Perrin is 3!!!!

   

     We have a three year old! The past year was certainly a little challenging as Perrin has become much better at self-advocating, but it has been so fun! His personality is best described as a whole lot of sass with a side of sarcasm, and a heap of goofiness. He went from barely stringing words together to having entire conversations, making up stories, and telling jokes. We've had a lot of adventures over the past year and he's definitely hit a lot of milestones, but here are the highlights:

- He has continued his swim lessons and is now in the "big kid class", where the 3 year olds start going to class without parents. He loves swimming and has just recently become incredibly comfortable in the water.

- This year we got to see Slipknot, Disturbed, and Shinedown in concert. At Slipknot he got to go back stage and meet the band and get an epic picture with Corey Taylor. We have tickets to Rage Against the Machine in September and are considering Blink 182 as well.

-Speaking of music, he still loves Slipknot and Taylor Swift, but he is also now really into Beyonce, Katy Perry, Disturbed, and Shinedown.

-He nursed today, on his third birthday. He has gone up to 13 days without. I'm pretty sure this is the beginning of the end, but I don't know when the "last" time will be. I intend to write a whole post about our weaning experience in the future.

-He is still one molar shy of a full mouth. Poor kid has been dealing with teething for 28 months and still going.

-He's about 39 inches tall and 34 1/2 pounds, if the vet scale at the children's museum is accurate.

-He loves to go hiking and go to the desert musuem. He knows a lot about different kinds of animals, plants, and rocks. He's also REALLY into picking up litter right now.

-He's still in our bed with us, although he does go back and forth between his little bed in our room.

- He loves to read and right now really likes And Tango Makes Three, the Eric Carle books, Caillou books, and one's with a little mouse named Maisie.

-He started at a nursery school in January and goes 2 days a week. He loves it and talks a lot about his friends there and sings songs he learns.

-His favorite color is blue.

-He loves to eat pizza, broccoli, croissants from Starbucks, and sushi.

-He really enjoys his animals and helps to feed them and let Fender in and out and look for chicken eggs.

-This year he got to visit Memphis twice, went to Phoenix twice, and vacationed in Seattle, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. He seemed to enjoy Seattle the most and talks about living and working there.

- He has lots of fun playing with his friends Isaac, David, Taeo, and Luna.

- He is having a construction themed birthday party.

-He went to his first two sporting events this year- U of A Football and U of A baseball. Bear Down!

-We had a rough patch around 26 months where he was getting physically agressive with other kids, and then at around 34 months where he started having some intense tantrums. Now we are just in the whiney phase!

-He loves building with blocks, playing with his toy farm house, doing puzzles, and playing with his cars and trucks.

-His favorite places to go are Playformance, the Desert Museum, Pump It Up, and the zoo.

-For his birthday, we had Starbucks for breakfast, went to Pump It Up with his bestie, stopped by Target so he could use his birthday money to buy a toy he's had his eye on, looked at his baby pictures together and went through his birth story, and later we will open presents and eat his requested dinner of artichokes and toast.

   I'm sure there are so many more things I could tell you about Perrin, but you might as well just come visit us and talk to him yourself! He loves to chat and meet new people and will definitely give you a way better impression than anything I could say. I've heard three year olds are quite the handful, so we are entering this year with a bit of apprehenshion. But knowing Perrin, I'm sure he'll at least keep things interesting!

The Big, Bad Book Review

    As promised, I reviewed the children's books we own based on gender representation. Why, you ask? Because media literacy is important to me. Because the types of media kids are exposed to shape their perception of what the world is "supposed" to be like and how people look and act. Because when that perception is limited to very strict gender roles and ideas, children don't get to experience the full range of their personalities. Because children learn to see anything outside their experience as "other" and if this isn't challenged as they grow up, can lead to some very problematic ideas and assumptions. That's why.  I ended up including 86 books in all after the rest failed to meet my initial criteria that we'll go over in a second. I'll first go over my inclusion criteria, methods, and variables and then move on to the results. Finally I'll discuss what this means in terms of parenting and strategies for mitigating some of my findings. I'll also include some recommendations for some of our favorite gender inclusive books.

