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Thoughts on Weaning
I consider myself lucky. In this culture of formula and inadequate support and work pressures, so many women seem to struggle with breastfeeding. For me, the struggle was actually weaning. Breastfeeding came easy. My babies latched well and I had a bigger issue with oversupply than with not producing enough. I had great support from my midwives and family, and I was lucky to have a whole year of Canadian maternity leave. My children were both enthusiastic nursers and as a result, weaning was a very long gradual process. I had initially intended to nurse my firstborn for 18 months. We did manage to night-wean him at 15 months when I got a part-time job but his day-time nursing made up for it. There was no chance he’d be weaned at 18 months. I didn’t want to stop breastfeeding before my son was ready. I wanted very much for the process of weaning to be loving and gentle and to move at a pace dictated largely by my son, with some encouragement from me. In that sense, I wouldn’t say it was truly child-led weaning as I definitely played an encouraging (or discouraging) role. I employed the oft-cited tactics like “Don’t offer, don’t refuse” and distraction or offering alternatives. Eventually, I would decline a request to nurse whenever I thought I could get away with it. I will be honest. Sometimes it felt like I would never get my body back. Sometimes I felt touched out and resented having to nurse again. Sometimes I felt that weaning gradually was too difficult, too slow. By the time Rain was two years old, he was only nursing before and after sleeps and when hurt or upset. A month after his second birthday, I got pregnant again. Nursing quickly became uncomfortable and I wasn’t sure I was interested in tandem nursing. I knew that the next 9 months held Rain’s weaning. We gradually got him into a bedtime routine that involved reading books, a cup of milk and some a lot of cuddles. By January 2008, he was only nursing once a day, before his nap. One day—was it January? February?—he was playing with his cousins in the house. They had the camping gear out and were pretending that the rolled blue foam sleeping pads were horses. They would sit on them and pretend to ride. Rain brought one back to the bus at lunch time. He asked to sleep with his horse during nap time. We laid down together on the bed in the back. I remember the light peeking through the curtains. I remember him putting his arm around Rose, his trusty horse and curling his body round the blue foam pad. I remember tucking his blanket around him. I remember how I stroked his hair and how he drifted off, forgetting to ask for a nurse. I don’t remember the day before, the day we nursed as we always did. I don’t remember the way he looked or what the light was like the last time we nursed. But I remember the day he didn’t nurse. I remember this day as the day he weaned. He did nurse again after that day: occasionally to sleep, when he fell and got hurt, after his sister was born and he would watch her nurse, curious and remembering how he had loved to nurse. By the time Noa was born, he would only latch, suck once or twice, grow bored and wander off to do something else. I remember the day with the blue foam horse named Rose because this was the first day he didn’t nurse. This was the real weaning: the day nursing was no longer a daily affair, no longer a part of the rhythm of our lives. I have many many memories of breastfeeding Rain. I remember the early days learning together, sitting up alone with him at night by the light shining through the closet door, listening to Aaron and the dog snore, listening to Rain’s sleepy swallows. I remember the toddler acrobatics as he nursed while...
Read MoreTo my babies: this year…
Welcome to the January Carnival of Natural Parenting: Parenting resolutions! This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month we’re writing about how we want to parent differently — or the same — in the New Year. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants. ****** Dear Rain and Noa This year, 2010, your fifth year and your second year with us, I resolve to: Let you help more and backseat drive less while you do Go for more walks Do my best to find the right place for you, Rain, to go to Kindergarten and Relax and give the school a chance once we make a decision Breastfeed you, Noa, until next New Year’s or as long as you’d like Shout less Spend less time on the computer during your waking hours Hold you in my arms and in my heart every day Wait and think before I react when you do something that upsets me Be patient about sleep and Continue to share the family bed with you Listen to you Never wish you were older but stay present with you right now today Take care of myself so I can be the Mama you deserve, so I can become the person you see in me Laugh more, play more, read more Teach by example and Follow your lead May 2010 be another year filled with togetherness. I look forward to learning more about you both every day. Much love, Mama ****** Visit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting! Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants: (All the links should be active by noon on Jan. 12. Go to Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama for the most recently updated list.) • To Yell or Not to Yell — The Adventures of Lactating Girl • It Is All About Empathy: Nurturing a Toddler’s Compassion Potential — Baby Dust Diaries • To my babies: this year… — BluebirdMama • Mindfully Loving My Children — Breastfeeding Moms Unite! • January Carnival of Natural Parenting: Resolutions — Code Name: Mama • Imperfect Mother — Consider Eden • Resolutions — Craphead (aka Mommy) • FC Mom’s Parenting Resolutions 2010 — FC Mom • What’s in a Resolution? — Happy Mothering • January Carnival of Natural Parenting: Parenting resolutions — Hobo Mama • Natural Parenting Resolutions — Little Green Blog • This year, I will mostly… — Look Left of the Pleiades • Parenting Resolutions — The Mahogany Way • I Resolve to Breastfeed In Public More Often — mama2mama tips • Moving to Two Kids — Megna the Destroyer • Use Love — Momopoly • My parenting resolutions — Musings of a Milk Maker • Talkin’ ’bout My Resolutions — Navelgazing • Parenting Resolutions — One Starry Night • Invitations, not resolutions — Raising My Boychick • No more multitasking during kid time — The Recovering Procrastinator • I need to slow down, smell those roses AND the poopy diapers — Tales of a Kitchen Witch Momma • Resolutely Parenting in 2010 — This Is...
