Blessings, what a difference a year makes. Just 365 days, when is your birthday? Today is my grandmother’s birthday, she taught me the most I know about breastfeeding my babies. She would be 111 years old today had she not died in 1985. She gave me her old car after driving it awhile. It was her suggestion that I could take her Chevy Impala, when my pregnant self would no longer fit behind the wheel of our International Scout.  Reaching forward to shift the gears was just too awkward came and she sat with me in the scary weeks as I awaited my first child.  Her loving presence made all the difference.

My grandmother was the only family member I knew at the time who had totally breastfed a baby. Her mother died when she was three. An unbroken chain of maternal mammalian connection until my mom and then me. There is something about being an elder that is an unvarnished reflection of of yourself as a young person.  Youth with another perspective Id say.  When I started this blog I wanted to connect and intersect with the elders, the ancestors who had nursed their babies, the ones who didn’t and the women who might need to talk with us now, about what was on their minds and hearts and how we might be able to help.

Who would whisper in your ear that it would be alright, and that nursing your baby would be good for you if that was what you wanted and that fierce longing was your passion for how you wanted to be just this once just this time.  

I am a grandmother now.   Five grandchildren all breast fed, nursed long and lovingly by their moms just because they wanted to without influence from me. I hope I was there for their mothers when they needed someone older and wiser.  I am the elder, wise woman in the room, the one with the gray hair.  Some memories are crystal clear. Some things, the hurts and petty slights have lessened over time and I mostly remember the love and how it feels when you are called to do something and be someone and follow a path that you may catch some heat for. I miss my grandmother, but I also don’t have the illusion that I appreciated her as much as I do now that she is gone.  I see things differently than I did then.

Many of the women I meet now or know casually on social media are surrounded by family many of them women that don’t support what they want. Maybe because it is different, or strange, or that nursing calls for a level of support that they are just unable to provide.  There may be a full generation or even two who have never nursed an infant. If all your advice comes from your contemporaries or “Health” professionals. You just may be missing the long view and those who have weathered the battle and the sweetness and lived to tell the tale.

 Be gentle with them; but be yourself even when it feels a bit scary. Do it anyway and know you are loved and cared for just because you are you! You both have some important stories to share, we are listening! Happy Birthday! We celebrate you! Just one more year to go. This too shall pass!

Nursing your baby for 365 days non-stop or longer is a long time, but not that long if you have made up your mind to stay close to your baby and to breastfeed until you or your little one no longer enjoy that kind of time together.  

Even if you planned to nurse that long, that is a long time to give up something you have been in the habit of doing just because you have decided to breastfeed your little one…  Just like nursing one day at a time, we have habits that are hard to break, or habits that we continue because we can’t stop. 

The big “A” words for addictions and abuse may rarely come up until you are pregnant, or nursing and you begin to wonder.  Will what I am doing hurt my baby? If I am solely responsible for their health and well-being; then maybe I will stop or try to stop a practice that is potentially not in their (our) best interest.  Perhaps considering my own health and well-being prior to this pregnancy was not incentive enough. Harm to the unborn child or the innocent infant as if it was defined as a separate entity unto itself raises the stakes.

Pregnancy is one thing; a finite set of time is different from the time after birth and others can observe and step in and judge you as the surrogate mom.  My daughter-in-law and I share a love of salami, cured, uncured Italian pork products are a treat. Shortly after the birth of the baby we shared a delicious deli sandwich that tasted the best ever… because it had appeared on a long list of items she had willingly given up for the weeks of pregnancy.

I recalled giving up coffee (caffeine) and soda. I never drank so that wasn’t an issue, occasional marijuana to enhance “?” was not a problem. The list was short, and I don’t recall any hardship.  I was much more impressed with folks who could give up cigarettes, alcohol, fried foods, sugar, an intolerable boyfriend and an array of other things they “did” daily so not appropriate for an infant or toddler.  I was supremely impressed with women with serious drug habits who were able to abstain from the minute they knew they were pregnant until the instant the baby was out. Alcohol use was less a reliable indicator of abstention, while it was probably the most likely predictor of fetal alcohol syndrome, many women did not associate weekend occasional binge drinking as affecting them at all.  Denial of abuse of any kind is a feature of addiction or abuse.  Is there something more “real” about involving someone else involved in your secret. I also remember doing things that I hadn’t done before, like eating more vegetables, drinking water, counting grams of protein, reducing sugar, drinking milk before I knew about lactose intolerance, and those wonderful daily naps.

