Little Failures

Tags

baby led weaning, breastfeeding, don't touch the baby without permission, floor bed, mindful eating, one finger touching, parenting, raising a happy child, respectful parenting, trust women

Thanks to people who have taken the time to comment recently – having an audience, however small, is one of the best parts of writing. Having an engaged audience is even better.

Parenting is hard. I think that’s a given. Everyone knows that.

But I genuinely think of my kind of parenting as the easiest parenting there is.

I call myself an attachment parent, but a lot of our attitudes are also baby-led, free-range, respectful, that kind of thing. We babywear and co-sleep and breastfeed, and we also do baby-led weaning, allow N to roam as freely as possible with only minimal safety concerns, and ask her before we wipe her face. (And leave her with a dirty face if she really protests. It’s not the end of the world. There’s no law that says your baby’s face must be clean.)

So how do we do it?

As I type, my partner is standing in front of the mirror with N, telling her that he’s sorry but he can’t let her play with his (computer) keyboard. He understands that the buttons are fun to press and make funny clicking noises, but when she presses them it does weird things to his game, so he has taken her away from the computer.

This kind of thing happens a lot, which you can take as a sign of terrible parenting (N does this a lot) or excellent parenting (my partner’s response). We redirect her, explain to her why her behaviour is endangering herself or others, try to be lenient when the behaviour is merely inconvenient rather than dangerous. But yeah, we get exasperated. We hand her over to the other parent. We stop what we’re doing and sit with N and give her the attention she needs, which is good and laudable and the kind of parenting we aim to do, but at times we do it reluctantly.

My days are full of little failures. One tenet of gentle parenting which has become more dear to me as my baby grows up is that parents are human, and humans are flawed. We can, and we will, and we do make mistakes. It’s a hard concept to grasp, particularly if your only experience of parenting is being parented. It’s hard to forgive your parents and yourself for these failures.

Recently, I shouted at N for grabbing the toilet brush while I was in the shower. It was the second time I had shouted at her. She sobbed. I felt horrible. I got out the shower, apologizing and saying soothing phrases, dried myself quickly, held her, explained why I’d shouted and told her that though I recognized my behaviour was wrong, I hadn’t known what else to do in the moment. I told her that it was okay to cry, because she was scared, and it had been a scary experience. I want N to learn that everyone makes mistakes – everyone including her parents – and that that’s okay, but that you have to take responsibility for your mistakes.

When I find parenting impossible, there are two thoughts that make me back down and calm myself. The first is that she is not doing this out of malice. This was really, really helpful to me in the early days and is still relevant now. When N would be dead asleep in my arms but wake the moment I laid her into a cot, it was not because she wanted to annoy me. The other day I had a problem with the front door and had to go out the back door, squeeze past some bins and open my front door from the outside – N was perfectly happy, and I’d told her I was going out for a minute because the door was broken but would be back very soon, but I still came back into the house to see her screaming, tears running down her bright red cheeks. She wasn’t pissed off. She was terrified I’d left her.

And the other thought, which is one that is perhaps more helpful for older babies and toddlers, is that she rarely gets her own way. If she wants to sleep in later than me, she can’t; if she wants to play upstairs, she can’t because I want to go downstairs and make breakfast; if she wants to stay in I can decide that we’re going out; if she wants me to walk slowly so she can grab at the bushes I can walk faster and stop her from doing that. I don’t even know the million myriad ways I thwart her desires over the course of the day. Maybe she spent all night dreaming about porridge, and then in the morning I offer her toast. Right now, for example, N is pulling the laptop screen back so I can’t see what I’m typing properly. I’m guessing she wants my attention. So I’m going to let her have her own way.

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Attachment Parent, Feminist Parent

Tags

feelings police, feminist mother, parenting, raising a happy child, respectful parenting, trust women

This is the sister post to Attachment Child, Feminist Child.

I recently found this article, which criticizes attachment parenting, and am still bothered by it. So much so that I haven’t read all of it, because who needs that kind of judgment first thing in the morning? I hadn’t even finished my first cup of tea!