    But first let's address the limitations of the information. I'm sure there are more than I'll mention explicitly, but let's at least talk about some major ones. I make some assumptions about the intent of the authors. For example, when I talk about gendered illustrations, I assume that the people in pink dresses were intended to be female. It is possible that the author was being very inclusive and actually intended those children to be male or transgender or some other expression, but given the overall tone of the books and the gender representation, I felt safe in my assumptions. Second, our book collection is not representative of all the books that exists. I get that. Furthermore, since Perrin is male, the books we were given may be skewed towards male characters due to the underlying gender assumptions of the people who bought them. Third, there is a lot of gray area in some of the variables. For instance, I don't include all the background characters, only the ones that either speak or have names. But we will get more into that in the discussion of variables....So let's get started!

Inclusion Criteria
    My inclusion criteria was pretty simple- it had to be a young children's book (so no chapter books) that had some kind of narrative. I did not include simple books that were only pictures or named objects. There had to be some degree of dialogue or interaction between characters. Like I stated before, that ended up being 86 books. There were definitely elements to some of the excluded books that were gendered and offered up discussions of representation, but for the purpose of comparing them to the rest of the books, it didn't make sense to include them.

Variables

# of Female and Male Characters Named- Pretty self-explanatory. Because these are children's books, I was fairly liberal with what I considered to be a name. For example, I counted "Mommy" and "Bunny" as being a name if it was referring to a specific character. For this and the next variable, I cut off the count at 3. So if there were 5 named males, it was still recorded as 3. I did this because the only books where this occurred were in a select few where a group of characters was acting together. The higher counts weren't really affecting the gender representation and I didn't want the large numbers to skew the results.

# of Female and Male Characters Speaking- Simple and I used the same count method as above. There was a lot of overlap between these two categories but because I was not including background characters, I wanted a fairly general criteria for which characters I did include.

#of Ambiguous Characters- I also included a count for characters that were not expressly identified as male or female. In some cases the look of the character was overtly feminine or masculine, but if they were not directly identified through gendered pronouns I counted them as ambiguous. The most interesting example was Green Eggs and Ham. Neither character is ever referred to as a specific gender, although most people I know refer to them as male. One is named Sam, but that's a fairly gender neutral name.

Gendered Illustrations- I used a simple dichotomous variable to identify which books relied on gendered illustrations. Examples include all female characters wearing bows and dresses or only female characters having eyelashes.

Franchised Character- I made a note if the character was previously established from something like a movie or parent story. For example, the Cat and the Hat was not, because the extensions of the character came after the book being reviewed. However, Clifford was, because it was also a character from a TV show. This went into to how I determined the next variable.

Gender Swapping Possible?- I determined whether or not it was possible to change the gender of the characters without it affecting the plot line of the story. If the cow in the story needed help getting milked, it wasn't gender swappable. Or if the character was previously established as a specific gender in some other genre, it was not gender swappable.

Bedschel Test- The Bedschel test was originally used to rate movies for gender diversity and representation. A movie (or in my case, book) passes if there is more than one female character, the female characters speak to one another, and they speak about something other than a male character. There is also an additional criteria of the female characters having to be named, but I used the less strict version for my purposes. I noted if the book passed outright, but if one of the characters was ambiguous and you could make the assumption they were female and it met the other criteria, I gave it a provisional pass.

Main Character Sex- I also noted the sex of the main character. Some books had two main characters of different genders, and some had a main character with an ambiguous gender, so there ended up being 4 different categories.

Non-human Character- This was more for curiosity's sake, but I noted how many of the books featured some non-human character (Animals, monsters, muppets, e.g.) This goes back to the idea of gender swapping and the choices made by authors.

Father/Mother- Finally I noted which books featured either a mother character, a father character, or both. If there were illustrations with a mother or father figure in the background, but they didn't meet my initial character criteria (named or speaking), I did not count them.

