Girl Crushing

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Woman is the only creature in nature that hunts down its hunters and devours the prey alive.

ABRAHAM MILLER, Unmoral Maxims

Since I haven't talked about boobs enough...

I read a lot of blogs. As of late, at least among the "mommy blogs" there is one heated debate and one heated debate only- breastfeeding. It's the subject that never dies, is never taken lightly (and perhaps it shouldn't be), and since I've started my blog I've never really touched on the topic. But here for the first and last time on Lullabies, I'm going to go ahead and "go there".

My name is Amanda and I breastfed for 6 weeks.

Some people gave me a pat on the back for the good ol' college try. Some insisted that I "could go longer you know." And I yes I did and do know. Some got up on a high horse and shook their heads down uponeth the scourge of the Earth. Some gave me support. More did the former.

Let me go on record as stating- I think breastfeeding is in fact the best thing you can do for your baby after they're born. It's scientifically been proven as the absolute best nourishment, it can help bonding, and there are multiple benefits for mother as well. But not all experiences are created equal.

My birth process was one great big ball of "oh, you want this? Well the exact OPPOSITE is going to happen." I wanted a vaginal birth and fought and pushed until I threw up, until I was so exhausted I needed an oxygen mask and six people to assist me. When Jack's heart rate started dropping and when his head was nowhere near close enough despite three hours of the most strenuous pushing, they called the shot and prepped me for a c-section as I cried in fear of the unknown, of the loss of the idea that I had about birth and how mine would go. My epidural (oooohhh, she used pain relief for a watermelon coming out of her vag for the first time ever! What a weak woman!) was barely hanging in there, the general anesthesia wasn't enough and if you'd like to know what the pinch of the scalpel feels like towards the end of the incision or what a persons hands feel like entering your body through your stomach feel like, just let me know. When I let the doctors know, they put me under completely.
I woke up probably an hour or so later. War torn territory, stitches and arms so sore I could barely hold my own baby. My body had never been in so much pain. To feel like you're dying and be presented with life, all swaddled in pastel stripped blankets, watery eyed and new...well, that's a different post entirely.
After I greeted Jack for the first time, I was presented with the next challenge- breastfeeding.
I thought it would be easy. I knew it was the most natural thing in the world so "why the hell is this not working?! Give it to me straight lady, are my tits broken?!" But they weren't, not entirely anyway. It was just harder than everybody had waxed poetic about. And it continued to be hard all the way through.
I cringed at every feeding time, which was always. My milk took a tad bit longer than I had thought. Once my boobs looked like Pamela Anderson's on roids I knew it was there, and then I thought it would get easier. I thought wrong. My boobs hurt so bad at every feeding, like my nipples were cracking open and he was sucking my blood like a vampire. And he was insatiable, since I made next to nothing milk wise. 4 oz. every 4-5 hours makes for a hungry baby, a tired mom, pain, frustration and sadness. I talked to consultants, I talked to my pediatrician and by the 6 week mark, after very little progress, after my breast pump threatened carpal tunnel and I threatened the pump and my body and Greg and whatever powers that be that were playing this cruel joke on me, I finally buckled and we took the drive to Target to buy our first can of formula, my eyes holding back tears from feeling like a failure.
And so it went. Jack ate when he needed to and to satisfaction. He grew and developed on point, and he only got sick with the croup once when it was going around the fall/winter of '08. I should have been happy with that. Happy that he's such a healthy boy and beaming with life every day. But I'll never forget the feelings I felt those first weeks of his life and I resent that if I had just not been inundated with judgement from other women, I would have enjoyed a time that he outgrew so fast. And I'll never let women get to me like that again.


I don't give a rats ass about what choices you decide to make as a parent. I've got decisions I need to make and a toddler I have to raise which is quite enough in and of itself. And if you're a woman that gets off on judging people for their choices because you think you're just so perfect, than I'm going to go ahead and say something I should have said three years ago- FUCK YOU. I don't suffer fools lightly anymore.
I believe in educating yourself about breastfeeding and in trying it and I believe in supporting one another if that doesn't work out. There are soooooo many other variables in life to consider other than breastfeeding. Yes it is an important thing but it isn't THE important thing. I believe it takes all kinds and that the world isn't black and white. I'm amazed I haven't completely given up on the idea of sisterhood, hell even just humanity, considering the things I've read, seen, experienced from other people, specifically women. But I won't give up. Let's be friends, sisters, women, mothers, wives and human beings. And let's support one another in the choices we all make in those roles. Perhaps I'm naive, but I feel that that shouldn't be so hard.

