It's TIME to talk about breasts (and attachment parenting)

Warning: you are going to see some breasts.*

*If you are a man, this means Warning: open this magazine or you will miss some foxy side-boob.

That's what TIME magazine really meant by putting this photo on the cover in a photo shoot and article about attachment parenting, and Dr. Sears. 

I saw this cover and I want to stay quiet, to let TIME magazine and the mommies and the bloggers have it out, but I can't. It makes me want to stand up on the stool they put the little boy on to reach his mom's breast in an artificial, impractical and purposefully-provocative pose and say, BACK OFF! Let people parent in the way that works best for them! Leave breasts for their original purpose: to feed babies. Don't use them to stir up controversy between women by playing to the extremes, by throwing the gauntlet of 'good enough motherhood'. Don't use your big red letters to pit us against each other. Don't propose the ideal that one way of parenthood is better than another, especially not when there are a host of other issues in politics where we women need to stand beside each other; attachment parents, bottle feeders, co-sleepers and cry-it-outers. 

BAPTISM BY FIRE 

Before our first son Hayden was born with PRS, a craniofacial condition that included an undeveloped lower jaw, a cleft palate and a tongue that covered his esophagus and trachea, preventing him from breathing or feeding without machines, J and I had some ideas about the kind of parents we would be. We were adamant that parenthood would not change us. We'd read a book that encouraged us not to change our lifestyle for our baby, but to 'invite him to join ours'. We intended to get him sleeping through the night in his $800 Pottery Barn crib as soon as possible. I imagined I would try breastfeeding but supplement with formula so J could be involved and we could have the convenience of our travel-filled, sporty lifestyle. 

We were so committed to showing everyone parenthood would not slow us down that we booked a trip to the Bahamas to go windsurfing for two weeks after my due date. We figured one of us could hold the baby on the beach while the other surfed, and then we'd switch. On the day that plane took off, we were sitting beside our son in the NICU, praying for his life.

I remember before he was born, walking with my aunt, a mother of six, and telling her how I had read that you never nurse the baby to sleep or he learns to fall asleep at the breast, preventing the lifestyle acronym we had read about, E.A.S.Y. (Eat, Awake, Sleep, You Time!) and I remember my aunt just looked at me and said gently, "Wait and see when he gets here."

Hayden at CHOPWhen he got here, everything changed. (You can read Hayden's story here) He was born with an Apgar of zero, whisked away from us, intubated and transported to a childrens hospital downtown. We were told he would need many surgeries, months in the hospital, years of therapies. We were told he would never, ever be normal. 

But I digress. This post isn't about Hayden or my transition to motherhood; it's about BREASTS, and who TIME magazine deems "mom enough".

Back to breasts. Shortly after Hayden was taken away, I hooked mine up to a mint green hoovering pump in the hospital for two days, while I waited to be discharged. I'd had an emergency C-section and had to recover before I could be driven to the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia to meet my son. When Hayden was six days old, doctors botched his first operation and he developed an infection. They took us into a small closet away from the other parents and told us he would either make it to the end of the week, or he wouldn't. We were no longer allowed to hold him. In a fog, I pumped. It felt like the only thing I could do.  Our son hung in there. When a doctor credited my expressed breast milk with helping Hayden to fight the infection, I pumped with new commitment. Every three hours, I hooked myself up to the machine in a converted cleaning closet next to the NICU. My breastmilk went into Hayden through an NG tube, and several months later, when he graduated from that, a Haberman feeder.

A baby with a cleft palate cannot make suction; a baby with a severely recessed lower jaw cannot make his mouth meet to latch; a baby who is failure to thrive cannot afford the calories it takes to try; and a baby whose tonuge has been stretched and surgically attached to the inside of his bottom lip to free up his airway cannot breastfeed. 