Results
     Ok, here is the good stuff. Most of it was pretty expected and also a little depressing. For starters, only 4 books passed the straight up Bedschel test. That's only 5%. If I included the ones that past provisionally, it only bumped it up to 9%. In addition, only 10% of the books had a female main character. Thirty percent had either an ambiguously gendered character or both, meaning 60% of the books featured a solo male character. Which is kind of odd considering that 73% of the books were gender swappable, meaning that the story wasn't dependent on the main character being male. Heck, 83% of the books featured non-human characters which I would assume leaves a lot of wiggle room gender wise.
     When we look at the characters in general, only 34% of named characters were female and 34% of speaking characters were female. In addition, 31 books featured a mother while only 16 featured fathers. If we looked only at those books that featured a sole parent, 25% of the fathers were the only parent while 61% of mothers were the sole parent.
     Finally, 40% of the books featured gendered illustrations in which characters were drawn to display gender over realistic depictions.

Discussion
    Let's start with the good news- 22% of the books have ambiguous main characters, meaning there isn't really any focus on gender, which is nice. In addition, 73% of the books were gender swappable, so even though there seems to be a tendency to default characters as male, it's easy to read the characters as female to balance things out.
    However, when we talk about representation of female characters, it's a little more bleak. The fact that there were only 9 books with female main characters was a little depressing. Even more so that in the books that did have female characters, those characters were in more supportive roles, thus resulting in the lack of Bedschel Test passes. And average occurrence of female characters was only 34%, period. I was surprised to find that one of the biggest perpetrators of female exclusion was none other than the beloved Dr. Suess. Despite most of his characters being made up fantasy creatures, the pronouns were almost always male. Even when they weren't, they were left as ambiguous. There was extremely little female representation.

In the book "The Day the Crayons Quit", all of the crayons are left genderless (which makes sense) except Orange and Yellow, which are defaulted as male. 

Another ridiculous example I found was in the Chick N Pug book. Despite referring to a future of egg laying, the baby chick was given male pronouns. Sorry, but male chickens don't lay eggs. I ended up redacting this book.

This chick is male in the book. Female erasure, plus a jab at domestic labor?

    The other trend that I noticed and had to go back and recode later on was the depiction of parents. Going through the books, there was obviously way more mothers included than fathers. But after coding what I realized was that when fathers were included, it was usually in combination with mothers. In contrast, mothers were more often portrayed as the sole parent. This is troublesome because this creates a situation where fathers are seen as part of the family unit while mothers are seen as the default caregiver. That shafts both the role of the father as parent and the role of the mother as literally anything else.

The "Bunny Book" is one of the few books that recognizes male parents and actually presents it as the career choice of this bunny. 

     So the big takeaway from all this was that there is a huge gender discrepancy in these books. Despite it being unnecessary, a huge emphasis is put on gender in children's book, but that emphasis steadfastly favors male characters over female. Children reading these books are getting exposed to the idea the males drive story lines, go on adventures, and do a large number of things while the females do very little at all. It also means female children are having to learn to identify and empathize with the opposite sex, which is a good thing. However, male children are not getting that lesson in reverse and are instead seeing themselves as the norm, the default, and the standard.

    So what can we as parents do? Well a good start is seeking out books with female main characters or characters that don't fit into traditional gender roles. You can also look for the books with gender ambiguous characters, since that seems to be somehow easier (Is it really easier for a character to be genderless than to be female? Is the feminine side of the spectrum that low down on the list?) Once again, I include gender ambiguous to be any character that is not expressly identified as male or female. I do not include style of dress and hair. I don't want Perrin to think you can assume someone's gender by their appearance or that there is one way to be a boy and one way to be a girl. Another thing you can do is to simply swap the gender of the characters. There are lots of books we have that have male characters but I simply change the pronouns as I read the books. Sometimes I even switch them back and forth each time I read the same story. Or you can take the emphasis off gender by using neutral terms like "child" and "person" rather than "boy/girl" or "man/woman".

This is an example of where I use "child" instead of "girl" or "boy" when I read. 

   Another idea that works a little better as the kids get older is to engage them in critiquing. Asking "Why do you think only the girls have eyelashes? All people have eyelashes!" or "Why do all the boys have short hair in this book?", "Why do you think books never have boys wearing pink?". Just opening up these kinds of questions and conversations can help children to see these books as being non-representative of the world around them and are a great introduction to media literacy.

Some gendered language in Dr. Suess. Despite few female characters and almost none that are named or speak, he still manages to use hyperfeminine tropes. 

This book read "with the heart of a dinosaur, he shouldn't cry" which is bullshit, so I changed it. 

