Purists Pooh-Pooh: Pack Up the Pump

This past week there was a decision to be made about how to feed my baby going forward. Up to this point, I've been breastfeeding, and within the last six weeks have started the gradual process of introducing solids. When I am at work, which is about 20 hours a week, the baby drinks my milk from a bottle which has been previously pumped and frozen in one of the cute little clear and purple bags that says "My Mommy's Milk" on it. Most people who have children or work with someone who has an infant are familiar with "pump and freeze." At first,  I wondered about  my co workers who do not have children, and  what they would think of the little pouch of pale liquid sitting in the mini fridge.  I was a bit embarrassed at the thought of putting evidence in plain sight that my breasts had been hooked to a ridiculous looking machine and milked like a cow. 'Can they hear it hissing over the bathroom fan?' I worried. 'Are they grossed out by how the fat separates and rises to the top like salad dressing?' I got over my modesty soon enough- having babies, it seems, tends to diminish ones modesty rather effectively- and was grateful to the inventor of the double breast pump, and to Lansinoh for their ingenious little freezer system.   

Fast forward a few months and my baby is now rolling over, sitting up, laughing, babbling, and eating a variety of liquefied fruits and veggies. In a mere instant, this time has elapsed. The days and weeks are blurred together, the details already fuzzy. One thing that's crystal clear, however, is the ongoing chore of pumping. At the risk of sounding like a complainer, I'll just come out and say, I really hate to pump, and I don't want to do it any more. But it's not that simple. If I stop, then I will have to give the baby formula when I'm working, for the next six months until she can have cow's milk.  Looking at my dwindling supply in the freezer I have felt pressure to continue pumping so that I don't have to change over to formula. I'll take a brief moment to explain something here: I mean to place no judgement on those who choose to give their babies formula. Period. Breastfeeding for 12 months is something that I chose to commit to with my first daughter, and now my second. The first time around, I made it the whole year with bags o' milk to spare in the freezer, never having to utilize formula for the gap between my pumped milk, and cow's milk. Having set this MOY standard for myself (yes, mother of the year,) with the first one, I now feel as though anything different is less than. I'm a purist, what can I say? I move furniture to vacuum underneath it, I spend forever chopping up teeny tiny pieces of garlic to cook with instead of buying the jar of minced garlic. I'm not trying to toot my over achieving horn here, because truthfully, It's a more burdensome quality than anything, and it doesn't always kick in either, (take my attention starved garden for example.)

What I've been forced to come to terms with is this: my frozen milk will be gone in a couple of weeks, and I simply cannot stand the thought of pumping my breasts one more time. I will have no other choice than to give my baby formula. I asked her doctor at her 6 month well-child-check how to go about it. She said matter of fact-ly, "Just introduce it like any other new food." I could have kissed her. It occurred to me then, that formula was not the enemy, and neither had been, apples, bananas, pears, sweet potatoes, carrots, peas or rice cereal, all foods that the baby had had, all foods that were not breast milk. 'Just because I give her formula doesn't mean that I'm going to stop nursing, or that the next six months of nursing don't count' I reasoned internally, 'and La Leche League isn't going to hunt me down and bang on my door in the middle of the night.' My own unreasonably high expectations for myself are the actual enemy. I'd be willing to bet most moms do this very same thing with one issue or another. I'm learning that finding balance between giving your children everything you possibly can, and maintaining your own sense of self and sanity is essential. I'll have to let some things go, plain and simple, and I have a feeling I'd better get used to prioritizing my perfectionist tendencies because real life with a growing family will demand it. Honestly, I felt nothing short of utter relief purchasing Similac and jubilation as I packed up my tired pump. So long purist! I think next, I'll buy some minced garlic. 

Love Is the Sponge

Last week someone in my family got into a lot of trouble. I do not view it inappropriate to write about it because it made the front page of our local news paper. Surely my readership of a handful does not compare to the number of relatives, friends, and acquaintances who saw the story in the paper. I don't think it would be appropriate to write about anything else this week, although I am sickened by what has taken place, and I feel an oppressive sense of disgrace and sadness. I am not going to go into the details of what happened. It is not my intention to rehash what the BDN has already reported. 


I got a call from my Dad early Tuesday that we had some sad family news. He gave some information and suggested that I check out the article online, which I did a few hours later when my girls were napping. As I was searching  for the article, scanning the headlines, I noticed two other stories that caused me to feel intensely disturbed. One was about an infant who had been mauled by a dog, as its mother lay passed out, and the other about a mother who had been intentionally breaking the bones of her 20 day old baby. I can barely stand to type the words out as I sit here tonight. I chose not to read those articles in full, partly because there was another I needed to find first, and partly because I simply do not have the emotional disconnection necessary to read a story about child abuse and neglect so severe since becoming a mother myself.  