As we had imagined with bottles prenatally, J was able to be more than 'involved'. When Hayden finally came home from the hospital, I pumped around the clock and J hung the 90cc bottle on a coat hanger rigged above our bed that connected to Hayden's feeding tube. As predicted, this offered convenience! One night, when I was exhausted, I hooked Hayden up to his monitors, nestled him in his boppy in the middle of our master bed and pinned a note to him that said, "Hi Daddy! Mom doesn't want to see either of us until 8am. There are three bottles in the fridge. Love, Hayden." And I went and slept for eight interrupted hours in our unused nursery.

Hayden gets his mama milk

But at five months, Hayden weighed barely nine pounds and my milk supply dropped severely. My body would no longer be tricked. I took fenugreek and prescription meds. Other mothers offered to pump for me. I upped my regimen. I pumped on airplanes and in restaurant bathrooms. I pumped to bolster my son's immune system when he contracted RSV and pneumonia. I pumped because he had severe reflux and the feeding team was afraid he wouldn't tolerate formula. I pumped to get him through his first three surgeries. I pumped exclusively for eight months, and then my breasts shut down. There was relief, and there was fear--had I gone long enough? Had I done everything I could? Had I been mom enough?

Feeding MaxBREASTFEEDING SUCCESS

When my second son was born healthy, I took him to my breast immediately. I had waited three years for this moment. My nurse was old school, pissy, and horrified. An hour after Max was born, he was still latched on, and she huffed that she had never seen someone nursing while in the stirrups, and not to let him 'loll at the breast, or I'd end up being his human pacifier.' I told her I had nowhere else I'd rather be. I was Max's 'human pacifier' for almost a year. 

When our daughter Piper came along,  I breastfed for over two years. When she was three months old, we were rear ended at an intersection and the safety belt crushed my right breast. I went through unspeakable medical procedures and pain in the months following the accident, but I continued to breastfeed Piper on the left side until her second birthday. By then, she had developed an aria that she sang, "Nurse you me, now, nurse you me now, nurse you me nooooooooowwwww!" with a lot of vibrato and increasing insistence and volume and warbling on the high notes. One of the last times was on an overbooked flight that was delayed, with Piper on my lap and a twoPiper's courtside snack-hundred-pound skinhead with swastikas tattooed on his neck on my right as she belted out her snack time theme song: "NURSE YOU ME NOW!!!" I tried to distract her, but the aria continued. Staring straight ahead, my seat companion said through his teeth in a tight, Eastern European accent, "Is not problem for me if her feet are HERE!" and he plunked Piper's big twenty-two-month-old feet in his lap so she could lie down and nurse herself to blissfull sleep. 

PARENTING BY INSTINCT/Attachment Parenting

My point is this is the story of my breasts, and how they fed my children in a wide variety of ways and for different lenghths of time through their early years. It is also about how Hayden's difficult arrival, our baptism by fire into parenthood, shaped the parents we are today. 

When Hayden first came home, after weeks of not being allowed to hold him and fear of crying exacerbating his swollen airway, (he had narrowly avoided a tracheotomy), we wanted to carry him all the time, keeping him peaceful. Although he was only 7 lbs, after a day my arms ached. He hadn't reached the weight minimum and lacked the head control for the Bjorn, so I dug out that ‘hippie sling’ I had top-shelved after my baby shower. It was the beginning of the era of the Paisley Womb. 

Hayden in the paisley womb

We took our son everywhere in his sling. It helped with his reflux and kept him calm. We also slept with him between us in our bed to manage all the false alarms on his apnea and pulse-ox monitors, to change his feeding tube, to cuddle him and relish every gurgling snore.   

Led by Hayden, we stumbled into what we called Parenting by Instinct, only to discover that thousands of people were doing the same thing and calling it Attachment Parenting. We read Dr. Sears and it resonated. This felt right. 

We continue to practice this method, though it looks different as they grow. My breasts aren't a part of it anymore, but for years, they were. Attachment Parenting for us meant creating connection between us as a family. All three of our children were worn, carried in our arms or on our backs or in slings. All three of them slept (and some of them still!) sleep in our bed. Or we sleep in theirs. Or they sleep curled up with each other. Or with the dog. We move around. This works for us.

