Archive for the 'breastfeeding' Category

In the Dark, About Waves, and First: Waiting

Published
by
jess
on April 5, 2010
in birth, breastfeeding, family, motherhood and parenting
. 0 Comments

by Suzanne Swanson

In the Dark

You’re up there nursing, up in the tiny windowed room tacked onto the back of the house, the flash of sunlight a solid memory, the neighbor’s yardlight etching a shadowy wallpaper of black walnut branches.  When you’re sitting there rocking, the two of you shading into each other’s skin, camouflaging each other, and he slides into sleep, his palm flat against your breast, you could stay there forever, listening to the noise a floor below, not caring that you’ve been doing this for over a year, you’ve missed every event in the world that began at his bedtime.

 You think about forgiveness.  It bubbles in you, like fish breathing, naturally.  You are so generous.  Fed by the great mother, you feed.  Your good will sparkles and hums in the tiny space and sneaks out the uncaulked cracks between the windows and lights on anyone you choose.

You’re up there putting him to bed, and you know he’s tired, he’s been rubbing his eyes for an hour and shouting at you in indecipherable syllables.  And he grabs at your shirt to get at you, but after a few gulps, arches and tries to make an escape on slippery stockings.  Or, he does quiet and finally, after a long wide gaze at your breast, finally his eyes flutter shut and you breathe deeply, deliberately, to answer your impatience and only after counting to, say, 200, do you rise and sniff his fine hair and turn him so delicately into the crib and as soon as he touches the lambskin you bought just for him he stiffens his arms and bends his knees to all-fours and begins to wail betrayal.

Whether you heave him up to start over or turn and let him cry—whatever you’ve decided, whatever you do—your spit sours in your mouth, your teeth clamp down hard on the growl in the back of your throat.  You try to think about forgiveness, for your teeth, for his size.  Let this child know I am just weary, let him know I am only one.  Let him settle here, please, in the arms of the witch, the one who loves him.

 

About Waves

Ranae wants me with her when she has her baby.  I say yes—yes unless it’s that weekend I’m at the North Shore.  It has been too long since I saw Lake Superior.  Of course, she says, I know that, I know.  Besides, she’s been in premature labor, and no one imagines she will make it til then.

She calls me the morning of her due date, calls me in Duluth where I am tearing up my sister’s carpet to reveal scarred maple.  We are waiting for afternoon warmth to drive up the shore.  Ranae says her water broke.  She feels ready.  She wants to stay home as long as possible.  We talk again at lunchtime.  Nothing new.  We are mildly shocked at the distance between us.

The waves at Gooseberry wash over us as soon as we leave the car.  Breakers shush in at an angle, curl like pages slowly turned.  They boom like the ocean.  My daughter says, the thing about waves is, they never die.  It is impossible not to think of Ranae, think of how we all came through water.

I have never liked the idea of riding the wave, staying on top of whitecap, contractions, changing cosmos.    The wind is not benevolent; it simply wants the waves to exist.  The woman lost at sea is half-fish, a mermaid who breathes in water and in air.  She swims close to the rocks, she delivers her infant to safe harbor.

We hike to the falls and back, leave the waves and return.  Some of us see a beaver.  It is an autumn day beyond the perfection of blazing leaves.  The fire dies in rustling ashes on the forest floor.  We drive in quiet back to the city.  There is no answer at Ranae’s.

I am sleeping.  The phone rings with the odd trill of someone else’s house.  Ranae is on the other end.  She has a daughter, 8 pounds, 3 ounces, so beautiful, already nursing well.  She was complete when they got to the hospital.  She could immerse herself in push-rest-push.   Now she is worn, she is floating.  A gray mist falls on the lake, drawn like a curtain over the lapping water. 

 First:  Waiting

Once, barely morning,

I had to go beyond

the windows, left you

in our bed, pulled on

my everyday uniform, loose

over the drum-taut

belly-baby, called

the dog I barely tolerate

for company.  Walked

the alleys, watching

for the line between

dark and light. 

SUZANNE SWANSON is a mother of three and a St. Paul MN psychologist specializing in pregnancy, birth, postpartum and mothering.  Her book, House of Music, was published by Laurel Poetry Collective (www.laurelpoetry.com). She is also the author of a chapbook: What Other Worlds:  Postpartum Poems and has been published in many literary journals, most recently Water~Stone.

