Feminist Parenting Forum - AKL, Tues 28th Mar

What:  Feminist Parenting Forum

Who:  Put on by the Auckland Women's Centre, featuring a stellar panel of Emily Writes, Tania Pouwhare and Sisilia Eteuati, all welcome

When:  Tuesday 28th March, doors open at 6.30pm for 7pm start

Where:  Mt Eden War Memorial Hall, 487 Dominion Rd, Balmoral, easy to get to on the 267 or 258 bus routes from the city or the southern isthmus, also the Outer (Orange) Link and cross-town services along Balmoral Rd.  Some parking behind the building too.  

How:  Tickets are on a sliding scale from $0 to $20 based on what you can afford.  Payments can be made in advance to the AWC bank account "Auckland Women’s Centre Incorporated" 12 3012 0782605 00 Reference: your name, forum.  Cash accepted on the night too, sorry no eftpos.  Email info@womenz.org.nz to register.

Facebook event here.

Reminder: Paid Parental Leave meeting in Auckland tonight!

Hope to see you there!

What:  Public meeting as part of the 26 for Babies campaign, supporting Sue Moroney's bill to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks.

When:  Tuesday 23rd October, 7pm

Where:  At the Fickling Centre, underneath the Mt Roskill Library, 546 Mt Albert Rd, Three Kings (best accessed from the lower carpark)

Who:  You, your friends, your neighbours, your workmates, that person you say hi to at the bus stop, and...

• Michele A'Court in the chair
• Jacquie Brown - famous from such things as Keep Calm and Carry On
• Sue Moroney MP - Labour
• Jan Logie MP - Greens
• Marama Davidson - Te Wharepora Hou
• Professor Tim Hazeldine - Economist

Facebook event.

Auckland public meeting on Extending Paid Parental Leave - 23rd Oct

What:  Public meeting as part of the 26 for Babies campaign, supporting Sue Moroney's bill to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks.

When:  Tuesday 23rd October, 7pm

Where:  At the Fickling Centre, underneath the Mt Roskill Library, 546 Mt Albert Rd, Three Kings (best accessed from the lower carpark)

Who:  You, your friends, your neighbours, your workmates, that person you say hi to at the bus stop, and...

• Michele A'Court in the chair
• Jacquie Brown - famous from such things as Keep Calm and Carry On
• Sue Moroney MP - Labour
• Jan Logie MP - Greens
• Marama Davidson - Te Wharepora Hou
• Professor Tim Hazeldine - Economist

Facebook event.

Guest Post: Abortion & maternal mental health report

Many thanks to Family Planning NZ for allowing me to publish the below from their e-newsletter:

A report released in December 2011 by the United Kingdom National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health was commissioned to review the best available evidence on any association between induced abortion and mental health outcomes, and draw conclusions where possible.  The report concluded that, on the best evidence available: 

• The rates of mental health problems for women with an unwanted pregnancy were the same whether they had an abortion or gave birth.
• An unwanted pregnancy was associated with an increased risk of mental health problems.
• The most reliable predictor of post-abortion mental health problems for women was having a history of mental health problems before the abortion. 
• The factors associated with increased rates of mental health problems for women in the general population and following abortion were similar. 
• There were some additional factors associated with an increased risk of mental health problems specifically related to abortion, such as pressure from a partner to have an abortion and negative attitudes towards abortions in general and towards a woman’s personal experience of the abortion. 

Here's a link to the full PDF of the report.

cynical? moi?

am i the only person who watched this ad with an increasing sense of annoyance?



i know it's meant to be some kind of tribute to mothers, but the absence of fathers really bothered me.  it seemed to me to insiduously reaffirm the stereotype that all the work around raising children is to be done by mothers, that mothering is vastly different from parenting.  and enforcement of the notion that if you're not a mother, you're missing out on doing the best job in the whole wide world - which is insensitive to women who can't have children and insulting to those who choose not to.

also liked this point, which i missed the first time i watched it:

I like how they used a lot of different races, but did you see how every other race’s house and life looked dirty, cluttered, and poor except the white family?

yup, and only the people of colour were using public transport too.  read into that what you will.

so no, the ad didn't make want to cry and certainly didn't develop in me an urge to buy more proctor & gamble products.  but maybe that's just because i'm too much of a cynic.

ETA: the ad (whoops!)

Of children and protests and taking the former to the latter

Port workers and their families on the picket line. 
Child holds placard saying "All my daddy wants is a roster".

On Saturday I will be going to the Rally to Save Our Port (4pm at Britomart for those not into Facespy).  I'll try to communicate my outrage at the union-busting tactics of Ports of Auckland management in an appropriate manner for someone who is part of the co-governance structure of POAL's inevitable owner (Auckland Council) in another post, if I can find a way. 

My children will be coming with me, and their father, to the rally.  I expect to see many other children there too, not least because at the heart of the issue of the Ports dispute is the impact of casualisation on families.

Wriggly and Snuffly are unlikely to be holding placards or chanting (neither can read and one can't talk) but they will be there and we will talk to them about what it is and why and see what the verbal one things and so on.

Part of my reason for taking the kids is to show them the possibilities of collective action, of standing up together with others, and give them experiences that are about challenging authority.  In time I shall possibly be the authority that gets challenged, but no matter as long as they are thinking critically. 

But the main reason they are going, and the main reason most small children who go to protests are there, is because I simply cannot participate unless I can bring my children with me.

Do I think that Wriggly and Snuffly understand precisely the cause and the chants and the speeches flying around above their heads?  No.  And I don't expect anyone who sees them to think "wow those kids are big supporters of this cause."  They are there primarily because I am there.