Parenting Across the Spectrum

This is not the only way to parent. We have fed formula. I saved the lid of the first can of Nutramigen we bought for Hayden, where my husband wrote YOU ARE AN INCREDIBLE MOTHER on the lid. I have many friends whose children sleep in cribs and beds. I hold dear to me women who have been able to let their children cry it out, because it worked best for their family. I applaud those who try breastfeeding, but know that it is not the only way to raise a healthy baby. I have friends and family whose children go to boarding school, who have nannies, who cannot fathom that we regularly wake up with several of our children nestled in bed around us. And I embrace the ideal that good parenting wears a lot of faces. 

So I take exception, I cannot let it go, when a national magazine tries to stir up controversy and sales by throwing gasoline on the fires of the mommy wars. Shame on you, TIME, for being sensationalist, for holding up the extremes as the example of something that works for so many. The above was the story of my breasts and of our unique introduction to the style of parenting that has worked for our family for ten years. What's your story?  

No training wheels

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia with my oldest son, Hayden, filling out questionnaires, complaining about litter downtown (Hayden, slamming the dashboard, "Am I the only one who cares about trash in the trees?!") and paying our monthly visit to the lovely Dr. Choo.

If you live in the Northeast, then you know we are getting an unseasonably warm and early start to spring, about a month ahead of schedule. Wondering, with every day that passes and moves us closer to April, can we trust this weather? Can we shave the dog yet? Can we shave the Hayden!? (These will be addressed in upcoming blogs...)

Following a long wait and relatively painless appointment, Hayden and I were antsy to get home with plans to go on a bike ride and get out in nature. We battled I-95 traffic and arrived home in the slanting late afternoon sun to find Piper (4) insisting that she needed me to take the training wheels off her bike--she was ready to ride a two wheeler. These are the slightly rusty training wheels that I had only recently located in the weeds and under the porch where Max had hidden them after jimmying them off her bike last fall, apparently mortified to have a sister who needed training wheels. (Note: Max has been a seasoned bike rider since all of last May. More on that later.)

We lost a few important mechanical pieces in the process, the hazards of using a seven-year-old mechanic, and ended up reattaching the wheels with various pieces of scavenged hardware and zipties. So I was a little reluctant to take them off again--she and Quinn have been having a great week riding loops on their teetering pink and purple training wheeled bikes, but yesterday Pip insisted: no training wheels. She was ready!

Off they came. Then there was the process of suiting her up. The boys raided her ice hockey bag, just put away for the season, and jammed on various knee pads and elbow pads, and slapped a friend's borrowed helmet on her head. Max's hand-me-down Adidas and black hockey gloves so stiff they stayed curled on her handlebars completed the ensemble and gave her a very 'motorcross chic' look. 

"I want to start on the grass," she said, because she had heard of a preschool pal who has mastered the technique with many bruises but no actual bloodletting. So we went to the lawn, wobbling along the grass towards the edge of a hill steep enough for a toddler to sled down. 

"Don't let go!" she shrieked. I didn't. But then I gave her a little shove to show her that falling down doesn't hurt, just like ice skating, when you're covered in pads. Over she went, and shot me such a look betrayal from under her tilting, too-big helmet.

"I said don't let go."

"But honey," I explained, "if you are going to learn how to ride a bike, I have to let go sometimes."

"No."

If you have never seen Piper seriously pout, I can just assure you, it can be scary.

Her brothers called out that she should try the long stretch of gentle sloping driveway where they both learned so we headed over, me holding her up by the handlebars and seatback. They circled in on their big boy bikes--last year's favorite birthday presents from my parents--and gave advice. Quinn (3) sped down from her house up the hill, training wheels rattling, handlebar tassles fluttering, and insisted she needed her training wheels removed too. 

"Not yet!" her mother and I chorused in unison.

Piper and I ran up and down the long stretch of driveway, the little muscles in her shoulders tensed, with her barking a constant running monologue of "Don't let go! You're not letting go! Hands on the handlebar, and my seat! I don't feel your hand on my seat! Don't let go!" 

Max zoomed by, standing up on his pedals, and called out glibly the same thing we said to him in a thousand botched training-wheel-free sessions, "The faster you go, the easier it is, Pipes!"