Books We Love

   Here are some of our favorite books. They are by no means perfect, but they do help give a little balance.

Dinosaur Kisses by David Ezra Stein: This book features Dinah, a female dinosaur. She tries to learn how to kiss, but instead ends up stomping and whomping and chomping everyone. It's a simple board book, but it's nice to see a female character portrayed as being physical, clumsy, and rambunctious.

Rawr by Todd Doodler: Ok, so we like dinosaur books. This dinosaur book uses no gendered language at all, although the illustrations are gendered (all the girls in dresses, all the boys with short hair). The main character is a dinosaur that is bigger than everyone else. However, we learn that even though the dinosaur is big, they can still be gentle, helpful, and kind.

Charlotte Jane Battles Bedtime by Myra Wolfe: This book features a family of pirates, so that's always cool. Charlotte is the child and she decides that going to sleep is for land lubbers, so she decides to stay up all night. She is described as "hearty" and having "formidable oomph", which is a nice change of pace from the usual adjectives describing girls.

Baby Badger's Wonderful Night by Karen Saunders: This is a father and son story; the father badger takes his baby into the forest at night to show him all of the sights. It's nice to see a father as the parent of focus, especially in a story that is tender and sweet.

Why Won't the Dragon Roar? by Rosalyn Rosenbluth and The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf:
Both of these books challenge the hypermasculine norm. In these stories, the main character is a male dragon and bull, respectively. But he doesn't like to engage in the typical male behaviors of those around him. The dragon doesn't like to roar and Ferdinand doesn't like to fight. Instead they like to spend time with their friends and smell flowers.

And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson: This book is based on a true story. It follows two penguins in a same sex relationship and how they hatch an egg to have their own baby that they raise together. It is a little hit or miss in that it definitely seems to portray opposite sex relationships as normal and the two penguins as "different", however it's a good conversation starter and a really sweet story.

Green Start Books (various authors): These books are some of our favorites. Many of them were left out of my analysis as they weren't narrative based, but we love them all the same. They are introductions to different aspects of environmentalism- gardening, animal habitats, recycling, etc. The illustrations are bit gendered, but otherwise gender isn't addressed at all. The illustrations are very cute and the simple sentences make these concepts accessible for even young kiddos. They are also made from recycled materials and include a back section with tips for activities and life style changes.

How Bathrooms Work

    I never thought I'd be able to crank out two sentences on this topic, but whatdyknow! There seems to be a lot of confusion and (misplaced) anger about Target's LGTBQ supportive restroom announcement and related legislation. Now, some of that ire seems to stem from some good ole fashion transphobia. To those individuals I would like to extend the warmest of "Fuck you"s. However, I have also seen many MANY comments along the lines of "think of the children!" "We just want to be safe!" "I'm not against trans folk, but now the PERVERTS are going to get in!". Now, this is kind of embarrassing, but....I'm not sure you understand how bathrooms work. So I'm going to explain somethings to you....

1) Nothing is actually changing, per se. You've been peeing next to trans people your whole life. Policies like Target's are to show support for LGTBQ communities and to stand in opposition of the transphobic legislation that has been passed in several states. 

2) These policies did not dismantle an invisible force field that was previously in place preventing trans people (or those perverts who we'll get to in a second) from entering a bathroom. Anyone can walk into any bathroom. I have accidentally walked into a men's room numerous times without anyone being like, "Oh hey! Wrong one!". And I wasn't even trying. Unless you were going to some super max bathrooms with bouncers checking IDs and birth certificates, the entry process is pretty much the same. 

3) Bathrooms, especially women's, generally have several individual stalls with locks on the doors. No one can actually see anyone else pee or take a dump. 

4) Bathrooms are really shitty (see what I did there?!) places to attack people. There is one entrance and exit where people come and go frequently without warning. It's a horrible place to try to do anything sketchy, from a purely strategic mindset. 

5) These perverts- I have bad news- they've always been able to go into whatever restroom they want (see #2). And they can also go all kinds of other places, like dressing rooms and malls and movie theaters and pretty much any place you may also go. But don't worry, because the odds of being sexually assaulted by a stranger are pretty low. The vast majority of assault is committed by a family member or close friend. 

