The Social Need to Nurse in Public

This post was inspired by a discussion on a webforum for swing dancers, oddly enough.

There has been a lot of media attention on the subject of breastfeeding in public. The main cause being the removal of photos from Facebook showing women nursing their children. At first, I was reluctant to take a stand on the issue. Parenting for me, is not a political statement. However the more I thought on the matter, the more I felt that so-called "lactivism" ran much deeper than a political feminist movement. Lactivists are pushing for a movement that is much needed in our society. Breastfeeding, and public displays of breastfeeding such as pictures, are needed to be seen in western culture for several reasons:

• To promote the normalcy of breastfeeding
  
• To educate the public on the healthfulness of breastfeeding
  
• To decrease the number of problems that new nursing mothers face.

The first time that Jonah and I nursed outside of our home, I was embarrassed to the point of mortification. We were at a picnic with friends at Edgewater park in Cleveland. Jonah was less than two weeks old. We had nursed in the car, before making our way to the public park pavilion and had only planned on staying at the picnic for less than two hours. This way, I would not have to worry about feeding Jonah in public. I found the first time out, amongst friends, as a new mother to be refreshing. Two hours passed very quickly, and Jonah was ready to eat before I was ready to leave. My baby was frantic, crying for reassurance that food was nearby. I looked around the pavillion, but saw nowhere secluded or private. I timidly peeked my head into the bathroom, with its rank and rusty stalls. I couldn't stand the smell, much less the thought of feeding my baby in there! Jonah's screams were becoming more real. I sat down at the edge of the picnic area, took a deep breath, and unclasped my nursing bra. Just as I began to lift my shirt, with my flailing screaming newborn drawing attention to the situation, a group of men walked past and looked straight at me. I quickly fastened my bra, and began yet another frantic search. Finally, I pulled the stroller to the corner of the pavillion. I sat between the stroller and the wall, on the floor, hoping no one saw as I lifted my crying baby to my breast.

I am sharing this story, because I think that it is typical for new mothers to feel this way when nursing in public for the first time. Embarassed, frantic, and self conscious. I wish that I could take my confidence in nursing now, and project it onto other new mothers. When a mother is learning to breastfeed, this is not the state of mind that she needs to be in. Luckily for me and Jonah, we have recieved the support that we need to nurse comfortably when we are not at home.

Promoting Normalcy: The reason that my story is so much like other women's first public nursing experiences, is that breastfeeding is seen as an abnormal behavior. People view it as weird, vulgar, and sexual. The breast is not seen as the vessel that holds nourishment and comfort for an infant or young child, but it is a sexual icon that is only exposed by the lewd and promiscuous. At the same time that it is viewed as a sexual conduit, the breasts also provide entertainment value to performers such as Britney Spears, Madonna, and a list of others too long to provide here. The breast is exciting and forbidding at the same time. It is no wonder with these conflicting views, that the public is easily misled about the true nature of the most miraculous part of a woman's body.

No woman should feel shameful about feeding her child. No woman should feel the way that I did in that park pavillion, desperately wanting to stop her child's cries, but desperately wanting to not offend anyone. The advice I have for mothers who are shy about nursing in public, is realize that if any onlookers are offended, it is their problem and not yours. Typically, I am the type of person who is a people-pleaser. If anyone finds my behavior offensive or awkward, I am embarrassed and quickly work to make the situation right. However, when it comes to nursing, a mother should be concerned primarily about the comfort of her child, and second, her own comfort. Breastfeeding is difficult enough, without having to worry about the comfort of individuals around you. Baby can sense when you are tense and uncomfortable, and in turn that will make him cranky and reluctant to nurse properly. For the best results, nursing in public should be just as comfortable for mother and child as it is in the home.

By giving the public more chances to see women nursing, breastfeeding will become a normal part of society. A child suckling at the breast will no longer seem "perverted" but instead would be publicly accepted. Women would no longer feel ashamed to use their body for what it is naturally designed to do.