Is that selfish on my part, to take them along so that I can participate?  I don't think so.  I'm not putting them in danger or depriving them of something vital; in fact I'm showing them a part of civil society that lots of kids probably only see from the outside, on the television. 

If I go shopping and I take them with me no one says I am cruel for making Wriggly and Snuffly tag along.  Whenever I've taken the kids to council work I haven't faced any criticism for forcing them to be in a workshop or meeting; rather I've been apologising for when they are a bit noisy or try to steal someone's shoe. 

When they get older and it becomes more feasible to do so, I will ask them if they want to come and if they say no then I'll try to arrange a babysitter or something.  We'll see how that goes. 

And as with protests so with so much else in life - if you make it so that children are unwelcome then you are also effectively shutting out their primary caregivers, and most of the time that's going to be women.  Let's see if we can change that.

On being a pro-choice mother

When I was first considering actually deliberately having a child I was nervous about a whole host of things.  One thing that worried me more than it probably ought to have was whether the experience of pregnancy would dent my staunchly pro-choice attitude.

I thought that I might get all misty-eyed about the embryo, and later the fetus, to a point where my view on abortion changed.  I was concerned that if I didn't I'd find it hard to connect to my offspring once they were here.  Neither came to pass.

Did I love the fetuses?  Not really.  I found the whole thing quite surreal, even with my third pregnancy, when I already had an example of what was coming right in front of me on a daily basis.  To me they were wanted, but they were too abstract for it to really be what I would call love.  Fondness?  Yes, certainly - I would sing to my bump, put my hands on it tenderly, that kind of thing.  But the "life" part of the fetus was something in my head, rather than in my womb.  It was all about the potential, not the actual; the future, not the present.

Did I love my babies?  Yes.  I thought I might not, when they first arrived, because the chances of PND were high for me and I hadn't had much to do with babies.  Instead I had a sense of deep wonder when I saw them for the first time, through the drug-induced haze, and within a few hours with both of them I would find myself staring at them through the perspex cot while they slept, grinning inanely.  Maybe that was the drugs too.  I know for many women the attachment doesn't come so quick, and maybe if I have another it won't.

Do I love my children?  Without doubt.  Every day I honestly do marvel that they are in my life.  Sometimes when they are asleep, of course.    I've made sacrifices for them, very real and significant ones, and I will again in the future.  I mostly do that willingly.  I enjoy spending time with them, even if sometimes I am a bit stumped to find something that will suit their needs and mine simultaneously. 

Do I wish I'd had an abortion?  Never.  All three pregnancies to date have been wanted.  When the first ended early in miscarriage I was pretty upset.  Not absolutely devastated, because although I grieved it was more for the lost opportunity, not for a lost person.  Others may feel differently of course.

Would I have an abortion in the future?  Yes; if I became pregnant in a situation which was untenable I would.  And if that time ever comes I want to be able to have the choice, myself.  I want to be able to choose who to talk it over with.  I want it to be my decision and no one else's.  And no one else can determine whether my situation is untenable, only me.  There is no universal test we can apply to whether someone needs an abortion or not.  If a pregnant person wants an abortion then they need one, whether they are already a parent or not.

 

Slogan:  "Pro-choice moms don't love their children". With angry ranty guy in the middle.

Do pro-choice parents love their children?   Well, I love mine.        

***

This is part of a week of Pro-Choice Postings hosted here at The Hand Mirror starting on Friday 28th October 2011.  For an index of all the posts, being updated as they go up, please check the Pro-Choice Postings index.  And if you'd like to submit a post for cross-posting, guest posting or linking to please email thehandmirror@gmail.com.

Guest post: Abortion as an act of love

By pohutu, cross-posted from threewisewomen

When you’re in a defensive crouch in the face of those on the march against reproductive rights, you can find you wake up one day to discover they’ve seized big swaths of ground that you’d never really even thought about defending. Perhaps because you never thought the ground was yours in the first place. Or perhaps because you’d simply never really thought about it.

One of those swaths of ground is love. Yes, don’t be shocked: love. Abortion and love.

Anti-abortionists began their assault on the ‘love’ ground decades ago: God loves you and your baby; we love you and your baby; we are the ones who love; you are the ones who hate and kill. Opposing abortion was the ‘loving’ position to take. For a while, this love-focus was directed primarily at the fetus. Save the life of the unborn child. We want to force you to continue an unwanted pregnancy because we love babies, we love your baby, we love children.

But if you really were doing this for love, how could you tell a woman that she was a murderer, a killer? How could you scream obscenities at her on a picket outside a clinic? Being all about love, and being so cruel to pregnant women wasn’t a good look. So, in recent years, there’s been an increased focus on the woman, with a lot of anti energy going into making the case that abortion hurts women. Now, it’s that we want to force you to continue this pregnancy not just because we love ‘the baby’, but because we love you, too.

In a culture that reveres mother-love, it’s easy to see abortion as anything but an act of love, and so we on the pro-choice side just gave away the ‘love’ ground without really even realizing it was there, without really even thinking about it.

Let’s take it back: “Abortion as an act of love.” Does that statement shock you? Does it seem a radical thing to say? If it does, why? If it doesn’t, hey, you get it. Abortion as an act of love. How could that possibly work? What could that possibly mean?

Just as there are as many reasons for having a child as there are women who have children, there are as many reasons for having an abortion as women who have abortions. Is every birth an act of love? Is every abortion its opposite? Let’s say you were unhappily pregnant and forced to give birth against your will (what anti-abortion advocates, out of ‘love’, want to make a reality). Would that birth be an act of love? Let’s say you had three children, lived in poverty, became pregnant and for the sake of your children, had an abortion. Would that abortion be an act of love? Let’s say you were 13 and pregnant and wanted an abortion. Your mother arranged it for you. Would your mother’s act be an act of love?