Merely reading those two headlines had nauseated my stomach and darkened my heart. By the time I found  the article I was searching for, the tears came easily.What I found out was that a family member, who has been teetering on the edge of stability for many years, had finally stumbled and fallen hard into a very dangerous abyss. Her face was pictured beneath the article. The image was at once, familiar and frightening. I saw eyes that were once a lively green, blank. The complexity and tragedy of the situation is largely lost in my vagueness here, and there is much that I am choosing to leave out. This picture is painted well enough in broad strokes- it is an incredibly painful one for many people.


I closed the laptop and went upstairs to where my six month old was sleeping, not frightened, not in pain, but sleeping peacefully. I scooped her up from her cradle and held her to my chest as I laid down on my bed and curled into a ball. She smelled milky and made little noises as she slept which comforted my queasy stomach and I felt thankful  that she was not awake to witness that she was taking care of me in that moment.  


Sometimes the pain of the world seems so overwhelming- mothers who abuse and neglect their helpless babies, loved ones who waste and disgrace their lives. I feel as though I need to hide from it, to close my eyes and hold my hands over my ears. Sometimes pain finds the cracks of our lives and seeps in slowly, pooling in the depressions of our hearts.  Other times tragedy is a flood that plows through our weakest levies. Laying there holding my own precious child, I realized that love is the sponge that soaks up the sadness. Loving my children, my fellow human beings, and even the disgraced among us is the only way we can, as individuals confront the suffering we encounter all around us. We must find ways to love, small and grand, each day, so that the sponge never gets too full to absorb the hurt of the world.


It may sound trite, but it helps me in times of despair to hold on to the notion that our own loving actions toward others will somehow make a difference in the vast interconnectedness of  humanity. I am not sure how I can act lovingly toward my family member right now in the midst of my feelings of fury, disbelief, and sadness towards her. But, as I called her mother, later that same day to offer a few words of support, on my way to work, a woman flagged me to the side of the road. She was missing front teeth, smoking a cigarette, her hair, greasy. "It's so hot today. Do you have some money for a drink?" She asked me. I decided not to  question how she bought the cigarette in her hand, and fished out a couple bucks and gave them to her saying, "Go get some water, it's really hot today," just as a voice said hello on the other end of the line. My spirit was elevated just a bit from having put a small token of love back out into the world. Maybe it will grow and grow into something that will one day truly help those people I read about in the paper that day. 

New Normal

A couple of months ago I took a trip to the park with my girls. A common occurance in my world, but this trip was special. I desperately needed to escape the confines of my tiny house that day, and I chose a particular park, that is more suitable for toddlers, thinking that mine could enjoy some independence while I carried her three month old baby sister around in the bjorn. Easy enough...right?


I had prepared for the mini outing by stuffing my over sized purse with extra undies, a diaper, wipes, sippie cups, snacks, a rattle, a burp cloth, sunscreen, a quilt, my water bottle, two sunhats and my travel mug of coffee. This assembly took somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 minutes as it was interrupted by a respectable blow out. 'Is the sound of being buckled in to your car seat some sort of signal that it's a convenient time to poop?' I wondered out loud to my three month old.  Having developed some sort of supermom complex, I had decided to cloth diaper, as I had done with my first, resulting in the need to climb the stairs to our only bathroom and rinse the poop into the toilet. 


"Plan twice as long as you think you'll need to go anywhere or do anything," a girlfriend of mine wisely told me when I asked her advice on taking both of the kids out alone for the first time. Her words rang in my ears as I put a clean diaper on the baby and strapped her into her car seat for the second time. I made it out to the car first with my two year old after a brief battle of wills concerning whether or not to put shoes on which was resolved by the promise of an underdog at the park. Going back in to the house to retrieve the baby, I could hear her wailing as she'd been left alone staring at the wall for ten minutes while her sister and I were in negotiations. I soothed her with a binky and a smile and slung her car seat handle over my arm. The suitcase that is my purse slash diaper bag went on the other arm, and my travel mug in one hand, keys in the other. By the time I was pulling out of the driveway, I was enjoying a sense of accomplishment on having gotten out by 9:15- in one piece. Yes, I had forgotten to brush my teeth, but so are the sacrifices of mothers, I told myself, and my children would be the only victims of my serious coffee breath. As I accellerated up my street I saw something fly by the window. My travel mug! In my rear view I watched as it rolled on the ground. "Fart knockers!" I exclaimed. "Darn it!"  I tried again. I pulled over, and ran over to my sweet brown life blood that was dribbling out of the cup mumbling something that made me feel a little better. Slugging down what was left of it, I walked back to the car and drove to the park feeling scrambled, ungraceful, and fuzzy toothed. 