Educating the Public: By achieving the above goal of promoting the normalcy of breastfeeding, it will be promoted as not only a normal source of nourishment, but also the best source of nourishment for an infant and young child. The more normal that breastfeeding becomes, the less mothers will turn to artificial baby milk (formula) as their child's source of nutrition. Formula is very useful. If a child should abruptly become seperated from his mother, if the mother became ill and was incapable of nursing, or if the infant was born prematurely and the mother's milk will not come in, are all reasons to use artificial baby milk. However, because breastfeeding has inherited the vulgar reputation through the conotation of the breast, many very capable mothers choose to formula feed their infant instead. Formula is promoted as a food source equal to mom's milk. Women say "why would I go through all of that when I have this other stuff that is just as good! Truthfully, formula is severely lacking when it is compared to breastmilk. It is missing several componants contained in breastmilk, including protiens and acids that promote healthy brain development, and antibodies that help protect the child's developing immune system (Baumslag,Michels "Milk Money And Madness" p 90). It is also missing the organic nature of breastmilk. Breastmilk, unlike formula which stays uniform, changes itself to meet the needs of the child at any given stage of development. The food that a mother is providing through her breasts is tailored perfectly for that child at exactly the moment he is drinking it (Baumslag, Michels p 77). The image that western cultures holds over breastfeeding is the biggest reason that mothers choose to feed their infants inferior food.

The general public is not the only group that needs to be educated. Pediatricians are severely undereducated in the breastfeeding department. I feel that this is due to two things. The first is that the current "normal" way to feed a baby is by formula. The general public wants to be educated in terms of formula fed infants rather than breastfed. For generations, breastfeeding was taboo, and therefor became ignored by the professionals. Anther reason is funding. Formula companies give enormous amounts of money to maternity wards and pediatric practices. All of the growth charts and feeding charts for infants are provided by formula companies and based on formula fed infants (kellymom). Doctors do not seem to know that breastmilk is broken down so perfectly by the human body, that a perfectly healthy breastfed baby will be smaller than a formula fed infant at the same age. Because breastmilk is broken down so completely, the body does not retain the unused portion as fat. A breastfed baby is also less likely to overeat. A pediatrician will urge many mothers to supplement "just one" bottle of formula every night, because their child is underweight. When a mother does this, it causes her body to produce less milk, and with time she will eventually increase the number of bottles given each day, decreasing her milk supply, and finally feeding the baby formula full time, when in fact there was nothing wrong to begin with. Pediatricians will also often tell a mother to wean her child right at twelve months, despite the fact that the World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding for the first two years of life (World Health Organization). The pediatrician is seeing the world through formula fed infants, once again. Formula is not good for all of those wonderful healthy teeth that baby is getting, and neither is the artificial nipple of the bottle from which he recieves it. It is healthy for a formula fed infant to be weaned from the bottle, and given whole cow's milk (which is what his formula was based on.) However, a breast does not equal a bottle. Breastmilk is not harmful to a young toddler's teeth, and in fact promotes healthy teeth(La Leche League International). Sucking on a breast is quite different from sucking on an artificial nipple, and is not harmful for the child. While there is no nutritional value of continuing to give a young toddler formula after his first birthday, breastmilk contains many benefits for both mother and child way past twelve months. The child's immune system is not fully developed and capable of working on its own until at least 18 months of age. During this time, a breastfed child is getting an extra boost of immunity from the antibodies in mother's milk. At the same time, breastfeeding past one year helps protect the mother from certain cancers. These are only a couple of reasons that WHO has reccommended breastfeeding into the second year of life and beyond. If more people see breastfeeding as normal, these truths would become general knowledge, and our child's nutrition would no longer be clouded by the lies of formula companies.

Decreasing the Number of Problems that Nursing Mothers Face: Breastfeeding is not an instinctual behavior. It is a socially learned behavior (Tamaro, "So That's What They're For" pp. 28-29). Any mother can tell you that the day her baby was born and brought to her breast the first time, she stared at the baby, hoping he would tell her what to do next. No lightbulb just turns on. It is a very difficult task to learn, and without proper guidance and modeling it can be downright impossible. Women need to see other mothers nursing. We need the support and commaraderie of other nursing mothers, but above all, we need to see other mothers nurse. By keeping breastfeeding private, we are making it more difficult, and pretty much impossible, for the next generation of mothers to breastfeed. I feel that this is the most important reason why public displays of breastfeeding should be allowed without censorship. I am confident that with more nursing mothers in plain view, the next generation of mothers would have fewer problems learning to get a good latch, figuring out the correct position to hold their infant, what to do if the baby is not latching properly. Fewer women would have the frustration of a screaming infant while not knowing how to feed them. The top reason that women fall back on formula is because they feel frustrated with themselves and resentful towards their baby that neither of them know how to breastfeed. It is a behavior learned by watching others, and by mimicking others.