Read MoreJust Renting
Bear with me for a moment while I do something taboo and talk about finances – you know, how much money we make (or don’t make). My husband and I are the last people we know who are still renting. Seriously. I don’t just mean the last in our group of friends. I mean all of our friends and acquaintances and the new people we meet all seem to own a house, a townhouse, a condo, something. It’s like we’re the last people in our demographic who are still renting. Although, what demographic do we really fit in anyway? If it’s age, that’s easy. But income? Class? That’s a little trickier. I have started to notice the subtle ways we apologize for things we think society finds objectionable, like renting. When we moved to our small town in 2008, everyone assumed we were escaping the Big City real estate prices and were surely buying a place. When we moved from our 1 year lease last summer into our current house, everyone assumed we’d bought our cute too small war time bungalow. Our answer is always this kind of bashful “No, we’re just renting.” Sure, some of it is by choice, but really, honestly, truthfully, we can’t afford to buy. It’s hard not to feel apologetic when you’re revealing a semi-embarrassing class barrier. Especially when all of your friends are on the other side of it. The people our age who own a house, have done so because: 1) they are professionals 2) their parents have helped them out SIGNIFICANTLY 3) they were the recipients of an inheritance We are not professionals. I am a stay-at-home mom and former administrator. When I went on maternity leave, I had been working my way up at the company I worked and was getting to the place where my salary was not too shabby. But I’d be back at the bottom if I returned to work now, after all the time off. My husband is in the trades. The non-unionized trades. So no big bucks there. Most of our married life we were paying off my student loans for my General BA in the humanities – you know, the degree that gets you tons of high paying job offers? There was no chance to pull together a down payment for anything. Our parents will not be helping us out. Our parents are working class. My in-laws are farmers in Saskatchewan. My parents are former Nazarene ministers who lost a house in the early 80’s. (Oh, yeah and those student loans I was paying off? Also because I wasn’t getting help from my parents. I’m ok with that. I do think it builds character. But it definitely changes things when you leave school with massive loans. That’s a totally different blog post though.) Our extended families are also working class. There will be no surprise inheritance from a great-aunt or aged grandparent. Even if there was, we’d be splitting it 36 ways with cousins. And for the few friends I have that were able to buy a place because they’ve already lost a parent? I can’t think of anyone who envies them their houses…they came at a price far far greater than any mortgage. I stay home with our kids – with two, I’d have to earn a lot to cover the childcare anyway. Aaron just started his own business so the banks won’t be looking at us seriously for a few years. For some reason, I feel apologetic about that. Every time someone asks me if we own our house, I forget the choices we made and I toss in that little just, “just renting”. So after all this whining about class and income, why am I saying choices? Because there was a time, before we had kids, when we lived in the Big City and were both working when we probably could have bought a place. But we consistently made choices not to buy real estate. Aaron’s parents did give us a bit of money. At the time, it would actually have...