Waiting to Take the Pregnancy Test, Dreaming When the Moon is Full, Letter at Nine Weeks

Published
by
jess
on December 28, 2009
in breastfeeding, family, miscarriage, motherhood, pregnancy and sex
. 1 Comment

3 Poems

by Wendy Wisner

Waiting to Take the Pregnancy Test

A yellow taxi, bright as blood,
stops behind the oak tree,
picks up no one, and slides away.

Every thirty seconds, an airplane
grazes the yolk yellow house
across the street.  Blue jays

spill from rusty maples-
swarms of them, hollow bodies.
I wish we bore our young

as birds do, outside the body.
Humans like to look
at what they make while they make it.

Each brief morning,
I gaze through the red veil
of my curtains.  I make a world.

In the afternoon I lose it.

Dreaming When the Moon is Full

My father picks me up in the old Datsun,
seats still sticky from the apple juice
I spilled as a baby.  My sister is a child
in her mint green T and it isn’t weird
when I bury my head in her chest.
It’s mushy there, like leaky down pillows
and she tells me everything will be fine
the way I told her on the phone last night
everything will be fine because the moon is full.
Then my father drops me off at your childhood
home.  Your mother’s hair is long and gold
like Rapunzel’s and she says it’s okay
if you and I sleep in the wild woods
of the unfinished attic.  As we climb
the stairs, I cup my hand on the small
of your back, rake my fingers through your
corn husk hair.  Even in the dream
I cannot give you a child, but you rock
and cradle me on the sawdust floor,
my body floppy as a doll.  Over and over
you forgive me, mouth sealed to my milky chest,
stars knocking like dice against the skylights.

Letter at Nine Weeks*

First the book said my womb was a plum,
then a small pear, a navel orange,
now a grapefruit, and this morning, you pushing
your almond body against the edges
of mine, drool blooming so thick and sticky
on my pillow I feared it was blood, I said to you
I want the world, I want it just a little.
                           

Danny wakes, and we sleep,
my body splayed out, ripe, taking up space,
you stuck to me, secret as a silkworm.
The blender whirs, the phone rings.
Birds screech, but I am strapped
to this bed, not dreaming, not thinking, you gently sucking.

*”Letter At Nine Weeks” previously appeared in a chapbook published by The Zen Center of NY in October 2009.

 

Wendy Wisner’s first book of poems, Epicenter, was published by CW Books in 2004.  Her poems have appeared in The Spoon River Review, Rhino, Natural Bridge, The Bellevue Literary Review, online at Verse Daily, and elsewhere.  Wendy previously taught writing and literature at Hunter College; she is now a La Leche League leader and is pursuing her Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) certification.  Visit Wendy on the web at www.wendywisner.com.

Thoughtloops of a Breastfeeding Mom

Published
by
jess
on October 26, 2009
in Uncategorized and breastfeeding
. 0 Comments

by Tania Pryputniewicz 

Two weeks before our first baby’s due date, my husband became obsessed with his G.I. Joe collection. Why now, of all times, take three plastic bins full of naked G.I. Joes out of the basement, dress them, and auction them off one by one on ebay? I remember reading in one of those “for new Dad” books how “now is not the time to start a new hobby.” I cracked the spine at that chapter and left the book out around the house, including on top of his slippers, to no avail. I’ve heard of other husbands engaging in this “uh-oh, my wife’s pregnant” phenomenon, taking up antiquing, birdwatching or some other time-consuming activity. In my husband’s defense, we both have selfish other pursuits in life: his-triathlon (which requires you to be good at three sports: swimming, biking, and running) and mine-writing. Still, it was pretty hard to take-this ebay thing-with baby on the way.

Marrying at 32, my husband and I qualify as late bloomers, arriving at parenthood at the age of 34. I used to think PMS wreaked havoc, but it pales beside the hormonal ups and downs that accompany the hourly nutrient siphon of breastfeeding. I considered myself a sane and rational person-I had my undergrad and graduate degrees, right? But, the new degree: LUIOBH-living under the influence of breastfeeding hormones had me by the tail. Of course I loved nursing my daughter, knowing it delivered the universe’s gift of the perfect food, her warm body against mine, her little hands gripping my thumb.

AND, it was grueling. I’d hold her for the new routine of stillness (hours of nursing) with way too much time to reflect, finding all that feminist theory from the college days nearly useless when it came to marriage and raising children. It had been fairly easy to be good “partners” (my husband and I) and function like equals when we were not faced with a beautiful, crying baby. I went off to my poetry readings on Thursday nights, he went off the underwater hockey on Tuesday nights, Wednesday was date night. Monday’s and Fridays I made dinner, Sundays and Thursdays were his nights, Saturday was take-out.