To close, I would like to say that I have grown more confident in my nursing since that dreadful first experience. I have learned to simply make Jonah and myself comfortable while nursing, and the rest just falls naturally into place. It is so natural, that many people do not realize I am nursing. I nurse while shopping (while he is in the sling,) while chatting to friends, and at restaurants. I have only ever recieved on negative comment about my nursing, at the mall, and I am still amazed at how much it did not bother me. I have stuck to my philosophy of "it's not mine or my son's problem to fix" and I am boosted with the confidence that I am doing the absolute best for my child: providing him with the most perfect form of nourishment, and responding promptly and calmly to his needs rather than frantically delaying them in order to find a secluded place.

other resources:
Ask Dr. Sears
Kellymom
Dr. Jay Gordon

How Our Experiment with EC Has Changed Our Relationship:

Even though we are still in the early stages of practicing elimination communication (EC), I would like to take a few moments to dedicate a post to the ways in which it has changed our relationship as a family, already. We have barely scratched the surface, and are just now introducing the potty during today's sessions. Today, Jonah seemed to be giving cues that he needed to urinate. Rather than grabbing a cloth diaper to catch it, as I have been (rather successfully, only false predicting two times and never missing a stream!) I decided it was time to introduce the toilet. I took him to the bathroom, held him onto the seat and made the "sss" sound. Jonah looked at me and smiled, but he did not urinate. I decided to be patient and sat with him, making the "sss" noise anytime he seemed to be giving cues of needing to urinate. Each time he smiled at me and cooed, as if amused at my attempts. After about twenty minutes, I decided that I had falsely predicted, and took him back to our flannel blanket to play. He did not urinate for the duration of our activities. I had noticed a pattern before, during our observation, that he seemed to urinate directly following waking from nap. After his naptime, I felt his diaper and it was dry. Back to the toilet we went, and we repeated the episode from the morning: me "sss"ing, and Jonah smiling back. If it weren't for all of the soaked diapers that I've been changing between EC sessions, I would be concerned about him not urinating, but I suppose I just have to fine tune my understanding of his schedule and his cues before he will successfully eliminate in the toilet. I have chosen a more suitable trainer toilet for him, and as soon as it arrives I am anticipating having an easier time introducing him to eliminating in the bathroom. For now, I suppose it is enough to introduce him to the idea of being in these surroundings.
As I said above, I would like to dedicate this post to what EC has done for our relationship, even in these early stages. I want to do this to let my readers realize that EC is more than merely taking the diaper off of the child. I realized before we began that EC was a way in which to nurture and encourage communication from child to mother, but I did not expect it to change the way in which we bond. EC, for us, has helped point out many points in my (old) daily routine that were not at all conducive to the nurturing environment I wanted to promote for my son. For example: upon his waking every morning, I would nurse, change his diaper, and often his pajamas, bring him out to the living room where he would sit in his bouncy while I made my coffee and breakfast. Sometimes I would wear him in my sling as I ate breakfast and browsed the web for news stories, daily weather, and other unimportant items, but most often I would sit with him bouncing in his seat. If he fussed, I would pop a pacifier into his mouth, hand him a different toy, and bounce the seat vigorously with my foot. This seemed to make him happy, "plus," I told myself "I need this time to gather myself, so I can spend the rest of the day being a good mother." This behavior of mine stemmed from my preschool teaching days, when I could relish the moments of the morning quiet, sipping my coffee reflecting on current events, before the mad rush of reality came over me when I entered my classroom. I needed my morning routine then. It helped me to thrive as a teacher. What EC has pointed out to me about this, is that Jonah is in fact NOT happy, patiently waiting for his mommy to start the day. In fact, he can get very distraught over it. I had no idea before EC, because I was not in the habit of watching his every cue, his body language as well as his verbalizations. As soon as we began our observation periods, our morning routine changed drastically. Upon waking, Jonah would be nursed, his diaper removed, and warm clothing placed over his upper body and legs only (leggings became a fast style in our household!) We would then come out into the living room, where I had created a "safe zone" of a large fleece blanket covered in cloth diapers. We would choose some toys, and have quality one on one time. Sometimes, because I do recognize my need to eat, I would snack on granola bars or cereal, but as opposed to our old morning routine, the focus remained on Jonah and the activity that we were doing together.
As I grew more experienced with his cues, we could make our activities more complex. We practice rolling, and sitting up, and there are quite a few occasions when I do in fact put him in the sling so that I can have breakfast or coffee, but again the focus of activity is on Jonah and his communication to me rather than keeping the focus on me and my own desires (wanting to read web forums or the news, wanting to "drink my coffee in peace" etc.) If there is something that is so important to me that I need to do it while diverting my attention away from my child, I now do that during his naps or bedtime, like updating this blog for example.
I do promote independent playing, often times laying him in our "safe zone" with a selection of toys. He rolls around, scooches all over, and explores the toys I have set out for him by reaching for them, groping them, and mouthing them. He does all of this while I lovingly sit back and watch him play. He entertains himself now, with the security of knowing that I will be there when he needs me. At this age, an infant does not merely want his mother, or to be held, it is his need. By answering his cues quickly, I am giving him the assurance that I am there, he will not be left behind. EC has done a lot to help me follow his cues, and see that in fact he was insecure about a lot of situations that I was not paying attention to. It has helped me become a more attentive mother, and more thorough in my caregiving. It has come a long way from the lines of merely dealing with waste and dirty diapers. It has become an extension of my parenting, and as such it needed to make some changes along the way.