What do you think?

Vodka after bedtime...

I've been a pretty social person these last couple months. I think it started with all the insane visiting during the holidays and shuffling back and forth from tables of food, arms of relatives, toasts, resolutions. I suppose it left me with an excess of momentum, which I never previously experienced as a lifelong hermit. Up until December, eventful nights for me were junk food, 30 Rock and maybe a whooppie sesh with the husband. That was until I inadvertently made the resolution to take back my social life. I figured I owed it to myself after oh, 3 or so years of social ineptitude/ambivalence.
Of course, being a mother I'm oft plagued with the 'ol maternal guilt. Am I hurting him by going out once a week or so? Does he miss me? Am I being selfish? I usually leave after tucking Jack in bed, after reading him "Goodnight Moon" for the umpteenth time, safe, sleeping under the watch of his father. I don't want him to know I'm not going to be here to squash any monsters that arise in dreams.
After mulling it over, guilt tripping myself, talking about it with Greg and friends and in-law's and the neighbors cat, I think I've let it go. I think that I've finally allowed myself to have more feelings outside of our safe, cozy, familial nook.
I go out because sometimes I like to feel the bass, the kick drum, the energy of a friend's band vibrating through the room. I go out to laugh at things people say, in real life, rather than the internet. I go out to lose my equilibrium for a few hours, find it again and nurse it back to health, tonight I'm my own baby. I go out for autonomy. I go out to see faces I haven't seen in days, months, years. But more than that, I go out to come back in. To take off foot crippling heels and put on pajama's and to feel a sense of relief instead of the contempt of monotony. To look at sleeping faces and feel like I'm home. To feel like maybe next weekend 30 Rock, junk food and whooppie sesh's are exactly what the doctor ordered.

I think every mom, woman, deserves that. Guilt-free, judgment free. Have your vodka, your cake. May your "walk of shame" be to the crib and the coffee maker.

Body Language

I live in a peculiar time when it comes to body image, and consequently I find myself torn down the middle. The ever apparent Pisces, not sure whether to go with the tide or battle against it. Even if it leaves me stranded on shore, no more oxygen in my lungs.
About four years ago I never gave my body much thought. I was a 17 year old girl, taught and perky. I ate like a bird but not because I was desperate to stay thin but because I had so many other things on my mind, moving swiftly to consume and feel the world and "maybe I'll actually eat dinner with my family tonight". Once I moved in with my now-husband I ate more. I settled down, became content.
When I found out I was pregnant I was 115 lbs at a height of 5'7''. I wondered what my body would become, but I was more concerned with what my life would become and when I focused on the emotional the physical fell behind. I gained 50lbs in those nine months. My frame was a mix between a girl (being that I was only 19) and the full fledged essence of a woman. Confusing and beautiful in equal measure. It had its up's and down's. My hips are small so I ended up with a wicked case of sciatica which at one point left me completely bed ridden achy with baby weight pushing my bones aside to make room for the world. My skin unable to handle the sudden weight gain stretched and became a map of motherhood and dermal abuse. But my mind was suddenly level. Once a woman who battled depression with dark rooms and razor blades and now someone so flushed with life I had no choice but to let the sun shine in. For me, for us, for him.
After Jack and I finally met, after the rush of all that oxytocin that floods one after childbirth left, I looked in the mirror and I cried. I cried a lot. I cried so much that I began to resent everything and everybody. "What the hell happened to me? Why don't they tell you these things?" I was 20 and while everybody I knew was bikini shopping I holed up in my apartment caring for my newborn yet feeling like I was pulled through a meat grinder.
It was then that I got to thinking about women and body image and society. It was a topic that made me want to rage and yet at the same time it made me want to hide myself away. Even now. Even in this very moment.
I became hopeful after I became involved in our local burlesque troupe. These women are amazing. Pillars of feminine power and allure. They built back up my self-esteem and while it has taken me miles from where I was I still find myself looking in the mirror, head cocked to the side, skeptical eyebrow raised. While I want to praise myself for being a natural woman I want to abuse myself back into a size 4. Because fashion isn't made for women like me now, for mothers who ate too much Burger King when knocked up. I hate the industry for not accepting me, I hate myself for not accepting me.
And so here I am today, torn between two possibilities- embrace what motherhood has given me and dress it, feed it, exercise it, love it or reject it and starve, exercise, deprive. Maybe soon I can get to where I want to go, with ME still intact.