ElementalMom

Meet Halima. Gorgeous, isn’t she? She’s Aurora’s milk sister.

So what’s a milk sister? That’s a baby who has shared milk from the same mama. Because Halima’s mother had a rare and really unpleasant birth complication, she is unable to nurse this time (Halima has an older brother). And because her parents are completely clear on the fact that breastmilk is hands-down the best thing to feed a baby, they called for help. I’m on one of the email lists they asked for assistance on, and so here I am, pumping milk.

Technically, that means I’m nursing three kids right now. I am the dairy queen!

Joking aside, it’s astonishing how much distaste people have for this practice. The squidge factor is superhigh. And yet 100% of the people who flip out when they find out you’re feeding a stranger’s child, even indirectly, drink the milk of other species. But sharing human milk? That’s just yucky.

Grow up.

The research has proven, time and time and time again, that human milk is the best food for human babies. So why do people flip out when you feed human milk to a human baby? Clearly they can’t have thought it through.

It’s ridiculously hard to find information on this practice of milk sharing. I know that in the Muslim faith, milk siblings are considered so close they may not marry. I know that in Romanian culture milk siblings are considered as closely related as blood siblings. I know that before some 19th century man decided that corn syrup solids were better than wet nurses, this kind of thing just happened without comment, because women looked out for each other and for each other’s babies. If something happened to make it difficult to feed a baby, other women just stepped in and helped. And like so many other aspects of what’s now referred to as “attachment parenting”, it was such a common event it was pretty much entirely undocumented. Which makes it tough on those of us trying to access the accumulated wisdom of generations.

I have huge admiration for Halima’s parents. The lengths they’re going to to ensure milk for their girl are just herculean. I think of all the women who could breastfeed and don’t because of some misguided ideas about vanity and propriety, and I want to cry. But I also think that great challenge often gives great blessings both to those who endure and those who are called to assist. I feel honored to be able to give this connection to my children, this new milk sister of theirs. Even Kestrel gets that this is an important thing; he’s voluntarily cut back on his nursing times, in favor of “just cuddling” so there’s more milk for Halima.

So if anyone reading this knows more than me (which wouldn’t be hard) about milk sharing, especially in other cultures, let me know in the comments. And if anyone reading this is in the SF Bay Area, more donations are appreciated.

Tags: Breastfeeding, milk share

La Leche League founder Edwina Froehlich died last Sunday. She was 93.
I am completely devastated. Edwina pretty much embodied everything I admire in an activist. And also proved that even if you come late to your passion, you can change the world.

My favorite article about her, so far, is the Chicago Tribune piece. Some tidbits:

In the 1940s, Mrs. Froehlich witnessed her older sister Pauline go through what were then standard hospital childbirth procedures: plenty of drugs, the use of forceps and no fathers allowed, said another son, state Rep. Paul Froehlich (D-Schaumburg). Her sister also was discouraged from breast-feeding.

“That experience led mom to seek a better way,” Paul Froehlich said.

Newspapers would not run stories or meeting notices that included the word “breast,” so the group used the Spanish word for milk, “leche,” for its name.

How fabulous is that? Smack into some stupid arbitrary rule, and work around it creatively. See what’s wrong with the world, and change it. Some other fun bits from the New York Times piece:

Edwina Froehlich,… was inspired to help found La Leche League to support breast-feeding after being told at the age of 35 that she was too old to make breast milk for her baby…

A pioneer on several fronts of motherhood, she worked for Young Christian Workers, a Roman Catholic lay organization, before marrying John Froehlich when she was in her early 30s. She had her first child a couple of years later, making her comparatively old to have a first child at the time, and she made the controversial decision to forgo giving birth in a hospital in favor of a more natural delivery in her Franklin Park, Ill., home, with an obstetrician attending.

“We used to tell the mothers the three main obstacles to successful breast-feeding were doctors, hospitals and social pressure,” Mrs. White said.

It is so hard to be an “older” mother. It’s so hard to stand up when the world wants to shame you for doing what’s biologically appropriate in birthing and feeding your offspring. Having had a cesarean with my first baby, and feeling that breastfeeding was at least something I could do right, it’s because of Edwina’s work that I was able, 2.5 weeks out from that cesarean, to participate in the Berkeley, CA Guinness World Record Breastfeeding event. It healed a lot of the “broken” feelings I was working through. Breastfeeding has also been a really good arena for me to use in my birth activism work, to show mothers how very wrong doctors can be about very basic things.

But at the time Edwina and her six cohorts (Marian Tompson, Mary White, Mary Ann Cahill, Mary Ann Kerwin, Viola Lennon, and Betty Wagner) got started with LLLI, breastfeeding in America was down to 20% of women. It’s not a whole lot better now, but without them to hold back the tide, who knows how much harder it might have been for me to get the support and encouragement I needed for this critical aspect of mothering?

So thank you, Edwina, for standing up for what you believed in, and making it that much easier for me to do so as well. You’ll be missed.

Tags: , Breastfeeding, Edwina Froehlich, La Leche League

There’s a daycare chain in Ohio that’s discriminating against breastfed kids. Read the whole story here. And then get out your red pen, and write those folks a letter.

I’d write more, but I’m just way too appalled to say anything constructive. Get going, and let me know what you did about it. Come on, there are babies counting on you…

It took me a while to begin this post, because I couldn’t decide if the title should be what it is, or “Our Culture Is Hopeless.”

Recently, we flew to Puerto Rico, from Oakland, CA. Due to the logistics, this entailed going through four security checkpoints. As onerous and ridiculous as these can be, we have gotten pretty used to them (which is a sad commentary all in itself), and were basically OK sailing through them.

Except, of course, for the formula.

Jason had Rowan in the Ergo on him, I had Kestrel on me. Kestrel is 21 months old; not a baby any more by anyone’s definition. He’s walking, talking, and pretty huge. Not A Baby. And yet I got pulled aside at each and every checkpoint, to get grilled about whether or not I had formula for the baby. One zealous agent even went so far as to search my bag for the formula I assured her was not there.

OK, follow along here, sportsfans. I am travelling with what is clearly a toddler. And every one of these people assumes my toddler is still on formula.

And yet Emily Gillette was kicked off a plane for breastfeeding a child just a few months younger than Kestrel.

So which is it, folks? If a baby is formula-aged, they’re breastmilk-aged, and that should be OK, but it isn’t. If they’re not breastmilk-aged, they sure as anything shouldn’t be sucking down formula. Where did we get so off-course? How did we become so backwards, so contrary to millennia of human evolution?

It’s a quandary that I ponder… while I nurse my not-such-a-baby. Good thing none of those guards wanted to check my carry-on milk supply.