It reminded me of a greater – and hopefully, false – dilemma that has been plaguing me recently: namely, how can I be an attentive and loving parent to N (now seven months and taking herself up the stairs to bed) and not have it consume my whole identity? How can I meet her every need and still be my own person?

Or, more pertinently, how do I continue being ‘my own person’ when I don’t really have any non-baby-related activities or hobbies? At the moment, I spend my weeks going to baby classes, meeting up with friends and their babies, reading books about parenting, cooking food that N can eat with us, and… well. That’s it.

At a recent breastfeeding group, we were talking about how you manage to do certain things when you have a new baby. The activities pulled out of the hat all met with the same derisive laughter: ironing (but of course), spending alone time with your partner, and looking after yourself. At a different group, with members who don’t follow attachment parenting principles, we were discussing routines, and I thought “we don’t have much of a routine – we follow the baby’s lead and allow her to feed and sleep when she needs those things.”

Both times, I took a mental step back and thought “I used to think this was bad parenting. I used to think this was anti-feminist. And now I do it.”

Why is it different? Why have my views changed?

Like many people, I thought that feminist parenting meant refusing to sacrifice any part of oneself to the needs of the child. Forcing self-sufficiency early; keeping parts of yourself distanced from the child; encouraging strong bonds with other family members at the expense of your own relationship. Phrased differently all of these could be good things, but in practice I have found that it means introducing things like bottle-feeding, lengthy periods of time separated from N, allowing N to cry when I know she would settle happily in my arms. These are not things I was willing to do as a new mother, and they are not things I am willing to do now.

It’s not as simple as “feminism means everyone gets to make the choices that are right for them”, although that is a major part of how my feminist, attachment family functions; for me it is a more complex situation, in which all of these things can happen. N can be a happy, well-adjusted child whose needs are met, whose desires are encouraged, whose development is allowed by the use of space and watchfulness. (For example, she has learned how to climb stairs! She has done this by being allowed to explore under supervision, rather than being contained within a playpen for my convenience.) At the same time, I can be a happy, well-adjusted mother whose needs are met, whose desires are encouraged, and whose capacity for parenting is constantly challenged, and hopefully improving.

Yes, my personality is, on occasion, engulfed by N – by her needs, her desires, her own personality. But I have found it effortless to retain my own identity. So effortless, in fact, that I haven’t even realised I’m doing it, and have been spending time worrying about it instead!

That list above, of the things I spend my week doing? That’s not ‘it’. I read other books. I talk to my friends about things other than our children. I am interested in learning British Sign Language from what I’ve seen in baby signing classes. I spend time on the internet reading feminist and social justice websites, or talking to non-parent friends about all manner of things; I drink wine; I write this blog (occasionally). I do all these things near N. If I do need space away from her, I tell her and my partner gently and with love, allowing them some alone time to play and bond together while I withdraw with a book and a bath. And if my need to be away from N coincides with a time she desperately needs me, I take a deep breath, remind myself that I am an adult and have a concept of time (i.e. it can happen later), and think of times when N has made me unbelievably proud and happy to stop my bad mood from affecting her.

Next time I will talk about how attachment parenting is (for us, anyway) feminist parenting – how my meeting N’s needs is teaching her principles that are vital for her well-rounded, feminist upbringing.

Happier When Fatter

Tags

earth mother goddess, fat, feminism, happy, mindful eating, trust women

[Content Note: reference to methods of dieting and weight loss]

18 months ago, I was a teacher in Korea. Despite running a cooking blog, I was pretty thin – my parents later told me that when they visited, they couldn’t believe how much weight I’d lost in the 10 months since I’d seen them. It wasn’t intentional – I had just really gotten into fat acceptance and was very uncomfortable with anyone making comments about my body.

Now I am about ten to fifteen kilograms heavier. I have been pregnant, given birth, and still breastfeed. A friend told me, last month, that I seemed so much more confident now than when xe last saw me (summer 2011), which xe put down to parenthood.

And yes, I am a confident parent. I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by people – women and mothers especially – who followed their own instincts and shun much advice from the ‘experts’, and I believe unwaveringly that I am the expert on my relationship with my daughter (though of course she is the expert on herself). I don’t always know exactly what to do, but I am sure that my partner and I are flexible and imaginative enough to parent N the way she needs to be parented, and I am very happy as a mother.