Enter baby, who shared our genes and all of a sudden, everything was an issue. Who packs the diaper bag when you leave the house? Who changes diapers? Who makes dinner? Who pays the bills? Cleans the toilet? Feeds the cat? Who arranges for a babysitter for a date? Just because I can watch the baby and cook dinner and do a load of laundry, is it reasonable to expect my husband, who has been earning the money, to do the same? Is making dinner without the baby “down-time”? Logic failed me, as I tried to weigh and dole out our responsibilities in my head.

Now that we have three children, I can say with a sense of humor that while many a mother cleans her slate entirely for the first baby and gradually returns former activities to her pie, many a father keeps his former pie and tacks baby on the underside, somewhere between the shell and the pie pan…probably out of self-defense. Mothers don’t have a choice: the unmistakable growth in the belly during pregnancy makes it impossible to hide from the reality of being subsumed…some tiny creature…with arms and legs…growing, taking over. So I’d prepared myself, during daily cat naps I could no longer avoid, to let go of my routine. My husband, on the other hand, dressed and undressed his G.I. Joes and took a little extra time off work since soon he’d be the principal wage earner. The morning we drove to the hospital I had to beat him off the computer (ebay) with a stick (when I could stand up again between contractions).  

But consider this side of the story: my husband would often say to friends (within my earshot) during those first months, years, really, of our daughter’s life, that he was at the bottom of the totem pole, barely breathing somewhere beneath the cat. I couldn’t see it… “What do you mean?” I’d say defensively, bristling (LUIOBH), totally unaware that I failed to look up from my darling nurser to greet him when he walked in the door, or made any attempt to move the nursing doughnut, the changing pads, or the stack of diapers and onesies so he could occupy his former spot in his former bed.

We laugh now about those initiatory trial-by-fire days, less concerned with equality than harmony, trusting that our workloads balance, even when we can’t imagine that they possibly do. Once the house quiets, and my husband’s finished straightening the handful of remaining G.I. Joes lining the shelves in our middle son’s room, we indulge in a glass of wine, amazed we made it this far.

Recent poems by Tania Pryputniewicz appeared in The Spoon River Poetry Review and Linebreak; her cover art and an essay appeared in Labor Pains and Birth Stories (Catalyst Press, 09). She documents the dual process of mothering and writing at Feral Mom, Feral Writer and has work forthcoming at Salome Magazine, The Mom Egg, Empire Report, and Tiny Lights. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she lives in the Sonoma County redwoods with her husband and three children.

 

 

An interview on breastfeeding and wet nursing with Erica Eisdorfer

Published
by
jess
on August 18, 2009
in book review, breastfeeding, interview and motherhood
. 2 Comments

by Jessica Powers

Erica Eisdorfer’s new novel, The Wet Nurse’s Tale (Putnam), was released on August 6, 2009.  The novel follows servant Susan Rose, a strong, independent devil-may-care woman whose dalliances with her young master get her into trouble and propel her into the wet nursing business. But a working class girl with a baby she wants to keep alive is vulnerable to the vicissitudes of social mores, scheming fathers, and the very nature of the wet nursing business in the Victorian era.

I was so taken with the novel (definitely recommended!) that I followed up with Eisdorfer in a telephone interview a couple weeks before the book’s release.

 Q. Tell us how you got the idea for this story.

There were three things that were the genesis of the idea for my novel.

First, you know how you know people who were born into the wrong gender or the wrong time. I always felt I was supposed to be British, so that was part of it. I read everything [related to Great Britian]. It seems like the place I oughta be.

Second, I nursed my own kids for a long time-one till two and the other till five. With my second child, we quit so she could go to kindergarten; it was kind of a mutual decision.

Third, for most of my life, I have worked in a college campus bookstore. I’ve never been a servant, but I know what it’s like to have to cut somebody’s crusts just so, to work for people that require a certain behavior. I understood that I was bending my behavior-we all have to do that to a certain extent but that was what gave me the idea for the servant kind of thing and the class sensibility [that pervades the book]. It’s a long shot and a real servant would roll their eyes at my comparison, but my experiences as a bookseller allowed my imagination to roam, and I took it from there.

Q. Obviously you feel passionate about breastfeeding…? Continue reading ‘An interview on breastfeeding and wet nursing with Erica Eisdorfer’