During the relative calm of the car ride, I regrouped. Pulling up to the sunny park I tried to remember to appreciate the beautiful day and opportunity to spend it with my sweet girls. I spread out the quilt and laid the baby down as I strapped on the bjorn. Then I heard a little voice from the car, "Mama, I peed." I pretended not to hear. "Maamaaa.......I peeeeed!" Chanting the serenity prayer in my head I went over to the car and found my daughter smiling sweetly at me as she sat in urine. "Mama I peed." She repeated. 'No shit' I said in my head. "I see that honey, lets clean you up. Mama brought extra undies." I said aloud to her. What had motivated me to potty train at this particular juncture again? At that point the thought of changing her monstrous poops and spending hundreds on disposable diapers didn't seem all that bad. After more negotiations regarding changing wet undies, I sheepishly put her back into her wet shorts, not having brought extras. 'Their not that wet.' I told myself. Sure. Suddenly, a shiver went down my spine as I spun around to look for my baby who was still on the blanket where I'd left her ten minutes ago twenty yards away. I grabbed the older one and ran to the baby, who only looked at me blankly. She was fine. I looked around to see if anyone had been watching me. My heart thumped. I felt a lump growing in my throat. 'You can't cry at the park, Johanna.' I scolded myself. But I did a little anyway behind my big plastic sunglasses. I was horrified at having forgotten about the baby.


My children seemed unphased and generally in good spirits despite my own sense of disgrace, so I persevered and proceeded to nurse the little one, flashing boob to anyone who might have cared to look. Having forgotten breast pads in my packing frenzy I was forced to stuff the burp cloth into my bra to catch the letdown from the breast that the baby wasn't using. 'It's this or walk around with a giant wet circle on my boob,' I reasoned. 'Enjoy the show folks,' I thought as my attitude shifted from exasperated discouragement towards determined survival mode. After that, the outing was fairly uneventful. The baby slept on me in the bjorn as I followed her sister around each apparatus, and gave her underdogs on the kiddie swings, taking care to use correct posture and even did a few lunges while my toddler entertained herself on the bouncy bridge. I began to feel better. A young woman with  long hair pulled into a french braid, wearing an ankle length denim skirt holding an infant on her hip, and pushing two little girls who also wore braids and skirts on the tire swing caught my eye. I guess she'd been there the whole time I had, though I hadn't noticed. We engaged in the standard park small talk, "How old?" "What are their names?" Her children were four, two and a half, and 9 months. We talked superficially about having babies. She smiled and said, "yeah, it always takes me about six months to find my new normal." 


We made it back home around 11, and I sat for a moment in the driveway as my baby, newly aware of her distaste for car rides, bleated, and her older sister yelled, "I want Daddy, where's Daddy?" I fantasized about sprinting away from my car and home. I pondered with sleepless disproportion the daunting tasks of getting everyone inside, fed, and put down for their naps. I fretted that perhaps I would be denied my own nap if the baby was fussy, or the toddler, reluctant. I thought back to the girl at the park who had been friendly to me. She looked so much more graceful than I had felt. 'When will I get this?' I thought, as my chin trembled and I began to cry again. 'You baby. Get a hold of your hormones. Get these kids inside and feed them and love them, and do the best you can and be proud of it,'  I resolved. So that's what I did. And that's what I've done everyday since. It's never perfection, rarely graceful, but it's getting easier as each day passes.  My baby is less fragile, and my toddler no longer has pee accidents. Most days, I manage to brush my teeth, and I no longer care who sees my breasts at any given point. I've settled in the new normal that is having two kids who are 25 months apart. Both uniquely and substantially in need of my time, attention and love. I'm watching in awe as they begin to play together by making each other laugh. I've learned to let anything go that is not essential to maintaining safety or peace. I know there will be challenges every step of the way, and I have days where I feel like crawling in a hole, but I think I've come to terms with the fact that doing the best I can as a mother means being imperfect. 


Every mistake is an opportunity to learn. Needless to say, I've learned a lot since we transitioned from a family of three to a family of four. I also realize now that every other mother out there who gives a damn has many of the same feelings and experiences that I have. The girl at the park with her three probably felt just as discombobulated as I did when her baby was born. She was probably trying to offer me some encouragement by telling me that it had taken her several months to settle in to routine again. Even though it sometimes feels like I'm the only one who has ever had a day this ridiculous, guaranteed, there's a mom out there somewhere enduring an even more ridiculous one, and that's strangely comforting. New normal is messy, unexpected, exhausting, and....perfect.