Abortion can be love just as motherhood can be love. Abortion might not be an act of love – coerced abortions, for example; motherhood might not be an act of love – coerced motherhood, for example. Or, an abortion might be simply a raw need. It might be desperation. It might be a mistake. It might be a million other things. And one of the those things is love: Abortion as an act of love.

***

This is part of a week of Pro-Choice Postings hosted here at The Hand Mirror starting on Friday 28th October 2011.  For an index of all the posts, being updated as they go up, please check the Pro-Choice Postings index.  And if you'd like to submit a post for cross-posting, guest posting or linking to please email thehandmirror@gmail.com. 

Expanding and contracting and expanding again

I was so sure it would be the Tuesday.  No particular reason, just a hunch. 

Due date was the first or second of September; the midwife seemed to waggle back and forth between them.  I was full and heavy, the most pregnant I'd ever been before.  Maybe I thought Tuesday because I wanted the pregnant part to be over.  I was very apprehensive about the labour part though, so I just kept pushing it away in my mind. 

Magically this process was going to be:

1. Pregnant
2. ????
3. Baby and mother healthy and well

I hadn't laboured at all with Wriggly, not a single contraction, in a story I told in three parts several years ago.  I was partly looking forward to giving labour a go, but pretty nervous, especially in regard to what I consider one of the scariest medical words in the English language, "crowning".  And I knew if labour didn't come on spontaneously soon it would be off to surgery for another sunroof delivery, with nary a uterus quiver experienced, and no chance of labouring with any future pregnancies either.

By 10.30pm I'd given up waiting to feel my first ever contraction and I headed to bed.

Moments from the Wrigglyverse

Wriggly:  Stop the rain!
Me:  I can't stop the rain.
Wriggly:  RAIN STOP!!!!!!
Me:  Did that work?
Wriggly:  No

---


Wriggly:  I'm going to buy a new TV, oh yeah.
Me:  Why are you going to buy a new TV?
Wriggly:  Because the old TV is old.  And I like LG because I like LG. 
Me:  Why do you like LG?
Wriggly:  Because I like it.
Me: What will you use to buy the new TV?
Wriggly:  I'll go to the TV shop and I'll buy it.
Me:  What will you buy it with?
Wriggly:  Oh I'll get some money, oh yeah.
Me:  How will you get some money?
Wriggly: 
Me:  How do Mummy and Daddy get money?
Wriggly: 
Me:  When Daddy goes to the shops with you, how does he buy things?
Wriggly:  He gets some money.
Me:  Where does he get the money from?
Wriggly:  The tramspectrer.
Me:  Can you say that again?
Wriggly:  The tramspectrer.
Me:  Tramspectrer?
Wriggly:  Oh yeah.
Me:  What colour is a tramspectrer?
Wriggly:  Green, yes, because green is my favourite colour.
Me:  Whereabouts have you seen a tramspectrer?
Wriggly:  At the shops, with Daddy.
Me:  Which shop?
Wriggly:  Oh it was only a pretend shop.
Me:  (Silent ARGH!)

---

Wriggly:  I haven't got any broccoli!
Me:  Would you like some broccoli?
Wriggly:  That's not broccoli! It's not!
Me:  You're right, it's cauliflower.  Here's some broccoli, would you like some broccoli?
Wriggly:  No, not really.

---

Wriggly is almost three and a half years old.  I've just spent most of four days away from him, for the first time in a very long time.  I missed him, and Snuffly, and I really enjoyed the time away for my partner and I to just be ourselves, not wearing any hats for a couple of days.  He welcomed me back with big smiles, they both did, and a bit of anxiety that he wasn't coming home which was easily soothed.  The three incidents above all happened today, since we met him at his Nana's at lunchtime.  I feel v lucky, every day.

Parental notification is defacto parental consent

Make no mistake:  parental notification for teen abortions is actually about parental consent for teen abortions.

Let's consider the broader position of those who advocate strongly for parental notification (not just those who agree when asked the right magical question).

Do they support the right of pregnant adults to have abortion on demand?  No.

Do they support funding for independent counselling services, not run by anti-choice organisations?  No.

Do they support Family Planning and their work to improve both sex education and access to contraception?  No.

Do they support early medication abortion, because it is easier both physically and psychologically?  No.

Do they seek to reinforce the position, shared by our current unfair law, that the pregnant person is not the person who should decide whether or not to terminate their own pregnancy?  Yes.

The point of changing the law to get parental notification is to yet again take power away from the pregnant person.  Notification will become defacto parental consent.  And that is just another way of saying the pregnant person can't, shouldn't, musn't decide. 

It is wrong that certifying consultants have the power to deny or allow abortions.*  It would be just as wrong for parents to have that power.  Even if that power is exercised over their own child, and they are under 16.

Many good points have been made in other blog posts about the relationships of parents and their children, and how while parental involvement can be encouraged it should not be mandated.  I'm not able to put a great link farm of all that good stuff together right now.  I agree with many of the arguments that have been made - about the right of teens to privacy, about the vulnerability of those who will be in abusive family environments, about the problem with parental notification where someone in a parental role may be the father, about respecting that people should choose who supports them.

I agree with all of that, and at base it all boils down to one thing for me; respecting the right of the pregnant person to control their own body, and acknowledging no one is in a better position to make that choice than they are.




*  This should in no way be read as a criticism of the many excellent certifying consultants who do difficult work in challenging circumstances.  I heart them.

Guest Post: Dealing with Infertility: a How to Guide for friends and family

Many thanks to Foggy in Nelson for this contribution, on the eve of Mothers' Day.  Wanting to write this has driven FiN to set up her own eponymous blog, (the below is crossposted) which I'll be adding to the blogroll shortly. 