Max learned on this same stretch of road last May, quietly, with his older brother, in about two minutes. But this was after three years of whimpering and crashing with me and J. Probably we started him too early, pushed him, eager to have him off and biking with his big brother and the cousins and friends who show up to ride the loop. Inevitably, the second we put Max on the bike, he'd start this high-pitched keening whimper, and as soon as we let go, he'd intentionally jerk the front wheel hard to the left, crash and run back to the house in tears. Every few months we'd try this, and then give up. He seemed content to ride a plasma car behind the pack of bikers, one leg tucked under him, the other pumping crazily to propel him forward. Like those super-crawler babies, why would he ever learn to walk? But eventually, on his own, long after the others, he did. 

And as the afternoon wore on and Pip's monologue of insisting that I NOT LET GO continued, I realized this would not be the day she learned to ride a bike. And I'll admit at first I felt a twinge of annoyance--that I was going to have to hold her up, stooped over, for the rest of the evening walk with the family and that afterwards, I was going to have to figure out how to get her training wheels reattached for the next few weeks, (or months, years...) I was tempted to push her--she could learn today! It could be so liberating! 

But as we continued on our loops in the perfect spring air, Sampson swimming in the pond and shaking his wet and slobber on us, the boys zooming ahead and then back again, catching a snake and letting everyone touch it, baby Harper with her little bare feet up on the handlebar of her stroller, my Mom and Linden and Quinn talking about which berries would be ripe first, I had a whooshing rush of gratitude. 

Why wouldn't I want to run alongside my pedaling daughter and hold her up? How lucky to have the chance to show her in a concrete way that I am listening to her, meeting her where she is, and I am there to literally catch her when she falls? So we went fast on the long stretches, me hunched over and loping awkwardly like one of the Hobbits. I made my finger and thumb into a loop around the crossbar over her handlebars, showing her that just as Max kept bellowing, the faster she went, the less my fingers needed to grab and steady her. And she got it, and she giggled as we sped on down the hill. 

Piper did not learn to ride without training wheels yesterday. Sometime today, when Quinn shows up ready to race around the loop with her, I'll jimmy them back on. But last night, nobody came home in tears. Piper was proud of her accomplishments, of her bravery, of what she had done. When J pulled in the driveway, she crowed, 

"Daddy, I'm learning to ride without training wheels!"

And she is. 

 Piper, March 2012

Part 2 of 2 Nine Years Ago Today

Sept 10--
night before the planes crashed, I went home and called my aunt, asked her to disseminate the information about what had happened with Hayden's surgery that day--I couldn't retell it. 

I remember a friend who had had a child in intensive care tell me one truth about it: every place you are will feel like the wrong place to be. It was so true. Every night I couldn't wait to leave the hospital (NICU parents can't sleep with their babies, as the babies are not in private rooms, and sleeping closets around the hospital are issued on a lottery basis). 

All day, I would fantasize about leaving, getting away from the smells and the beeping and sitting by my son and not being able to hold him. I would daydream about showering, about pumping in the privacy of my own home and not the pumping closet or a bathroom. I would think longingly of my bed, our neglected dogs. But as soon as I was pulling out of the parking garage, I wanted to be right back in the NICU with my son, washing my hands at the wash station, settling in beside him for a day together. 

That night of Sept 10 was no exception. Seeing Hayden in so much pain was brutal and the news that he might die made me want to run away from him, to sever the tentative, cobwebby threads of attachment that were forming.  

But as soon as we were home, I wanted to be back at the hospital. 

I woke up early the morning of September 11th. How I got to the hospital I don't know, since I wasn't allowed to drive yet. My mom might have taken me, or I might have taken the train. I know it wasn't Jon, because I remember him calling me from work when everything started to fall apart. 

As I waited at the nurse's station to be buzzed in, I saw families watching the TV in the waiting lounge as the first plane crashed, LIVE FOOTAGE, it said. 

A plane crash? Too bad, I thought, irritable and impatient to get to my baby. 

