The WM Parenting Connection

By Jennifer Tomasino

I belong to a social networking group of local La Leche League members. One conversation that recently came across the board was a mom who received a jury summons when she was pregnant and on bed-rest. She asked for deferment and was granted time. The second time she received a summons when her baby was one week old. She again asked for a deferment and was granted time. Now she has received a notice of final deference and told that she needs to report for jury duty or face fines/imprisonment. She has a five month old who has never taken a bottle and wouldn’t know what to do with and rubber nipple if he saw one. This gives her a three hour window at best.

Members of the LLL group have stepped forward to help: offering to wait in the hallways with the baby for the 3-5 hours it will take for the selection process, one woman wrote an opinion piece for the local newspaper which was highlighted as the “story of the week,” others have offered advice and words of encouragement.

I feel for this mom, I received a summons for jury duty a few months ago and was granted deferment because of a nursing infant. But I was on bed-rest when pregnant as well and could have easily been in her situation had the original request been delivered a few months earlier.

Several local moms have taken it upon themselves to inform and write state officials about the situation in hopes that Washington (my home state) will become a breastfeeding friendly state.

On one hand I understand that there are people who will do anything to “get out of jury duty” but on the other hand I wonder if there needs to be some sort of exception for moms with very young children and babies who are breastfeeding. This mom and others aren’t trying to shirk their responsibility, just postpone it until their children are able to spend more than a few hours away from mom.

What do you think? Do you live in one of the 13 states that has breastfeeding exceptions for civic duties? If not- do you think your state should? What would you do?

Breastfeeding at Jury Duty?

Image via Wikipedia

Rocket Fuel in Infant Formula: Are We Poisoning the Next Generation?

There is no question that breastfeeding is best for your baby. In recent years we have seen a rising movement in the US to encourage more mothers to nurse their babies as rates for exclusive breastfeeding even at the three-month mark remain low.

While there is no question that encouraging breastfeeding is both justified and needed, I have many times seen or been part of situations where new mothers struggling with the demands of nursing have been shamed, ridiculed or harassed for their difficulties in establishing a breastfeeding relationship with their babies.

On the other hand, I have seen breastfeeding mothers, particularly those who nurse past the 6-12 month mark being ridiculed, harassed, and thrown out of public places.

I nursed my first child with an ease that might shock some new mothers. My daughter took to the breast right away and nursed like a champ. Other than some minor discomfort when my milk came in, I can’t remember any blips in our breastfeeding relationship, which lasted for three years. I was ridiculed and harassed many times for this, even to the point that a nurse mockingly asked me if I was planning to nurse my daughter until she was in her teens.

During this time, as I steeled myself every day to do what I felt was best for my daughter, I remember hearing non-breastfeeding or no longer breastfeeding women mention a host of complaints about nursing; it was painful, I didn’t produce enough milk, my baby didn’t like nursing, and so on.

In my ignorance or perhaps because I was fighting every day to keep nursing, I blithely dismissed them all. I refused to believe that any of that was true and wrongly assumed these women were just not up to the tough job of mothering.

Then my son was born.

He didn’t take to the breast right away. In fact, he never took to the left breast at all, despite attempting every known nursing position, intervention, and the help of three coaches, two midwives, my mother and my best friend.

I couldn’t believe it, here I was, the breastfeeding pro, the breastfeeding queen who had nursed my daughter close to 7,000 times over three years and in every imaginable place and situation. Why couldn’t I get my son to nurse?

My son and I struggled through three months of agony as I attempted every so-called proven (and some off-the-wall) ways to establish a nursing relationship between us. I didn’t want to give up, didn’t want to believe that it was not going to happen for us.

I plodded on while my son lost weight; he cried and was colicky and uncomfortable. With a heavy heart I finally decided to start feeding him formula. He took to it right away, settled down, stopped being colicky and finally started gaining weight. He was happy, and I felt completely rejected; my own son, my child, wasn’t receiving his nourishment from me.

Despondent, I started looking online for help from fellow moms. I found some amazing support groups with women who didn’t judge me for what I considered my failure, as a woman, as a mother. They helped me to work through my feelings, to be grateful for the three months of nursing we did have, and to understand that the most important thing is that my child is thriving, happy and healthy.

I found other groups that shamed and ridiculed me, and attempted to break down step-by-step where I had failed not only my child but all of womankind. And so I came to understand what it was like to be on both sides of the breastfeeding wars.

I still believe that breastfeeding is best for babies. But now if I hear a new mother crying with frustration or pain at not being able to establish a nursing relationship with her baby, I no longer judge her. I’ve learned to open my heart and my mind and to understand that as mothers, we are all doing the best that we can with what we have.

The simple truth is that we do not have a culture or atmosphere in the US that supports nursing mothers, and until that changes the best that we can do as women is to support each other in doing what is best for each individual mother and baby without judging, shaming or harassing.

Towards a New Gentleness in the Breastfeeding Wars