We continue to be delighted with the inspiration and wisdom our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants share, and we hope you'll join us for the next carnival in June 2012! (Check out
May,
April,
March,
February,
January, and a summary of all our
2011 posts if you missed any.)
Your co-hosts are
Dionna at Code Name: Mama and
Lauren at Hobo Mama.
Here are the submission details for June 2012:
Theme: Embracing Your Birth Experience: It seems like there is so much pressure in the natural parenting community to have the “perfect” birth, but everyone’s definition of the “perfect” birth is different – and it certainly isn’t what happens for many women. This month we want to celebrate the miracle of birth no matter what it looks like. Pick at least one part of your birth experience that you can hold up and cherish and share it with us!
Deadline:
Tuesday, June 5. Fill out the
webform (at the link or at the bottom) and email your submission to us by 11:59 p.m. Pacific time: CarNatPar {at} NaturalParentsNetwork.com
Carnival date: Tuesday, June 12. Before you post, we will send you an email with a little blurb in html to paste into your submission that will introduce the carnival. You will publish your post on June 12 and email us the link if you haven't done so already. Once everyone's posts are published on June 12 by noon Eastern time, we will send out a finalized list of all the participants' links to generate lots of link love for your site! We'll include full instructions in the email we send before the posting date.
Welcome to the Carnival of Weaning: Weaning - Your Stories
This post was written for inclusion in the Carnival of Weaning hosted by Code Name: Mama and Aha! Parenting. Our participants have shared stories, tips, and struggles about the end of the breastfeeding relationship.
My view.
My older nursling is turning five next month. I haven't been writing much about our
tandem breastfeeding (mis)adventures lately for a few reasons.
One is that it was going relatively poorly, sorry to say:
major nursing aversion. And I felt bad about that.
One is that I had
this external sense that Mikko really should wean. I happened upon a discussion of people talking about me behind my back, and that was the consensus. I know — you never hear good things when you're eavesdropping, right? It stuck with me, and made me feel sheepish and low. I kept telling myself, What do I care what other people think? But I do…obviously.
Just look at the
recent hubbub over the
TIME cover. That kid's a three-year-old. Mine's almost
five. I know there's hate out there.
I felt bad that I was feeling this external pressure to stop nursing, and bad that the internal pressure due to the nursing aversion was exacerbating and emphasizing it.
I wanted the end of our nursing relationship to be one of gentleness, peace, and mutual respect —
a wistful bittersweetness with more sweet than bitter. I didn't want an abrupt end with me screeching, "I can't take it anymore!" and forcing him away from me.
Calming the nursing aversion
I read a
couple articles that
Amy Phoenix wrote as guest posts for Code Name: Mama about
nursing aversion. I had tried techniques before (calming techniques, hypnosis techniques, deep breathing and relaxation, distraction), but nothing had made the toe-curling sensation go away. If nails-on-a-chalkboard had a feeling, nursing aversion was it. But this time, when I read Amy's articles (this was a couple months ago now, I think), I concentrated on this item:
"I am choosing to breastfeed."
It was so simple, and it worked. It felt magical that first time, and I was scared it would disappear. It wasn't magical, because I would still feel nursing aversion from time to time afterward, but it was amazingly helpful, because it was much abated from those earlier levels.
I also participated in a private conversation with Amy (where I doubt she knew she'd have this much effect on me), where she said something about how she wished we lived in an environment where nursing pairs could continue as long as they wanted without any inappropriately placed shame. That and seeking out other mothers of older nurslings took a huge weight off me and reassured me on this most basic level: My kid and I are doing something that's totally normal and fine. I realized it had been the aversion that had caused a lot of my psychological discomfort, because it made every nursing session feel so
off to me.
I now felt able, since I wasn't dreading each nursing session or feeling guilty about breastfeeding an older nursling, to contemplate weaning on a more logical, loving level.
Welcome to the Sunday Surf, a tour of the
best blogposts I've read throughout the week.
 |
| I think he doesn't seem as old to us as Mikko at that age because of the marked differences in hair volume. |
We've been beachin' it up around here. That's a verb Mikko coined, and I will now use it liberally.
