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?  

The Reluctant Grandmother of a Chameleon (or today's parenting dilemma)

Yesterday, my ten-year-old son Hayden went to a reptile show two hours away in Hamburg with a friend. After much haggling, we sent him with $30--all of his own dollars--in his pocket. This included cash for a $7 entry fee to the show and a McDonald's lunch. We talked about what he was allowed to bring home to his large habitat--which already houses a green anole, a very small garter snake, a fat spotted orange slimy salamander (their real name), a pickerel frog, a firebelly toad and 10-15 Eastern Mountain newts. The night before, Hayden was hankering for a veiled chameleon. We did some more research on chameleons. We have looked into this several times over the past few years, and everything I find says chameleons are very difficult to keep, and they are definitely not for beginners. 

We talked with my brother-in-law, who is well versed in the successful keeping of all things aquatic, amphibious and reptilian. Nick has created professional saltwater aquariums that included seahorses and eels, and he has built a stunning, full-wall terrarium in his office for poison arrow frogs, including a waterfall, live bromeliads, and an automatic misting system. He vouched that chameleons are something even he won't try because it is so difficult to recreate their natural habitat, and because they don't like to be seen, or handled. In fact, the successful keeping of a chameleon includes it feeling safe because it is hidden, in a quiet, leafy, humid, environment with strict temperature guidelines, three different light settings and a broad variety of insects and invertebrates to feast on. Nick told Hayden to get a leopard or a tokay gecko--easy to care for and can be tamed to handle.

You can imagine my displeasure when Hayden came home with a five-inch chameleon of unknown origin he had already named Frederick. He recited all the things the sheister who sold it to him told a gullible, big-eyed boy: that this kind was easy to keep, just needed a UVB light, a heat lamp and maybe a dozen calcium-dusted live crickets every four days. I've maintained a simmering rage all day that these traveling reptile show salesman are allowed to sell challenging and potentially dangerous animals to kids. (Hayden's friend came home with a baby NILE MONITOR--destined to grow to an aggressive eight feet! He was promised it would be friendly if he handled it frequently.)

Hayden was thrilled--he had negotiated the seller down from $30 to $21. He couldn't remember the exact species and there are over 180 different kinds of chameleons. He thought it began with an S. After much internet research, I think I am the reluctant grandmother of a senegal chameleon. 

Last night was a scramble and quick fifty dollars at Petco to get a corner of our habitat temporarily livable for Frederick. As I drove home in the rain with the UVB light, the red light, the starters for the flourescent tubing, a two liter mister and a baggie of calcium-sprinkled crickets, I struggled to put my finger on my emotions. I was pissed for sure. But there was more to it.

1) Hayden brought home an (unreturnable) animal we had discussed as being too challenging for our level of reptile care

2) the swindler at the traveling reptile expo knowingly sold a ten year old rookie an animal he couldn't care for, sentencing it to fairly certain death

3) that as an animal lover, I wanted to do my best to keep Frederick alive in honor of the fact that he is an innocent reptile who didn't choose this fate

4) but (and this is the big one) was all of this in conflict with the fact that I was sending Hayden the message he could do whatever he wanted, and I would pick up the slack for his poor choices? 

Frederick is still alive today. We are in the process of constructing a vertical habitat out of a cracked fish tank that will have the things he needs--UVB light and basking light by day, and incandescent light by light. We are making a false bottom out of egg grate and plexiglass to be the reservoir for a water pump and drip system that can, with the help of daily misting, keep the humidity up and provide a water source. We need more live foliage to create the privacy screening and climbing network. I have had to remind him several times not to handle him. 

Frederick the Chameleon

 I have made a chart. It has 52 squares on it; they represent the money I have spent in creating this alternative habitat for our 'bargain' chameleon. Hayden has until June 1 to fill those squares by working for me to pay off Frederick, or he goes to a new home. If at any time in the interim, Hayden cries uncle, I will help him find Freddy a better life.

For my part, I will stop complaining about the error in Haybes' judgment, stop bitching about the hoodwinker who sold a chameleon to a ten-year-old. I will drive to the pet store for crickets and mealworms once a week, and keep the silkworms supplied with mulberry leaves. I will remind Hayden to mist and change the light settings. And I will do my best to keep Frederick alive, and let Hayden enjoy him.

To be fair, he's pretty darn cute. The ten-year-old Chandra might have had trouble resisting him as well. 

Update on April 29, 2012 by Chandra Hoffman

Circling in on this, I realize...

