For the love of a good story

Birth stories are powerful stories. They are family lore, they are secret women’s business and women’s voices and feminist reclamation of the right to speak, they are bonding over chocolate biscuits at a newly formed mothers’ group, they are whispering in the night to a beloved child, they are sharing joy and fear and loss and triumph with others so that they too may learn something, they are spreading the word that birth is not the way a lifetime of Hollywood exposure has us imagine it, they are midwives’ wisdom, they are democratic and secular creation stories — and they are often the raw and unabashed truth about our bodies in a world where bodily truth is hushed and hidden.

Sometimes, they are told and met with happiness. Other birth stories are tinged with disappointment or confusion or fear. Occasionally, they are full of grief. All of these kinds of stories are important, and all of them teach us.

As Bean’s second birthday rapidly approaches, it seems timely to link to my post on the story of her birth. I also want to link to some others. And if you have a post of your own or someone else’s you’d like to share, please feel free to link in comments – or, if you prefer, write a comment about a birth you experienced or witnessed. I’d very much love to hear all about it!

Hello Little Bean My story as posted here at Spilt Milk.

Mathis family triplets video A video slideshow of images of pregnancy and birth of triplets (and the subsequent six months, including serious illness for one of the babies, so not entirely cheerful.)

Lola Constance Evelyn Kristalee’s raw and moving story about giving birth to her stillborn daughter.

Nella Cordelia from Enjoying the Small Things A frank account of the birth of a child with Down Syndrome – don’t miss the stunning photography.

Labour of Love, three positive birth stories Stories from Gabriel Targett, illustrating a doula’s role.

Bring me your unlikeliest easy breezy birth stories This post from blue milk elicited a lot of interesting comments and stories.

Beautiful Birth Stories Want more? A range of stories can be found here… or all over the interwebs, actually.

Got milk? Got PCOS?

I have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrom (PCOS). It’s one of the reasons I’m fat, and had some problems with fertility, and may even explain why I’m a moody sooky-la-la some of the time. Maybe!

I’ve known this for years. But what I didn’t know until recently is that it may also be one of the reasons my daughter had slow weight gains as an infant and possibly even contributed to her early weaning. My obstetrician, GP, and midwives knew that I have PCOS. But none of them actually knew (or at least, mentioned) that this very common condition can have an impact on lactation. A little bit of forearming might have gone a long way, but like much research into breastfeeding, this element is something many professionals are ignorant of.

Anyway – no point in crying over spilt milk (sorry). But for those of you with an interest in lactation or who have PCOS, here’s some worthwhile linkage.

Kellymom – always a great evidenced-based site for breastfeeding information. There’s not a lot on the actual site but it’s a starting point for some useful links, particularly Dr Hale’s article on the drug Metformin.

 Breastfeeding with PCOS blog - a useful resource which includes personal stories about battling undersupply caused by PCOS.

 The blog ‘got pcos’ has some useful tips and information. This post gives a clear explanation of the link between PCOS and insufficient glandular tissue.

An unkind cut

The Guardian newspaper ran an article in November about the alarming rise in labiaplasty.  I had read that anecdotally, requests for cosmetic surgery to correct ‘problems’ with one’s vulva have increased exponentially in tandem with the pornification of our culture – the British figures would appear to support that assertion.

A study published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology last week revealed that, over the last year, there has been an increase of almost 70% in the number of women having labiaplasty on the NHS. There were 1,118 in 2008, compared with 669 in 2007 and 404 in 2006.

There is no way to know how many girls and women had the procedure performed privately – but presumably the total figures are considerably higher. In Australia, the figures are also in the thousands. Thousands of women and girls who have subjected their most tender parts to slicing and trimming for mostly cosmetic reasons.

There are some women who suffer physical pain and discomfort because of the shape of their vulva (generally the length of their inner labia), and this can at times be quite severe. The fact that there are surgeons skilled in genital surgery is a boon to many of those women, and I certainly don’t begrudge them the chance to improve their quality of life.

But the reality is that the majority of labiaplasties are performed purely for cosmetic reasons. Yes, even our ‘private parts’ are meant to live up to the airbrushed standard.