But my increase in confidence over the last year or so is not just down to the change in my circumstances. It is also down to the changes in my body.

When I was three months pregnant, long before I was visibly pregnant, my partner and I got to spend a month backpacking around China. The other day I was looking through those photos and on seeing a full-body shot of the two of us on the Great Wall of China, my first thought was “that’s not my body.” And suddenly I was thinking back on years of being discontent with my body – ill-advised diets, fasting, going to exercise classes and really hating them, the new year that I sarcastically made the resolution to “not eat all year.” (I happily broke that resolution with a very delicious breakfast, then continued to break it all year.)

I realize now that I was unhappy with my body and its shape, but I assumed that I wanted to be thinner, in accordance with the patriarchy’s constant drumbeat of thin is good, fat is bad. Lose weight and take up less space in the world.

No. I am not the kind of person to take up a small amount of space. I have more presence than I did eighteen months ago, and – as clichéd as it sounds – I feel like an earth mother goddess type. I know that my larger body can do amazing things. As a bonus, my body is now a “fuck you” to the patriarchy.

You know how people sometimes say of fat people, “there’s a thin person inside waiting to get out”? For me, there was a fat woman inside waiting to get out.

Public Breastfeeding as Activism

Tags

breastfeeding, feminism, parenting, trust women

I breastfeed in public.

I do this for a number of reasons: mostly, of course, to feed my hungry baby. To remain involved in social contexts. To show that neither the ‘feeding’ part nor the ‘exposed breasts’ part are a big deal. To refuse to allow my body to be hidden away. To refuse to participate in the unnecessary sexualisation of breasts. To continue living my life as I would do were I not breastfeeding.

I also do it so that people who will one day become breastfeeding parents themselves see me.

For these future breastfeeders, I try to be an example of what breastfeeding can be.

They see that breastfeeding is easy. They see me unclip my bra with one hand and move my baby in the general direction, trusting her to latch on (she is practised now, after all, practically six months in). They see me cradling her gently while holding a book, while watching out for the bus, while chatting with friends. They see me taking the opportunity to bond with her, looking into her eyes as she sucks, or playfully biting her fingers to make her laugh.

They see that breastfeeding is not easy. They see me struggle to pull my bra down from under a squirming, wailing baby. They see my perfectly content baby pull off my nipple mid-feed and start observing it with a deep look of concentration on her face, or kneading it like a cat. They see me not knowing what I’m doing, whether a crying N is arching her back with hunger or anger (or both!), trying to force my nipple into her mouth. They see her push me away in tears, me continuing to try feeding her for a few moments before I realize what I’m doing and let her be. They see her eventually calming down enough to get what she wants, on those occasions that she does want to feed.

They see me reading my baby’s most subtle signals, and completely misreading those signals too.

They see strangers supporting me: I can’t count the number of thumbs-ups I’ve gotten, particularly from middle-aged women. They don’t see strangers disapproving of me: as far as I’m aware, I’ve gotten one negative comment and even that was a begrudging compliment (“she’s brave”).

In my six months as a breastfeeding mother, I have seen very, very few women breastfeeding in public. I get excited when I do – grinning broadly at them, telling people later on “I saw a woman breastfeeding today!”

I get that it’s scary to expose yourself in public, both physically and emotionally. What if someone looks? What if someone says something? What if the baby cries? What if the baby starts twiddling your nipple and gazing sternly at it and spraying milk all over the table behind her? (A situation I’ve been having to deal with this past week – congratulations on your inquisitive mind, N!) As much as the NHS pushes breastfeeding over bottle-feeding, and as much as bottle-feeding can be demonized, breastfeeding in public still remains a thorny issue.

I want more women to breastfeed in public, for themselves and for future breastfeeders. For example, although I use a variety of positions to feed N, there is only one in which I sit up and therefore which I use in public.

I think it would greatly benefit future breastfeeders to remove much of the stigma associated with pulling your breasts out in public to feed your baby; not just directly, but also for them to see a wide variety of breastfeeding, both successful and unsuccessful. The learning curve once you have your newborn is a steep one, and making breastfeeding safer and more visible can only help.

