Love-Knowledge Baby

“Thank you for your suggestions, but please excuse me while I ignore them.”

That’s what I want to say to a lot of people.  And you know what?  I started out this whole mothering journey with a much “better” attitude.  In the beginning, especially, I was ready and willing to listen to peoples’ suggestions, their advice, and their anecdotal evidence in regards to childrearing.  I was a lot more submissive, and a lot less fierce.  I had a newborn.  I was young.  I thought I needed to listen to those who had done it all before, and so I asked.  I listened.  I nodded my head and tried it their way.

And it felt wrong.

It felt wrong when I called my mom about my 2 month old baby who was crying, and she told me to put him down and let him cry it out.  It felt wrong to watch my helpless infant lying on his blanket, his small body twisting, limbs jerking in the agony and danger of loneliness, his hysterical cries answered by my shushing voice and not the touch of my skin on his, the warmth and scent of me, the taste of my milk . . .

I’m so ashamed.

I’m so ashamed I listened to my mother that one time.  I’m so filled with regret that I let him cry at all, and I took that deep, nails-on-chalkboard feeling of absolute shame and wrongness with me as I researched for myself.  I discovered what my heart had been telling me all along: babies cannot “self sooth.”  Meeting an infants needs as soon as they arise is the basic prerequisite for humane and biologically normal parenting.

When my beautiful son developed facial eczema after early introduction of solids at 5 months old (another result of my submissive and passive parenting with a domineering mother of my own), I heard plenty of things which caused me to grow a tougher skin.  Things like, “Eeew, what’s wrong with his face?!” and “Oh, it’s just baby acne.  It’ll pass.  My kids all had that, and I ignored it.  It eventually went away.” and “That’s terrible!  Have you asked the doctors to test him for X, Y, or Z?” (all horrible diseases which have no cure) and “It’s eczema.  You need steroid cream.”

I could actually write entire paragraphs about what people said to me about my son’s skin.  Many comments were so stupid my brain rebelled and struck them from my memory almost immediately, and I’m glad not to share them.  Suffice to say, I kept a cover over his stroller and car seat when we were out (this was before I used slings), and started to get jaded about bringing Bailey to public places.

What I do know is that I used my own initiative to keep a food diary of what I ate and how it affected him through the breast milk.  I eliminated wheat.  We also did something that made me nervous, but ultimately worked out for the best; We backed off of solid foods and went back to exclusive breast feeding.  Meanwhile, multiple trips to the pediatrician supplied us with steroid creams and other things with long and upsetting warning labels.  Though I asked to be referred to an allergist, I was told he was too young for true allergies.  We should just stick to the creams.

The advice that parents of babies with eczema is confusing.  Bathe often, don’t bathe often.  Use this cream or another.  Most of those messages revolve around treating the symptoms of eczema, not finding the cause.  I knew there had to be a cause, and it was inexorably linked to food.

My food diary led us to a wacky sort of elimination diet, and all the while we got no sleep.  Bailey scratched himself bloody.  We put mitts on him, and he’d use the mitts to scratch his skin off.  All his clothes had blood stains.  I stayed up nights just holding him and applying more creams and swaddling him and nursing him.  Nights blended into days which melted into weeks.  I eliminated most of the major allergens, and I saw some improvements and then back slides.

It was a dangerous few months.  We both lost weight.  I lost a LOT of weight, but I didn’t really care about that as much as my baby’s weight loss.  Babies aren’t supposed to lose weight.  They’re supposed to be fat and happy.

So, without my pediatrician’s referral, I found an allergist who would see infants.  We looked over my food diary, and picked out the major elements and went to get blood drawn from my 8 month old baby.  They called us back and told us that he was indeed allergic to wheat, oats, rye, barley, soy, egg whites, egg yolks, and peanuts.

No wonder my haphazard elimination diet hadn’t seemed to work.  There was just too much to eliminate.  It was too hard to tell without that test.  Within the next months, Bailey’s face cleared up as we learned to adapt to a new allergen free diet.  The change was amazing, and he started gaining weight again.  I never put my normal weight back on, but I felt so much better knowing the food I was eating wasn’t going to hurt my baby (barring mistakes and carelessly read labels).

Now I’ve been Gluten Free for over two years, along with the rest of his allergens.  We’re still breast feeding and a recent blood test at 2 and a half years old has shown that he’s no longer allergic to soy, and that a whole bunch of his allergies have come down on the severity scale.  I’m now pregnant with out second child, and I know what I can do for my baby if he or she has allergies.  I can change the contents of my milk.