Some women don’t choose or can’t give up or add anything to their already tight health regime. They live to tell the tale and either feel guilt and remorse while noting their child survived the life they led as did they.

Please tell us your story. Many women even today feel that their child’s health status today directly stems from something they did or were exposed to before they knew or when they knew but it couldn’t be helped.  No judgment, compassion and love pave the way for new beginnings and forgiveness.

In my book, Little Black Breastfeeding Book: Maternal Experience of Breastfeeding. 

 I have a small section where I expand on a topic that is near and dear to my heart. It is the concept of the mother-baby couple. Back in 2012, it began as a letter of support to my daughter who even after successfully nursing two children seemed to be struggling. I also noted that after many years as a lactation consultant and nurse midwife, I saw startling differences in the women who successfully nursed their babies. I also saw startling differences in the type of support and guidance nursing mothers received. Rarely was support and guidance given from the heart from those who had already successfully nursed their own children or even from those who had witnessed such a thing. We had skipped one or even two generations of no cellular memory of being breastfed or having nursed a little one. Not only was it fast becoming a lost art, but few were speaking about the benefits and experience of the mother. Here is a tiny excerpt from my story on the mother-baby couple as a tenet of the five keys for success that most mothers may need.

“The mother and baby are inseparable.  I would like to have you begin to think about how lives intersect along a continuum that begins with conception and one which ends with weaning. We cannot think about the needs of the infant during this period of time without thinking of the needs of the mother. There is no separate life for the mother or for the fetus.  Many midwives think that pregnancy is actually the establishment of a symbiotic relationship between interdependent souls. 

If conception occurs shortly after intercourse between a man and a woman, this act starts another relationship involving a heretofore-unmentioned third party: the mother -baby couple.  The experience that comes from joining two entities is uniquely interdependent on each other.  There is no mother without the baby. The development of who we are as mothers uniquely depends on the awareness and presence of the other.  We can speak of the origin of the mother-baby couple in terms of love, passion, sex, desire, planned or even as an unintended consequence of a momentary act.  However, we don’t always the know the spiritual circumstances of conception. I believe and I would like for you to consider if there is not some part of you that was called to be a mother.  Maternal instinct is an oversimplification of what I am talking about. Is there some part of you that opens to sharing yourself with another human being and for caring for a part of you that will become its own separate being?”

This morning I listened to yet another Story Corp of a woman in search of her biological mother. She spoke about the longing of discovery while also loving her adoptive mother. Her story points to a unique and special connection.  On her journey she met her siblings, folks she shared womb space with under very different circumstances than her own. Earlier in the week, my grandson called to tell his mother that his best friend’s mother called to say sadly his friend had committed suicide the night before. My daughter called to tell me. We cried as mothers, worried for our own sons and the despair we experienced in our own lives. Last night I finally got to speak with him.  In no small way was it a conversation about grief, love, and connection with the mother. It was about both longing and reflection.

In less than a month, four friends of mine noted the passing of their respective mothers.  All acknowledging the wave of memories and conflicting emotions. Last night I listed to Gloria Steinem speak about a pivotal moment when she decided she was unable to continue this relationship and how it impacted her life, her vision of her own mother and childhood and all the life experiences as a woman and a feminist that would yet to come. At a casual lunch, a friend mentioned she had not heard from her daughter for a long while; her daughter telling her just after her wedding that she no longer needed a mother just now.  My friend at 72 lamented missing her so, yet unable to cross the chasm to be where she was not welcome or wanted.  Settling for grief, is a most delicate form of love.  Our experiences as mothers deeply influences our spiritual lives. 