And that ‘standard’ is indeed airbrushed. As Mia Freedman discussed in her recent blog post on this issue, even magazines targeting women routinely airbrush female genitals. And not just because they want to, either. Freedman explains

When I worked in magazines I got worked up for quite some time about the censorship requirements around vaginas. Unless anything has changed since then, the basic situation is that any magazine featuring a picture of a naked woman, had to digitally remove anything visible outside the ‘single slit’ of the vaginal lips. So any stray bits of labia or clitoris had to be airbrushed out. Because it was deemed OFFENSIVE …

The now defunct magazine Women’s Forum first brought the issue to my attention years ago and Cosmo then took up the cause with a campaign protesting it. What a shocker. And nothing changed.

To this day, any magazine showing any ‘genital detail’ must be sold in a sealed plastic bag. Like pornography. And I’m not talking about explicit legs akimbo shots, just shots of a normal girl standing up with her legs closed. She must look like Barbie or the airbrush will be deployed to make the censors happy and protect our sensitive eyes from OFFENSIVE VISIBLE LADY PARTS.

Many Australian women are unaware that these censorship guidelines even exist. I certainly was.

Like most straight women in our society, I’m not in the habit of looking at other vulvas. We don’t do much communal bathing in our country, so unless I do become a birth doula one day, chances are I won’t be getting acquainted with too many examples other than my own. And I’m not alone in that. So is it any wonder that girls and young women increasingly consider the bodies they see in pornography to be ‘normal’? Is it any wonder that their own genitals, if they differ markedly from that version of ‘normal’, seem somehow wrong? Compounding this phenomenon is the popularity of waxing – another legacy of pornification which means that genital variations are now more noticable than in more hirsute times.

There are a number of Australian cosmetic surgeons who advertise genital surgery services online. Their websites promised enhanced comfort and self esteem. Conversely, my googling didn’t lead me to any surgeons openly touting penis enlargement surgery – on the contrary, it is very easy to find sites decrying the practice as unnecessary, unreliable – and of course, reassuring men that a satisfying sex life is not dependent on their genitals living up to a porn-star standard. I’m not claiming that penis enlargement isn’t big business (pardon the pun) but the drastic option of surgery is something that is falling out of favour, right at a time when more and more cosmetic surgeons are acquainting their scalpels with women’s genitals.

Aside from the obvious pain and discomfort immediately resulting from surgery, women having labiaplasty do run the risk of future problems.

As with any surgery, labiaplasty is potentially risky. Dr Sarah Creighton [a consultant gyneacologist in London],says that there have been no studies into the after-effects or possible complications of labiaplasty, nor has there been any research into the impact on childbirth: she suggests that women who opt for this procedure might experience the same problems while giving birth as women who have undergone ritualistic female genital mutilations.

I can’t help but wonder how many women who opt for this procedure are fully aware of the implications for childbirth. Presumably, many of them are young and have not yet embarked on motherhood, or indeed decided whether or not they even wish to. In any case, the reality is that should they give birth in the future, a scarred labia will probably not stretch and open in the same way as undamaged tissue will. This is likely to impact on (or even destroy) their ability to birth without significant medical intervention. To me, that seems high price to pay – and a cost that I hope cosmetic surgeons are disclosing along with their $4000-$10 000 invoice.

Despite perhaps having some shared origins in the pathologising and commodification of female bodies, I don’t think we should conflate labiaplasty procedures with ritualistic female genital mutilations much further. These are obviously very different experiences and issues.

But what is very clear is that girls and women need us to teach them more about themselves. Generations on from women first being urged to examine themselves with a hand mirror, we’re still not getting it right. Body diversity extends beyond skin colour and weight, and body image concerns can be found below the belt.

A more personal kind of linkage

Almost six weeks ago something terrible happened to a friend. Her baby daughter died.

Even though I haven’t known this friend for very long, the nature of her loss was such that it had me reeling for days. I wept about it. My husband and I talked late into the nights about what had happened, and had to fight urges to wake our Little Bean just to hug her. I had understood grief before but this was beyond the edges of my knowing.

Even though the stillbirth of  Lola has occupied so many of my thoughts I haven’t mentioned it on my blog. It isn’t my story to tell. But her mother, Kristalee, is telling it in her own words here. Her strength and honesty floor me every time I visit the site. The birth story of her daughter is so raw and beautiful. If you want to know about the courage of women, and men, and love, and humanity, it’s all there.

The black dog’s a bitch

So I haven’t been around for a little while.

