I’ve been debating whether to include the following sans commentary via the Links at right or to draw them into relation here. I’ve decided on this route because I’m curious what others think. I have little to add except that I found the second story in a new magazine that I like, Topic.
Something tells me that Michelle Duggar never had trouble breast feeding. I wonder what she would say to Sonya Huber?
how about,
“haven’t you ever heard of Lansinoh?”
or,
“why are you even bothering to have a baby? i am clearly the only woman capable of populating the planet”
by mary—Oct 13, 02:03 PM
okay, can i just say,
1)what’s Lansinoh?
and
2)please, mary, and any other mother reading this, does this nightmare huber article sound familiar? it’s not really like that, is it? as someone who would love to have a baby sometime in the relatively near future, i was freeeaaaked out by this hellish breastfeeding story.
i won’t even begin to analyze why it is that greg had to post a link to this piece.
by kathy—Oct 13, 02:23 PM
Lansinoh is nipple balm and would have saved the author from much of her suffering.
Yes, breastfeeding is sort of hellish and constant for the first few weeks (though Lansinoh was my fifth of whiskey, so to speak), but it gets much easier, so much so that I kept doing it for 21 months. I should say that my attitude about public nursing is significantly more evolved (or philistine, depending on your point of view) than Huber’s, though, maybe b/c our first several months of it took place in a much more family-friendly country far away from my prudish mother. I guess if you think breasts exist only as men’s sexual playthings, you might feel uncomfortable doing it in public and that would make life harder.
Oops, this is turning into a rant that is maybe not appropriate for this forum. Greg has my email address if you need it. (:
by mary—Oct 13, 03:26 PM
I posted it because I am a fan of breasts, and not only as sexual playthings, (although i do like them well enough as that!), but also because they are pretty useful in the lactating sense. I am always surprised at american prudishness in this respect. I listened with rapt attention one day when katherine perkins for WOI’s “Talk of Iowa” talked for an hour about women seeking rights to breastfeed in public (unfortunately, there is no archive online). How/why American women lost the right to breastfeed in public is something i don’t very well understand. We let obese people eat in restaurants; why not babies? (I know: terrible, terrible analogy, if you can even call it an analogy) so I would actually love to hear what your mother has to say about it: is she simply a woman of formula, or does she have other reasons? And what else was better about Belgium in this regard? (I find the forum completely appropriate for rants of this sort, obviously.)
I remember being twelve years old when my aunt breast-fed at my grandmother’s. I was terribly embarassed. But i think my embarassment was because i was twelve, not because I believed that was something she shouldn’t do. what strikes me about Huber’s essay is less the physical pain she had, but that the whole essay is about overcoming (pretty poorly, I might add) what is a really ridiculous social stigma.
by greg—Oct 13, 03:48 PM
Aside: Do you think Duggar remembers when her breasts weren’t lactating?
by greg—Oct 13, 03:49 PM
thanks for the wisdom, mary. (must note everything for future reference!)
by kathy—Oct 13, 04:29 PM
actually, I wonder if Duggar is a breastfeeder at all, b/c lactating suppresses the hormone that makes women ovulate so it’s a lot harder to get pregnant when you’re breastfeeding. Proof of God’s motherly wisdom or Mother Nature’s mercy.
My mom is just generally a prude, not necessarily about breastfeeding in public. She nursed me, as my grandmother did her—lots of family support for that, lucky for me.
I am not a Europe-is-always-better kind of person, but I can’t think of an aspect of parenthood that is better supported in the US than there. Maybe Chris can. Rose had free health care, we had five days in the hospital (close to free), no one (including Chris’s boss) batted an eye if I flashed a nipple, pregnant women could ride first class in trains for the price of second class, Rose got money from the gov’t every month, etc.
by mary—Oct 13, 09:34 PM
And they say that Europeans hate families…
by greg—Oct 14, 08:06 AM
i hate to have missed such a bountiful discussion.
i can’t speak to the pain…but it is different for each woman.
what i can say is that t had some difficult days in the first 1 1/2 with getting the baby to latch on…but after that, she didn’t experience too much soreness and the nipple balm was never applied.
by Jeremy—Oct 14, 04:20 PM
Yes, where were you?—Oh, forget it. I don’t need to ask. For the sake of your sleep, I hope your conferencing and such is over soon.
by greg—Oct 14, 06:20 PM