breastfeeding – Page 5

There is no night and day

Attachment Parenting International is 20 years old. Twenty years of promoting connection and spreading reassuring support to parents across the globe!

When I first became a mother, I followed every instinct to connect with and nurture my baby. I held her, I nursed her, I gazed into her eyes…regardless of the time of day. Strangely though, I met a lot of resistance to my “alternative” approach to parenting.

“Nursing AGAIN?!” became a common greeting, and although I did not waver in my approach, my confidence took a big hit. I was exhausted, and I felt alone.

This is where I thank Attachment Parenting International for showing me that I am not alone. I am so grateful to have stumbled, completely by accident, upon this wonderful concept of Attachment Parenting. It turns out that I am not alone in my approach. In actual fact, there are many, many more mothers like me, feeling the same way and taking the same approach of connecting with our children.

So many of us feel this sense of loneliness, particularly in the darker hours when exhaustion sinks in and it feels like the rest of the world is soundly sleeping. So to the mama who is feeling isolated and exhausted right now, I offer you this…

There is no night and day.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I was awake throughout the day and I slept during the night. I moved throughout the day and was still during the night. The two were totally separate, as stark a contrast as light and dark.

And then baby bean was born, and all at once, light was thrown into my world in more ways than one. The edges of day and night started to merge together into a blurry grey smudge. You see, I had birthed The Great Unsleeper.

I knew nothing of tiredness before motherhood. The kind of tiredness that saps your body of strength, that throws its arms around you and just keeps squeezing, where you feel like the air is running out of oxygen and you forget which way is up, the kind of tiredness which almost makes you lose yourself.

Almost.

Almost, because you find yourself with every touch of baby’s soft skin, cheek to cheek. Almost, because you find yourself with every gaze held in those deep, pool-like eyes. You find yourself with every smile, every gurgle, every clap of the hands and sweet “mama!”

You find yourself when you need it most. You find yourself during darkness.

Because our darkest hours are actually scattered with stars, with gems of pure love. In this time that I once termed “night,” quietness rules. There is no sound in the world besides baby bean’s soft breath and my own steady heartbeat.

In honesty, there have been moments in which I felt isolated, scared and incapable during these dark hours. But these have been momentary flashes of doubt amid the darkness.

Because when I stop and look at my beautiful girl’s profile against the shadow-like beams of light lingering in our bedroom, I understand that I have all that she needs — that I am all that she needs. I understand that I am enough.

Nestled safely in my arms, she does not need light or direction to nurse. Resting her head on my shoulder as we sway forwards and backwards in our rocking chair, she does not need daylight to feel safe and content. Little bean and I do not race through this notion of “night,” because for us, there is just light and dark, and there is beauty and connection in each.

As we sit rocking, cuddling, nursing, I imagine the hundreds of hours that we must have spent in this peaceful state. I imagine us rocking across great distances, to other countries and cultures. I imagine us meeting versions of ourselves at each destination, all these miles from home.

A mother. A baby. Connected in darkness.

I imagine us rocking through time, backwards and forwards. I imagine us glimpsing versions of ourselves wherever we land, be it hundreds or even thousands of years away from here.

A mother. A baby. Connected in darkness.

You see, in truth, little bean and I are not alone once the moon rises. We are part of a bigger picture, a louder heartbeat, a stronger pulse. Mothers. Babies. Connected in darkness.

Because for us, there is no night.

API post-conference: Who is Kate Frederick?

Kate Frederick.

She wasn’t a speaker at Attachment Parenting International‘s 2014 conference. She wasn’t even in the audience. But her name is stuck in my head.

As a bonus for early conference attendees, API hosted a showing of “The Milky Way” film on the evening before the weekend “Cherished Parents, Flourishing Children” conference at Notre Dame University at the end of September. As an added bonus, the lactation consultants behind the film, Chantal Molnar and Jennifer Davidson, were available for Q&A.

And during that Q&A, the name “Kate Frederick” became part of the conversation.

In the film, Kate’s part was just a brief glimpse of a 2013 newspaper article about a mother being fired from her job for breastfeeding. Her name wasn’t mentioned in the film, just a reference to the many mothers who have been discriminated against because of their choice to breastfeed.

