Not that you asked...

I've been trying to recreate some balance in our lives the past two weeks, as in, Do Dishes Daily, Blog Weekly, instead of the other way around. But I just have to blog about the subject of Hathor's latest cartoon.

She was pretty furious about a column in Salon criticizing outspoken attachment parents. And I love her cartoon's response. It truly is not fair that parents who base their parenting choices on history, thought and research are the ones NOT allowed to share their opinions. Not that I think anyone should be handing out unsolicited advice to strangers. But AP moms get more than their fair share. I can't tell you how many times people "warned" me that my baby was going to "overheat" or be "smothered" in his sling. AP parents suffer through all sorts of nosy, unwanted questions. "Isn't he potty trained yet?" "He's not still sleeping with you, is he?" "When are you going to wean that child?" or "Why don't you just spank him, then he'll stop that whining!"

I think Ayelet Waldman is correct that advice from AP parents is more threatening to a parent's sense of adequacy than the advice of those whose practices are "often less a matter of conviction than one of convenience." Shouldn't it be? No one wants to be a detached parent. And everyone knows "breast is best," whether or not they want to admit it or do anything about it. But what, exactly, is wrong with conviction? The problem is NOT that AP parents give conviction-based advice. The problem is that human beings are imperfect. They forget that other parents have feelings and love their children. They forget that NONE of us WANT to screw up our kids. And they forget that it's rude to give unsolicited advice to strangers.

On the other hand, I, for one, am tired of giving good advice to people who don't really want it. Did I mention that my last client is using Baby Wise as her parenting bible? She had that baby on a schedule before she even got home from the hospital, and quit breastfeeding not long after that. She had no business taking my class in the first place. She wasn't the least bit interested in natural childbirth, and she thinks that you can't raise a child on less than $80,000 a year.

In other disappointing news... Our neighbors across the street became parents for the first time a few days ago. (That's not the disappointment, of course.) They're very private people, and we haven't been especially forward in our neighborliness because of that. Nonetheless, they know that I'm a breastfeeding educator, and that I was available for any assistance they might need. Unfortunately, they chose to keep their difficulties of the first two days to themselves, and their baby girl ended up back in the hospital with severe jaundice.

My neighbor and friend who lives next door to the new parents brought me the news. She was pretty irritated by the whole scenario, knowing it could have been prevented. I'm frustrated by the fact that they were released from the hospital before the baby was nursing well, just because the mother had an easy birth. But I wasn't surprised that they didn't ask for help.

One of the first lessons we were taught in lactation educator training was the maxim "Don't work harder than the client." In other words, if the mom doesn't want to do the work, there's nothing you can do to make her succeed at breastfeeding. At first I thought it sounded like a cop-out. Aren't we supposed to care about our clients and their babies? Wouldn't anyone who loved their baby and had the right information WANT to breastfeed? We have to start out as idealists, or we'd never bother at all.

But eventually we're forced into realism. When you get that first call from a mom who's clearly looking for a way out, who doesn't really want you to have a solution, only a reassuring "you tried, it's okay to give up now." Because the truth is that a lot of people don't want the information at all. They don't want to do the work, and they don't want to feel any guilt. Ignorance is bliss -- though only when you have no idea of the greater bliss that's available with the right information, motivation and support.

The problem, of course, is that some moms get caught in the middle. They desperately want to breastfeed their babies, and they've tried everything they and their consultants know of, but some piece of information, some amount of support, some act of God is missing, and the bliss they expected never comes. It's not fair.

In the case of our hermetic neighbors, I don't think it's a matter of not wanting to succeed so much as it is our culture's bizarre reverence for medical personnel. As though somehow people who specialize in the care of sick or premature babies in emergency situations would know more about the proper care and feeding of a healthy, full-term newborn than an experienced mother certified in breastfeeding education. They don't. They used to give babies sugar water, for heaven's sake. Not that a NICU nurse can't also become a CLE or IBLCE -- I wish more would! But it's not a normal part of their training.

Another part of the problem is the idea that you can't actually prepare for parenting, that you just have to figure it out as you go, and learn from your mistakes. Sure, that's true to some extent. But there IS information out there. And some mistakes CAN be prevented. Severe jaundice would be one of them.

Anyhow, I think I've gone on long enough. This post went in a different direction than I planned, so maybe I'll actually write again soon. ;)