Elimination Communication Day 3: An Experimental Trial Continued

As we were continuing our observation sessions for elimination communication, I was beginning to feel discouraged. After hours of watching my son's every twitch, logging the times of every nap, feeding, and elimination, I could find no pattern and could see no cues. I was beginning to think that maybe it wouldn't work out for us. I wanted to try a few more days of observing before throwing in the towel.

One of the problems we've had is, Jonah does not seem to urinate when he is not wearing a diaper. He lay hours on the floor playing, completely naked for me to see that much anticipated golden stream. He would begin to get cold or fussy, or I would need to get back to the reality of stay-at-home-mom chores. The diapers he wore while I carried him in my sling were coverless, but there would still be a slight delay between when he urinated and when I would know that it was happening. It was too difficult for me to see his cues this way.

This afternoon, during our fourth observation session, we had a breakthrough. Jonah urinated onto the pile of cloth diapers on which he was playing. When I saw him urinating, I smiled and made the "sssss" sound. Jonah smiled at me and went on playing. A few moments later, it happened again. I met it with the same reaction and so did Jonah. An hour later, Jonah had urinated four times and each time I smiled and whispered the "ssss" sound into his ear. By the fifth time that he urinated, I was able to successfully predict it and have the extra diaper ready for clean up duty. I was completely overjoyed, and have newfound hope in that we can pull this off.

Baby Signing

I came across baby signing years ago while I was in college, studying psychology. At the time, I was discovering a new field called language acquisition and development. This is the study of how children learn language, and fine tune their knowledge of the world around them through language. I was deeply interested in literacy and how children learn to read, as well as how they learn grammar rules. But my job at the time was a lead teacher in the one-year-old classroom at a nursery school, and I was becoming increasingly aware of how miraculous it is that infants learn language. It is never taught to them by conventional teaching methods, and it is much more than pure mimicking as 90% of all sentences are completely novel. Yet sometime within the first eighteen months of life, sometimes even before the child can walk (which is by far an easier feat in coordination!) an infant will utter his first word. It is like a sunrise over the grand canyon: too beautiful and elegant to be explained, but too beautiful and elegant not to try to explain it. The more I watched these little wonders learn to speak, the more I wanted to know "how do they do it?"