But after several showings of “The Milky Way” film, Chantal and Jennifer received a letter that was different than other notes of support. This one was from Kate, who identified herself as an API member from New Hampshire, USA, and the woman about whom the article featured in the film for maybe a couple seconds is about.

Kate was a child support officer for the state Department of Health and Human Services at the time of her job termination due to failed negotiations with her employer regarding her right to breastfeed and her desire to leave the workplace to breastfeed during breaks.

She is now an event planner and has since founded The Rustik Baby Project, through which she advocates for breastfeeding mothers’ rights. Among her projects is a New Hampshire legislative bill that would provide greater protections to breastfeeding mothers.

It is exciting to think of what Kate’s hard work — borne of a passion ignited because of a low point in her life when she refused to give up on what was her biological right — has the potential to give all of us.

Of course, Kate — like any of us — is just one person. And each person can only do so much. But think about what amazing things all of us working together can do!

Some names, like William Sears or Ina May Gaskin, are household names in our Attachment Parenting (AP) communities. And these AP “celebrities” have done so much for the Attachment Parenting movement. But there are so many people whose names we don’t so readily know, or names we may never know — people who are all doing their own little part in their communities, even if only in their homes, to make the world a more compassionate place for their children and future generations.

Kate Frederick is one of those names that we might not otherwise know, but a person who is doing great things in her own little corner of the world — things that when added up with all of our efforts are changing culture.

Every one of us could be Kate Frederick.

2014 Conference: The Milky Way

This has been seven years in the making.

I had seen “The Milky Way” film before during a local 2014 World Breastfeeding Week event. It was powerful then, and it was no less powerful this second time around, here in South Bend, Indiana, USA, at Notre Dame University at the 2014 Attachment Parenting International conference, “Pathways to Child Flourishing.”

This time around, the producers of the film were available for discussion: Chantal Molnar and Jennifer Davidson. And that’s where I learned that it took seven — SEVEN — years for them to make their film, “The Milky Way.” During that time, Attachment Parenting has really come into its own as far as the national conversation goes…here in the United States.

We seem to be at a tipping point. There are so many people — parents and non-parents even, professionals within parent support and beyond — who are joining the Attachment Parenting movement, and the Western culture seems ripe for questioning the status quo.

The purpose behind making “The Milky Way” film is to help change the world. I believe that it could, that it is. It is getting people talking, helping members of Western society to reframe their minds around what’s supposed to be normal about infant development specific to breastfeeding.

It is empowering women to advocate for themselves. And that can change the world, one mother, one baby, at a time.

During the discussion afterwards, audience members — parents just like you and me — had the opportunity to ask questions. There was much discussion about the varying experience levels and approaches to breastfeeding support by lactation professionals, the milk bank movement, what advocacy work is happening that can help working breastfeeding moms, exactly how little medical students learn about breastfeeding in med school and the amazing things that countries beyond the United States — like Germany and Sweden — are doing to promote secure attachment from even before birth.

My husband, after watching the film and attending the discussion at the conference, said we should move from the United States to Sweden. I have to admit, it’s tempting.

It was a great start to the conference.

World Breastfeeding Week 2014: Parent Support Deserts in the USA

By Rita Brhel, Editor of Attached Family magazine, API’s Publications Coordinator

What this year’s celebration of World Breastfeeding Week is really about—more than updating the status on breastfeeding acceptance or increasing understanding for mothers who are unable to breastfeed—is advocacy for parent support.

While the primary goal of Attachment Parenting International (API) is to raise awareness of the importance of a secure parent-child attachment, the organization’s overarching strategy is to provide research-backed information in an environment of respect, empathy and compassion in order to support parents in making decisions for their families and to create support environments in their communities. API extends beyond attachment education, also promoting the best practices in all aspects of parenting from pregnancy and childbirth to infant feeding and nurturing touch to sleep and discipline to personal balance and self-improvement through such innovative programs as API Support Groups, the API Reads book club and the Journal of Attachment Parenting, just to name a few.

API is a parent support organization made up of parents located around the world with a deep desire to support other parents.

In this spirit, API created the Parent Support Deserts project through which we mapped gaps in local parent support opportunities specific to Attachment Parenting (AP). The goals of this multi-layered project are to identify communities, regions and nations in need of conscious-minded parent support and to encourage collaboration among like-minded organizations to address these gaps.