This all has been tremendously difficult, but extremely rewarding, but there’s something you don’t know.  If you go back and reread what I’ve written, feel free to mentally insert between each sentence that someone told me to stop breast feeding.  If we do that, we might actually come vaguely close to the amount of times somebody actually believed that it would be better for me or my baby to use formula, or just STOP nursing . . . and said it to my face.

So, forgive me if all I want to say to people who have advice for me is, “Thank you for your suggestions, but please excuse me while I ignore them” . . . but that’s the polite version.  Because I can understand why a mom would want to eat what she wanted to without having to worry about her nursing baby’s food allergies, but I CAN’T understand the choice to switch to formula just to indulge in lattes and pizza.  I can’t understand it because I know how important, how vital and irreplaceable breastfeeding is to the mother and baby.

There is NO logic behind switching from the one perfect, living and utterly changeable nourishment source to a dead and inadequate replacement during a time of stress and compromised health.  If I had followed that chorus of voices and denied my intuitive desire to continue breastfeeding, I don’t know how much worse it could have gotten.

But I know it would have been worse.  Breast milk is a supply and demand system.  The more formula introduced, the less breast milk I would produce.  My milk supply would have plummeted.  The introduction of formula into his digestive system would have irreparably altered his intestinal flora.  I was also all too aware that one of his allergies could easily be to dairy (which his latest allergy test as a toddler confirms).

So I would have been quickly losing my milk supply while trying to do damage control as he reacted to the milk-based formula.  At that point, I’m sure advice would have been to switch to soy-based formula which would not have solved any problems because he’s allergic to soy.  I’m so glad I stuck with nursing and had him tested.  I can change my “formula” to exclude his allergens and still include all the good things he needs.

What is so horrible about breast feeding?  Is it the white blood cells, the stem cells, the essential and easily digested form of DHA built for babies and toddlers, the fact that the milk changes to match the developmental stages of the child, or is it simply because boobs are icky or only for sex?  Is it the bond and love and beneficial neurological feedback that a child receives through skin to skin contact?

What is it about breast feeding that offends so many people?  Why is breast feeding seen as the problem in so many cases?  If someone can stand up and give me a rational and intuitive reason I should not breastfeed my baby, my toddler, both of them at the same time, in public, anywhere, anytime and with great joy . . . I’m waiting.

Let me hear it.

But if it’s not both rational and intuitive, it won’t work for me or my family.

And I’ll just say, “Thank you for your suggestions, but please excuse me while I ignore them.”

Oh, you bet I am.  I’ve thought about how hard yet rewarding this whole mothering journey has been.  I think about all the pratfalls we’re set up for, all the false expectations of what a mother should want, what a “good baby” is, and how to go about gestating, birthing and raising human beings . . . Instead of warm fuzzy feelings, I am overcome by the deep rumblings of a ferocious and primal womanhood which has had to fight its way past many obstacles.

I am fierce because I never doubted my ability to birth.  I’m fierce because I dared to question a routine ultrasound, and when the nurse told me refusing could lead to a dead baby, I told her to get my medical records copied so I could find another provider.  Even as a young mother, I was not going to be bullied.

I am fierce because I found myself a midwife and planned a home birth in Midwestern America, where ignorance and persecution keeps most out of hospital births under the radar.  I kept my internal flame burning as I threw up every day at work for 6 months until I took an early leave.  I kept faith and love in focus as my husband lost his job and we were forced to move to a smaller apartment.

And I survived through a home birth transfer to hospital that tore away my trust for the people who should have been supporting me most.  I survived over 50 hours of labor, the latter half an experience of dehumanization, coerced medications, genital mutilation without consent, the near loss of my newborn baby, and the scolding and condescension of the medical professionals surrounding me.  I survived the three days before I held my son for the first time.  Against pressures to do otherwise, I protected his prepuce and his beautiful, intact body.

I pumped my precious milk every 3 hours until I was ALLOWED to hold him, ALLOWED to nurse him with my own breasts, three days after I pushed him out, after he was immediately severed from me.  I survived that week while they poked and prodded and gradually unhooked him from the various life support machines.  I remember his defiant swatting at the plastic oxygen hood that masked his face and the precious smug look on his tiny face as they finally removed it.

I am fierce because I never doubted he would be well, and though the doctors were cautious, he did nothing but improve and gain weight.  And I took him home, and loved him ferociously . . . partially to make it up to him, to try to heal the wounds of our birth.