This blog honors what I hope is the maternal experience of the connection if for however brief or tormented or joyous. It is a shared memory that women so rarely give voice to because they are not heard or are shamed at a point of great vulnerability with such high expectations.

Tomorrow is my mother’s birthday.  She has been long gone as we noted ten years since her death the day before President’s Obama’s first inauguration. We buried her the day after my birthday.  I shopped today for a headstone that I hadn’t quite gotten to purchase just yet. At 65 I am still a part of that mother-baby couple.

Please tell us your story of your experience as a part of the mother-baby couple?

I always used to think that there was a special kind of grief reserved just for mothers who lost their little ones in the first year of life.   Whatever you thought those first 365 days would be like, you could not have imagined it ending with death. Now that I am older and way wiser, it doesn’t matter how old you or they are, there is no preparation for the loss of a child. I was invited in to a moment of a dear friend who yesterday wanted to share with me the birth of her now dead daughter who would have if she had lived would have celebrated her 58^thbirthday with her mother. The day that the two of them would forever share.

Birth, anniversaries of precious events still ring true and ever present knowing no time or distance between mother and child.  It occurred to me that there are other kinds of loss. Estrangements, separations, consensual or otherwise that activate the grief button. It is not depression, it’s not something you get over. There may be comfort and solace, but it is something we learn to live with as if an essential part of us, a missing limb is now gone.  You live differently, you acknowledge the special place in your heart and your memory and your expectations and desires.

It also occurred to me that even if you didn’t experience such a loss, most mothers live in abject fear that once the love and connection has been made, everything at all cost must happen to prevent anything or anyone from causing or contributing to that loss. The fear of separation, actual or virtual is intolerable. So, we hover, we smother, we meddle, we neglect our own lives in avoidance of feeling even the threat of that potential separation or the belief that we or anyone in any way could cause harm to our baby.

Blessings to you, or to anyone feeling the loss and searching for a way to fill the void. Tears are sweet.  Today, I learned even cows cried tears when they missed their babies.

Please tell us your story. We are listening and standing by.

Their comments seemed harmless enough at first, but the feeling of disapproval lingers and stings.

“How many times are you going to feed that baby, he can’t be hungry?”

“They better learn now; someone is not going to pick her up every time she cries.”

“You are spoiling that baby!”  “No one is going to watch her for you, and she won’t ever take a bottle if you keep that up”

You need nerves of steel to keep the milk flowing and not take to heart when the people you know, and love don’t get it. Strangers of course are a different category of misery.

When I think back especially to those times, it was my first time as a woman when I decided to nurse that I stood up for myself and did day in and day out what I thought was best for me.  A classic conflict avoider from birth, I usually remained silent and just did what I wanted to do anyway and hope I didn’t get caught in having to explain.  Nursing my baby just because I wanted to… forced me in some ways to take a very public stand about my own values and beliefs as it related to my own well-being.  I could rationalize from time to time that it was for the baby when in fact it was absolutely for me.

I remember once the little one was crying at a large gathering of extended “family” and friends. Most everyone thought they were being helpful by passing the fussy, cranky smelly one around, asking for a bottle, a pacifier, jiggling and shaking the baby and I heard my mother in a mildly annoyed way.  “Give that baby to his mother please…” They belong together.

My mother’s defense of me caught me off guard, it was my husband who usually stood between me and the crowd of parenting style police. She had taken on a not so new role of advocacy for me that allowed me the courage to step in to my rightful place of connection with my own baby. I lost my fear, and I know longer cared what other people thought about the things that were within my power to do something about. It was my first and best attempts at consistently choosing love.

Being a mother made me fierce and confident and able to stand my ground.  It would be many many years later that I would get my words and my voice on how being a mother made me feel. Until then, just claiming my space and nursing my baby was enough.

Please tell us your story and recollections.  How did you handle harsh criticism of your desire to nurse and stay close to your baby? Especially when it seemed like the baby was seen as competition for your love and respect and you weren’t seen at all.