As research pours in on the benefits of breast milk and breastfeeding, evidence continues to point toward AP practices, such as using fewer interventions during childbirth, avoiding early mother-baby separation, rooming-in at the hospital, breastfeeding on demand, interpreting pre-cry hunger signals, encouraging skin-to-skin contact, room sharing, discouraging cry-it-out sleep training, helping the father in supporting the mother, and others. As a result, the vast support network that many communities now have for breastfeeding mothers—from a breastfeeding-friendly medical community to lactation consultants and peer counselors to doulas and childbirth educators and parent educators trained in lactation support—tend to direct breastfeeding mothers toward Attachment Parenting.

Local parent support for breastfeeding has grown at an astonishing rate since La Leche League (LLL) International was founded in Illinois, USA, in 1956. LLL groups are located worldwide in nearly all developed nations as well as other less-developed countries. LLL has expanded its resources as cultures have evolved with technology and the changing roles for mothers, assisting mothers in providing breast milk to their infants whether through exclusive or partial breastfeeding or pumping as needed.

By contrast, there are few organized AP-minded support opportunities for mothers who are unable to or choose not to breastfeed or feed expressed breast milk. Formula-feeding parents are relatively on their own in terms of finding support that rightly points them in the direction of Attachment Parenting, as this choice or necessity to bottle-feed exclusively is seen less as part of the relationship context and more solely a nutritive option—though certainly we know, and research in sensitive responsiveness is finding, the behaviors surrounding bottle feeding are as much a part of the parent-child relationship as is breastfeeding. Unlike breastfeeding support, formula-feeding support is much less cohesive, with some information sources putting forth questionable science regarding formula versus breastfeeding benefits.

For this introductory look at the Parent Support Deserts project, we examined locations of parent support groups in terms of infant-feeding in the Attachment Parenting context. We focused on LLL for breastfeeding support and API for both breastfeeding and formula-feeding support. While this list is in flux, click here to see state reports of API’s Parent Support Deserts specific to Attachment Parenting infant-feeding support in the United States as spring 2014, as well as read more details about the Parent Support Deserts project. You can find this article in the latest issue of Attached Family magazine.

World Breastfeeding Week 2014: Learning to Listen

By Sara Jones Rust

My husband gently bounced our wailing 3-week-old son while pacing around our apartment. I quickly finished toweling off, ran a comb through my wet hair and threw on a comfy pair of post-baby pants and a T-shirt. Luckily I had the forethought to brush my teeth while in the shower, a time saver I had picked up over the last few weeks. I jumped into the corner of the couch that had recently become imprinted with my shape and adjusted the nursing pillow.

“Okay, ready,” I said, refreshed from my shower and the savored last few moments without a child attached to me. Beckett screamed. His face was red with insistence that he was not pleased. His little arms, still the purplish hue of newborn skin, flailed around seemingly out of his control. My husband handed our extremely loud, squirming, 7-pound bundle to me with a look that said he was sorry he wasn’t able to keep him asleep any longer. It had only been 40 minutes since our last nursing session. I cradled Beckett in my arm, positioned him and quiet fell. He latched on and began sucking furiously. His wide eyes locked with mine in an intense stare, letting me know that milk was required now and anything less would not be tolerated. After all, I had let him down before. Then after a few moments, his gaze softened and his eyelids fluttered with the pleasure of warm milk.

Immediately after Beckett’s very fast birth—I dilated completely and delivered him in less than three hours—I had a postnatal hemorrhage. I passed out, and the midwife stopped the bleeding, but it scared my husband. I had to take some iron pills during my hospital stay, but other than that, it was fairly glanced over. Hours later, I felt good so I didn’t think to ask any questions.

Beckett was perfect: He barely cried, and I fed him every three hours per the nurse’s recommendation. He had some trouble latching on at first but caught on in the first 24 hours. My new little family, drunk with happiness, basked in the quiet timelessness that the hospital provides in those first days before we headed home, when the realities of having a newborn smacked us sober.

Before we were released from the hospital, the staff ran down a typical checklist. Beckett was small—just over 6 pounds at birth—and he’d lost weight and became jaundiced because my milk had yet to come in. This was typical, we were told. They discharged us, but we had to return the next day for a bilirubin test to see if his jaundice was gone.