 

I’ve thought long and hard about whether to pen this post but after 12 hours of feeling churned up about the issue I have decided that getting it all out on paper (the laptop version) will help with the processing of my feelings, and maybe serve as an educational and useful tool for a few people out there.

 

Fertility, or lack of it, is an awkward issue. It can destroy friendships, relationships, and the self esteem of those involved because of the sheer hugeness of it all, combined with the insidious silence that is often associated with all things to do with female reproduction.

 

I have known since age 23 that I have a fertility ‘issue’, having been diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) following years of irregular periods, strange weight gain, body hair and oily skin. I read up on PCOS, took the information to my GP, who ordered the necessary blood tests and internal uterus / ovary scan (fun – not) and confirmed my thoughts. I have PCOS, which means that my ovulation is out of whack. It doesn’t make pregnancy impossible, but it certainly can make it more challenging. I’m fully aware that I may have to go through the horrors of hormone treatment, medication and IVF, and that there is still no guarantee of a child at the end of it all.

 

It’s always been in the back of my mind, but it wasn’t until my marriage to S in 2009 at age 29 that the reality started to really weigh on my mind. S and I visited our GP, whose advice was to ‘get cracking’, which we promptly have done but to no avail yet.

 

One of the total arseholes about having PCOS is the irregular periods, meaning that 5-6 times a year I have ‘hope’; my period hasn’t arrived for 8 weeks and we immediately think ‘ooh, could it maybe have happened naturally’. Then comes the purchase of a pregnancy test with the heartbreaking single blue line as a result.

 

This doesn’t just affect me, it affects S deeply too. The only times I have seen him cry during our marriage is when he admits how painful our conception issues are for him. It must be doubly difficult for him; having to comfort me and the (irrational but real) guilt I face, while also feeling heartbroken himself.

 

I sometimes wonder if people are aware that we are not childless by choice, particularly given my commitment to my career (whatever my career will morph into!) and passion for feminism, choice and women’s rights. The reality is that until re-connecting with S I wasn’t desperate for children (although I did have a plan to have them one day), but once we had started dating again I have been burdened with an overwhelming desire to make a small creature that is part me, part S. I love the idea of having children who look like him, maybe have his personality, or mine, or their own! Yes, I can rationalise that it’s probably hormones talking, but that doesn’t take the pain away.

 

The reason this has all come to a head is the pain of having to endure another round of “mum’s are the best”, “being a mum has completed me” nonsense that comes up during the commercialised marketing opportunity that is Mother’s Day. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem celebrating mothers (mine is amazing), but I DO have a problem with the sheer hype about Mother’s Day that has the opposite effect of a celebration on many people; those who have lost children, those who can’t have them, those who are trying and trying to have them, those who have lost Mother’s, those who have become estranged from their Mother’s, those who were adopted and desperate to find their birth Mother, those who had their children taken from them when it was socially unacceptable to have a baby out of wedlock.

 

I am grateful that my Mother has always seen Mother’s Day as a commercialised waste of time, and has instead encouraged us to do nice things for her on a regular basis. She would rather us attend her PhD graduation, make her regular cups of teas and have long phone chats, instead of making a big fuss of her on a random day that has been designed to generate $$ for companies.

 

I make the comparison with Valentine’s Day. I’d rather S made me cups of coffee when I’m working on an essay, gets up in the morning with me when I have to get to the airport early and buys me flowers / chocolate / wine / ice cream occasionally. It would suck to be in a relationship when it was only celebrated once a year. I would likewise encourage those who go overboard on Valentine’s Day to also think about the effect of their celebrations on others. Since struggling with our infertility issues I have become acutely aware that shoving my happy relationship in other people’s faces could actually be really hurtful for those who are going through a breakup, separated from a loved one, bereaved, or single and lonely.

 

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t celebrate the happiness in our lives. But we should also do so sensitively and also keep a look out for our friends and families who have tough burdens to bear and think about their needs.

 

One further point before I leave you with some ‘do’s and don’ts’ for supporting a friend or family member who has infertility issues. Being a mum is not “the best”. People who say that are unintentionally ostracising and demeaning the work and lives of those who are not mothers. Just because we’re not mums doesn’t mean we can’t be “the best”. It doesn’t make us less loving, less caring, less hard working, less smart, less connected to people, or less valuable. We do other things that matter: we advocate for people, we work as cleaners, doctors, teachers, bus drivers and politicians. I am no less a fully-fledged adult woman because I haven’t popped out a sprog yet.

 

Do:

• Involve us in the lives of your children. Just because we don’t have them doesn’t mean we don’t like yours. Invite us to birthday parties, baptisms, school assemblies etc. When you leave us out but invite your friends who do have children you only ostracise us further.
• Do allow us to say ‘no’ though if it is a bit too hard.
• Ask us about our work and actually put some genuine interest into it.
• Organise a girls’ night, get a babysitter, and keep children out of the conversation.
• Remember that we childless ones can have sleepless nights, stress, and sickness too.

 

Don’t:

• Pity us. Treat us as human beings with full lives, because we don’t need children to have a full and interesting life.
• Expect us to get super excited when you get pregnant / have a child.
• Give advice on how to get pregnant, or promise that we will get pregnant one day. How could you possibly promise that?
• Tell me a story about someone that I’ve never met with PCOS who got pregnant after trying for years. How could that possibly help me?
• Forget about your childless friends after you’ve had a baby. We’re still here!
• Stick endless posts up on Facebook about your children’s nappies, teeth, sleeping routines etc. No offence, but no one really cares.*

 

 

 

* Ok, so that may be a little harsh, I don't mind hearing about children occasionally but when it's all I ever see it's quite a put-off and makes me assume that you have nothing else to talk about. For me, seeing your posts about kids all day is the other side to you putting up with constant political posts from me.