The boys have been wanting to hang out and dig in the sand every day. Well, Alrik doesn't express this verbally, but he cheerfully sets off crawling once he's let down on the sand. He digs with the little shovels (whichever one you're trying to use), slithers into any hole you're trying to dig, smashes through any castle you're trying to build, and then scoots away on grand 11-month-old adventures. At least he's stopped eating the sand.
Speaking of 11 months. I had to emphasize that while I can, because: Tomorrow —
tomorrow! — my baby turns ONE.
How did that happens?
Links to read!
"Not that you’d know about this, but African and indigenous South American women have been wearing their babies in wraps on their backs, and breastfeeding their kids through early childhood for centuries. And many modern single moms, out of necessity, have been co-sleeping with their children through late childhood years since forever.
However, when a world renowned doctor and parenting expert Dr. Sears assembles those practices along with 6 other steps for growing confident children it is called “Attachment Parenting,” making news and going viral. It also gets a coveted TIME magazine cover."
So much good information here. So many linked resources. I can’t even pick out what I like the best. Please read and absorb it all. Thank you.
It’s important to me she recognize I am an individual outside of being a mother. …
I don’t want her to hear these stories and know me as an individual only in the past tense–what I used to do or who I used to be.Beyond a stay-at-home mom, who am I now?
I am not being oppressed by my parenting style. Thanks for your concern but you are missing a key piece of the story. You see; I am not solely responsible for building and maintaining my child’s sense of attachment.
Exactly. Attachment parenting wasn’t meant to exist in a vacuum of one isolated mother and her children. It’s a natural child-raising culture, but it reflects the millennia of how parents raised their children only if the village is intact. On the one hand, having been plenty isolated myself, I totally sympathize with parents who find AP hard due to lack of support. On the other hand, refusing to acknowledge the role that other trusted caregivers have in AP (particularly partners, who I think get the shortest shrift in these conversations) just reinforces those silly modern stereotypes that parenting is meant to be done alone.
Ah, I love e.e. cummings. What a beautiful birthday tribute, and poetry break.
you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you’re young,whatever life you wear
it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever’s living will yourself become.
We were stumped by
how to organize and disseminate the ever-growing collection of toys: Mikko's preschool playthings, and Alrik's baby amusements. But mostly Mikko's. That kid gathers toys to himself like black cat hair to a white sweater.
We have that
iconic IKEA Expedit bookshelf with cubbies in
our small play area that was formerly a dining nook. We
tried placing some toys artfully on the shelves, one or two to a cubby, in a sort of
Montessorian tableau. But that worked only for bigger toys, and was better when he was younger. Now that he's four and three-quarters and has umpteen teensy plastic whatsits, it's hard to contain the chaos.
So we started dumping everything into bins that fit into the cubbies. Only, then it was impossible to find what he needed on any particular day. ("No, the purple truck! With the lightning bolt!") Plus, like things didn't always end up together, so you'd have a naked doll but no handy
doll clothes.
Next, I tried sorting things by purpose: one bin for action figures, one for vehicles, one for dolls, and so on, which made cleanup easier. But when I looked at how Mikko
actually played, it was through an incredible, inspiring mishmash. A doll would be pulling a vehicle by a shoelace, and a dinosaur would come over with a screwdriver to help. Separating toys by likes cramped his style.
Enter:
Bin a day.
Prepare for binning
This was Sam's idea, and it's worked a treat.
We picked out seven bins, and Sam left me to start organizing with my own special system.
First, of course, there was
purging.
That's always the first (also middle and last) step in any sorting project: decluttering. We let go of anything broken, missing important pieces, needlessly duplicated, or unfavored. What was left supplied each bin without stuffing any of them, leaving room for new items that would need a home.
Next was
grouping like items together — but in multiple piles. I used a lot of plastic food-storage bags for the little things,
the kind with the zipper
so they're easy for Mikko to open and close by himself. (If anyone has a more sustainable idea for see-through storage, let me know.) So, considering we have, oh, a decabazillion tiny metal vehicles, I made seven separate baggies of them, and tried to toss an assortment in each one.
For
things that aren't as plentiful, like our Mr. Potato Head family, I placed all the parts into a single bag.
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