breastfeeding

Confessions of a lazy breastfeeder.

April 24, 2012
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Confessions of a lazy breastfeeder.

I have something to confess. I am a lazy, lazy breastfeeding mama. Case in point. My three and a half-year old daughter still nurses at night. Which means 2-3 times a night she gets out of her bed, walks to our room, crawls in to bed with me and nurses for anywhere from 1 minute to 30 minutes depending on how sleepy I am. And since I am usually quite sleepy, it’s closer to the half hour mark than not. I know she doesn’t “need” to nurse at this time, I know I “should” have night-weaned her months/years ago, but I didn’t. Oh, I have tried, more than a few times, really I have, but two happy sleeping people always seemed to be more important to me than one crying and then fitfully sleeping baby and one miserable mama. I am also quite the lazy breastfeeder in other ways....

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Not evil, just corporations and marketing 101.

March 17, 2012
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I feel the need to also publish this post tonight. I wrote this at the same time as I did my previous post, but they needed separating in order for my thoughts on both to be clear and concise (and to make sense to me!). My friend who wrote about the “heart” vs “brain” conversations when it comes to breastfeeding or not, also brought up something that I feel I need to explore in a bit more detail. She said in her post that: …groups that appear extremist seldom accomplish much beyond polarizing the already divided public and swaying public opinion away from their original goals. I think the breastfeeding “movement” falls victim to this, getting labeled by the crazy behaviours of a smaller subsection of our population.  This makes us feel sad and defeated, and we react from that emotional place as opposed to regrouping and considering more...

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Passion and Compassion

March 16, 2012
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Passion and Compassion

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding. ~Erma Bombeck Oh Erma, how I wish this was more true. Compassion. A feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering. As mothers we (are supposed to) have it in spades. For our babies, who need us 24/7 to nourish, nurture, love and keep them safe. For our husbands and partners, who for the above reasons need us as well and because they are there for us when we need them. Sharing our lives, bringing home the bacon, or doing the stay-at-home parent thing while we go back to work. And for our fellow {wo}man. Our sisters, our friends, the stranger with 4 kids under 4  struggling at the grocery store, the new mama doing her best to figure this all out, the grandmother who has been there and done that and now looks on with a touch...

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Attachment Parenting… Not as ‘fringe’ as you may think.

March 10, 2012
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Attachment Parenting… Not as ‘fringe’ as you may think.

Kooky. Fringe. Unhealthy. Enslaving. Controversial. These are just a few of the terms I have heard this week to describe Attachment Parenting. All of this in the wake of Mayim Bialik’s new book, “Beyond the Sling: A real life guide to raising confident, loving children the Attachment Parenting way.” being released. Mayim tackles and explores the many aspects of attachment parenting in her book, including babywearing, baby-led weaning, elimination communication and co-sleeping. I went to Chapter’s earlier this week to see if I could get my hands on the book, but they had not received their shipment yet. I am really looking forward to reading this book. I think that Mayim has a lot to offer the parenting world and not just the ‘kooky’ attachment parenting world. I mean, the woman does have a PhD in neuroscience and did her thesis on the properties of human attachment, outside of...

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three days

January 12, 2012
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three days

Day 10: Childhood… heroes that is. Day 11: Where I sleep… well, at least it will be in about 6-8 weeks. Day 12: Close-up My beautiful “Renaissance Baby” nursing. For most of my #JANphotoaday shots I have been using a new photography App called Camera+ and I am really liking it. I hope you are enjoying my shots! N~

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Repeat after me… Breastfeeding is not OBSCENE!!

January 12, 2012
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…and yet, the breastfeeding witch hunt rages on… And very strongly on Facebook again! More breastfeeding pictures have been removed, people’s accounts have been blocked or suspended and there is much confusion about what Facebook’s actual policy on breastfeeding photos is or if they even have one. You would think that they do have one based on this response from Facebook’s own Help Centre. But in an article published in the Vancouver Sun yesterday, Facebook’s Canadian publicist said that, “…although Facebook does not have a specific policy regarding breastfeeding images but given that Facebook’s policy is no nudity it would be best not to post (breastfeeding images),..” The mixed messages from Facebook are enough to make my head spin! For the whole back story and media updates I will direct you to my friend Jodine Chase’s blog. She has been chronicling this most recent battle daily since it all started on...

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All tied up.

January 2, 2012
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All tied up.

The topic of tongue and lip-tie has come up quite a few times lately in regards to it’s effect on the breastfeeding relationship and the health and well-being of both mama and baby. I asked my friend Joanna to share her breastfeeding journey from this past year. This is her story. A year ago my husband and I welcomed our beautiful son into the world. Nursing my baby was something I was passionate about and was so looking forward to creating that special bond with my new baby. I started breastfeeding him a few hours after his birth and it hurt. I remember my doula saying to me a million times “If it hurts, you’re not doing it right.”  So I continued to try to improve his latch. Several hours after he was born the pediatrician came to check him out.  The first thing he said was “Your son...

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Nurse-in. Nurse-out.

December 27, 2011
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Nurse-in. Nurse-out.

Tomorrow, there are nurse-in’s planned at Target stores across the USA and in some Zeller’s stores (the future home of Target) across Canada. It is all in response to an incident that happened to a breastfeeding mom at a Houston Target store in late November 2011. You can read all the details here, in the post written by Annie Urban from PhDinParenting on the Care2 site. This is sadly not a new news story. Long story short is this: mom is shopping with baby, baby gets hungry, mom has a full cart of items and decides to sit down and nurse her child with a cover over her. Mom is subsequently harassed by store employees asking her to move or leave and then proceed to threaten to call the police and have her arrested for indecent exposure, etc, etc, etc…. And… Cue the Lactivists!! And the uproar from both...

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That’s OK, I don’t like you either…..

October 7, 2011
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We have to say what we believe…whether it is popular or not. ~Howard Dean There is a lot of animosity on the web these past few days. At least in the mommy world. And specifically in the “I am a breastfeeder” and “I am a formula-feeder” world. Now, I am not going to go into this debate again, because, well, A) you all know how I feel about it and B) it is kind of “useless, never-ending round and round we go saying the same things and not hearing each other” conversation. This latest round of “She said, She said”, has just solidified a thought that has been brewing in my head for a long time. And likely in a lot of other’s heads too… So I am just going to say it. NO, we DO NOT all have to get along. It’s true. I may not only not...

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Coming clean…

September 19, 2011
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It has come to my attention that people may think that I only do things a certain way. That I am all natural, all attachment parent, all breastfeeding, all babywearing, ALL THE TIME. I am here to set the record straight. First of all, my births were not strictly speaking all that ‘natural’. I was induced for both with Cervidil. Once out of necessity and to save both of us, and the other because my OB was on call that day and I was SO DONE with being pregnant. Yup, that’s right. I ASKED for it! I chose to breastfeed both my kids. Doing so with my son was NOT an easy thing to do (my boobs were twice the size of the poor kid’s head)! I also can’t stand NOT doing something well and so I persevered. Through a preemie birth, use of a nipple shield, crying every...

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