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Things I read/twittered or talked about this week
7/2/2009 9:00:00 AM
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The Drinking and Breastfeeding Controversy
6/30/2009 1:37:33 PM
Drinking and breastfeeding has been in the news recently after a mother in North Dakota pleaded guilty to child neglect after breastfeeding her infant while intoxicated. Fox and friends had a short segment on drinking and breastfeeding which you can view here. Once again, an "expert" was called that probably shouldn't be putting ideas in the minds of current or prospective breastfeeding mothers.
Is Dr. Svetlana Kogan being sponsored by the formula companies to scare all women away from breastfeeding with her blanket, ridiculous approach to drinking and breastfeeding?
She claims that nursing mothers should wait 24 hours before breastfeeding after having even one drink. Nursing mothers around the world drink a glass of wine with dinner. As the Fox anchor noted, her own doctor (and many other doctors and lactation consultants) recommend having a glass of beer, Guinness in particular, to increase supply in the early postpartum days.
The anchor seemed to think the doctor was extreme, noting that there is a whole school of thought that formula is never better than breastmilk and that pumping and dumping one time is a reasonable approach for many breastfeeding mothers after they have had a drink.
A more commonsense and breastfeeding friendly approach is to tell women, yes it is OK to leave the house, yes it is OK to be social. Do not breastfeed drunk. Do not breastfeed if you cannot or should not drive. Do not breastfeed if you feel tipsy or buzzed. Be more cautious when nursing a 6 day old baby than a six month old baby. Drink with food. Drink after your baby goes to bed and wont be nursing for awhile. Stick to one drink. Isn't this commonsense?
According to a quote taken from the La Leche League's page on drinking and breastfeeding:
Dr. Jack Newman, member of the LLLI Health Advisory Council, says this in his handout "More Breastfeeding Myths":
Reasonable alcohol intake should not be discouraged at all. As is the case with most drugs, very little alcohol comes out in the milk. The mother can take some alcohol and continue breastfeeding as she normally does. Prohibiting alcohol is another way we make life unnecessarily restrictive for nursing mothers.
Do not discourage women who are already embarrassed, uncomfortable and afraid to nurse in public to not breastfeed for 24 hours after one drink. That is only encouraging plugged milk ducts, mastitis, angry babies and premature weaning.
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Things I read/twittered or talked about this week
6/25/2009 9:00:00 AM
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EC Pooptastrophe
6/23/2009 1:10:04 PM
Img Source: Lunita on Flickr
One of the problems of pottying a baby who can barely crawl much less walk is that they cannot just stand up and walk away when they are finished.
Brielle would sit on the pot for a considerable length of time when she was a baby because it let her "sit up" before she could sit up on her own and she liked to play with her toys and books that I kept nearby.
Bianca on the other hand, wants to take off across the room the second she is finished. That means that even though she can hold it until she gets to a potty, there is still a huge potential mess. We realized that potential today.
After fussing for an hour or so (and a few failed attempts) Bianca finally did her business on the potty. I was sitting literally three feet away from her at my computer desk.
While I was saying hello to my brother online, Bianca decided that she was finished and dove off the potty which stuck to her butt and the whole thing tipped over spilling its carefully crafted contents into her training pants which were sitting down by her ankles.
Then she took off across the living room dragging her "filled" (formerly white) trainers behind her, smearing stuff up and down her legs with each crawling motion. The telltale poo stretched from the inside of the overturned potty, down the sides of the potty, in small piles across her little play rug and then up and down her legs and even into her toes.
The Elimination Communication Paradox. EC parents almost never have to deal with poo but when we do…..it isn't pretty. 
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Circumcision Questions From My 4yr Old Daughter
6/19/2009 1:17:40 PM
Image Source: Leo Reynolds on Flickr
Brielle has a basic knowledge of the male and female anatomy. After my recent pregnancy she probably has a better understanding of the female reproductive system than many adults.
She asks a lot of questions and I always try to give her honest, accurate answers that will not only educate her but will also keep her from learning about life from her adolescent friends a decade from now.
While I have no problem giving her answers to topics that other parents avoid like the plague, I have a few topics that I am exceptionally passionate about. One is routine male circumcision and yesterday Brielle hit the nail on the head.
The last thing I want to do is perpetuate the craziness that has made natural far from normal and the normal people far from natural. I also need to convey the truth without inadvertently bashing the people in her life who are either circumcised or chose to circumcise their own children.
She knows that cats and dogs have retractable penises. Yesterday she asked me (out of the blue),
"Does "so and so" (a male friend of hers) have a penis that disappears like Blackers?"
Me: "Um, no…"
Brielle: "It is always outside??" (At this point I don't know if she is doing mental comparisons to the cat or to female genitalia, but she is pretty surprised either way.)
Me: "Well, yeah. Not all boys are outside all the time. Boys are born with it hidden but lots of boys have surgery to take away the part that hides it."
Brielle: "Who does the surgery?" (she is fascinated at this point)
Me: "Doctors"
Brielle: "All boys have the surgery?"
Me: "No, lots of them though"
Brielle: "How do they do it?"
I was at a loss here. I know that they strap down the helpless, screaming, hysterical infant and crush off the foreskin with no anesthesia after literally tearing it away from the glans. I can't tell Brielle that. She will have nightmares (I know I do). I am rarely at a loss for words but I really did not know what to tell her. I finally said:
"Um….uhh….they sort of cut it off."
Brielle: "Maybe they use a special penis knife"
Me: "Yeah, they kind of do"
Brielle: "Why?"
Me: "What??"
Brielle: "Why do they do it? Why do they do the surgery?"
Sigh………..Now what do I tell her? Because it is a hugely profitable industry? Because some parents prefer amputation to soap and water? Habit?? Because parents don't do the research first? Because ‘they' can? Because some parents think their children are property? The best answer is probably ‘Because they don't know any better'. I just said:
"Because they want all the boys to look the same."
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