Breast vs formula: a false dichotomy

One of the things that bugs me most about much of the discussion about feeding babies is the way that it paints breastmilk and formula as mutually exclusive options. 

There's a lot of guilt inducement all tied up in it too, much as a result of personal experiences of judgyness that cannot and should not be denied.  Many many mothers have felt the discomfort of the You Shouldn't Be Doing That stare, whether it be directed at their breastfeeding or the bottle they whip out to deliver formula (or indeed expressed breastmilk).

Shelley Bridgeman's ill-advised column in the Herald this week has brought out all sorts of feministy outrage, all over the interweb, not least in Giarne's guest post and the comments to that.  I've seen discussions on Facebook, Twitter, on other blogs, the comment section on the article itself, and heard them in real life too, all critiquing Bridgeman's bizarre take on it.  It has touched a raw nerve, which is not surprising given the factual inaccuracies and really quite out there conclusions drawn from a life experience that seems pretty rare.

I really liked this comment, which Nikkin made on Giarne's post:

It is sad to read of the "putting baby first" vs "putting mummy first". The mother/baby dichotomy is counterintuitive. The wellbeing of baby is caught up in the wellbeing of the mother and vice versa.

This has been so true for me.  And it has lead me to the conclusion that for me it isn't breast or formula that works, it is both. 

With Wriggly the formula started in the hospital.  My milk wasn't coming in, we were both struggling with feeding, and he was losing too much weight.  But it wasn't the end of breastfeeding for us; far from it, after three months, when most of our troubles came right, he was mostly breastfed until I went back to work at nine months.  After that it was a slow realisation that first expressing at work wasn't going to be practical (dropped lunch feed), then I had too much evening work (dropped dinner feed) and finally I just didn't have much left and he wasn't all that interested.  We made it to precisely a year. 

And it was formula that helped us make it.  It took the pressure off the breastfeeding and meant I could concentrate on increasing my supply, getting our latching right, and kicking the thrush to the curb, plus it slowed my unhealthy weight loss. 

Second time around and while the experience has been different in some respects (we made it to three months of exclusive breastmilk), again formula has enabled me to continue breastfeeding when the nipples just would not come right.   It has curbed weight loss, for both of us, and given me some flexibility for my mental health as well, on those days when the idea of being attached to Snuffly by a very short tether has simply been too overwhelming with everything else I have to get done.  He's just hit eight months and is having one breastfeed a day, along with two of formula and a fair few servings of solids.  It's likely I'll have to wean in the next month or two, due to commitments that will take me away from him overnight, and that's ok with me.

For me the Great Feeding Debate is not a debate at all, because it's an And not an Or.  These are the choices that have worked for me, for my body, for my babies.  They may or may not work for anyone else.

And for the record I don't feel a great desire to get breast implants post-breastfeeding.  Although I would quite like to go out and buy some beautiful new bras.

Guest post: Middle/upper class privilege gone crazy

Many thanks to Giarne for this restrained response to an outrageous column in today's Herald.

Shelley Bridgeman’s opinion piece in the NZ Herald today “Not all families are equal” really got my blood boiling!

I must preface this with some information about me. I’m 33 weeks pregnant with our first child. I have no direct experience with breastfeeding nor parenting. My comments are based on discussions with friends and family and all the new things I’m hearing at antenatal classes and from our midwife.

Bridgeman’s article is a prime example of middle/upper class privilege gone crazy.

I’ve had many a debate with friends around the pressures of pregnancy – to breastfeed or not to breastfeed; how long to breastfeed for; how much weight they put on during pregnancy; how fast they lost it afterwards; how many stretch marks they had; how they feel about those stretch marks that are left; whether they are comfortable whipping their breast out in public; raising the ‘perfect’ child; dealing with colic, disability; whether to have a drug free birth or interventions that might be wanted/needed. Just the start of the list I’d say.

I want information about many of these topics, but I don’t want anything rammed down my throat. I have a great deal of respect for Plunket, the World Health Organisation and the Parents Centre; I also have an enormous amount of respect and time for the experiences of my friends and family.

Bridgeman is pushing her experiences down our throats in this article. She makes revolting, patronising comments about how other families raise their children and it is obvious that she is most disparaging of lower socio-economic families and mothers in developing nations. How hypocritical that she says "not all families are created equal" and then in the next breathe extols her way as the only way to go.

WHO's recommendations about breastfeeding are about the best start you can give children, the milk that comes from women is a very nourishing, complete food and I would suggest from the women I know that not breastfeeding has more to do with issues they might have (infection, pain, latching problems etc) rather than some upper class notion that they will need breast surgery afterwards or can't find good quality water in which to mix formula.

The author’s focus on the superficial issues with breastfeeding shows that Bridgeman and her peers need just as much advice as the lower class and developing nations – just maybe they need advice about body acceptance, the way advertisers manipulate our environment and they desperately need some assistance being empathetic to others’ lives.

She states:

I have reliable anecdotal evidence that there exists a small and privileged sector of society for whom the act of breast-feeding leads to the acquisition of breast implants a few years later. WHO's recommendations, while a godsend for women in developing countries, aren't doing their counterparts in Remuera and Herne Bay any favours by inadvertently leading some of them to undergo major surgical intervention in order to remedy their dissatisfaction in their post-feeding breasts.