I began reading countless studies, and working on my own through the guidance of Dr. Merriman at Kent State University. We ran studies on how preschoolers generalize grammar, how young toddlers begin to categorize names of objects, and how infants and young children develop the vast amount of phonetics needed for the English language. But none of these really answered the true question of my heart "HOW do humans learn to speak?" It takes so much coordination between the tongue, muscles in the mouth, when breath is held and released, and when vocalization occurs in any given phoneme. These are things that cannot be mimicked, yet we learn them, perfect them, and use them every day without thinking about it. We learn new words and put them into a category unaware that we are doing so. We make up sentences that have never been spoken.

It was my quest to answer the big "how" question that brought me to a study conducted at Ohio State University on using sign language with infants. I'd read about several studies on sign language for deaf infants and children, how they spontaneously will begin signing and creating a method of communication if none is given to them from their culture, and how infants of deaf parents will begin to babble phonemes of ASL using their hands. But this study was different. This was about using sign language in a hearing community of infants to understand their needs before they can verbalize. I do not remember the name of the professors conducting the research, nor do I remember a lot about their particular paper published. But I do remember that it lit a fire under me. Immediately after reading the paper, I implemented an ASL componant to my lesson plans at the nursery school. I turned my classroom into my own little language lab. I had the full support of every parent in my classroom, who were eager to also learn the signs and try to communicate with their children.

Teaching signs to an older infant was extremely easy, I found. Saying the word as I was signing led to a quick association between the sign and the meaning of the word. Within a couple of months, my preverbal infants were telling me they wanted "more" to eat, they wanted their "milk" cup, and if they were "hurt." After a while, they were even able to tell me that they wanted me to read the book about "rockets" or that they had dropped their "bear" and couldn't reach it! I was in astonishment as these older infants communicated with their hands. As months passed, we noticed they began putting signs together to communicate in sentences of signs. They began speaking at a much earlier age, and the infants that were introduced to my program early in infancy began showing understanding of language as well as complex problem solving much earlier than we expected. This was not a scientific study, but an exercise in observation.

When I had my own child, there was no question that I would begin signing with him at an early age. Signing with a young infant takes work and patience, as they will not produce signs for months to come. But being persistant has paid off. After teaching Daryl a few signs that he can use, and introducing sign language to Jonah in context, Jonah finally began paying attention to our hands. I noticed about a month ago that Jonah would flit his eyes back and forth between my face and my hands while I was speaking and signing to him. Recently, I have noticed that for events that I always give a sign for, such as a diaper change, he looks at the level that I always make the sign, as if he is anticipating the sign. He is showing signs of understanding the sign for "nurse" as he kicks his feet in excitement and begins to root with his mouth when I ask him "do you want to nurse?" while making the sign.

It is my hope that soon this understanding will become the ability to produce signs and communicate his needs as well as his desires. Our ultimate goal is to use language to create an awareness of the world around him, and to help him better understand his surroundings. We are hoping that it will create an empathetic individual with the means to communicate and problem solve efficiently. But for these early months, I am still content to take wonder at my little baby and the thought of all that his little brain is processing every second of every day.

Elimination Communication Day 1: An Experimental Trial

"Steve is potty training his baby!" Daryl told me days after we had brought Jonah home from the hospital. Steve is a friend who's baby at the time was only around seven months old. "That's not right." I said "Either you're mistaken, or Steve is off his nut." Potty training at seven months? How could that be when infants do not have the control or mental capacity to acknowledge when they are eliminating?

