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Posts Tagged ‘breastfeeding’

“Mom Enough”: Thoughts about the Time magazine cover

Posted in families, motherhood, parenting, tagged , , , , , , , , on 15/05/2012| 4 Comments »

I wanted to write a full post about this. 

About the supposed Mommy Wars.

About how completely I do not buy into this adversarial narrative that is constantly shoved down my throat.

About how most attachment parents I know are not competitive or sanctimonious at all and how we’re all parents and should focus on sharing and supporting each other.

About how shifting the focus onto mommy vs. mommy is simply a distraction from the fact that motherhood is still a liability in western culture because patriarchy.

But then I read this. (Trigger warning: discussion of mental illness, bipolar disorder and suicide.)

And I realised that my personal discomfort with the ‘class warfare’ and bourgeois mother goddesses, is nothing compared the the mothers who struggle every day to be a good parent.

Please, read the post. It’s heartbreaking, inspiring and beautiful. 

I need to go cry now.

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The end is here

Posted in motherhood, relationships, tagged , , , , , , on 28/10/2010| 1 Comment »

No, I’m not quitting this blog. Don’t worry. But I do want to talk about endings.

My secondary relationship reached its end, officially, just over a week ago. After not seeing each other for several weeks, I finally “called time of death” on our romantic relationship. It just wasn’t working out, and after repeated attempts to save it, I finally just gave up. As I felt I was the only one making any real effort to maintain things (whether true or not, it’s how I felt), I had to come to terms that it was no longer making me happy and to face the reality that if he wasn’t going to make the effort, then maybe he just wasn’t that into the relationship. He was asking me to lower my expectations of the relationship so far that I basically had to stop caring. And that wasn’t fun for me. Apathy is a real turn off.

C’est l’amour.

This ending made me sad, but not upset. I loved this man. I loved being in a relationship with him. He’s beautiful, we had great chemistry and he made me feel sexy (something I don’t often feel, as a mum). He was an escape from my day to day routine, but also not afraid of coming over to my house and helping out with the baby. I saw such potential in that relationship, and had such high hopes for the future. Letting go of that was hard. But in the end it was when I withdrew my emotional investment that I even knew how much I had invested.

The aftermath has left me feeling unsexy and unlovable. My libido is all but gone and I’m putting all my energy into being a mum and into trying to lose a few kilos.

I’ve started weaning my son. He’s doing well. I’m down to one breastfeed per day. He drinks milk from a cup like a champ, so I’m not too worried about that anymore. I admire women who keep going with breastfeeding, but my son doesn’t seem to be enjoying himself that much anymore. I think I realised it was time when he seemed too distracted every time I tried to offer him the bewb. He was still crying if I stopped prematurely, but now he’s stopped that. Now, I give him one long, intensive breast feed in the evening. Soon, I’ll stop offering that. The end is imminent. By the time his Birthday comes along, he’ll be done.

I’m a little sad about it, but hopefully it will  make things easier. I’ll be able to wear a real bra again and go back on normal birth control pills. I won’t have to wear easy access tops and I can even contemplate going back to work, putting my son in childcare. And I won’t have little teeth-shaped bruises on my nipples.

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Pondering an End to the Bewb

Posted in motherhood, parenting, tagged , , on 07/10/2010| Leave a Comment »

My son is going to be a year old in about a month.

At that time he will officially be able to drink cow’s milk, which means I have the option to stop breast-feeding him. Well, tell the truth, I’ve always had that option. I’ve kept with it for a number of reasons, both for the benefit of my son and because it’s one of the times during the day when I feel like he really appreciates me.

I’ve been trying to find advice from various sites on how to go about weaning my son after 12 months, and not surprisingly, I’ve stepped on another landmine in the Mommy Wars. Weaning v. Extended Breastfeeding.

The supposedly objective viewpoint is “do what’s best for you, whatever that is!” which to me seems like they’re saying “we’re not going to get into this, you ladies fight about it amongst yourselves!”

I’ve heard stories of women whose children “wean themselves” at about 12 months, basically start refusing the bewb when its offered, and I wonder if their child was picking up on their lack of patience or if they genuinely were over it, so to speak. I’m curious what will happen.

I’ve started tentatively offering my son some cow’s milk in his sippy cup already. He seems a bit confused by it. I’ve been giving him water for some time now, and he’s had formula from a bottle before. I think I will start eliminating his early morning feed, which I did this morning. I caved in and gave him a breastfeed after breakfast, but maybe once he starts really downing the cow’s milk, I’ll cut that feed too.

As his first birthday comes and goes, I’ll start cutting the afternoon feed too. Then the evening one, but keep the occasional feed for when he’s being particularly clingy. Or not. I have such mixed feelings about this. I was ‘fed into my toddler years, up until about 30 months or so, however, after spending two weeks with my mother and seeing how she dealt with my son, she really gives in to the crying, and I think she probably could have weaned us earlier if she was able to say no to us, which I suspect she rarely did. We weaned ourselves, apparently. I’d like my son to lead the way, but right now, he’s started to demand his feeds when he wants them, so I don’t know how easy it will be to tell him he’s not getting it anymore. At the very least, I’ll make the change gradual.

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