UnchartedParent.com

Last week, our local newspaper ran a story on a burning national controversy: breastfeeding.

I can’t believe I can still write that breastfeeding is a “burning national controversy.”

In 2007, scientific evidence and analysis has firmly established that human breastmilk is the best food for a baby.  This conclusion is not surprising—after all, it seems logical that the best nutrition for a baby would be the very liquid that was designed by God or nature expressly to feed a human child.  (To learn about the benefits of breastfeeding and to find additional resources, click here.)

This conclusion is also not universally accepted, especially in the United States.  In some cases, women of earlier generations, who were told when they bore their babies that formula was superior to breastmilk for both nutrition and convenience, have difficulty accepting that the choice they made for their children is no longer considered to be superior. 

More common, it seems, are objections from those who consider breastfeeding to be the right choice for feeding an infant; they just don’t want to see it.  These are the people who shoot dirty looks at women feeding their babies in a mall, who ask them to refrain from breastfeeding on airplanes, who even request that nursing women take their babies to a bathroom (where are they supposed to sit while nursing in a bathroom; on the toilet?).

I have to confess that when my son was born, I was eager to join this fight.  I never had any doubt that unless I was physically unable to nurse my baby, I was going to breastfeed him.  Among many other reasons, breastfeeding is thought to provide some protection both against food allergies, which plagued me in my youth, and Crohn’s Disease, with which I have lived since my early adulthood.  I knew I would do anything to help and nurture my baby; breastfeeding for me was a given.

I also knew I would breastfeed in public.  Yes, it’s true, breastfeeding involves, well, a breast.  Or two.  And while roughly half the population loves to view breasts in private, it seems that a good chunk of us are repelled by the sight of a breast being used publicly in the function for which it was designed: to feed a baby.  But it seemed to me that there could be nothing more innocent, more loving or more family-oriented than a mother and child, nestled together and sustaining each other.  And I had no intention of becoming a prisoner in my own home, or spending half of my time out of the house in public bathrooms, just because I had become a mother.

I couldn’t wait for someone to challenge me.  I was ready with arguments and enthusiasm, with accusations of both ignorance and the inability to separate the sexual from the innocent, to take on the first person who asked me to leave or to stop nursing my son.  I was Woman, damn it, and I was ready to strike a blow for mothers everywhere.

But no one ever challenged me.

I don’t know if it’s because I was living in a major metropolitan area at the time, where people were used to seeing mothers breastfeed in public, or if it was just chance that in all the times I breastfed my son in public no one seemed to care.  I don’t think I was more than ordinarily discreet; I never even draped my son with a blanket or one of those nursing covers.  (I did sport a wardrobe of attractive nursing shirts; go to Motherwear.com for a great selection of nursing clothes and an excuse to buy yourself something even as you spend huge chunks of your time and money buying stuff for baby.) 

Whatever the reason, my choice to feed my son in public was accepted by everyone with whom I came into contact (with the exception of a relative or two; I believe these exceptions would fall into the category of generational differences).  To me, though disappointing to the pugnacious side of my nature, this acceptance was a positive sign of American society’s maturation.

Unfortunately, however, it seems that ignorance or prudishness or simple fear or reluctance to be made at all uncomfortable still exists in quantity in America.  Many women still find themselves faced with the choice of being pushed into vocal advocacy of their right to feed their babies in public or being even more reluctantly shoved into a dark corner for committing the crime of trying to be a good mom and an active member of society at the same time.

In American society, breasts represent sex.  But that’s not how they started out.  Breasts were designed to feed human infants; their sexual role is secondary.  It’s time people stopped equating breasts with immorality and ceased shaming mothers for doing what’s best for their babies. 

And if you don’t like it, well, who says you have to look?

What is it with the naked baby dolls?

My one-and-a-half year-old daughter, “Emmie,” has already amassed quite the collection of dolls.  Most of them are baby dolls, although a few represent older children.  They blink, they laugh, they cry, they have soft bodies for cuddling or hard bodies to take the inevitable abuse inflicted by a young child.  They come with cute little outfits that can be removed and put on again.  Some have lots of hair, some are bald. 

Regardless of these dolls’ differences, they all share one thing in common: they are naked. 