6) If you demanded everyone pee in the restroom they were assigned at birth, ladies would be changing their tampons next to Michael Hughes. Please tell me how well that would go down. 

7) When you talk about the trans community and "all those perverts" in the same argument about bathrooms, you are either a) insinuating that trans people are perverts or b) saying that trans people should be humiliated and probably beaten up or at least screamed at a lot (see #6) to prevent the made up imaginary crimes by cisgendered people. Which is bullshit.

8) Literally nothing is different except that you are now aware of the fact that a transgendered person has heard you fart, and you can either be cool or be a bigoted asshole about it. 

9) Target bathrooms are no more dangerous since the policy announcement and it's absence does not make bathrooms safer. That's not how bathrooms work. They are open doors people walk through to go pee. It's not super complicated. 

10) The conversations I have overheard are almost entirely about the ladies' room, yet 1 in 6 boys experience some form of sexual assault, often perpetrated by males. The fact that boys have been sharing restrooms with grown men  without comment highlights the absurdity of these "safety" arguments. 

Some notes for people who would like to delve a little further-

Saying bathrooms are now "unisex" or that "men" can now go to the ladies room belies a complete ignorance about what it is to be transgender. I highly recommend you educate yourself. Here is a good place to start.

Let me know if I have left anything out or if you have any additional great perspectives! 

It's Personal

     By now most people know that Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt is being argued tomorrow. This ruling could prove to be my generation's Roe v. Wade. It could set a major precedent for abortion restrictions across the country. The decision made has the power to either move towards securing women's rights and healthcare or obliterate it.
    I've generally tried to keep pretty quiet about abortion. I have friends and family on all sides of the issue and I have been wary of stepping on anyone's toes. So I've held back from spouting off the statistics showing abortion access is an integral part of healthcare and promotes social and economic security. I haven't engaged in religious debates about what texts actually say regarding abortion. I haven't pointed out the human rights precedent of allowing women to make their own choices regarding fertility and childbearing. Don't get me wrong- I have friends, family, and coworkers who have had abortions. With one in three women having an abortion by age 45, be sure that you do to. You even go to church with them. But as dedicated as I have been to protecting the rights and experiences to those around me, I have never been overly vocal about the issue.
   That was until I really sat down and examined my experiences. And then I realized- it's personal. I am pro-choice by default, my own morality and sense of justice really doesn't allow for anything else. But it's more than that. While I have never personally had an abortion to date, there is a good chance that I may have one in the future. Joey and I are about 99% sure we are done having kids. But I'm only 28. I have at least 20 more fertile years ahead of me and even if we were able to use the most reliable forms of hormonal contraception (which I can't for medical reasons), there is still a decent chance we could end up with an unplanned/unwanted pregnancy. And the thought of that is what jarred me into cognizance. It's easy to think of abortion solely in the context of teen pregnancy, rife with drug use and multiple sexual partners- abortion as the answer to an unstable situation. But the reality is that many abortions don't meet any of those preconceptions. Abortions are sought by women who are married with children. By women who are well educated and financially stable. Once again- your neighbors, coworkers, church members. But society's stereotypes of the kind of women who seek abortions were so ingrained that it wasn't until recently that I realized that I am the type of woman who seeks an abortion. And I may be that woman one day. And despite all of my higher education, my financial stability, my rock solid marriage, and my amazing son, there are people who think that Joey and I shouldn't be able to make decisions about the number of children we will have or whether or not I should go through another pregnancy and birth. Or whether or not we should all suffer through another bout of severe postpartum depression. There are people who would take away a very personal decision between Joey and I and force us to have a child we didn't want. And that scares me.
   What scares me even more, is that after thinking about this more, I realize it's only due to sheer luck that I have never needed an abortion. I can think of three specific instances in my life where I was at risk for an unplanned pregnancy and that pregnancy would have been devastating. A pregnancy at any of those points of time would have left me in a vary dangerous situation. And the horrific part is that two of those instances were before I was educated about pregnancy, birth, and abortion. Before I had received counseling about the types of situations I was in. Frankly, had I gotten pregnant in either of those instances, the odds are pretty good that I wouldn't have sought an abortion. I would have birthed an unwanted child into circumstances that were unhealthy at best and at worst would have ended in harm to myself or the child. My life would have been shattered, my education, my personal growth and discovery. All because I didn't even believe I had a choice.
   But I do. It's my choice. My legal right. And it's the right of every single woman in this backwards ass country. And I'm tired of being quiet and polite. And I'm tired of people having to whisper and have secrets and live with shame because they made the absolute best decision for themselves and their families and all anyone can do it point fingers and shit on them. This is not some hypothetical debate. This is not a matter of principle or a talking point or a campaign platform. I refuse to sit back and listen to people discuss abortion as if I didn't even exist. As if their words have no impact on me. This is my family. This is my body. This is my life. It's personal.
   And if you are one of the people trying to take this choice away from me- if you want to limit my healthcare and my decision making and interfere in my marriage and my family- know that it does not go unnoticed. I know exactly who in my life would send me back into that dark hell of depression and call themselves a hero. I don't say this to shame you or change your mind. I say this to let you know- it hurts. You hurt people. Your words and your actions hurt people. Your hands are not clean.