She continues to say “Once the risks and costs of surgery are factored in, bottle feeding would seem a no-brainer for this particular subset of women.” So, her needs come first and she feels validated by other peers saying that they too have put themselves before their children. I’m not sure she read WHO’s 10 facts on breastfeeding in much depth. Colostrum contains antibodies that help protect infants from common childhood illnesses, later in life it is shown the breastfed babies have lower blood pressure, lower rates of overweight, obesity and type-2 diabetes; and for the mother it reduces the risks of breast and ovarian cancer, helps a return to pre-pregnancy weight faster, and lowers obesity rates.

It’s not stacking up as a no-brainer for me yet when breast surgery costs thousands of dollars and has a heck of a lot of risks. It seems to me after my little bit of research that we could be saving thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in health care costs over a child’s lifetime if they get at least a little breast milk. Plus, there are benefits for the mother, one of them is even superficial about getting back to a pre-pregnancy weight.

I won’t really get into the ‘flat head syndrome’ – I’ve heard many theories – that babies spend too much time in car seats (as many of them now clip into pram bases); that sometimes they just come out with some flat bits on their head ... oh hang on, do I really care if my baby has a flat piece or two on its head but its healthy and happy? No I don’t! If that’s all the Bridgeman family has to worry about then aren’t they lucky!

Bridgeman decided that we all needed to hear the superficial reasons why she didn’t breastfeed when she could have taken the opportunity to give some information from some experts and her friends and family about how they navigated the amount of information about how to care for their infant.

Baby on the Board

The last six months, since I was somewhat surprisingly elected to the Puketapapa Local Board, have been such a whirlwind that my intended post on what it was like at the start, as a woman and as a mother (not to mention as a centre-leftie) went by the by.  Maybe I'll write it Next Week.

However I can share some observations about Snuffly's involvement as the unofficial seventh member of the Board.  He's been at most things, as he was five weeks' old when both his parents were elected.  Three year old Wriggly struggled quite a bit with his younger brother going to meetings with Mummy and Daddy, but now that often they both stay home for the night events, with a friendly babysitter, he's more relaxed.  Still cries when poor S1 or S2 arrive, which must be quite disconcerting, then he's usually happily playing and forgets to say goodbye or wave at us from the window as promised earlier in the evening. 

Snuffly has been a smiley cuddly dream for anyone looking after him, including me.  I simply couldn't be doing this* if he was sick, had a disability, was a reflux baby or had colic.  I'm very aware that his good health, and our good level of resources, are what enables me to be a Local Board member. 

I've breastfed him in all sorts of odd spots - in the kitchen at Tradeshall during the City Vision results party, while I was on the phone to a mate in Wellington who wanted the goss, and didn't tell me the General Secretary of the Labour Party was listening in; in the old Auckland City Council chambers, with portraits of the Queen and her hubby looking on; at the tech training, as the only woman other than one of the facilitators, with a bunch of mainly older men including George Hawkins MP struggling with the new laptops; in a back room at a public meeting angry residents worried that a "The Warehouse" would radically change their neighbourhood; during a hearing on a resource consent for aforementioned "The Warehouse" proposal; and, most uncomfortably, during our inauguration at the start of November, when Snuffly was just two months old and basically none of my business-y clothes fitted.  While it was nice to have several hundred people turn up to celebrate our election, especially my whanau and friends, it was incredibly daunting to have to sit at the front, side-on to the crowd so I couldn't hide behind the table, and feed my small baby at the start of the night.  . 

Generally when I'm feeding Snuffly in public I'm keen to be as discreet as possible.  I can't think of a time with this child or the previous one when I've been at all interested in people seeing my breasts in that brief period when baby is going on or coming off the nipple.  And unfortunately I find breastfeeding really hard, and so with Snuffly I'm still using nipple shields which make discretion tricky.  Luckily I've got quite adept at it, I think; working out which clothes are going to give me the flexibility I need and not flash the world, and how to best manoeurve them and Snuffly in the right dance to minimise pain, maximise milk, and eliminate skin shows. 

I've not had a single complaint to date.  Someone did make a somewhat snarky comment that I could have taken a couple of ways, a month or so back, but I can't remember it now so it can't have been that bad.  Staff in particular, as well as other members of the City Vision ticket, have been amazingly supportive.  Snuffly has been very good about cuddles with others, which has been a relief, and of course his father is often around to share the duties which is immeasurably helpful. 

One of the things I've been careful to do is assume that whatever Snuffly and I need is just going to be ok.  I've stopped myself from asking if I can have a room to put the portacot in, near the meeting venue, and just checked that they know I need one.  We've just turned up, and started to feed when necessary, because at this point we are simply a package deal;  it's only recently that he's been having a bottle enough of the time for me to go into the office without him for a significant period.  Oddly I am now less comfortable about feeding him with the bottle at an event than I am about breastfeeding.  I suspect if I hadn't been so tired and overwhelmed when this all started I might have had the energy to be more worried about feeding in public.  Seems the oddest things have a silver lining.

And I've got amazingly good at assessing the wheeled access of a zillion places, along with which venues have bathrooms where you can change nappies and which don't (*cough* Auckland Town Hall *cough*).  All useful knowledge, and not just for those with young babies either.

I'm not doing this to make a point about breastfeeding in public or how when babies are welcome mothers can participate. I'm doing it because it is the only way I can do it. I hope it does break down some barriers around babies (and their parents) being acceptable in public life, and knowing that it might does make it a bit easier for me to keep going. But honestly if I could not be doing it this way I would. Because it is HARD. To be trying to work, trying to have difficult conversations about politics and learning so much new stuff, when I'm jiggling Snuffly to stop him crying, attempting to judge if he needs to go down yet, needs a nappy change or perhaps will have to be fed early, is really tricky. I don't recommend it.






