If You Belonged Here

Bottle Feeding

Years ago, before my friends started having babies, I always thought I'd breast feed. I'd seen the signs saying breast is best and I believed that, of course, I would do what was best for my baby.

Then my friends started to breast feed and I watched, asked, and listened to every one of them. What I found was that breast feeding was very hard work. Most of my friends didn't have nearly enough support for what I began to perceive to be a heroic undertaking.

You see, they were pretty much all formula fed as babies themselves, so their mothers and even grandmothers had no idea what they were going through or how to advise them when they had problems. I began to think cracked and bleeding nipples were just part of the toughening up process, although I've since learned that doesn't have to happen.

My own reality was at odds with all of those bus-stop signs. I'd grown up helping bottle feed family and friends' kids, and in spite of bottles and mixing powder and water, it seemed so much easier than what I saw my friends go through. For one thing, the mother wasn't the only on who could feed the baby and so she was more likely to be able to get some down time.

None of this really mattered much until I was pregnant with a baby of my own. Then other realities set in: questions about medication, diet, and, ahem, personal growth. I mean, seriously, who knew they could get so much bigger? The very thought gave me a headache but I wasn't allowed to take my migraine medicine or drown my sorrows in beer. And I really needed that beer, especially after I realized my body and my baby were public domain.

I am a private person. Seriously, I am. And so imagine my surprise when everyone from the guy who waxed my eyebrows, to my housekeeper, to the lady one sink over in the movie theater, starting asking me about my plans to breast feed. Only they weren't really asking. They were insisting.

Because Breast Is Best.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I did not believe that breast was best for me and my baby. First, the medication. Then, the physical reality of being a 34Z. Mostly, the fact that I do not do well without sleep. Not well at all. As in psychotic and homicidal and bitter, bitter, bitter.

If I breast fed, I was likely to lose my mind. Best case scenario, I would keep my baby alive. But I would probably stop liking her somewhere around night three, and move to outright hostility by night five. She would need therapy. I would need institutionalizing.

Still, Breast Is Best. I mean, if even the kid who bags my groceries thinks so, it must be true.

It's true, right?

I went on a quest to find out just how true. Sweet Hank, was I in for a surprise. I began to sift through the arguments, but I found that there were few hard facts, supported by statistics and numbers that I could compare and evaluate. Reputable sources (Dr. Sears, the FDA, and La Leche) claim that breast fed babies may experience certain advantages but they seldom get specific. And when something definite such as fewer ear infections or fewer instances of bowel problems, is mentioned, the numbers simply aren't quantified and the original studies are almost impossible to find. I was left wondering, how many fewer, how much of an advantage?

When I did find original studies, they were woefully small and limited (as in a sample group consisting of a single preschool class for 2 months, and only 5% more ear infections for bottle fed babies). To make things even more confusing, other sources attributed early ear infections to bottle propping and infant constipation to poor formula prep and storage, which can occur when bottle feeding but are also completely avoidable.

Breast was questionable, at best, as far as I was concerned. And all the while when I was making this decision, The Dol was breast feeding Baby Dol. She's promised to tell you about her experience in another post, and so I'll leave the details to her, while telling you that even though she is very glad she did it, nothing about her experience alleviated any of my concerns. If anything, her experience helped me transition from concern to outright fear.

As far as I could see, an average of 3 additional IQ points was not nearly enough to justify the pain of a clogged milk duct. And so my decision was made. I would not be breast feeding. Not for a year, or six months, or three months, or the first six weeks, or even the first few days. Not once. Not ever.

This was not a popular decision, although The Dol, despite her own choice to breast feed, gave me her unconditional support, for which I am to this day extremely thankful.

I expected the nurses at the hospital to be horrified by my choice. I was wrong. Instead, they said things such as "bottle babies tend to sleep longer between feedings and are quicker to sleep through the night," "you always know how many ounces, and whether or not it was a good feeding, when babies are on the bottle," and "bottle babies rarely get jaundice or have trouble with weight gain."

Seriously. There are health advantages to bottle feeding. Who freaking knew?

But as far as I'm concerned the biggest advantage for me was that other people could feed Secret Lulu. My mom flew out and got up with my baby so I could sleep through the night (three nights in a row, actually) and find my smile. Mr. Poppins got all kinds of happy bonding time while feeding his new darling. Friends and family, regardless of their position on breast feeding, loved being able to hold the bottle for her.