Early Childhood Development 101

    I think a lot of people- or at least a lot of people who have never had a child before- think of development as a linear process. Things gradually get better. Babies gradually sleep longer. They gradually nurse less. Which from a macro standpoint is true. A five year old probably sleeps longer stretches and nurses less than a five month old. But does a five month old sleep longer than a five day old? Sometimes. Sometimes not. Sometimes the baby sleeps longer for a few months then goes back to waking more frequently. Sometimes the toddler starts nursing like a newborn again. And if you were expecting a smooth linear path, it can be frustrating or nerve wracking or miserable. A lot of parents think something must be wrong. There are countless articles that talk about "regressions" (see here for why that is a bit of a misnomer).
    The reality is that development is often a messy two steps forward, one step back situation. Revisiting our expectations and adjusting our perspective can be really helpful in making the process less stressful, but I'm as guilty as anyone else in loosing sight of the long term and becoming completely overwhelmed in the day to day. So here are some of Perrin's big developments that we are finally seeing, even though they have been in the works for some time.

1. Sleeping through the night. While we were in Philadelphia, Perrin decided to sleep from 11 pm to 6 pm without waking. Previous to this, a 4-5 hour stretch was about the longest we ever got out of him, and even that wasn't on a regular basis. (Side note: Did you know that the definition of "sleeping through the night" that all those baby books use is only 5 hours? Not sure about you, but my concept of a full night's sleep is a heck of a lot more than 5 hours.) It was awesome. But the next night was the normal up every two to three hours, so we didn't get our hopes up. However, over the next few weeks the nights of long sleep stretches became more frequent until they were more often than not. For our purposes, I consider our "night" the time he goes to bed until the time Joey gets up in the morning, usually around 5:30. Perrin and I usually stay in bed until 7, so we get more sleep than that, but if he wants to nurse and then go back to sleep or something during those morning hours, I still count the night as a "success". Naturally, this meant he was also not nursing as often during the night. Which brings me to milestone number two.

2. Night weaning. We've been working on this one for a while. Waaaaay back in the day I thought I might toy with it around 1 year, the earliest it's usually recommended. But it was obvious when we got to that point that Perrin was nowhere near ready. And honestly, night nursing never really bothered me that much. We cosleep and Perrin had been pretty good at nursing lying down since about 9 weeks, so nursing him at night barely roused me at all. A little help latching and I just drifted right back to sleep. Perrin never even really woke up.
    So then his second birthday came, and the idea of sleeping for several hours straight had started to seem pretty sweet. I bought the book "Nursies When the Sun Shines" to help prep him for the concept and we started with a version of Jay Gordon's nightweaning method. However, once again, it was obvious he just wasn't ready. I'm sure we could have been a little more forceful with it and maybe had more success, but once again night nursing just wasn't that big of a deal for me. I didn't mind waiting a bit longer.
  So really, the night weaning and sleeping through the night happened pretty much simultaneously. Maybe once or twice a week he still asks to nurse in the middle of the night, and I usually let him since allowing him to latch for 10 seconds and rolling over to go back to sleep is easier than arguing about it. (In truth I offer water and remind him to wait until morning once, and if he persists I just go with it). But mosts nights he nurses before we lay down to sleep (he doesn't actually nurse to sleep at night anymore) and then doesn't nurse again until after 5:30 when Joey gets up. Sometimes he makes it all the way until 7 when we get up for the day.