For me, those wounds included self-doubt and hatred, undeniable and heart wrenching grief, and later flashbacks and waking nightmares.  I did not value sleep as much as I valued the time I spent with him, learning his ways, listening to my deep intuitions as I should have all along.  I could not resent him, or mourn a life I used to have because I nearly lost my baby before I ever held him . . . and because a large part of me died in that hospital.

I am fierce because I began to listen to myself and my baby above all other voices.  Ignoring my intuitive voice had led me to a sham of a birth which had hurt us both.  I set my mind to researching parenting, the evolutionary psychology of birth and childrearing, and I wore my baby in slings and other soft carriers.  I nursed him on demand and coslept.  We started practicing Elimination Communication as a family.  I refused any and all vaccinations for my baby, whose immune system was flawless by design and inexorably tied to our breastfeeding relationship.  I could not and would not let my helpless child “cry it out” and lie to myself that it was for his own good, as my mother undoubtedly did to me.

I am fierce beyond belief because, even as my husband remained distant or took to uncontrolled raging fits which left holes in doors, I stood firm.  I told him that if he lay a hand in anger on my child or myself, he would know fear.  And he listened, and we talked.  I am fierce because I recognized the helplessness and fear that our birth and our situation caused in the man who was supposed to be able to protect us, and I told him that it mirrored my own pain and terror . . . and that we could weather this storm together.

I survived the cold and sometimes violent withdrawal of my husband, and I saw him open the door to hope.  I would not stand down, and I would not take no for an answer.  I did not accept that he did not, and could not, love our baby.  I weathered their bonding issues and kept on believing that they could get along and form a close bond.  I watched them play together, and saw the day my toddler cried when daddy had leave for work.  I am fiercely proud of my family.

I am proud I pushed my son out of my body of my own will and power, under threat of surgical knife.  I am fierce because I did not let the subsequent nightmares overtake my life.  I slipped many times, but I never failed to get right back up again.  I wrote, I read, and I thought and cried until I couldn’t any more, and when it was time, I beat back the demons that plagued me so that I could live my waking moments without the past intruding.

I am strong.  I am fierce, and now they think they can tell me to stop nursing my baby because he is too old?  Or because his nursing and my giving milk will harm the new child growing within me?  I have listened to the objections, and I have read my fill of research . . . but more importantly, my heart says I am healthier, happier, and more full of life and love than I have ever been.

So I will do as I please.

Because when they tell me how to parent, or what’s good for me or my babies, they do not know to whom they speak.

Am I a fierce mama?

Oh, you bet I am.

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This post was inspired and written for a blog called FierceMamas.  Please go visit and read the other posts by Fierce Mamas!

http://fiercemamas.blogspot.com/

I don’t know who to–Can’t trust anyone–Want to be by myself, left alone–and how can I make sure that–I don’t want that to happen, or this, or that other thing–

STOP.

I’m ready to get hurt again, to die, to be betrayed again–Better to be prepared, isn’t it?

STOP.  STOP.

I want . . .

YES.  Yes?

I want . . . to be . . .

I want to be worshiped like a goddess idol.

I want my husband to run his workman hands over my rounded curves and delight in me.  I want to eat exactly what I want, when I want it.  I want to be somewhere safe.  I want to play music and dance if I feel like it.  I want to wear what I WANT TO WEAR, even if it gets wet in the pool.  I want to lounge in warm water and invite the rushes through my womb.

I want to be left with my love so we can kiss and sway and dance, and do things that aren’t allowed on television.  I want an ecstatic birth!

PETA can go screw themselves because I want to luxuriate on lambswool or rich soft animal furs NAKED.  I want to allow myself to feel that beautiful, rolling, purring connection with my physicality.

I want to love being pregnant this time JUST AS MUCH or more than I did the first time around.  And I want . . . candles.  Back rubs.  Whispered devotions.

I want to open wide and give birth to my baby.  On the bed, the floor, in the pool . . . where ever.  But I WANT TO DO IT this time.

I want to be the first person to touch my baby, and I want Brad to be the second person, and Bailey the third.  I want to hold my own baby skin-to-skin and just hang on for dear life because I missed that with my first baby.

I want a healthy birth.  I want a healthy baby.  And the best way to do that, is to take care of myself, and work WITH my body . . . and enjoy the ride.

That’s what I want.

Just to enjoy it.