The chameleon situation is actually a microcosm of what is to come: more and more I will have to let Hayden go out into the world with his peers, armed with nothing more than the conversations and input of the family who love him, and sometimes, he's going to come home having made a mistake. And J and I will lie in bed like we did last night, angry at the world that created this dilemma, and we will struggle to find the right choice, the teachable lesson, in the situation. We will debate how much we should rescue him, whether or not we should sweep in with a hard and heavy hand, or let him take a fall, or find a delicate compromise... When I look down the gauntlet of all the choices Haybes still has to make, I suppose I should be GRATEFUL that today we are only talking about an underfed, ill-fated, five inch chameleon.

Disclaimer: I have checked on Frederick more than a dozen times since lunch.

Dog Blog--Sampson, 11 months old

Sampson and Piper

It's hard to believe but Sampson's first birthday is fast-approaching next month. Piper (right) has the cake all dreamed up: there will be tiers of ground beef and meatballs, possibly a sausage and bacon layer, and a McDouble on top. We have no idea of our big boy's current stats. Big. Heavy. When he jumps up in the bed and lies on top of you, it can kind of press your bones togehter. I'm guessing he's around 160? 

Personality-wise, he is mellowing beautifully. He loves his kids and has taken Jonah's old place at the base of the trampoline, or herding them away from the water's edge. He loves swimming, much to the chagrin of our fisher-friends at the pond. He has built up incredible strength in his hind legs (an original concern of mine) and can now paddle around behind the boys in the canoe, assuring all painted turtles sunning on the rocks an easy warning and escape. 

There are still vestiges of his puppyhood status in his personality: Sampson can still take a game too far with Hayden and is oblivious about his size and superior strength when it comes to wrestling. It is still not safe to leave things lying around, as one of Sampson's most classic attention-seeking behaviors is to saunter by you and dangle whatever he thinks you might want (that running shoe? this nice permanent marker? a mangled Barbie?) out of his mouth, then break into a delighted, head-high canter when you react. 

With the help of the gentle leader system, he is a good walking companion and though he is not perfectly trained--my brother-in-law suggests a refund is in order on obedience school--he is the perfect dog for us. A little naughty, a little budgy, a whole-lot-lovey.

Fisherman's Friend

Stay tuned for the photos of Sampson's spring home hair cut and his brother's matching 'do--we sheared Hayden's Anthony Michael Hall curls at the same time. Also coming up is Anna Cole's training lesson with her eager, intelligent German Shepherd 'Claude Giroux'. 

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

Favorites on Friday -- Harper

I love HarperCollins, who brought CHOSEN to life as a hardcover and last month, in paperback, and I am having a great time on the blog tours with TLC and ChickLitPlus, but this post is about another Harper debut, my sweet niece born on 11/11/11 at 11:11 who has me smitten. Harper Ford

What a fantastic sister I have to not only move from the Caribbean to the PA farmhouse in the apple orchard only a hundred yards from my front door with her instant playmate daughter for my daughter, Piper's 'sister-cousin', but then to give birth to another sweet baby who brings magic and her angel sphere to our life every day. 

My love for babies is no secret--I will travel to orphanages in Eastern Europe to hold babies and have cherished that early time with each of my three. There is a frequent revisiting of this issue in the Hoffman House (captured in my article "Are You Done?") a constant questioning about whether or not this sphere will only visit our house in the form of nieces and nephews from now on... 

Harper in our lives is all the fun of baby time--walking up to steal her away for a prolonged visit at our house while my sister sleeps, play with her, and then the ability to drop her back off if she squawks too much.

What a gift for my kids as well! I knew Piper would love her (and accelerate her campaign big time for Piper and Harpera baby sister of her own) and Max has always been obsessed with babies, but one of my biggest delights was when Hayden held her for the first time. 

Hayden is a great big tough ten-year-old now, bustling from hockey games to researching rare reptiles to hip-hop dance class and interested in all things Flyers and Lego. I put a week-old Harper in his arms during our extended family's Sunday Night Dinner, and her pure innocence and magic touched something in him--he started laughing, the delicious, uncontrolled, joyful chortling of his toddlerhood, a hearty belly- laugh I haven't heard from him in ages. It didn't stop--he just kept laughing, marveling over her toes, her tiny fingers clutching his, the way she dreams with dramatic rapid eye movement, lids open...  

Today, my favorite thing on Friday is Harper, and the rest of her lovely family, the gift of getting to raise my family in this extended village, and be the doting auntie to its newest member. 

Auntie C and Harper Ford