3. Weaning in general. Another idea I had way back in the beginning was that I would allow Perrin to completely self wean if I was still ok with continuing the nursing relationship. My baseline goal was to make it to two years, and then just let him go after that and see what happened. Well, about two months after he turned two I developed a really awful nursing aversion. Nursing aversions are hard to describe. It's not simple as being physically uncomfortable (which can be a sign of latch issues that sometimes develop as kids get older and need to relearn a good latch). It's more like, if you could imagine that nails down a chalkboard feeling but in your nipples. At least that's the best way I can describe it. Anyway, I had started to get it during ovulation and menses around 17 months postpartum when my menstrual cycle returned. But after Perrin turned two, it was everyday, all the time. So I knew that allowing him to nurse on demand was not going to work much longer. I made the decision to start nudging him in the direction of weaning. I experimented with a few different approaches. Limiting the frequency of nursing didn't seem to go very smoothly. He was very resistant, as anyone would be when their main source of comfort was suddenly inexplicably unavailable. However, he was totally cool with me limiting the duration of the nursing session. Often I could give him about 10 seconds on each breast, say all done, and he'd scamper off to do whatever. So that became my main strategy. He could nurse as often as he like, but only for a very short amount of time, with the exceptions being before night and nap.
   Now about a month ago when Perrin was just shy of two and a half, I began to revisit the limiting frequency approach. We started instituting a "nursing for nap or night time" policy and did lots of offering snacks, distraction, and staying busy. So far it's been going extremely well. Most days he only nurses four times- before and after nap and before and after night sleep. I make exceptions for extreme distress, such as when he is hurt. And every now and then he inexplicably insists on nursing in between and it's obvious that it is a real need, even if I can't understand why. Going back to the start of this post, I understand that it's not going to be a perfectly smooth transition and I am fine with the ups and downs and back and forth until we both get used to the new status quo.
   My goal now is to keep up with the nap and night nursing, until that's no longer working either. Then we will start working on completely weaning.


So these are the several different goings ons, all of which have developed in just the past few months. I know things will continue to evolve as we near the three year mark, and I am very excited about the prospect of being done nursing and moving to even more independent sleep for Perrin. But right now I am perfectly comfortable in the fact that change is coming, even if it is slow, and I know there is light at the end of the tunnel.

5 Things to Know About Natural Birth (Or at least my take on it)

    This was not on the list of regularly scheduled programming, but I got tagged like 3 times in a post about natural birth and I've had to give this response before, so I figured it would be best just to keep all these thoughts together and accessible. So, as someone who had a natural birth and who is also a certified childbirth educator, here are the things I think are important to know:

1) We will start with anecdotal evidence. My birth. I loved it. It was loooong (78 hours) and my baby was BIG (9lb. 14oz.), but I would not describe my birth as painful. Contractions were uncomfortable (although I have endometriosis and not a single contraction hurt worse than my period cramps), pushing was really hard work (not only was he big, he wasn't ideally positioned), and crowning felt intense, but never once did it feel like I was suffering or needing additional assistance in any way. Now, to hedge, I had a homebirth. I could move freely, eat what I wanted, rest on my own bed or in a birthing tub in my living room. We could come and go from the house as we pleased and be left completely alone when I needed some space. I imagine if I had been in a different environment I would have faced some unique challenges that may have changed how the birth progressed and my perception of it, depending on the limitations of the space.

2) Let's be clear- No medication does not mean no pain relief. It simply means using other tools to cope with discomfort during labor. In my classes, we go over all the different pain relief options and they fill in a tool box with the ones that appeal to them and then have a separate space for ones they want to avoid. Massage, hydrotherapy, positioning, activity, relaxation and mediation, TENS units, aromatherapy- all these things can offer pain relief during labor and help labor to progress optimally. Some people think natural birth just means showing up and gritting through it, and that usually results in the stories you hear about it was so awful or they had to get medication or they were so exhausted after they couldn't function.