That first night home was a shock. Beckett cried and continued to cry—all night. We changed, we burped, we bounced, we danced, we swung, we patted, we shushed and eventually we cried, too. The only thing that stopped him from crying was nursing, which I was doing every two to three hours, as the nurses told me to.

When he was four days old, he was still jaundiced and was now spending a good amount of time in a light box, which looks like a baby-sized tanning bed, to help his body get rid of the bilirubin that was causing jaundice. He’d only gained an ounce or two, and my milk still hadn’t come in.

I had been determined to breastfeed, and I was beginning to think it wasn’t going to happen. Beckett’s pediatrician was putting quite a bit of pressure on us to supplement with formula. I felt so helpless. I sobbed as I put the bottle in his mouth. He pushed it out a few times but eventually accepted it and sucked down the entire few ounces in a matter of minutes. I was worried he would stop nursing, that he would prefer the formula to my milk … if it ever came in. I felt I was letting him down.

But Beckett stuck with me, kicking and screaming, as it were. We kept up our nursing schedule. I had an app on my phone that alerted me every two hours. Finally, on the fifth day, my milk came in. Nothing could have made me happier. We ditched the formula, Beckett ditched the jaundice, and I took pride in and felt thankful that I was able to nourish my child the way I had planned—the way I felt was best for us.

I found out much later, in speaking with a lactation consultant, that the postnatal hemorrhage was most likely the cause for my stunted lactation. I’m not sure if I would have done anything differently, but it certainly would have alleviated some of my feelings of failure and guilt if I had known this.

Beckett began to pack on the ounces, but still his crying persisted. He would only sleep if he was being held. We counted the minutes until another feeding, because it was the only time he didn’t cry. Inevitably after he nursed, he’d fall asleep and we’d have a few moments of peace before he awoke, mid-scream, and we’d start counting down the minutes to feeding time again.

After two weeks of little sleep, we were at a pediatrician appointment when I had a moment that changed everything for us. Beckett was fit as a fiddle, but the doctor still wasn’t thrilled with his weight gain. It was good but not great. The doctor thought the crying might be colic and described it as unstoppable crying. To which I replied, “He stops when he’s nursing.”

“Hungry guy,” she said. Right at that moment, everything clicked. He’s just hungry! I couldn’t believe I had been so rigid in our feeding schedule. I immediately stopped thinking about schedules and instructions and just began to listen to my heart, the mom instinct that, like my milk supply, seemed also to be a little stunted. From then on, I nursed him whenever he was inconsolable. It ended up being a lot. I wondered if it was possible to nurse a baby too much. But I continued to let my gut overrule my paranoia.

Once I learned to listen to my son and to myself, things began to fall into place. At our following pediatrician visits, we were told that he was thriving and to keep doing whatever we were doing. It didn’t solve all of our problems by any means, but it began a practice of listening in our house that has served us well and, I am confident, will continue to.

You can read more in the double "Voices of Breastfeeding" issue of Attached Family magazine, in which we take a look at the cultural explosion of breastfeeding advocacy as well as the challenges still to overcome in supporting new parents with infant feeding. The magazine is free to API members--and membership in API is free! Visit www.attachmentparenting.org to access your free issue or join API. — You can read more in the double “Voices of Breastfeeding” issue of Attached Family magazine, in which we take a look at the cultural explosion of breastfeeding advocacy as well as the challenges still to overcome in supporting new parents with infant feeding. The magazine is free to API members–and membership in API is free! Visit www.attachmentparenting.org to access your free issue or join API.

World Breastfeeding Week 2014: Sometimes Breastfeeding Requires a Bottle

By Rita Brhel, WIC Breastfeeding Peer Counselor, API Leader, API’s Publications Coordinator/Managing Editor

Among the wonderful aspects of Attachment Parenting is that it is an approach to child rearing that every parent can take part in. Certainly, research supports some parenting techniques more than others. Breastfeeding, for example, is quoted in Attached at the Heart by Attachment Parenting International cofounders Lysa Parker and Barbara Nicholson as “the model of attachment,” and by reading an overview of the research, it certainly is.