You Are The Expert On Yourself

Tags

feminism, mindful eating, parenting, pro-choice, raising a happy child, respectful parenting, trans, trust women

Dear N,

You are the expert on yourself.

You know when you want to feed, how long you want to feed, when you want a nappy change, when you are tired, when you want to sleep (different things, apparently!), when you want to wake up, when you want to play, when you want to babble, when you want a cuddle, when you are itchy, when you are cold, when you are happy, when you are sad.

I can make educated guesses on some of these things (you are rubbing your eyes and crying – let me help you settle to sleep!) but I often get it wrong, because I don’t have all the information. No one does, except you.

As you grow and become more self-aware, you will know what kind of toys you like, what kind of clothes you like, when you want to cut your hair, when you want to eat and what kind of food you want, when you are full and want to stop eating, when you want a bath, when you want to go outside and run, when you want to read a book, when you want to play a game, when you want to spend time with me and your dad and your sibling(s) and your friends, when you want to be alone. If you want a partner, or more than one partner, or no partner. If you want children, and how you want to have them, and how you want to raise them. If you want to be a girl, or a boy, or a woman, or a man, or neither, or both, or something entirely different.

I’m not the boss of you. If I ever tell you “it’s not that bad” when you hurt yourself, or “you can’t be hungry now” when you ask for a snack before dinner, or “smile!” or “hug your grandparents” or “you’ll be fine” when you’re uncomfortable – please remember that I don’t know a thing, because you are the expert on yourself, and neither I nor anyone else can tell you otherwise.

And so I want you to learn yourself. Pay attention to the things that make you feel good, the things that don’t, the kind of books you disappear into, the injustices that make you rage, the clothes that show off the parts of your body you want to show off, the food that satisfies your hunger, the food that satisfies other urges, the movements that come easily to your body, the pronouns and descriptors which feel right to you.

There is too much emphasis in this society on external cues for phenomena we can regulate ourselves. Girls especially are taught not to trust themselves. Some of these are well-intended – think of a parent saying “just one more mouthful” when you’re full but they’ve slaved over dinner at the end of a long day, or “you’re not wearing that” when they just mean to protect you from predators (who, by the way, only care what you’re wearing because they can use your clothing as an argument in court, not because it actually makes them ‘lose control’ or whatever bullshit). Some of these are not – think of starving yourself because there are whole industries which make their money from teaching you that your body is wrong, and binging because you’ve lost your natural instincts to eat what you want, when you want.

It’s going to be hard, N, to hold your ground against a world which tells you that we know your body and your mind better than you do. (I’ll tell you about my labour with you through that prism, one day, if you’re interested.) (And I’ll probably tell that story to other people on my blog, too.) Which is why I want you to immerse yourself in yourself. You are the expert; be the best expert you can be. Don’t be the ‘expert’ who makes assumptions and learns from amateurs. Do the original research. Experiment. Form solid conclusions, and use those conclusions, and publicize those conclusions. Experiment some more. Do this so that when people say “go on, you know you want to,” you can say “no” with utter confidence.

Don’t let yourself be swayed by others. Stand your ground, have boundaries, and don’t let other people tell you who you are.

I, for one, will never pretend that I know you better than you do yourself. If I slip up, I am sorry. Like Will Smith, I want my daughter – you – to own her body, to understand her mind, and to make her own choices.

Thought of the Day

Tags

anti-choice, feminism, parenting, pro-choice, sex education, trust women

The kind of people who say “you need a license for a (dog, TV, marriage, etc), you should need a license to have a child” are probably the same kind of people who are looking to restrict access to (or outright ban) abortion, contraception, even sex education.

What the hell?

When Are You Going To Give Me Grandchildren? Childfree by Choice

Tags

childfree, parenting, trust women

Okay, so not a recipe. The camera battery died, so have this instead: not a post about parenting, but about not parenting! Perhaps an odd way to start off something that is ultimately a parenting blog, but I’m full of surprises. I will be using gender-neutral pronouns in this post: xe for s/he, hir for his/her/him.