I don’t know if it’s because of all that’s happened in the last few months or if it’s chemical, but it hit me the other day that perhaps the reason I’m watching crappy TV instead of blogging, eating as much as possible and furtively weeping is not because I think this is a good life plan but because I am, in fact, a wee bit depressed.

I’m quite familiar with the d-word. I say it out loud from time to time because when it comes close to taking your life you learn pretty quick to tell anyone who’ll listen that it might be coming back again. At least, that’s true for me: like Voldemort it seems a lot less scary if I speak its name.

People keep telling me how normal I am to be feeling this way. And as much as I hate to be a walking cliche, they’re right. I’m a woman and a mother. I’m married and I’ve had cause to grieve recently. Statistically I’d probably be an anomaly if I was jumping around smiling like a toothpaste commercial.

But why is that, exactly?

When I was an undergraduate studying 19th century history, I wrote quite a gruesome essay on the popularity of cliterodectomy as treatment for “female hysteria”. I suppose that experience (and the spontaneous discussion I had with a complete stranger over the library shelf about how her gynaecologist had assaulted her) might have been the beginning of a broader awareness of mysogynistic medical language and practices. But it also got me thinking about how the depression I was experiencing then seemed so overwhelmingly female.

My daughter is almost fourteen months old so it’s a bit late for the post natal blues to visit, but then again, she only recently weaned. According to Louann Brizenden (author of the fascinating, though controversial, book The Female Brain) the withdrawal from regular surges of oxytocin and other relaxant hormones at the time of weaning can cause depression in women. Now perhaps there’s only a fine line between saying that womanly hormones can make us sad or mad and the more poetic (and more obviously misogynistic) explanations of wandering wombs and pathological masturbation. But I’ve learned enough about my body in the last couple of years to know for sure that its hormonal rhythms have an impact on my mental state.

What I don’t think we need more of in this world, though, is researchers looking for ways that biology justifies what they see around them. Women are twice as likely as men to experience depression. Five seconds of googling pulls up articles about how this is tied to hormones, sexual or spousal abuse, body image and losing work/family balance. None of these causes is uniquely female and yet, somehow, they each carry that connotation.

When I talked to my doctor about how I’m feeling lately, he jumped on the motherhood thing and then the hormone thing right away. I’m not saying he’s wrong. Just that the statement ‘it is normal for new mothers to feel depressed’ should be outrageous, even though he apparently is right. My chiropractor concurred.  ’You’re not alone, we all feel a bit that way when the babies grow up a little’, she said. And a couple of friends have also shared with me that relationship strain and feelings of despondency seem pretty much part and parcel of the parenting gig. Especially for the women.

What my GP, chiro and everyone else are really saying is that in our society, many mothers’ lives are so full of difficulties and so lacking in recognition and support that mental illness is a natural human response.  It’s enough to make you depressed, when you think about it.

You can take your Pretty Pusher and shove it

Now it’s not enough that women give birth. We’ve got to look good doing it too.

If you can’t escape the Body Police when you’re bringing a  person into the world through your vagina, when the hell can you? At your own funeral maybe?

I choose to laugh, lest I cry. No one likes the ugly cry, remember.

Serving to Live

Obama has talked a lot about service. Cynics say he’s trying to align himself with JFK (presumably minus the brains-being-blown-out part) and others say he’s just being practical – the mess is so big that it just can’t be cleaned without everyone mucking in. My money’s on a little of both.

I’ve talked about service a lot lately too. Well, I’ve talked to myself about it. I’ve been thinking about the difference between service and submission, and the different levels of respect we give to various types of service.

Being a mother (and to a lesser degree, being a wife) is all about service. A mother – especially an attachment-parenting type mother – is available to serve her offspring twenty-four hours a day. I read something recently that described breastfeeding as the most selfless act of all and I’m not sure if it is entirely selfless but it is certainly all about the giving.

Personally, I have a great deal of ambivalence towards the level of service involved in mothering. It brings joy and untold rewards, that is true. And perhaps more than that: it’s necessary. In my mind, choosing to have a child means choosing to look after that child in the best possible way – and that means a little selflessness. But without making the required sacrifices that parenthood brings, what would be the point? You won’t hear me talking along those lines after a 4am wake-up-call. If I say anything at all beyond ‘arrrrggggnnngggffffthhhh’ it’ll be something with four letters. But still – I get up. Not responding when I’m needed is unthinkable. A non-0ption.