But there is an alternative for parents who are unable to breastfeed. Not breastfeeding doesn’t exclude you from the benefits of Attachment Parenting, in particular feeding your baby with love and respect.

Each of my three children has taken a bottle as part of their full-time feeding strategy. Not every mother can breastfeed or breastfeed exclusively. There are plenty of breastfeeding advocates who will tell you otherwise, but as with just about everything in this life, there are exceptions to the mantra, “If you just tried harder … ”

My oldest child was born 10 weeks early. Babies born this early don’t generally yet have the ability to time their suck-swallow-breathe reflexes and must be fed by tube. Eventually they transition from the nasogastric tube to a bottle, as it’s much easier for some babies to get milk out of a bottle than the breast. My daughter required the easiest-flow nipples—and even then, we were enlarging the nipple hole with a safety pin. I pumped my breast milk, and every ounce had to be fortified with special nutrition to help her grow and medication for her many medical conditions. She never breastfed. She was bottle-nursed with expressed milk for six months and then with formula until she was a year old.

My second born was taken by Cesarean section two weeks early. I was anemic prior to the surgery and then hemorrhaged on the table. My doctor was concerned about a recent outbreak of hepatitis and persuaded me to not get a blood transfusion, even though I lost enough blood that it took six months of taking iron pills to get my blood iron level back to the normal range. I was so anemic that I would fall asleep part way through lunch and wake up two hours later to finish the plate, only to take another nap immediately afterward. I just plain didn’t have enough energy to keep up with the demands of breastfeeding exclusively. So my second daughter was supplemented with one to two bottles of formula a day. I was able to mostly breastfeed, with some formula, for nine months, and then bottle-nursed with all formula until her first birthday.

With my third baby, I was determined to breastfeed. I spent four years learning all I could about how to have a healthy pregnancy, natural childbirth and successful breastfeeding experience. And I was very healthy going into the birth, had a wonderful natural VBAC (vaginal birth after Cesarean) with no complications and started off my first exclusive-breastfeeding relationship.

Well, he is my first baby to receive only breastmilk, but he was not exclusively breastfed. Three weeks after my son was born, I developed mastitis and a breast abscess in the inverted nipple on my left side, and the subsequent procedure and antibiotics caused a yeast infection. As it turned out, I am allergic or resistant to every breastfeeding-safe antifungal available, medical or natural. In order to protect the right breast that remained yeast free, I only breastfed from the right breast, while exclusively pumping the left side and giving that milk to my baby through the bottle. This meant that I was pumping six times a day for the first six months in addition to breastfeeding, gradually reducing the number of times I pumped as I introduced solids. I did this pumping and breastfeeding routine for one year, before allowing the left breast to dry up. My son is now 2 years old, and I continue to breastfeed from the one side.

I would not choose bottle feeding if I had the option. I love breastfeeding. Bottle nursing is not the same as breastfeeding; it will not satisfy a mother’s desire to nurse her baby. But bottle nursing does give a mother an alternative to model the beginnings of attachment, which is designed in breastfeeding. Just as with breastfeeding, bottle nursing is done on demand, in response to the baby’s cues. Touch is supremely important, particularly skin-on-skin contact, as is eye contact and verbal communication. Looking into my life, a person would not see any difference in how I am raising my babies compared to another breastfeeding family, apart from the bottles. I cosleep, hold my babies all the time, respond quickly to their murmurs, don’t believe in any sort of crying-it-out and gently self-wean.

There are challenges to bottle nursing. Bottles, nipples and pump parts have to be washed after every use, and because of yeast issues, I had an additional careful sterilization process. The breast pump had to be remembered for every trip outside the house that might coincide with the pumping schedule, even if it was a trip to the grocery store. If you’re not pumping, you have to find an alternative, such as formula, which is expensive and comes with its own set of challenges, from increased allergy risk to ear infections.

Another challenge I frequently encountered, especially before my babies developed a strong preference for me demonstrated by separation anxiety, was that relatives would assume that since I wasn’t breastfeeding, that I didn’t care that they held the baby all day long and bottle-fed her, when in fact I did care very much. When I voiced my concern, that it’s important for my bonding—or in most cases, when I would simply go to the person and take my baby back—I would receive all sorts of teasing about spoiling my baby or even downright scolding about my selfishness.