*  By which I mean what is effectively a half time (plus) job.  They're paying elected members on my Board around $35K pa, equipping us with laptops, vodems and Blackberries, so to me that means this is a significant part time commitment that should be approached professionally and not as just something I do on the side of everything else.  As the Local Boards are a unique structure in local government, and operating for the first time, many members are taking different approaches, as we all struggle to work it out, and to fit our old lives around the new commitment.  It's a great privilege to be on the Board.  I just wish Rodney Hide et al hadn't rushed it all in, because it's a bit of a mess as a result.

Next Week, Next Week, Next Week

Everything is going to happen Next Week.  Next Week will be perfect and filled with plenty of time that I can spend on things other than meetings and childcare.  Next Week, always Next Week.

I don't live in Next Week though, I live in This Week.  And This Week is always packed, filled to the brim, with plenty of commitments for family and community.

Being on a Local Board and having two young kids equals awesome.  The chance to have a positive effect on my community, which sorely needs some local institutions that connect people and build our capacity, is a great privilege.  And to be able to raise children who are funny and bright and happy is a wonder too.

To try to keep track of the busy-ness and avoid childcare calamaties I have been using *cough* Outlook *cough* to colour-code my life.  Purple is for Board stuff, Orange for family, Green for my day job (starting two days a week from March 28th, eeek!), Yellow for childcare by others, Mauve for feministy stuff, Light Blue for me time.  The Light Blue has largely been medical appointments so far.  But today I'm getting my haircut!!ZOMG1!!  I feel so decadent. 

Maybe next week could actually be Next Week.  I could meet a fellow feministy mum for a playdate, do some ironing that isn't focused on just the clothes I need to wear in five minutes' time, even read a book for a while with a hot chocolate and some baking I made myself.   Maybe, just maybe, I could even write a blog post that was about more than whining about how I am too damn busy to write blog posts...

Hmmm, maybe that'll have to keep until the Week After That.

commercial surrogacy

on international women's day, radio nz ran a piece about commercial surrogacy (nine to noon, 8 march 2011, 9.36am). apparently, there's a move to ban it in new south wales.

the had on a man who had paid a woman in india to be a surrogate for his son. this man kept reiterating that he wasn't exploiting the woman, that he had taken particular care in selecting the agency he used, he had spoken to the woman several times himself. what he actually meant was that he had made sure that the woman wasn't being forced to go through this process.

i'm not sure that he could ever be entirely sure of that. if she was under any kind of threat, it would obviously be in her best interest to assure him that no force was involved, and she would, of course, do that repeatedly. with a smile on her face.

but even if he was right, her poverty was very clearly being exploited. the man made it clear that he was helping her financially, the money given to her was the equivalent of ten years of income and would allow her to educate her other children and buy a house. in other words, there was economic pressure and the woman felt this was something she had to do to improve the condition of her family.

again, we come back to the question of choice. yes, it was her choice to be a surrogate, but to have to make that choice under such circumstances is a pretty crappy kind of choice. it's exactly the same "choice" argument that was being used by the supporters of the win-a-wife campaign: that the ukranian women were choosing to undertake their involvement with an agency, and were choosing to better their circumstances by entering a marraige with a (comparatively) rich foreigner.

in both cases, it is a clear exploitation of poverty and i was really disappointed that kathryn ryan only touched on this lightly, as did the medical-legal specialist. it was pretty much brushed over. when the man was asked why he didn't choose an australian surrogate, he brushed over the issue by saying there were no appropriate avenues for him to have a family, but he only talked about adoption and foster parenting. he didn't say why he didn't look for an australian surrogate, or if he did, why he couldn't come to an arrangement with one.

again, similar to the evasiveness of the win-a-wife supporters when asked why the competition hadn't involved a woman from an economically prosperous western country. i would also have liked ms ryan to have found out the difference in cost of getting a surrogate mother in australia or america as opposed to one in a developing country. and i'd like to know the demographics of the women in western countries who choose to do this, in places where it is legal.

to me commercial surrogacy is absolutely akin to the sale of human organs, which is against the law. similar reasons could be put forward for the sale of organs: the donor knows he/she is saving a life, and the money will improve the lives of his/her family. in the case of surrogacy, a woman is selling use of her womb and the rest of her body, she is going through a process that can have a significant impact on her health.

she shouldn't have to make that choice because the world is ordered in such a way that she doesn't have enough money to house and educate her children. good quality education is the right of every child, and shouldn't have to be bought with a pregnancy. ditto for good quality housing.

if this man really cared about the welfare of the surrogate mother, if he was really interested in improving her life, he would give her the money without requiring her to go through a pregnancy and give up her child. if he was really interested in making sure he wasn't exploiting a woman in a developing country, he could have made sure that he selected an upper class woman who already had a house and whose children were already going to the best school. but i bet the agencies who organise this kind of thing don't approach those women.

i don't mind the law in nz, where a woman can be a surrogate for family or friends, but without any commercial payment for the pregnancy. and i think it's extremely important that the birth mother lives in the same country as the child, so that she can be a part of the child's life if she so chooses. but the commercialisation of this process is wrong, on so many levels.

Interesting read on mothering and working

Thanks to a FB friend for directing me towards this thought-provoking column at Salon, including:

When Paul Krugman warns that many of the currently jobless "will never work again," I am petrified -- hello, 3 a.m.! -- that he means me. I long ago lost track of how many jobs I have applied for, including some I wouldn't have looked twice at in my 20s, but I can count the resulting interviews and have fingers left to twiddle idly. Before I left full-time work in 1996, my then-husband and I, both reporters at the same newspaper, earned the exact same salary. Now my ex, still a reporter, is making $30,000 a year more than that, while I have been passed over for jobs paying $20,000 less.