As a society we have a truckload of ambivalence about this service stuff too. Anyone pregnant with her first child knows this first-hand – all of a sudden, her needs are subjugated to those of her foetus. And should she dare to drink a glass or wine or eat a rare steak in a restaurant she’s likely to draw everything from furtive whispers to open criticism to flat refusal from wait staff. And all this after spending an afternoon having all and sundry either touch her abdomen without asking, comment on her size, tell her eye-watering tales of their own episiotomy scar or offer parenting advice: invariably along the lines of ‘don’t ever let your baby cry, it will get brain damage’ or ‘don’t spoil it – crying is good exercise for babies’. She is expected to take all of this with serene grace because she’s just so lucky to be a host organism and no longer requires a brain of her own.

But she better not get too complacent. Because when that baby is outta there, being a host organism is no longer good enough. Oh no. She needs ‘me time’! Preferably at the gym or the beautician so that she can return to her ‘pre-baby’ self as soon as possible. And she’d better learn how to avoid letting her baby manipulate her – because babies need to be trained not to cry, since their crying is inconvenient and interrupts mummy and daddy time. Or, perhaps she needs to learn how to respond to every sound her baby makes and prevent any crying at all – which means holding her infant 24 hours a day. Which shouldn’t be a problem, since she can use a sling to help her do laundry and make dinner.

In reality what most of us strive for is a happy medium between disappearing into baby-service altogether and not spending enough time loving our children because we’re distracted by our own adult lives. But of course there is no such thing as a happy medium – just a host of compromises which usually require one person in the family to have their needs put aside at any given time. And a Darwinian battle for ascendency to avoid being the family member in that default position.

Anyway, all of this is not really what I wanted to say. What I wanted to say is that our valuing of individuality, ambition, and power detracts from the value of service. As a mother and a feminist, I believe – I need to believe – that spending this time in service of my family is not subjugation because although it is not paid work, it is vital and valuable work. It is work I can be proud of.

I remember a conversation with a fellow feminist and mother, back when I was pregnant, about cloth nappies.** My friend had said that the very thought of having to wash and dry nappies on top of all the other work involved in raising her two wonderfully active boys was enough to scare the bejeezus out of her and I totally sympathised. In a writing class I went to that afternoon, I scribbled ‘will drudgery make me a drudge?’ It was a real fear and one that still grips me sometimes.

But I resist it. Because I know that being the mother my daughter needs, the mother I never had, is as important to me as it is to her.

I think that when we conflate service of this kind with submission – to the patriarchy, to a stereotype, whatever – we devalue the work that so many women do.

And what is so wrong with service anyway? Serving one’s country in war is considered one of the most honourable and noble tasks. Serving the community as a volunteer – aid worker, tuck shop lady, firefighter – is seen at the least as a worthy contribution, if not some kind of higher calling. And the word doula comes from the Greek word for servant. Many women who do birthwork talk of themselves as birth servants – and so they are. Their role is to support the mother: no more and certainly no less. To give such support is an honour and it requires skill and the ability to put one’s own needs and opinions aside. 

It’s refreshing to hear the leader of a country known for individualism and greed talk about the value of community service. I hope his words have some impact and encourage a new spirit of volunteerism. I also hope that those of us who care for others in our family every single day without economic reward, will start to feel as though that work – that service – is precious, skilled, valuable and worthy of acknowledgement by other feminists. And everyone.

 

** Incidentally, I did go ahead with the cloth nappies. But it’s my husband who usually washes and dries and folds them, after he’s gotten home from his paid work and played with our daughter for a while. Because serving a child and a family and a household is men’s work too. Of course.

More Facebook Flak

I’m doing my postpartum doula training with an organisation called Childbirth International, and through this, I’ve come in contact with passionate and dedicated women who are working in the childbirth ‘industry’. One such person is Emma Kwasnica, who has been at the forefront of some of the Facebook breastfeeding bruhaha. She has asked other CBI folk to pass on this open letter. And so I’ve obliged.

Hello,

My name is Emma Kwasnica. I am a 30-year-old Canadian tandem-nursing mother
living in Montréal, whose Facebook account has now been entirely disabled
over the breastfeeding photos controversy (
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1869128,00.html). The
official petition group on Facebook, now over 153,000 members strong, is
called Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is NOT obscene! (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2517126532).