For a long time I have been aware of the Desperate Grandparent phenomenon online – the forums I frequent (Shakesville in particular) are full of people who do not want to have children and whose parents don’t understand or believe them. Recently I’ve become aware of it in my own life, although (obviously) not applied directly to me, but to a relative of mine who is ambitious, works hard, and appears to be completely happy in hir chosen career. Furthermore, xe is vocal about not wanting to have children. And I can understand why.

Thirteen months ago, I had a full-time job with a good salary, worked part-time as a freelance writer, and updated my cooking blog several times a week. Now I do no paid work, have only just started writing again, and spend my days catering to N’s every whim. This is not something I begrudge, but I do worry about my career, about my family finances, about my ability to interact with other adults, about my sanity (there are occasional days where I hate N’s behaviour and the situation I’m stuck in, and on those days I fear depression). At the same time I love N and enjoy my life with her, relish the opportunity to spend so much time watching and helping her develop, feel pride in the fact that she is exclusively breastfed.

Ultimately, none of the things I was doing thirteen months ago were that important to me. I hated teaching and was beginning to resent the internalized pressure of keeping a blog updated regularly (foreshadowing? I hope not!). The only thing that was important to me was continuing to write, and that is something I have managed to keep doing – but only just. N is nearly five months old and only now have I got the mental energy to write.

If I had loved my job – like my relative does – then things would be entirely different. On becoming pregnant, I would not be able to do that job for a significant period of time. I would miss out on anything that happened in my field during my maternity leave. I would not progress any further in my career – in fact, it’s more likely that I  would slip back a notch or two, and when I returned to work, have to waste another few months (or years?) getting back to the position I started in. I would be passed over for promotion in favour of men, or of people without children. I would have to use my holiday and sick days to look after that child during school holidays and hir illnesses. In hir early years, a large proportion of my salary would go to childcare providers. My superiors would think less of me for having children – my family and peers would think less of me for being so career-minded. To me, this sounds like some form of hell.

These desperate grandparents say things like “it’s different once you have your own!” It is, yes. I love N fiercely. But that love does not change anything else about the world. I’m still less likely to get a job than another twenty-two-year-old with a good degree.

I wanted children. (I still do.) I knew some of what it entailed as my parents were always very honest with me about parenting – I was present at my sister’s birth, I witnessed my mother breastfeeding my siblings, I watched my parents raising us and discussed it with them when I felt there was something better they could do (as only a teenager could) – but I still had no idea.

I don’t know why my relative – or anyone else – doesn’t want children, and I don’t need to know. Personally, I can imagine not wanting children because the working world is unfriendly towards parents (especially, I believe, towards parents who experience pregnancy), because some people value their career and/or lack of dependents above potential children, and because pregnancy is kind of horrifying.*

It baffles me that you would want to force children on anyone – let alone your own offspring.

 

*This is something I feel very strongly about and intend to revisit in another post. Pregnancy is natural, sure, but also weirdly like a horror movie.

In Support of Feeding Babies

Tags

breastfeeding, parenting, street harrassment, trust women

I’ve been struggling a little with this post because I’m so excited and so full of ideas I can’t pin down one thing I want to talk about! (I’m expecting this post to be a bit scatty. We’ll call it a warm-up.) Right now I’m doing more research into floor beds – that throwaway comment at the bottom of Sleep got me thinking that it might just be possible. And I’m planning for my next post to be a recipe, to cover all bases in our first week.

Anyway. I read this article over the weekend, and one sentence in particular resonated with me:

We’re pushing breastfeeding as a message but we sure aren’t embracing it as a culture.”

The author is talking about the US, and goes on to talk about workplace culture and other things that I’m not sure entirely apply to the UK (or at least not to me at the moment).

But this particular sentence is applicable to my direct and indirect experiences of breastfeeding. I am extraordinarily lucky in that breastfeeding has never been a problem for me or N: I was confident, she was good at suckling, we were surrounded by women who had breastfed and who supported us totally, and we never came across any problems.