Things were worse than the day before. Hayden was needing 'rescue doses' of morphine and his eyes, when they were open, were wide with fear and pain, wild like a spooked horse's. He arched against his baby restraints, opened his mouth around his tubes with soundless screams. Dr. Casey, the neonatologist at CHOP stopped by his bed and cupped Hayden's tiny heels in his palms, told me that yes, this was a bad setback, and yes, Hayden was in considerable pain. I loved him for telling me the truth with white-jacket authority. We watched the monitor alert for his heartrate hitting 230, nothing I could do.

The next plane hit. Nurses were distracted, scattered and scared. Who is Ben Ladden? I wondered as I sang to Hayden, a song by Massive Attack called "Protection". 

This boy I know needs some shelter

Don't think anyone can help him

Stand in front of you, take the force of the blow

Protection

And I can't change the way you feel

But I can put my arms around you

 Jon called. "Get out of the city. We're under attack." 

"I can't leave him!"

Jon agreed to come downtown as soon as he could; traffic was bad.

Hayden needed another rescue dose--the nurses were all watching the TV, some crying. 

And then I thought, my son relies on machines for his life. What if we get hit, lose power, if the generator fails? 

I called over Kathy, one of my favorite nurses. 

"Can you teach me how to bag him, just in case?" 

She did, and I worried over how long I would be able to squeeze the pump, how long until my arms got tired. 

"You'll do it as long as you need to," she assured me. We were all fairly sure disaster was coming to us, and the news of Washington and the other plane in PA confirmed it. The sleeping closet list was pages long--nobody wanted to leave their child alone while the country was under attack. 

I pumped in the closet to CNN. I saw the bodies jumping from the windows and I cried for them, and for my baby, who was crying without making a sound. On the other side of the curtain, another mother was pumping and sobbing. We didn't talk, just let the machines hiss and the newscasters react for us. 

Numb. Underwater. Surreal. These are the words that come to me when I think back nine years ago today, when I recall the time immediately following September 11. It was a month when the country reeled and the death count climbed and my son fought for his life, and won.  

Update on September 10, 2011 by Chandra Hoffman

http://www.chandrahoffman.com/blog/2011/9/4/ten-years-ago-today.html

Part 1 of 2 Nine years ago today 9-10

At six days old, our newborn son Hayden went in for the first of a handful of procedures, an attempt to enable him to breathe and eat on his own so we could one day take him home from the hospital. But because of our son's unusual anatomy, at the pre-op broncoscopy, the scope went through the back of his esophagus, risking infection of his heart and lungs with stomach acid. 

 

I was in McDonald's having a milkshake when this happened. I'd been sitting in the waiting area with all the other parents whose kids were in surgery, and I'd heard the white-haired nurse inform a Jamaican couple that their daughter's open heart surgery had begun. 

"Ah, she be slice, then," the father nodded, matter of fact, while the mother knitted beside him and I'd thought to myself, open heart surgery! And they were so calm! How come my baby was going in for a tongue-lip adhesion, something comparatively small, and I couldn't sit still?

Things are going to be fine! I told myself, and decided I needed to go have a milkshake to calm down. 

The CHOP poster outside the hospital McDonalds said THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MINOR SURGERY WHEN IT IS YOUR CHILD.

So it was okay for me to worry, normal, but this was minor. They'd wheel him back to the NICU and we'd watch and see how his oxygen sats were, and maybe do a trial extubation later in the week. If this didn't work, there were two more big guns in our arsenal: a tracheotomy like ENT wanted, or jaw distraction, breaking his bones and inserting metal bars with medieval cranks to extend the lower half of his face over the next four months, plastic surgery's first choice.

We'd chosen the least invasive route, willing to try and see how it went, save the big guns for later. 

When I came back to the surgery floor, Jon was pacing; they had been looking for me. Doctors took us into a small closet, away from the other parents, with a chair, and a plastic couch, and two fake plants, and a painting of the ocean under flickery flourescent lights. 

There were a lot of apologies and backtracking. We wanted to see him, but he wasn't out of surgery. Obviously they'd aborted the other procedure. I was still walking everywhere with a pillow over my stomach, only six days post C-section, and I wiped my tears on my pillow, which smelled like home.