 I am reaching out becauseI think you may be interested in the Facebook fiasco over breastfeeding
images, and them being classified as “obscene, sexually explicit and
pornographic”. Yes, I said *breastfeeding*. The most loving, selfless act
on Earth.

For the record, my entire Facebook account has now been deleted, with no
explanation from the administrators of Facebook. While they have not
confirmed the reason for disabling my account, I can only suspect it stems
from the fact that, in the days leading up to the disabling of my account, I
had photos of me breastfeeding my daughters deleted, and was given a
“warning” for having had uploaded “obscene” content that renders Facebook
“unsafe for children” (see screenshots here :
http://picasaweb.google.ca/emma.kwasnica/20081011BreastfeedingChallenge#5288261770656740850&
http://picasaweb.google.ca/emma.kwasnica/20081011BreastfeedingChallenge#5288261775340683298
)

Given the amount of obscene, pornographic, and truly disturbing photos,
applications, ad banners, and groups that proliferate across Facebook, I am
stunned that this has happened to me. I am an aspiring midwife/Childbirth
Educator/Breastfeeding Counselor; I run a lively discussion group on
Facebook called ‘Informed Choice : Birth and Beyond’ (
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21515708855), and have been sharing
all of my summarised research, studies, links regarding pregnancy, birth and
motherhood with a group of over three hundred people, since July 2008. And
now, everything that I ever wrote, all my photos, all of my
midwifery-related research, has been deleted –right off the face of
Facebook. Furthermore, this does not concern me alone, as many (over one
hundred ?) other Facebook users had their posts deleted, too, since whole
discussion threads were deleted into oblivion, if it was indeed me who began
the thread (which, 80% of the time, it was, since this was my group, me
sharing the recent research relevant to the childbearing/-rearing woman).
Facebook has not responded to the e-mails I sent, politely enquiring why my
account has been disabled. They remain faceless. Hence the reason why I am
now reaching out and going public with my situation. I am desperate to get
my words back, and most importantly, the general public needs to be made
aware of Facebook’s disgusting double standards regarding “decency”. I am
revolted to report that Facebook allows the likes of a group called “Dead
Babies Make Me Laugh”, and yet, someone such as myself, who wants nothing
but to inspire and help women on their journey to birthing healthy, vibrant
babies, has had her whole account deleted.

In the name of normalizing breastfeeding, I have now done several radio
station interviews (a Sakatoon one, as well as Montréal’s 98.5 FM, and now
today, a 40-minute segment on “Maritime Morning” out of Halifax, to which
you can “listen live” this weekend, when the show will be re-aired, here :
http://www.news889.com/station/bios/); I was also interviewed for ‘La
Presse’ newspaper here in Montréal, the article for which appeared in this
past Monday’s edition of ‘La Presse’ (
http://technaute.cyberpresse.ca/nouvelles/internet/200901/04/01-814622-des-meres-en-croisade-contre-facebook.php),
and the English translation for which you will find below. I may be doing
another one-hour long segment on the same Saskatoon radio station at some
point this week, and a second show on “Maritime Morning” in the coming days.
I was interviewed this afternoon by CBC TV media, and appeared on “CBC
Montréal News At Six” this evening (the news hour broadcast will be
available online at CBC’s web site for the next 20 hours, here :
http://www.cbc.ca/ondemand/newsatsix/montreal.asx (you can skip ahead to the
Facebook vs. breastfeeding photos segment, which begins at 48:40).

There is an interesting Canadian perspective to the entire Facebook fiasco,
in that the tireless organisor of the original online protest (
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=39521488436), in which 11,700 people
participated on December 27th, is from Ottawa (Stephanie Muir), the TERA
site that is currently the “safe haven” for breastfeeding photos which have
been deleted by Facebook is a Canadian one (http://www.tera.ca/photos6.html),
and is coordinated by Paul Rapoport of Hamilton, Ontario… and now, the
only (known) person so far to have had their Facebook acount fully disabled
over this issue, as a direct result of the MILC online protest –me, a
Montreal mother.
Please help me by spreading the word of Facebook’s appalling actions (such
as by posting this to your blog), and consider this an official plea to get
the word out ! For the sake of the next generation of babies, people
everywhere need to understand that the larger issue of normalising
breastfeeding is deeply important here. In 2009, it is unacceptable that
women feel shamed, or are sexualised, while providing the most normal, the
most physiologically appropriate food for their babies : breastmilk.