I’ve heard of this phenomenon before, though I know it is not universal to all little girls.  Many of them, however, apparently prefer their dollies to be in the buff, and my daughter fits into this category.  It doesn’t matter how cute the clothes were, whether they were easy or difficult to remove, or what the dolls look like under their clothes.  Emmie just wants them all stripped down to their bare essence.

While I find the sight of my daughter, surrounded in her crib by an increasing population of naked dolls, naked stuffed animals, and, ironically, blankets with which she likes to cover herself and the occasional plush Nemo fish, to be an amusing one, I can’t help but ponder what primal instinct is pushing through Emmie’s emerging cognition to make her insist on naked dolls.  Is it a secret desire to be nude herself?  She rarely insists on running around without clothes on, so this explanation seems unlikely.  Could it be an expression of rebellion against the societal norms that force us to clothe ourselves?  Well, I’ve never met a kid—or an adult, for that matter—who likes to try on clothes and shoes more than Emmie, so that probably isn’t it, either.  Maybe it’s some fashion statement, and Emmie is so incredibly stylish that she finds every outfit donned by her dolls to be void of any aesthetic value.  Perhaps, but I’ve often seen her fit my underwear around her neck like a scarf, so I’m not sure her standards are all that high.

Whatever the cause, I think it’s unlikely that Emmie will change her preferences any time soon.  After all, if she can’t recognize the need for clothing in the midst of a northern New England winter, she’s probably not going to accede to any requests to cover her dolls up in warmer months of the year.  Neither is she likely to dress her dolls due to any sense of modesty—something my five-year-old still lacks.  (This became evident over Christmas when “Jack” shuffled into my sister’s dining room as we lingered over dinner, requesting that we help him turn his one-piece pajamas right-side-out so he could put them on again.  We all burst out laughing because the only clothes he had on were the pajamas and his underwear, both of which were curled up around his ankles.)

Presumably, Emmie’s affinity for nakedness is just an age thing.  Only time will tell.  For now, however, I’ll just find a place to keep those doll clothes and hope that Emmie doesn’t suddenly decide she needs, in all places, to look just like her dolls.

Remember when you were in your twenties and you had to move?  You’d find someone’s van or pickup truck, or maybe rent a U-Haul if you really had a lot of stuff.  You’d inevitably pick the hottest day of the year and you and three or so friends would grunt, sweat and curse as you moved all of your belongings out of one apartment and into another.  At the end of the day, you’d laugh over beer about the third-hand furniture you almost broke, you’d have some boxes to unpack, and you’d be done.

What a pain that was.

What I’d give to move that easily now.

We’re in our new house, and we’ve even unpacked a few boxes.  That’s quite a feat considering we moved during an ice storm and between the four of us, we have sustained, over the past week, five colds (no, that is not a typo) and two extraordinarily nasty gastrointestinal bugs (the adults; and one of the kids may be getting started on this one).  When they haven’t been sick themselves, the poor kids have been bored to tears wondering: a) where their toys are; and b) if they are ever going to be allowed to leave this new house/prison again.  The one-and-a-half-year-old has, predictably, regressed in her sleeping skills; she’s only made it one whole night in her new room thus far.  And mom and dad are so stressed that we just want a vacation (something that is highly unlikely given the amount of money we just spent to buy a new house!).

The good news is that we really like our new house.  As tired and worn out and frustrated as I am, I can still see that this move was the right one for us.

And that’s a good thing, because I have to hold onto that thought each time I’m dealing with a contractor, a missing object and someone’s illness—especially my own—all at the same time, and visions of sitting amongst boxes and drinking cold beer with college friends floats across my mind.  This will be worth it, I remind myself through gritted teeth.

Have I mentioned that I don’t do transitions very well?  Oh, wait, that’s a whole other blog post . . . .