3) It's like running a marathon. Ask any long distance runner and they will tell you running can hurt. Your muscles are working hard, your body is taxed, there can be discomfort. But they still run because they know they are working towards a goal. They also know that the pain is PRODUCTIVE and not INJURIOUS, and that is an important distinction. Some people who aren't familiar with extensive physical exertion may not readily understand the difference. You can feel pain when you are injured- like stepping on a nail or breaking a bone. It hurts and it signals your body to have a adrenal response to the situation to cope. However, you can also feel pain during things that are not injurious but actually productive, like running. It may be uncomfortable, but your body is not being harmed or damaged, it's simply working hard. Same thing with birth. Nothing is happening TO you; you are ACCOMPLISHING something. And when the body perceives that kind of discomfort, it does not initiate a stress response, which is good because those stress hormones can actually make pain worse and make you feel panicky. Mentally preparing for this distinction during pregnancy can keep you from panicking when you feel a contraction and stimulating an injurious pain response. Telling yourself or having other people remind you that the discomfort is normal, your body is working hard, your baby is on it's way, etc., can help keep you calm and the discomfort in perspective.

4)One of my pet peeves is when people say "You can't plan labor." Well fucking duh. Everyone knows this. It peeves me because it is usually said in response to a mother trying to prepare herself for her labor or gain more knowledge. It sounds discouraging and frankly really patronizing. The mom knows she can't plan. But she's trying to prepare. And that is GREAT. Our culture does not prepare us for birth at all, but especially not for natural birth and it does take some effort to rectify that. While some people may feel more comfortable with a medically managed pregnancy where they don't have to participate, many others want bodily autonomy and the ability to allow their body to do what it needs to do. What I recommend to my students is this: Make a birth plan- the one you want. The one you envision and hope for. Then make a separate contingency plan. Talk with your birth partner about what you would do in certain circumstances, such as if you medically needed an induction (which is not common) or medically needed a cesarean (also not common). Write those things down so you both are on the same page and know what to do if a situation arises. But then put it away. Don't look at the contingency plan again. You have addressed the "what ifs", now focus all of your energy on your original birth plan. Say affirmations, read birth stories, watch videos, surround yourself with positivity.

5) It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Most people are interested in natural birth for the experience and the health benefits to mom and baby. However, at some point you may decide you want a different kind of experience and that's okay, but you can mitigate the risk to you and baby by knowing about interventions and how to use them. Timing of epidurals, method of induction, etc. can make a big difference in how much risk you are adding on with these interventions. Also, as I tell my students- you can't get an epidural in the parking lot. Chances are even if you plan the most medicated labor in the history of childbirth, you are going to have to deal with a few contractions on your own. So it behooves you to know about how to handle birth in the event that medical interventions aren't readily available.


     So there you have it. Per usual, feel free to ask questions, email, facebook, etc.

Catching Up

    I feel like I've really been slacking the past few months and am a little frustrated because I have several topics I'd like to cover, but this semester has been crazy for us. Joey has had some very time consuming classes and I feel like I've been juggling 18 different things. Perrin and I did a parent-child Waldorf class this semester. I started phasing myself out of the grant project I was working for and launched my childbirth class series. I also had plans to go back to school and had to study and test for the classes I needed to take. Unfortunately due to our financial situation, that isn't going to work out. Money is tight and there are other projects that I also need to focus on. That coupled with the fact that once Joey has a tenure-track job I should be able to attend classes at a discounted rate led me to decide to postpone any additional education for the time being. But at least I know I can test into higher level chemistry and calculus!
    I did however decide to put my M.A. to use and applied for an adjunct position at the local community college. The have an adjunct "pool" and don't advertise official openings, so I just have to hope that they need a professor in the subjects I'm qualified to teach. I'm also starting an extremely part time job at the local birth center leading a Parent and Child group. Throw in an essay I prepared for a writing contest, a trip to Philadelphia, and the general fall and winter festivities, and we've been quite busy lately. I really don't like being busy, but it just seems to happen.
    Anyway, I'm hoping to get a few posts out over Joey's winter break. Unfortunately any school break usually turns into "Let's do all the things we've needed to do for the past 4 months!" so I'm not sure exactly how much spare time I'll have. So if anyone is still out there, stay tuned. I promised I still have original thoughts and ideas, I just rarely get a chance to write them down.