The one issue I did have was right after giving birth, when the midwife asked me not to feed her until the placenta was delivered. I think it was maybe half an hour before it came out, and then when I did try to latch her on, we both struggled. My partner left and went home to sleep, and N and I were left alone, and it was the strangest time: I was so elated but so terrified that Breastfeeding Was Going Wrong, and is the baby starving, and oh my god look there’s a baby, and just a general buzzing throughout my mind. When she was eight hours old, she did it, and we’ve not had an issue since. But now I wonder what on earth that midwife was thinking, and regret that I was so placid and obedient just after labour (and during, too, but that is another story).

One of my friends was less lucky, ended up not breastfeeding (not through choice), and was shamed at every turn. Did you know that when looking up how to make a bottle feed, the Aptamil website reminds you that formula is a poor substitute for breastmilk before it lets you watch the video? I’m guessing it’s not the only one. Women who are not formula feeding voluntarily should not be made to feel any worse than they already do.

A breastfeeding friend was warned that her baby was not gaining weight fast enough, and encouraged to supplement with formula. She spent two weeks trying to force more milk into her perfectly happy baby; thankfully, the next time she took the baby to be weighed, a different health visitor reassured her that her child just happens to be on a lower percentile. Women who are breastfeeding should not be made to worry unnecessarily about their baby’s weight gain, nor should they be forced to doubt their capability.

One of the books I have (Your Baby Week By Week – not recommended for attachment parents, exclusive breastfeeders, co-sleepers, baby-led weaners, babywearers, and more) pushes the importance of giving your baby a bottle of expressed breastmilk. I have read arguments (possibly in this book, I can’t remember and don’t care to look) that breastfed babies must be able to take a bottle so that their parents can feed them in public. Women should feel completely free to feed how they want, when they want, where they want.

I hate the idea that I should make N take a bottle so strangers won’t run the risk of seeing part of my breast.

This is a feminist issue: we are expected and encouraged to use our bodies in a certain way, shamed if we do not or cannot, expected to fail, expected to hide our successes so other people do not have to risk looking at our bodies.

How do people keep all these bigoted ideas in their head at once!?

The current culture is pushing breastfeeding without understanding the social, biological, and emotional contexts.

Society at large is not ready for, or supportive of, public breastfeeding. Some feminists are pushing for equal topless rights, arguing that breasts are unnecessarily sexualised. I would go further and say that breasts are constantly unnecessarily sexualised. If I wear a push-up bra and a low-cut top and go clubbing, I’m purposely sexualising my body; wearing a stretchy-necked top and a nursing bra and periodically pulling my breasts out to feed my baby is a totally different thing. So different that I’m beginning to think that anyone is uncomfortable with me feeding my baby is imagining me in high heels and nipple tassels… anyway.

It is embarrassing to feed your baby in public because people are staring (trying to catch a glimpse of a nipple?) or looking away (desperately trying not to catch a glimpse of a nipple?) and I do feel the pressure to balance N in the feeding position to hide me undoing my bra.

Biologically, some women struggle to breastfeed. I’m going to leave this here as I don’t know much about it, but basically, if you physically cannot sustain a baby on your own breastmilk, this is not something you should feel punished for. We’ve (mostly… partly…) gotten past blaming people for attributes they were born with, like homosexuality*, but for some reason we believe that women can want their way into successful breastfeeding?

Furthermore, it requires a lot of mental energy to breastfeed in a world where women’s bodies are simultaneously public property and something sinful to be hidden. We feel as if we are inviting comment when we expose our breasts, because strangers already make rude and frightening comments on the parts of a woman’s body that are visible. If I did not believe in fat acceptance, I would struggle to bare certain parts of my body in public (for example, refusing to wear short-sleeved tops in summer as a teenager).

What we need is a world where people breastfeed publicly, where breasts are not sexualised in non-sexualised settings, where those who do not breastfeed are allowed to look (so that young people can learn what breastfeeding looks like, thus ingraining certain ideas such as positioning to aid their breastfeeding experiences in the future), where parents do not feel like they are hounded for their feeding choices, and where women and their bodies are trusted. Instead we have none of those things and a breastfeeding campaign which attempts to ignore that.

*This might be a bad example; please suggest others!