It seems that, at least for me, people assume that breastfeeding is only for nutritional sake and that if you’re feeding by bottle, then suddenly mom’s job is reduced to changing dirty diapers. It shows that there is still a need for education about the importance of a secure parent-child attachment and that a mother is indeed much more than a source of milk.

World Breastfeeding Week 2014: Breastfeed Chicago!

By Patricia Mackie, MS, LPC, API Professionals Coordinator

Public breastfeeding can infuriate us, scare us, make us feel ashamed or empower us. For one Chicago mom, it empowered her to take action and create an organization that would focus on advocating for breastfeeding at a larger level in her city (located in Illinois, USA). She wanted not only to help raise awareness of the benefits of breastfeeding but to ensure that mothers feel comfortable feeding wherever and whenever their babies are hungry.

Breastfeed, Chicago! is making changes for Chicago, one mom at a time, through a very talented board of directors that help to put together the group’s advocacy campaigns. I sat down with Katrina Pavlik, the founder of Breastfeed, Chicago!, to find out more about the organization and advice she has for others who want to advocate for breastfeeding in public. We met on a brisk day on the southwest side of Chicago and sat down over some hot coffee to chat about breastfeeding.

PATRICIA: Tell us how Breastfeed, Chicago! came to be.

KATRINA: In 2011, I created a closed Facebook group to invite people to start a conversation about breastfeeding in Chicago. Within six hours, it had grown to 400 people. (As of this writing, the group boasts a membership of 2,287 members, and more people are added daily.)

I saw a need for a community that could discuss how to make Chicago more breastfeeding friendly. From the Facebook group, we expanded and added the Breastfeed, Chicago! blog and resource list.

I wanted to see moms having more of a voice in writing policies.

PATRICIA: Chicago and the surrounding suburbs boast a high number of La Leche League (LLL) and Breastfeeding USA groups. What is different about Breastfeed, Chicago!?

KATRINA: LLL and Breastfeeding USA are so important. They provide breastfeeding support, which is critical for new moms just getting started.

Our organization is about advocacy and policy. We are working to change the view of breastfeeding. We are working on raising awareness, educating the public and advocating for policy changes.

PATRICIA: Tell us about the advocacy efforts Breastfeed, Chicago! is working on.

KATRINA: One of the big projects we are working on is a letter-writing campaign. One of our board members drafted a letter that we send out to businesses. It basically goes over Illinois breastfeeding laws and gives some information about working with breastfeeding moms. We ask that the information be posted in the employees’ space, such as a break room, so all of the employees from the top down are receiving this information. The letter is also available on the Breastfeed, Chicago! resource list so that parents can print it out and send it to any business that they feel would benefit from this information.

We also are working on a sticker campaign. We have printed up Breastfeed, Chicago! window decals that businesses can place on their doors or windows that indicate that this is a breastfeeding-friendly business.

We really want this to be mom-driven, so we have these travelling baby cafes in the summer. We meet in different areas around the city, and moms can get together, have a cup of coffee and chat. It’s an opportunity for us to brainstorm ideas that will help make Chicago more breastfeeding friendly. We take the stickers with us and moms can take a stack and hand them out at their favorite businesses, restaurants, et cetera.

The blog also has an advocacy tool kit that can be downloaded. It includes information on your rights as a breastfeeding mom in public and at work. It has tips for advocating for yourself and your child, questions to ask your pediatrician, tips to make breastfeeding in public more comfortable. It also includes a letter that you can send to your birthing hospital to express your gratitude or disappointment with their approach to breastfeeding. And it includes the window sticker and a letter that accompanies the window stickers, explaining the sticker campaign.

PATRICIA: I noticed you didn’t mention nurse-ins.

KATRINA: Breastfeed, Chicago! has never implemented a nurse-in. We want to circumvent the nurse-in. We want to normalize breastfeeding and implement interventions that will make this normal. Nurse-ins are a tertiary intervention. We are looking at what can we do before that.

When thinking about a nurse-in, there are a few factors we want to think about. One thing I always try to think about is the mom-to-be, the woman who hasn’t had her first baby yet. What message does a nurse-in send to her? [That] this is so abnormal people have to stage protests in order to do it. We want her to get the message: “This is what all my friends are doing. I see it. It’s normal.”