Did sharing feeding times cut into our bonding time? I don't think so. I carried her everywhere, wore her in the Bjorn until she was six months old and about to do permanent damage to my back, and still managed to be the one to deliver 95% or more of her feedings.

The reality is that, if anything, Secret Lulu is over-bonded to me. That's a clinical opinion, given by a trained psychologist, who informed me in no uncertain terms that it was time for us to begin to separate, for me to regain my identity outside of my little girl.

I haven't met a single person who knows us who disagrees.

Since my own experience, I have met others who promise that they loved breast feeding and never had a problem. I think that this has a lot to do with how much support they had lined up and how many people around them were breast feeding veterans. I don't say this to excuse my own decision not to breast feed--I don't feel I need an excuse--but as a bit of unsolicited advice for mom's who google their way here on their way to making a decision.

There are plenty of women who wear their scarred nipples as a badge of honor. They'll be happy to tell horror stories of mastitis, split nipples, and infections and then insist that if they can do it through all that, no one has any excuse not to do it. And people who opt out any way should be killed because they are child abusing, selfish jerkyheads.

I'm here to tell you that some women have a huge investment in believing breast feeding is the only right way, because if it's not, then boy were they silly for not just switching to a bottle. These true believers, like fundies everywhere, come at the question as if it isn't a question at all. Although if for some reason, say double mastectomy, you can't breast feed, you'll be hard-pressed to find one of them who believes your child will be damaged because of it. The feeling I get from these women is that real mothers are martyrs.

My advice is to stay away from these women.

If you believe you want to breast feed, find a doula who can help, a friend who has breast fed three kids, an aunt or a sister who isn't afraid to show you how to mash your nipple into a crying baby's mouth. Hang around mothers who aren't ashamed to be seen breast feeding, who will let you ogle the latching process, who will warn you against pressing your breast away from the baby's nose because the baby can breathe just fine as it is and you are going to give yourself a blister in an uncomfortable place if you do that. Remember that it's okay to have someone else bring the baby to you to feed at night, and then to take the fed baby away to be burped and have a diaper change while you go back to sleep.

And remember, that someone, somewhere will always think you're parenting wrong no matter what you do. It takes the pressure off.

Gone with the Wind

I've seen the movie, at least parts of it, and I know that the book was a sensation. But not so long ago I heard a radio interview with a professor who had decided to teach a class on popular novels, sort of "these books are literary trash, but people love them; why?" He assembled the list of books with a sneer on his face (or so I imagine) and even though he'd never read any of them, he was certain, based on their popularity with the hoi polloi, that the reading list was banal and eye-rollingly common.

The first book on the list was "Gone with the Wind." The professor, having never deigned to read such a trashy novel, went home to read the book with the idea that he was going to have a jolly old time tearing it apart. Only when the day of the next class came, he was agitated and at loose ends with how to proceed. You see, he had loved the book. He couldn't put it down. He was riveted, dazzled, and wholly absorbed in the characters, who were, quite frankly, my dear, a damn sight more interesting than most of the books he had previously taught.

The students, who had also had the bad taste to love the book, were relieved. They would be able to share their honest opinions without shame and still pass the class.

This story interested me for all of the same reasons that it probably interests you. I mean, the professor was set to loathe the book, to endure it at best, and to have to pluck his eyes out with a rusty serving spoon at worst. He began the book with the same skin-crawly feeling I reserve for forced marches to Wal*Mart. But instead of Wal*Mart he found himself with the keys to the Wynn Esplanade in Vegas.

Sigh.

I almost went out and bought the book that day. Almost. I really had it in my hot little hands but I checked out the spine and it turned out that Bookgirl could get me a copy for free, so I went home without the book and called her instead.

By the time the book finally came, my initial boil of curiosity was down to a simmer. Margaret Mitchell, esteemed author of this 1936 masterpiece, proceeded to raise my blood to a boil and then have me frothing over the edge of the pot with a flashy sizzle.

Oh, fiddle-dee-dee.

I now believe that the professor understated his conversion. The book is as readable today as it was when it was first published (I wish I felt the same about Jane Austen's work) and the characters, pacing, and plot are amazing. As in someone may have sold her soul to the devil amazing. I died a little when I realized it was Miss Mitchell's only novel.

