Breastfeeding, just do it.

[mrsbrown]

I nearly wrote this as a comment, and then realised I was asking a question I should really try and answer/discuss in my own journal.

Is it hard being on-call to a needy child? Is it hard to interrupt your meal, because the baby needs a breastfeed? Is it hard to (1) get up in the night to a child and know that no one else can do what you can, which means you probably won't get a good night's sleep for 2 or more years, unless you're lucky.

But it didn't occur to me it could be described as hard. It's just what you do when you have a baby to look after. It's what you do when you're a mother, it's in the job description.

I wonder how many of the things I think of as "hard" , aren't really. They're just what you do. Like go to work everyday, or wash the dishes straight after dinner, or keep your desk tidy. That stuff's hard. Breastfeeding a baby - piffle!


Oh god! And then I get to be guilty, because it _was_ easy for me (2), and I'm still having trouble properly understanding how anybody can think it hard, or even too hard to persist at. But I know all these people for whom it was too hard, women who pushed themselves, and angsted, and suffered pain and made informed decisions that, for them, stopping breastfeeding was the right thing for them. I know all that intellectually. But emotionally, I think, "I wouldn't have given up" and "I wish I could feed that baby/ solve that problem for them".

And while I think/feel that, I think I need to stay away from, or avoid giving advice to, new mothers. Or at least make sure that they understand my prejudices.




1. Actually it's hard to write a contemplative journal entry, when your child says, "Cake! Cake!" and then "keen faish! keen faish!", which means, "clean face" so you have to go and rearrange the face washer storage so you can find a clean one quickly next time she says "keen faish", but then after helping her wash her face, she demands, "teef!" and you give up in disgust and go and write a footnote worthy of it's own post.

2. My Dad put it into context for me a little while ago. He reminded me that I was 19 when I had MrPeacock, and the breastfeeding and mothering was easy. At 19 I had no idea of the things that could go wrong, so I was relaxed in a way that new mums at 38-40, just can't be. Although that doesn't explain the conviction I had that someone would take him away if I didn't do it "properly", or the constant flashing of Bambi meets Godzilla everytime I put him on the floor at playgroup.

Comments

[moonborn.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm VERY pro-breastfeeding personally.
But as to why I'd define motherhood so far as hard - history of Anxiety and Depression, along with that whole less-and-more-than-anticipated birth and first week. Doesn't mean the difficulty wasn't anticipated (albeit not so soon, nor in the particular forms of difficulty that happened in the first part of Morgan's life), I just reserve the right to complain a bit about the not so grand aspects.


I think this entry addresses some of what I was trying to get at, too - because despite whingeing about it being difficult, I'm determined to stick it out and truthfully DO feel a bit contemptuous of some of the women I know who gave it up as 'too hard' two weeks in (similar to how I feel about people who use disposable nappies because cloth is 'too hard' too).
Like celsa, I also have those sympathetic thoughts too - and so those are the ones I try to encourage in myself more (also being a P, I believe I can't speak to another's life and experiences as adequately as they can. This helps in not being judgemental, and I don't see it as a character flaw, but a strength, despite its tendency to make me undermine myself before I even start, sometimes).

Ooh, AND I understand the guilt about the ease, and I think that's the complement to those people who say "You'll never manage to stick BLAH out" because they didn't. And that's why the Mum-upmanship can be so bitter and horrible, because there's all this guilt and self-justification limping about people's heads.

[celsa.livejournal.com]

"those people who say "You'll never manage to stick BLAH out"

Yes! These are the opposite end of the scale to mrsbrown's "Breastfeeding. Just Do It" statement. I encountered one recently who was really scathing in his insistence that his wife would not be able to maintain breast feeding. His attitude was more "Breastfeeding. Just Screw It". I wanted his head on a pike!

(their two month old exclusively breast fed baby just gained 800grams in the last two weeks, and her mum is ridiculously serene)

[moonborn.livejournal.com]

I always wanted to be one of those serene new mothers (whilst knowing I'd probably be the hyper-vigilant, on edge constantly type :p).