Sincerely yours,
-Emma Kwasnica, Montréal

P.S. Here you will find the full-page newspaper article/image from Le
Journal de Montréal (
http://picasaweb.google.ca/emma.kwasnica/20081011BreastfeedingChallenge#5261616556288520402),
in which I am tandem-nursing my daughters at Montréal’s 2008 Breastfeeding
Challenge. This is particularly relevant, as Facebook has said that no
major newspaper in North America would publish the type of breastfeeding
photos that they have deleted. This simply isn’t true – this newspaper
image is living proof ! If Montreal, a city of over 3.5 million, can handle
seeing this image in a daily newspaper, then why can’t Facebook ?

Thanks for the mammaries

Breasts are pretty good multi-taskers. Biologically, they have a couple of very important purposes: nourishing offspring, and encouraging the male of the species to come help create said offspring in the first place. Culturally, they have a multitude of meanings. They’re some of the hardest working symbols around. I’m quite fond of mine.

I wish that our generic attitude towards breasts was just that, actually: fondness. Instead it is fraught and controversial. The Facebook breastfeeding ban has simply brought that to the fore and perhaps at least one positive has come out of the madness – people everywhere seem to be talking about breasts and their milk-making powers.

Facebook has been taking a lot of hits for the absurd hypocrisy in the way its policies  are enforced. On the one hand, we have the perfectly natural photographs of mothers lovingly feeding their babies and children being removed. On the other hand, we have the terribly unnatural photographs of teenage girls posing seductively for the camera multiplying unabated every day. But… hold on a second – how unnatural are those other photos, really?

Distasteful, worrying, annoying, titillating, misogynistic, misguided, sexy, pornographic, hilarious, pathetic they may be. But unnatural? Notwithstanding silicone and photoshop, breasts-as-erotic doesn’t seem very unnatural to me. At least, it’s nothing new.

In arguing that breastfeeding photos are ‘natural’ and nothing to do with sex or even exhibitionism (aren’t social networking sites temples to exhibitionism?), those against the Facebook ban hope to dispute the ‘obscenity’ label. And yes, Facebook seems to be pretty slow to wake up the fact that breastfeeding is NOT obscene! Of course it isn’t. The notion is ludricous. A lot of people are saying things like breasts were made for feeding babies, men just don’t like their fantasies being disrupted by nature, breasts aren’t sex objects, they’re food. A lot of people have the best of intentions.

But what if they are unwittingly making things worse for women? What’s wrong with a breast being sexual as well as nurturing? Because it would require a woman to be multidimensional? We’d have to see lactation and sex as something other than polar opposites. Not a Madonna/Whore situation, but a reality situation. It would also require us to have the maturity to live with a little ambivalence.

The fact is, some men (and women) WILL find a glimpse of naked breast arousing, whether there is a baby around or not. Some women DO find the sensual experience of breastfeeding arousing (alas, I can’t claim to be one of them). Some people pay good money for lactation porn. Judging by some of the comments from online strangers that participants of the virtual nurse-in have received, there are a lot of people out there who are more than happy to have a bit of milk with their mammaries.

Not that I’m condoning turning a breastfeed into a perving session – quite the opposite. I’m just saying that putting a baby in a photograph doesn’t make a breast - or its owner – into an asexual earth mother, any more than photographing them doesn’t instantly make a thirteen-year-old’s breasts pornographic (yes, even in an art gallery, Kevin Rudd.)

What I am asking for is that I am not essentialised into oblivion. I am not a human milkbar. Nor am I a human amusement park, cleavage at the man-pleasing ready. I am a complex, sentient human being who happens to have breasts. Lactating breasts. Whether I choose to post photographs of them on Facebook or anywhere is not the business of salivating man-children any more than it is pathetic little lactophobes writing site usage policies in California.

Which is exactly why we need more images of breastfeeding in the media and online, not fewer. The more breastfeeding is seen as a normal part of everyday life for many women, the more it will cease to be a freakshow and become - dare I say it – natural – in the eyes of those doing the looking. So thanks is due to those women who participated in the M.I.L.C virtual nurse-in, and those who breastfeed in public every day. And the men who support them. Naturally.