Like the vast majority of western culture, I believed that children are not capable of controlling their elimination until nearly two years of age, one year was the earliest a child would ever begin showing signs of potty training. I believed this despite my experience with infants and witnessing infants controlling their eliminations. It is a child-rearing "fact" that is bore into us from culture. After Daryl mentioned his friends' endeavors, I came across something on the internet that talked about "elimination communication." The process in which mother and child actually communicate about elimination, and mothers tune into cues given by their infant that signal when they have to go. Is this what our friends were under taking? It still seemed bizarre. Babies without diapers was just a mess waiting to happen. But, my curiosity caught up with me as usual and I had to read more about where people would get such an idea. What I found inspired me. Mothers in several cultures such as India and African cultures, never use diapers. From the day her infant is born, the mother can sense via cues given by the infant, that her child needs to go to the bathroom. She takes her child to the appropriate place, and in turn gives her child a cue to eliminate. The child does, and the two continue life without a diaper completely clean. After reading about such cultures, I began thinking doesn't it make sense? Who would want to have a soggy, slimy, smelly bulk of diaper between their legs. Isn't using a diaper kind of laziness, so that parents can simply attend to their child's waste at a time convenient to them, as their child sits in wetness? I decided we would try. Afterall, the only ill effects that could come out of trying would be pee everywhere, and that is easily cleaned.

At the time, we were moving from Cleveland to Toledo, and it was not an opportune time to break through cultural barriers with a diaperless baby. Now that we are settled into our new home, and the hectic holidays are behind us, it is time to give it a try. I was re-inspired upon receiving a gift from our friends, which was a book outlining Elimination Communication. Despite hesitations, I decided the only way to do this was to jump right in.

To tune into the cues that Jonah gives before he eliminates, and to find a pattern in his elimination schedule, we spread our cloth diapers over the floor and lay him naked on top of them, and observed. What I found was actually very interesting to me. While I expected a show similar to that of Buckingham Fountain, the entire two hours that he lay naked he did not urinate. It was not until I pinned a diaper onto him, coverless so that I could know immediately when he urinated, that he went. Later in the day, I had him in the sling to put laundry in the dryer, and I just had a feeling that he had to urinate. I felt his coverless diaper, and sure enough after a second or two, I felt a spot of warm wetness growing over the front of the daiper. As he urinated, I made the "sssss" sound as prescribed in the books and websites that I have read.

The purpose of the "ssss" sound is to give your child an associative cue for eliminating. The hope is that once I am able to better predict his need to eliminate, I can take him to the appropriate place (a potty) and give him a cue by making the "ssss" sound, and he will go. The same method is used for bowel movements, only a different cue is chosen.

I am choosing to venture down this path for several reasons. Although it is more work now, if our goal is reached it will be far less work than potty training Jonah at the age of 24 months. The reason western cultures must potty train is because our infants are trained to eliminate in their diapers. When the child begins to develope the desire to be diaper free around 24 months, we must "un-train" them from going potty in their pants. By responding to Jonah's cues and needs now, we are eliminating confusion and frustration for the future. Another reason is pure curiosity. I want to know if it works, and how it works. I want to see my child learn, and discover how we can learn together. Finally, it is just one more way in which mother and child bond and communicate their needs. I am whole-heartedly meeting all of the other needs in my child's life, why not strive to meet his elimination needs as well, rather than putting them off until I am ready to deal with them by changing a diaper.

Jonah is also enjoying our experiment. He was so pleased today to be naked, and not constricted by his clothes or diaper. I have never seen him so happy to be on the floor playing, and he was more mobile than he is when we have "floor play" that includes clothing. In this case, we are following the old addage "if it feels so good, it must be right!"

Introduction

Despite the name of this web journal, Jonah's Journal, it is I, Jonah's mother, who will be managing and writing posts. I feel that this is as much my journal as it is my four month old son's, because the purpose of this blog is to chronicle the relationship and journey between mother and child from each of our perspectives. I plan on journaling our journey that includes "baby wearing," nursing, elimination communication, and other milestones not only in Jonah's cognitive abilities but also milestones in my parenting. Some people would label my methods as "attachment parenting" but I prefer to call it following my heart.

We have several reasons for creating this journal. One is for our own personal use; to create an organized system for keeping memories. Another is because some of the methods we use may seem a little odd to our family and friends, and we would like to explain ourselves uninterupted. Having this public journal will give others a chance to see that the way we are doing things really does work and is based not only on scientific research and reasoning, but also our instincts. Finally, I am hoping to give a little guidance through my own faults and trials to other mothers and babies going through the same journey. I would like other so-called attached parents to know that they are not alone, and give insight to those parents who are on the fence about these methods.

We hope that you will enjoy reading about our way of life, whether you are a friend, family member, or curious stranger.