Seriously, how many books have great stories but so-so writing, or beautiful writing but boring stories, or plot holes, dull characters, parts that drag, and disappointing endings? Almost all of them, if you ask me. Too many, at the very least. Even "The Di Vinci Code" annoyed me at times, and that book started off with a bang and was the definition of clever. You know how it is.

But "Gone with the Wind" is a perfect read.

And now that I've read the book, I've spent more than a reasonable amount of my designated daydreaming time recasting the movie. George Clooney would be Rhett. He's the only one who could pull off that gentleman pirate thing with the right aplomb.I think I'd love Reese Witherspoon as Scarlett (made over with pale skin and black curly hair of course) but she may be too, ahem, mature. Perhaps Keira Knightley would better follow in the tradition of Vivien Leigh, what with them both really being British and all. Either way, she'd have to be more sassy than sweet and have a strong jaw and great comedic timing.

Any ideas?

It's All Too Much

Peter Walsh saved me. You see, I didn't know that clutter was holding me back. Seriously, clutter has been holding me back.

Now some of you, those of you who have spent anytime at all in my house, will believe that I am setting you up for a punchline. You think I'm OCD, compulsive about order, the queen of the purge, and as someone so eloquently nicknamed me:

Little Miss Neat & Tidy

I am all those things and so much more. You see, people of my type often look extra organized and tidy on the surface. And when you open our medicine cabinets and drawers and snoop around you (feel free to deny it), you begin to believe we are tweakers who stay up all night on cleaning binges.

That might be true.

But it's not the whole story. You see, INTJs are known for their pockets of clutter. Sometimes we keep this clutter in a highly organized fashion. For instance, I have a secret bookshelf full of books I intend to read but haven't read for seven years and counting. There's also a sewing machine and a fair amount of sewing support materials because, someday, I will learn to sew like a Versace seamstress.

Peter calls this aspirational clutter. This type of clutter can also include the dusty jars of capers and artichokes in your pantry.

I have those, too.

Unfortunately, you can check these claims of aspirational clutter out for yourself next time you are at my house because I have decided that I am not ready to part with it. Yet. At least not the capers. But the shelf of diet, nutrition, and fitness books that can all be ignored now that I've discovered Dr. Oz and his healthy approach to living--those had to go.

You have no idea how nice it feels to no longer be (in my own mind, of course) the woman with all the diet books.

But that's not what saved me. No, that was just a little help. What saved me was realizing what memorabilia I was holding onto, why I was keeping it, and how I actually feel about it. This was not a lengthy process as most of the things I own of this type are neatly stored in two large plastic containers.

And yet some of the things in these containers haunt me, and I'm quite a bit afraid of them ever seeing the light of day. So why do I keep that horrible poetry I wrote in the tenth grade? Why do I still own the dress I wore to Senior Snow Ball? I'll think more about the poetry later, but without further ado, the dress has absolutely got to go. No one, not anywhere, not ever, will want to wear that dress again.

Getting rid of the poetry is more furtive. I mean, seriously, shouldn't it be shredded and burned just in case?

What I realized was everything I own requires energy, often emotional but on moving days quite physical, energy. Every time I have to push the jar of capers to the side, every time I look at the sewing machine, every time I cringe over the poetry, I am using valuable energy.

Why?

Well, the truth is that even if I can't design and produce a beautiful summer dress, I use the machine for things like buttons and hems. And the capers are really good on chicken and in pasta salad, which I do occasionally make. But the poetry...the only thing I can think of is that I'm holding on to all of that teenage angst.

Time to let it go. And yet.

Then I got to the next book. Because Peter, while he was starring on Clean Sweep, realized something counter-intuitive. Some people, when they finally got rid of their clutter, realized that there was more than just household clutter holding them back. There was career clutter and marriage clutter and, whoa, now that the waist deep piles are gone I can finally see my (please, Hank, say it ain't so) thighs clutter.

Once the household clutter was gone, this other clutter couldn't stay hidden, and so it had to be dealt with. Only dealing with it wasn't the overwhelming task it had once appeared to be. Actually, the hardest thing became doing nothing. So naturally the career changed, the relationship ended, and the thighs began to melt away. Almost as if by changing the environment, the person had changed their fundamental being.

Feng Shui at it's most basic.

And so I wonder, am I ready to burn the poetry? Am I ready to clear the path to something new?

But more importantly, now that I've embraced Peter's books how to I reconcile their basic mandate of letting go of clutter to the fact that they are now collecting dust on my bookshelf.

Anyone want a couple of really great books?