——————

Edited to add some pertinent linkage

1.  A page with some of the ‘offending’ photos. Some of them do show a lot of naked flesh. Many of them don’t at all. Personally I find none of them offensive. How about you?
2. This great post by PhD in Parenting is well worth a look, as is her more recent update.
3. This is in my blogroll as well, but in case you’ve not clicked Jennifer James’ excellent collection of images reminds us that our uneasiness with breastfeeding is new (and largely due to the normalising of infant formula.) Look how far we’ve come.

Five books I wish I had read before having a baby

I’ve read a lot of books about pregnancy, birth and parenting. Some even before I was pregnant. But like most people, I didn’t know then what kind of parent I wanted to be, or what kind of challenges I would face. Now that I’ve read even more about this whole parenting caper as I’ve frantically searched for my own answers as well as expanding my knowledge in preparation for doulahood, I thought I’d share some of the gems that I’ve recently discovered.

1. Breastfeeding…naturally This excellent book about breastfeeding is produced by the Australian Breastfeeding Association. It is definitive, up-to-date, readable and comprehensive. I challenge you to find a breastfeeding question or difficulty that is not at least mentioned in this book. Even better, it comes free with a subscription to the ABA. I really wish I had subscribed and met my local group before I had the Bean. We live and learn!
2.  The Attachment Parenting Book This guide is by peadiatrician Dr. William Sears and his wife Martha Sears, a nurse and lactation consultant. I would recommend pretty much anything by any of the Sears famliy, who never fail to put a baby-centred but positive and practical spin on their advice, which comes from a depth of knowledge and experience that few parenting ‘experts’ can boast. This book in particular is great for expectant or new parents – whether Attachment Parenting is something that you think you want to do or not. Before I had the Bean, I confess, I thought that parents who practised AP were mostly hippies who didn’t believe in discipline or boundaries. In other words, I had no understanding of what the AP philosophy actually is. When I read this book I was so thrilled to find that many of the practices I had instinctively gravitated towards were in fact part of a parenting style with proven benefits. Well worth a look.
3. Fresh Milk by Fiona Giles is a wonderful book. It covers all the stuff about breastfeeding that may not be in the more practically-based guides. Reading this book made me want to jump up and run around topless in a lactation celebration. It doesn’t shy away from the more complex or unnerving elements of lactation and breastfeeding lore, such as wetnursing and sexuality (or putting some breastmilk in the chaplain’s tea). Everyone who has breasts, or loves them, really ought to read this.
4. Pinky McKay’s Parenting by Heart is a great introduction to parenthood. McKay is one of my favourite parenting ‘experts’ — she writes warmly and reassuringly. She is a certified lactation consultant and her advice is breastfeeding-friendly. She acknowledges that all children and parents are different and that no approach should be one-size-fits-all. She gives mothers permission to carry their infant around all day, if that is all that will calm both of you, regardless of what Aunt Mavis might say about ‘spoiling’. At the same times she gives mothers permission to shut their bedroom door and spend an hour painting their toenails while Aunt Mavis takes care of the baby, if that is what is needed. I wish I had read this before I entered those wild and desperate early weeks of parenthood when I was most vulnerable to the well-meaning ‘advice’ we are all bombarded with.
5. The last book on my list today is one I have not yet finished reading. I picked it up at the library, thinking it was a book about natural birth, only to discover later that it is actually a compelling and fascinating treatise on the fallout from blanket testing for foetal abnormalities. Anyone who is pregnant, or might become pregnant, should read Defiant Birth by Melinda Tankard Reist. Whatever your stance on abortion (mine, for the record, is firmly pro-choice), it is horrifying to read of how many women are encouraged to abort foetuses who later turn out to be perfectly healthy children; or of how many mothers of disabled children are now asked why they didn’t ‘have the test’ — the assumption being that had they undergone prenatal testing their children would have been aborted. I confess I meekly went off for my prenatal testing as referred by my obstetrician, only questioning afterwards whether I had really wanted to. Pro-choice I may be: but informed choice it must be, right from the question of whether to have a test in the first place. Aside from airing this important and little-discussed issue, the book also allows for a space for the stories of people whose pregnancy outcomes may not have been what they had hoped. Stories that are hard to read, but important. I imagine anyone who is facing the reality of a worrying result from prenatal tests would gain much strength and courage, as well as knowledge, from this book.