Nurse-ins also serve to embarrass the individuals involved. Similar to the way we raise our children, we don’t want to punish and embarrass people into change. We want to teach them and educate them into changing their behavior.

PATRICIA: What advice would you have for parents in other cities who would like to take on a venture like Breastfeed, Chicago!?

KATRINA: Use social media. Moms are online all day everyday. Moms will come together and build community. Once that community it built, moms will start to share their needs. Make sure you are listening, and when a mom brings up a need, step back and contemplate and ask yourself, how do we make this better for all moms?

Make sure you reach out to your local breastfeeding professionals. Make them feel important, and ask them to be a part of what you are doing.

And be aware that things move slowly.

World Breastfeeding Week 2014: A Journey to Breastfeeding

By Heidi Ripplinger

When I was little, I had a favorite baby doll. She was big enough for me to cuddle in my arms, was plump with silvery curly hair and had a round face. She looked like a cherub, and I loved her. I brought her with me everywhere I went. I changed her diapers, I wrapped her in warm blankets, I washed her face and I fed her bottles.

Yes, that’s right, bottles—the kind that had the pink nipple and the “milk” that flowed back and forth. I even had one that was divided into two liquids: orange juice and milk.

I never learned about nursing—well, that’s not entirely true. I think I intuitively understood what breasts were for, but I only saw one woman during my childhood breastfeed her baby, and she hid under a blanket, tucked away in an out-of-the-way room of her home while we were visiting.

I was 8 years old. I was exploring the house and stumbled across her sitting on a couch, all covered up, holding her baby. I asked her what she was doing under there, and she said she was nursing. I was confused. I had never heard that word before. I wanted to check it out.

I reached in to look under the blanket and was quickly told that it was private and I shouldn’t look. I felt embarrassed and humiliated, like I had done something terribly wrong and vile. I thought she was ashamed because I couldn’t come up with any other reason why she would hide what she was doing.

Later, I told my parents. My father laughed it off, and my mother looked annoyed. Now I really felt terrible. No one talked to me about it. No one helped me understand. No one paid much attention to the situation at all.

Fast forward to my 20s: I had a friend who just had her first baby. She was adamant that she would never breastfeed her children. She was convinced it was akin to incest, especially when they were older than three months. Because of my earlier experiences with nursing and because of being raised in a culture where women’s bodies were exploited and devalued for nothing more than a man’s plaything, I was inclined to agree with her.

But there was something gnawing at me. I couldn’t really tell what it was, just a quiet tapping deep in my soul. It moved around a lot, and it was the lightest whisper, so it took me a long time to hear it and even longer to listen. I had to be quiet. I had to be still. I needed to learn to sit with my baggage and noise that accumulated over the years of passive conditioning.

It took a very long time. It wasn’t until I was pregnant myself that the floodgates finally opened. It was akin to ocean waves crashing to the shore: I would nurse my babies. Better yet, I would nurse them on demand, openly—wherever I was—proudly and with no reservation. And I would nurse them for as long as they wanted. I felt released of my shame I had harbored since that fateful day long ago when I stumbled upon the breastfeeding mom. I felt empowered knowing I would be the one to give my children the perfect food, specifically made for them. No one else can do that, just me.

I nursed my first child until he was 4 years old. I’m nursing my second child, who turned 4 years old in June.

In the beginning, I had no idea what I was doing. I remember the first time I brought my firstborn to my breast. He was 15 minutes old. My midwife had helped me get out of the birthing tub and settled into a rocking chair that was in our living room. I was so tired, and my arms felt like Jell-O. We tried nursing, but my son just wanted to root and cuddle.

The next time was about an hour later. I was comfortably in bed and felt refreshed after having a nice dinner. My little love was hungry, but I couldn’t figure out how to get him to latch. I was so clueless to such a normal function of the human body, of our human connection.

Thankfully, my midwife was there and was experienced herself. With a little coaching and a lot of patience, my son filled his belly and I filled my soul. In that moment, I knew what it was to be a momma—his momma—and I was in love. I could feel another voice in my soul starting to emerge, a voice that would eventually lead me to understand where our power as women lies. Once again, I needed to be still and listen.

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