first became a new mama, my mama came to help. I know lots of grandmas (especially first-time grandmas) want to be there when then baby is born: to snuggle, and to love, and to hold, and to feed, and to help. I'm not about to deny that Mom wanted to come meet her new grandbaby and snuggle and love.

But she really was a huge HELP. Unlike many new grandmas, she didn't take over the baby. Instead she waited on me. She made sure the food was cooked and the laundry was done and the dishes were washed. She brought me a small glass of wine and a freshly diapered baby when it was time to nurse. She made sure the fridge and pantry were not missing items. Before she returned to the care of her own family, she made sure the floors were vacuumed and the bathrooms were cleaned.

Overall, she didn't do much to take care of the baby. She left that job to me and Gary. When I tried to pin on a diaper, and it looked like it surely wouldn't stay on that child more than 5 minutes, and would surely leak like crazy, she gave me some pointers on how to pin it on a little better. But mostly she just encouraged me that I'd get better at diapering with practice. Being a lactation consultant, she knew not to sneak bottles into Rachel even though I'm sure she would've liked to have fed her granddaughter. Instead, she made sure I knew that I could nurse that child just dandy, and gave practical pointers when necessary. Being a nursery nurse, she also knew what to do with a jaundiced newborn (put that kid in a sunny window!) and that breastfed babies were usually more jaundiced anyway (in other words, chill out) and how much jaundice would be too much for us to deal with at home.

My mom was the PERFECT new grandma.

I hope I can do the same for Katie next month, leaving the parenting to Alia's parents, and just doing the slave-duties of waiting on the new mother and alleviating her of all her "non-mommy" housewife-duties.

Avoiding Cracked Nipples

Guys may want to stop reading now. You've been forewarned....

My mom's career (in addition to momming) was an RN in the hospital nursery. In her last decade or so before retirement, she also worked as a lactation consultant. Nursing seemed to come very easily to me, but when I read How My Breasts Saved the World, I realized that a large part of my ease probably was a result of having my own personal lactation consultant on hand 24 hours a day for the first week after my eldest was born.

Nevertheless, I frequently had cracked nipples and also suffered greatly with mastitis. Eventually, sometime during Kid#2 or Kid#3's nursing days, I learned to recognize the signs of a breast infection early and take steps to prevent its worsening. (By the way, in case anybody is inclined to listen to a doctor's advice to stop breastfeeding when mom has a breast infection, take the doctor and stick his/her head in a toilet and flush, and then go home and nurse your baby more than ever.)

Some time after I'd had 3 or 4 kids, Mom happened to be at work and ran across a new mom, still in the hospital, who was nursing her baby for 30-45 minutes per side. This is usually not a good plan for new moms; it's usually a perfect plan for obtaining sore and cracked nipples. But this mom was doing fine. So my mom the lactation consultant asked her about it. It seems this woman had pulled on her nipples 300 times a day for the last couple of months of pregnancy.

That's it? No complicated exercises from the Lamaze teacher? No "nipple conditioning" out of a modern book on pregnancy and labor? Nope. Just holding onto the nipple (not the areola) and pulling straight out 300 times a day.

Now, with my track record of sit-ups, jogging, dusting, saying my prayers, and other things that I struggled to make habits, I never managed to do the 300x per day thing. But I probably did manage to work in 150-200 yanks on most days, divided between getting dressed, showering, changing into jammies at bedtime, etc.

And that was the END of my cracked nipples. So simple. So easy. No problems with any of the kids after I heard this tip. And so I want to shout it from the rooftops, beat mommies over the head with it, and foist this information upon them, to save themselves trouble when the baby is newborn. So any of you pregnant people out there (Melynda!!) consider yourself whopped upside the head.

Weaning

Okay, I admit it. I'm ADD and distractible.

Someone asked me to read "Dark Night of the Soul" by St John of the Cross. So I'm getting my feet wet and going through it. And St John uses an analogy for how God gives us His good gifts in sweetness and joy, but then must eventually help us "grow up," and thus we begin to encounter anfechtungen.

But the analogy distracted me.

It said something about how a mother would put aloe on her breasts to discourage a child from nursing so that he would be weaned and go on to his growing up.

Aloe? YUCK! Nasty! Aloe in a kid's mouth would certainly discourage him from asking to nurse. But aloe in the mouth is just awful. It would be kinder to hit a kid than to put aloe in his mouth.

Just the thought of aloe in the mouth makes me want to run to the bathroom and spit and spit and spit. Thinking of aloe in the mouth makes you want to wash your own mouth out with soap because it would improve the sensation in your mouth.

Oh. Was I supposed to be reading theology?
Ooops. Got distracted by that "Solidarity With The Holsteins" thing again.
And the horrid thought of aloe touching my tastebuds.

Aloe in the mouth. [Shudder!!!!]

Nursing Mother Threatened with Lawsuit

My friend Polly linked to a humorous and informative blog on nursing. (No, Heidi, not your kind of nursing. The "feeding babies" kind of nursing.) It's called the Lactivist. The eye-popping subject of the week was that the pork producers have gone after this mommy and her little blog. She used the phrase "The Other White Milk" on a t-shirt, and the trademark lawyers went ballistic. Good grief!

The Lactivist looks like a good site, even before the recent uproar. There are some cute slogans at her store. I think my favorite is "Breasts: Not Just For Selling Cars Anymore."