Read MoreVision
2010 is our time to turn our eyes to the future, to look ahead and figure out where the road might be leading. The word for 2010 is VISION. This is the year to find our feet, develop our vision and begin the task of building. We are in a unique position to carry forward the lessons in being present and being mindful from 2009 and place them in the context of what do we need to do today to make tomorrow a reality? This is going to be an exciting year, not because a lot of things will happen but because we will be able to see what is coming. The big rocks for 2010 are: Rain starts Kindergarten – where and what that looks like TBA Continue with self-sufficiency and creativity projects Continue to grow our business Reduce/eliminate debt load Mindful parenting & positive discipline Self-care (reading, writing and figuring out how my hopes and dreams intersect with my hopes and dreams for my family) I have quite a few specific goals that I won’t list here. Maybe I’ll do a monthly goal post just to keep me accountable. At the very least, expect more news about the future vision and the direction of those calls with my sister as the vision gets clearer. How about you? What’s on the table for...
Read MoreInspiration Round Up
Since my post on Refreshed Resolutions last week, I’ve stumbled on some other blogs that offer a similar way of approaching the New Year. Need some more ideas, some inspiration? Check out these bloggers and tools: Kelly Rae Roberts – scroll down almost to the bottom of her post, just past the line of stars and the photo of the seashore and you’ll find more questions to ask yourself about 2009. Superhero Journal – she discusses the idea of picking a word of the year and offers some other interesting tools for exploring your intentions for 2010. Mother Earth News – quoting Cold Antler Farm writer Jenna Woginrich, talks about resolving to meet your goals one hour at a time. Definitely inspirational! I really want to hear what you come up with so don’t forget to link to your post in the comments to my post for the New...
Read MoreRefreshed Resolutions
Every year at this time when I hear people asking about and making New Year’s Resolutions, I do something different. In general, I see Resolutions as a self-inflicted attempt to make myself feel shitty by March. In my early 20’s I used to make Resolutions and it was too easy to lose momentum by Spring. Life gets busy. I would fall off the wagon and it seemed to take even more effort to get back on. It’s harder to make that effort half way through the year when I wasn’t coming off the high of Holidays and New Year’s Eve revelry. I also realised that I wasn’t making realistic goals. New Year’s Resolutions often seem to lack real goal setting features like being specific, measurable and achievable. If your goal is to procrastinate less, how do you decide if you’ve actually met that goal? (I guess you’ll decide later?) I am not a personal coach or goal setting expert but even a layperson can see the difference between that and something more like “I will lose 20 Lbs by June 1 and another 25 Lbs by Dec 31” or “I will create a filing system for my office by March 1 and plan meals weekly before grocery shopping.” Resolutions fell by the wayside. In their place came Reflection and Looking Forward. For about 7 years now, I’ve spent the last week of December going through the process of reflecting on the closing year and looking forward to the next year as a whole. I examine all areas of my life: individual, work, family, friendships, creativity, spiritual and I try to ask questions that allow me to see the big picture rather than focusing on individual goals. Reflection: What were the prevailing themes of the last year? What were the successes? The challenges? What was I happy with? What would I have changed? If I could boil down the year into one word, what would it be? How did this year fit in the continuum from the year before and the year ahead? Looking Ahead: What are my hopes and dreams for the next year? Where do I want to focus my energies? What word would I like to predominate the new year? How would I like this year to differ from the last year? What positive things from this past year would I like to carry forward into the new year? What things do I anticipate for the upcoming year (this question relates to things that may be out of my control or have been pre-planned, like expecting a baby or moving)? What can I do to make those things successes or less challenging? What goals would I like to achieve this year? How do I see this next year contributing to the years that will follow? What do I want to build on? Some of this process occurs at the back of my mind as I go about my daily duties but I always make time to sit down and either write it out or talk it out. In the past I have done this by emailing back and forth with a friend, posting to a message board or having a quiet cup of tea with my husband while the kids napped. I think it’s important to have both aspects: the free-form brainstorming on the periphery without looking right at it and the dedicated time spent solely on the task. I’ve been doing this for so long that I end up beginning the process around Boxing Day without even realizing it. The questions just start bubbling up and I don’t shy away from them in the same way I eventually shied away from the idea of a Resolution. This process doesn’t seem tinged with potential failure from the beginning. It allows me to close the year feeling positive rather than unhappy that I didn’t reach my unattainable goals. I will post my finished product on Monday January 3. Feel free to join me. Answer the questions that speak to you. Make up your own. Focus on a theme...
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