jana and i have been friends since jr. high. this girl is spunky and full of love and life.
over christmas we were at my friend tara’s house decorating christmas cookies. jp and i knew we were pregnant but weren’t going to tell anyone outside of our immediate family just yet (not for another week). but being around these girls, as well as my tara’s amazing mother, cindy, and my dear friend, shalva, and having such a riot, there was no way i could let them find out over an email or a blog post or facebook. so, while we put red icing on the gingerbread man and after tara, as always, asked me about our plans for kids, i let them know we were expecting a little bean. of course, they freaked out. tara and cindy were besides themselves but i didn’t think anything of it as they are two exuberant women.
as jp and chicky and i got ready to leave jana gave me a big hug and whispered, “shhh. don’t tell anyone but i’m pregnant too.” GAH. that was awesome news but i had to play it cool. turns out, jana had let tara and cindy in on the secret before shalva arrived. she was planning on keeping the news from me too until i let my cat out of the bag. her little one was due three weeks after ramona’s due date. and tara and cindy had to continue to play it cool since shalva didn’t know and they didn’t know i knew.
july 16th, the day after ramona was born, jana calls me. “when did you have your baby?”
“yesterday,” i replied, “how are you feeling with three weeks left?”
“my baby was born on wednesday!”
holy crap. cullen thomas was born three weeks and two days early. had he been born two days later (on ramona’s bday), he wouldn’t have been considered a preemie.
i got to meet cullen and catch up with jana this past august on my trip to minnesota. he’s a doll. she’s an amazing mother (but i had no doubt about that). who would have thought that these two crazy girls would end up mothering-up so close to each other. not i.
chicky with ramona at the hidden beach on my last trip to minneapolis.
cannot wait to go back on october 21st for some more driver family time.
ramona is breastfed. ramona is breastfed at home, in the bed we share together, in restaurants, in cafes, in parks, in the car, on the sidewalk, in the tattoo parlor, in the target bathroom. i do not breastfeed ramona in public as a sort of political statement or to be progressive. i do so bc the girl needs to eat! and bc it’s the best way to get her to soothe her if she’s fussy, nourish her if she’s hungry, calm her down if she’s tired, comfort her if she’s overstimulated or upset (like if the dog accidentally walks on her face or the bright lights at jp’s barber wake her up unexpectedly).
jp and i always knew we (well, i) would be breastfeeding her. there wasn’t ever any discussion of anything else. the fact that i get to stay at home with her certainly lends to the ease of this decision and i feel very fortunate for the set-up of our family and work schedule, which allow me the time and space to breastfeed her. i applaud the women that pump when they have to go back to work. i do understand the difficulties in the ups and downs of milk-production and latching issues that may affect a woman’s ability to nurse her child as much and for as long as she would like. i do not take for granted the relatively painless time i have had nursing ramona.
i also understand and am thankful that a big part of our nursing “success” is that i had an amazing midwife, maren wood, who was committed to helping ramona and i get a hang of the whole nursing business. ramona latched seemingly effortlessly when she was born. maren was very encouraging but also warned me about how things can change when your milk comes in. sure enough: as soon as my milk came in (only 36 hours after her birth) my boobs became extremely engorged and gave ramona trouble in the latching department. maren came over every day for four days to give guidance, check on ramona, encourage us, and ensure i was doing well physically and emotionally (i was a wreck).
many women don’t have this sort of resource for lactation help. the hospital has lactation consultants in-house but what happens when you leave to go home? or if you are at home but don’t have a midwife as amazing as mine, you can hire a lactation consultant but i know that jp and i couldn’t have afforded that. so, yes, we were very, very lucky. i also had women around me that i felt comfortable figuring out how the whole boob/milk thing worked: i was some form of naked or topless in front of my mother, my sister-in-law, my super doula (pamela black), my friend, aubrey, and, of course, maren and jp. without this trust i don’t know if i could have as successfully and quickly felt comfortable with nursing.
and now, at nearly ten weeks, ramona has become a champion eater. latching on isn’t as awkward or fumbling as it once was. she’s got a radar and knows what she has to do. that has definitely made my job easier. but the questions have started (i love you, erica) about introducing solid foods or how long we plan on doing this and other such inquiries into the relationship between a nursing child and her mother’s boobs. so this article was timely for me: breastfeeding in the land of ghengis khan. because, well, we aren’t worried about when she’s going to start eating solids or how long she may want to nurse. we are confident that it will all happen in due time.
this article was also extremely appropriate to me bc, while i have never been treated oddly bc of our public displays of nursing, it still isn’t something the american public seems to readily swallow (awful unintended pun). and though i’m not setting out to change the world, it would be nice if breastfeeding was looked upon by more people and more openly as a very important and even beautiful thing between a mother and child. and to receive that support from people besides my husband and family and birth team would be wonderful and crazy and, hopefully, inspiring to other women who are considering breastfeeding or are saving breastfeeding as a thing to be done only at home.
there would be a lot of questions people would ask if ramona were still nursing at two but chances are good she may be and we certainly aren’t going to discourage it just bc of what others may think or say. and i’m not going to move to mongolia .
i love it when classy/creative/cool looking places buy stuff from ollie’s vintage.
it makes me happy thinking they are going to a good home. cheesy, i know.
we closed on our house sometime in april 2010. the next day we took a hammer to a wall in our old bathroom.
discovering, gasp!, a window back there, we decided to rip out the wall, as well as the contractor’s shower.
and then we tore up three layers of nasty flooring.
but jp did a fantastic job at eventually making the floors look pretty.
a year later, almost to the day, we have a fully functional, beautiful bathroom. everything but the toilet was replaced. we (actually it was all jp with some help from his brother and his father) did everything ourselves–plumbing, tiling, window installation, pouring the concrete sink, blah blah blah. i think my only contribution was hanging the shelves. and they’re slanted. oops.
voila!:
now someone with actual photography skills come take pretty pictures–i’m not-so-secretly fantasizing that EJA would be up for the task. i’m wanna submit this beauty to apartment therapy!
welcome