It’s moving day, and as I write this, here’s the tally so far:

• 4 colds
• 1 case of strep (the boy)
• 2 ear infections (the girl)
• 1 bloody nose (Mommy, given to her by the girl)
• 1 dead car battery the night before the move
• 1 winter storm, first of the season, coming, as I’ve long predicted, on our moving day
• countless meltdowns (by parents and kids)
• roughly 50 viewings of the movie Cars, punctuated by various Wiggles videos
• 3 pounds of M&M’s (dark chocolate, consumed just by Mommy during packing)
• myriad cups of coffee and cans of Diet Pepsi
• 2 unhappy digestive systems (Mommy and Daddy, due to all of the cr*p we’ve been consuming)
• 8,674 bins and boxes strewn throughout the house (so it seems)

After I post this, we’re taking the computer down.  Only God and Comcast know when I’ll be able to get it up again, so UnchartedParent will be taking a moving break.  I hope to be back with a new post on Monday, January 22.  Please come back then!

Parenting is a consuming responsibility.  We parent while we eat, while we sleep, while we watch TV.  Sometimes, it’s tough to remember other things that used to receive our attention—like our spouses.

My husband and I both believe firmly that no matter how difficult it is to schedule or how much it costs to get a babysitter, we need the occasional night out together without the kids.  After all, our relationship is the foundation of our family.  If the marriage cracks, the family as a whole can only get weaker.  So we make it a point to get a sitter from time to time and enjoy being together and reminding ourselves why we got married in the first place.

Until recently, however, the logistics of getting away overnight together have eluded us.  Various factors—including our own nervousness—have prevented us from taking the major step of spending an entire twenty-four hours apart from the kids.  (We’ve each spent nights away from them individually, but they have always had one of us at home.)

Last month, we celebrated our ten-year wedding anniversary.  We knew we wanted to do something special to commemorate the occasion, and the choice seemed obvious: for the first time since our oldest child was born five years ago, we would leave our kids in the house (with family) and spent a night away, by ourselves.

It was amazing.

Don’t get me wrong: I thought about the kids some, and even missed them a little the next morning.  But for the first time in five years, my husband and I went to an inn in a quaint town.  We had dinner in a fine restaurant, and we didn’t have to repeatedly retrieve crayons from the floor.  We ate three courses, and we ate slowly enough that we weren’t threatened by indigestion.  We browsed in a glassworks factory (just picture that with small children!).  We slept in on a Sunday morning.  And we, well, let’s just say we didn’t worry about small, pajama-clad feet clambering into bed with us in the middle of the night.

We spent almost twenty-four hours rediscovering the joy of being in each other’s uninterrupted company.

And when we returned home?  Well, the kids were just fine.  Contrary to my fears, my one-and-a-half year-old daughter did not suffer a nervous breakdown; in fact, my sister reported that she didn’t cry once.  And why wouldn’t they have done well?  Their uncle apparently devoted hours to satisfying their cravings for all types of amusements and their aunt fed them a steady diet of their favorite foods.  It sounded like they had had as much of a holiday as we had.

Our night away from our kids was, I believe, the best thing we could have done for our family in this stressful time of moving houses.  Everyone got a break, everyone survived and everyone had fun.  And our family foundation is the stronger for it.

I don’t know when we’ll be able to get away again, but I swear it won’t be another five years!

This is a parenting blog, and parenting is, logically, the topic of most of my posts.  But parents are people, too, and to me one of the fascinating aspects of parenting is how it changes us as people and how the other aspects of who we are affect us in our parenting.  So occasionally, I like to share thoughts that are not readily connected to parenting, but are clearly about the human beings we have become.

I remember vividly a conversation that took place in my college apartment when I and my friends were all about twenty years old.  Eight or ten of us had returned from some event or were hanging out before heading to some party, and our conversation turned to the latest doings of the then-candidates for president.  We were settled comfortably onto chairs or in spots on the floor and enjoying the animated discussion when suddenly, one friend—let’s call her Kara—sprang to her feet and exclaimed in horror: “Look at us!  We’re sitting around the living room, drinking coffee and talking about politics!  We’re in college, for God’s sake!  Let’s get out of here and go to a party.  Let’s get drunk.  Let’s do something else!” 

We were slipping into adulthood, like it or not.