Quite terrifying reading, although I think the author's situation may be a bit exacerbated by the industry she is in (journalism).  At least that's what I'm telling myself as I contemplate my return to the paid work that pays most of our bills in less than two months, when Snuffly will be a little over six months old. 

The article is of course quite US-centric, but I suspect many of the troubles Read is facing may translate here.  I haven't job-hunted for six years, so I'm totally out of touch with the realities of that quest - what are your experiences, whether you are seeking to mix paid work with child-rearing or not.

Boobs about boobies

I thought the second time would be easy.  It should be shouldn't it?  After all Wriggly was breastfed to a year and he had a pretty bad start, what with the elective caesar for breech, the lack of milk, the mix feeding, the pain, and a large weight loss on my part.  This time was going to be better, because I was going to labour, I was going to know what to expect and I was going to be kinder to myself. 

We're at ten weeks now and I have mastitis.  It feels very unfair indeed.  After weeks of pain and nipple shields and sterilising and cracks and blisters and fissures and tears and advice things were finally, finally, coming right and then the red flare comes up, the flu-y feeling starts and this morning my partner had to drive me to the doctor because I was too ill to go by myself.  I nearly cried when I got there and the lift wasn't working.  I did cry as I explained it all to the doctor. 

I'm just not very good at breastfeeding a newborn.  I can't get the latch right, and I hate just sitting around while I'm being sucked on.  I need to read a book, or be online, or play a game, or make a phone call.  None of which is conducive to good positioning.  I do seem to have very sensitive nipples as well, and having already fed Snuffly's big brother for a year hasn't changed that. 

I asked myself earlier on in this process why I was so determined to breastfeed; what were the actual reasons why I was persevering.  Thinking hard there were two main ones;  because it gives me a sense of achievement and because it is so much more convenient for my life than dealing with formula and bottles.  Because of the nature of the way I live, Snuffly has been fed publicly many times already - in meetings, large and small, mainly.  No one has batted an eyelid to date, which is good because I'd hate to have to be rude to them.

Last time I had to start giving Wriggly formula in hospital, as I simply didn't make enough milk.  We mix fed until about three or four months, I can't really remember precisely, and then formula became a rarity, until I went back to work at nine months and had to be out a lot over the evening feed.  On his first birthday he gave up, but my supply had been dwindling for months.

I swore this time would be different.  My concerns about the pain have certainly been taken a lot more seriously than they were two and a half years ago.  The fact that I have already fed one baby for a year seems to give me a bit of standing, plus my Lead Maternity Carer has been a revelation of good midwifery compared to the last one.  But it was around this point last time that the pain lifted and feeding started to become an easy joy.  And that hasn't happened yet. 

It scares me - what if this time will be different because it will be worse?  Now that I've got antibiotics for the mastitis it seems to be clearing fast, but what about the thrush which we seem unable to shake?  Is this going to hurt forever? 

And am I going to have to give up?

you can stop feeling guilty now...

... if you ever did feel guilty about being a mother in paid employment. can't say that i ever did, but now the research proves that your kids' turn out just fine, so i was right to not waste my time worrying:

According to a review of 50 years of research on the subject, kids whose moms went back to work before the kids were 3 years old had no worse academic or behavioral problems than kids whose moms stayed home. In fact, in some instances they did better. The research, which appears in the Psychological Bulletin, a peer-reviewed publication of the American Psychological Association, looked at 69 studies between 1960, when research on the issue started, and 2010. The researchers looked specifically at academic and behavioral outcomes....

The researchers found little evidence to suggest that mothers who work part-time or full-time have children with problems in later life. But the researchers did find two positive associations between working motherhood and well-adjusted children: kids whose mothers worked when they were younger than 3 were later rated as higher-achieving by teachers and had fewer problems with depression and anxiety.

The only small caveat was that children whose mothers worked in the very first year of their lives tended to have slightly lower formal academic scores than those whose moms didn't. However children whose mothers were employed when the child was 1 or 2 years old had higher academic scores than kids with full-time moms. Over the three years, the effects evened out.

yes, i too hate the term "working mums", because all mums work. they just don't all get paid for the work they do. but aside from that niggle and a crappy last paragraph to make sure you feel guilty about something, it's nice to see actual research is showing that whether you take up paid employement through choice or necessity, your kids aren't going to be any worse off.

on a related topic, it was interesting to hear the interview on nine to noon this morning (11.20am) with desmond morris, author of "child: how children think, learn and grow in the early years. at 21 minutes into the clip, he also talks about women in paid employment feeling guilty about leaving their children in childcare. he says they shoudn't feel so guilty, because a nursery school provides social interaction which is very natural. he speaks of the importance of children being able to interact with others of their own age, to become more socially educated, more in tune with the behaviour of other individuals, and more able to give and take. after all, he says, we evolved for a million years in small tribes where the children were playing with one another and there wasn't the isolation that we have now.

it's something i see even now when i visit india. many live in an extended family situation, and parents don't actually see much of their kids at all. they see them when the kids are hungry, or when the kids need to be bathed. this is especially so in the village situation. in the cities, there is a greater movement to nuclear families, and so much more competitive pressure with the education system, that the natural interaction of village life is being lost.

it's one of the outcomes of a developed and industrialised society that we lose a lot of that social interaction. and the response has been to make mothers feel that they should be spending every possible moment at home with their children, as if this would somehow make up for the loss. my own sense always was that this is not natural, or at least not traditional, the way it has often been claimed.

which is not to say that i have any problem with women who choose to stay out of paid employment, and who do focus more of their time & attention on their children. it's an equally valid & valuable choice, but what the research is showing is that it's not a better (nor a worse) one.