They were very, very sorry, they said.

When we saw Hayden back in the NICU, he was in obvious, extreme pain, writhing and arching, unable to cry around his intubation.

One of the doctors came to his isolette and rattled off the list of antibiotics he was being put on, and I wished for pen and paper, but at the same time, knew that it didn't mean anything, that knowing their names, looking them up on the internet, wouldn't change anything, because he said it then: "Either he'll make it to the end of the week, or he won't." 

We drove home that evening under a sky that was gunmetal gray, heavy with humidity, on Broad Street with all the traffic lights, which I hate. That was the night J told me carefully, that he was concerned Hayden might not be ours to keep. 

It happened then: six days of ambivalence, of feeling guiltily disconnected from this poor little creature in the hospital was sandblasted off me by sheer terror. Finally, I wanted this baby to live, to grow up, to be mine.

(For PART TWO, click HERE)

Some people have it way worse

This week writing has taken a backseat to hospital time, which I hate. First off, there's this smell, like overcooked vegetables that marinated in plastic bags of dog urine. And then there's the way that just sitting there can be so draining. Plus I'm from the suburbs and think parking somewhere is my god-given right, not a paid privilege.

Saturday night my mom fell and shattered her femur--an injury common to linebackers, people with osteoporosis and recent knee replacements. Two out of three ain't bad. Having been left in hospitals often as a child, she likes 24/7 family coverage, which makes a good case for large families, except that we all went on to have kids, passing our offspring like batons at the hospital parking garage and corralling them on whirlwind field trips around the city where the child/caregiver ratio is like an underfunded public school. I keep quoting to my siblings the analogy of marathon vs. sprint--I think we're going to make it.

But I was already hospital weary: Last Thursday my son had his annual check-up with the craniofacial team at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia. This is a marathon in its own right, eight specialists in as many hours, people we have known since Hayden was a baby and transferred there at birth unable to breathe or eat on his own. I used to dread these--I wonder if other people who have gone home without their babies share my same anxiety that they technically belong to the hospital, and at any moment the hospital might take them back? When Hayden was younger, these loomed large, as each team evaluation presented the possibility that another syndrome would be diagnosed, the proverbial other shoe coming crashing down. So far, so good.

But each year since he was about five, I have seen them as reassurances, confirmations that the hurdles are mostly behind us, and our son is blissfully normal. This year Hayden opted in on a study on the effects of craniofacial abnormalities in children. ("Fifteen bucks? For answering six pages of questions? Seriously?!")

I had completed my own version, but surreptitiously peeked over his shoulder as he was doing his. What mother doesn't relish a glimpse into the mind of her eight-year-old boy?

I feel self-conscious and don't want to read aloud in school because of my face, mouth, teeth, speech.

NEVER

I feel like bad things happen to me because of my face, mouth, teeth, speech.

NEVER

I am teased because of my face, mouth, teeth, speech. 

NEVER

I want to die because of my face, mouth, teeth, speech. 

Hayden looks up at me, eyes wide, and whispers earnestly, "Mom? I think some people have it way worse than me." 

Looking around the waiting room in the pediatric plastic surgery unit, walking to get our lunch in the atrium, passing the NICU where he spent his early months, the PICU where he writhed after his second surgery, the closet where they took us when they told us he might not make it to the end of the week, Hayden still holds my hand.

We meet with the last specialist, who gives us his blessing to continue life as usual, and come back and see them all next year. Walking to catch the train home, Hayden quietly picks up trash on the city sidewalks with a disgusted harrumph, carries it for blocks until we find a garbage can. Then he is asleep, leaning against me on the train as I steal a few minutes, editing my neglected manuscript. Outside the SEPTA windows, the city falls away to green. We will soon jump in the pool to rinse the hospital smell off us, and I think again as I listen to him snore and kiss his wild curls, even as we gear up for my mom in a straight leg, non-weight-bearing cast for three months, some people have it way worse. We are indeed blessed.