Flash forward twenty years to this past weekend, when I, Kara and another friend from that college living room attended the birthday party of a fourth friend who had been present twenty years earlier—the last in our group to turn forty.  We reminisced as we always do when we get together, and we swapped stories about our kids and our husbands.  We also, as friends will do, checked up on each other to see how everyone was faring.  The honoree had recently been in a car accident, and we all wanted to know how her back was healing.  Kara asked about my chronic gastrointestinal condition, making sure that there hadn’t been any significant developments she had missed.  We shared lots of details, but it wasn’t until the birthday celebrant approached the friend on my left and inquired about that friend’s recent surgery that I realized we had reached a much bigger milestone than turning forty.  She asked innocently, “Hey, how’s your hip doing?” 

Oh my God, I thought.  We’re sitting around a restaurant, limiting how much wine we drink and talking about our physical ailments!  Let’s talk about something else!

We’re getting older, like it or not.  It seems forty’s not just an age, it’s a stage.

Just reassure me that I’m not going to be showing up at Denny’s for the Early Bird Special anytime soon.

How do you know that your house is too dirty?

When your five-year-old son is disgusted by his ability to write his name in the dust on the family-room TV.  (I gave him a rag, and he in turn gave that TV set a better cleaning than it’s had since we bought it.)

I could say that the dust build-up was just a byproduct of our manic efforts to pack up the house for our move.  But regular readers of this blog know that it’s really part of my m.o.

To give another example, my husband was cleaning the bathroom a few days before the arrival of holiday company when “Jack” paused and asked his father what he was doing.

“Cleaning the bathroom,” Paul answered.

Jack’s face took on a look of concern.  “What happened?”

Apparently, Jack witnesses cleaning infrequently enough that he considers the very activity evidence that some unfortunate event has occurred.

Look, there’s no point in cleaning up the house now.  All of the dirt here will soon be someone else’s problem.

Of course, maybe I should consider changing my ways in the next house. 

Nah . . . .

Politics and policy are passions of mine; in fact, they used to be my vocation.  Even though I now spend most of my time parenting and writing, I still closely follow and participate in politics. 

I’ve been paying lots of attention to the early presidential race.  (November 2008, after all, is only twenty-two short months away!)  This past Saturday morning found me at the breakfast table reading an article about Democrat John Edwards’s official campaign.  I paused when I reached his new campaign slogan and slowly, dubiously, read it aloud: “Tomorrow begins today.”  Hmm.

Then, from one whom I had thought was contemplating only his Kix: “No it doesn’t!”  My five-year-old son, “Jack,” wore a look of protest on his face.

My husband and I cracked up.

There was a momentary pause, and then Jack requested, “Mommy, say that again.”

“Tomorrow begins today,” I said wryly.

A wide smile broke out on Jack’s face.  “That’s silly.  You’re joking!”

Sorry Senator Edwards, but if you can’t even convince the five-year-olds, I think you need to go back to the drawing board!

I hate to be clichéd.  I hate to do something just because it is “the thing to do.”  But as it is an American tradition to pledge new virtues on this day each year, here are a few of mine for 2007: 

• I resolve to lose my “moving weight,” beginning February 1 (yes, I have eaten my way through this moving fiasco and have gained 10-12 pounds—so far).

• I resolve not to be shocked each time the money pit we are buying costs us more money than we expected (“Uh, sorry Ma’am, but if you don’t hand over $25,000 right now, the roof will fall in.”).
• Once I have lost my moving weight, I resolve to set a better dietary example for my children (so long, Diet Pepsi).
• I resolve to try to have more patience with my children (note my careful wording of that resolution).
• I resolve to earn more money in 2007 than I did in 2006 (shouldn’t be too hard; not a very high bar here).
• I resolve to try, against all odds, to introduce the concept of compassion for others to my children and encourage it to make some headway against the value of material greed I witnessed in 2006’s December gift-fest.
• I resolve to kiss and hug my children every day, and to remember that no matter what else happens, they are the greatest gift I could ever receive.

I greeted the new year with a glass of wine in my hand, laundry at my feet and boxes and packing materials surrounding me like quicksand.  2007 is beginning with a hectic flurry of packing, moving and unpacking, which will promptly be followed by a hectic flurry of imperative home improvements (new septic system, clearing up well-water problems, etc.).  I don’t know everything that awaits me this year, but I have a pretty good idea it will be an adventure.

But wait: I have kids.  Life is always an adventure.

Happy New Year!