Last fall we learned that the IRS had dis­al­lowed breast pumps to be a tax-deductible item. The out­cry that went out from work­ing fam­i­lies, lac­ta­tion con­sul­tants, birth work­ers and family-oriented orga­ni­za­tions was deaf­en­ing. Con­gress heard the call and the House and Sen­ate each issued a let­ter to the IRS regard­ing their decision.

On Thurs­day we learned that the IRS reversed their deci­sion and pumps are once again allow­able. How often does that kind of thing hap­pen? They. Just. Reversed. It. The sheer amount of online pres­sure on Face­book and blogs and other sites allowed those who cared about this topic to swiftly unite.

If you read the let­ters from the House and Sen­ate it’s heart­en­ing to see that the argu­ments they use in favor of breast­feed­ing are the ones we’ve been stat­ing for­ever. It did my own heart some good to see this kind of dec­la­ra­tion come from elected officials.

I have to say, though, that no Wis­con­sin Sen­a­tors signed the let­ter. And only two Wis­con­sin reps from the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Tammy Bald­win and Gwen­dolyn Moore, signed.

Even with that, I’m choos­ing to accept the Valen­tine that’s been offered. Breast milk for everyone!

These days folks know me as a child­birth edu­ca­tor, doula and lac­ta­tion con­sul­tant. Twenty-three years ago I never dreamed I would be any of those three. Ter­ri­fied of nee­dles and uncer­tain of hos­pi­tals I gave birth to my first child, Alyson. My hus­band wanted me to breast­feed. His mom had breast­fed all of her chil­dren and she said it was great. I grew up in a fam­ily where no one breast­fed and it seemed strange to me and I wasn’t sure. I thought I’d try.

My baby was born early and due to some con­cerns she was in the NICU. It was really scary to see her in an iso­lette with an IV in her lit­tle head. My hus­band made her new “home” cozier by plac­ing a sign there that pro­claimed: “My name is Alyson Ruth Grauer” so that every­one knew who she was, not just that she was a baby. She was given for­mula for three days in hos­pi­tal because of her stay in the NICU. I could only hold her for short peri­ods of time but my heart longed to be there with her always. I thought of her as I pumped my breasts to get my milk in, alone in my post­par­tum room. (more…)

Wow. When I read Amy Chua’s arti­cle in the Wall Street Jour­nal that was my reac­tion. Wow. On the one hand, she upholds some sterotypes that are out there of Asian moth­ers. On the other, she tries to let us see the rea­son­ing behind the behav­ior. The one thing she does not do is to cut Amer­i­can moms any slack. At all. Period. I think the word that comes to my mind is “wimps”.

This is pretty hot stuff right now. There has been much talk about Ms. Chua’s new book on the topic, “Bat­tle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” and I sus­pect she prob­a­bly feels that her words have been mis­in­ter­preted  by some. She has voiced her view­point and I am tak­ing this oppor­tu­nity to address some of the issues in hers that are caus­ing me the most difficulty.

1. “ What Chi­nese par­ents under­stand is that noth­ing is fun until you’re good at it.”

I strug­gle with this because I don’t believe it to be true. Life is about the jour­ney, not just the end result. And we can’t all be good at everything.The strug­gle to learn some­thing new and to mas­ter it can be fun as well as chal­leng­ing. And I can have fun at bowl­ing or scrap­book­ing or what­ever even if I’m not great at it. Doing some­thing just for the expe­ri­ence is enlight­en­ing and enrich­ing. (more…)

With the new year approach­ing I’ve been won­der­ing: How much has your life changed since you brought your baby into the world? Do you remem­ber when you were expect­ing and peo­ple would say, “Boy, is YOUR life gonna CHANGE.” And, of course, it was never said with any­thing but inten­sity and an atti­tude of wel­com­ing you into some awful club you never wanted to be a part of in the first place. Those folks missed the boat.

Truth be told, your life has changed, hasn’t it. (more…)

Over the last two decades when­ever I meet peo­ple at a gath­er­ing and they ask what I do for a liv­ing, I receive one of four reac­tions when­ever I tell them I am a child­birth educator:

1. They look fright­ened, like I might pull a pla­centa out of a bag, and they quickly decide they need to talk with some­one else.
2. They loved their classes and then ask ques­tions about births they’ve heard about.
3. They tell me the hor­ror sto­ries of their own child­birth classes and want to know how any­one couldn’t know they were pregnant.
4. They tell me they didn’t go to classes because they fig­ured they would learn about it in the hospital.

In response to A: I never carry real pla­cen­tas with me (though if you ask my kids they will tell you that I have pocket mod­els of the pelvis, baby, plactenta and uterus), B: We trade sto­ries, C: I sym­pa­thize. And usu­ally they wish that they’d come to ours!, and D: My jaw is usu­ally on the floor and I am speech­less, a rare thing for me.

So, why go to child­birth classes? (more…)

I was in a good mood, prepar­ing to facil­i­tate Moms’ Group, when into my InBox pops a copy of an essay Erica Jong wrote for the Wall Street Jour­nal about attach­ment par­ent­ing.

Jong is an author who wrote a book in the 70’s called Fear of Fly­ing and is con­sid­ered to be a fem­i­nist voice. Some would say a mil­i­tant fem­i­nist. The last line of the essay reads, “We need to be released from guilt about our chil­dren, not fur­ther bound by it. We need some­one to say: Do the best you can. There are no rules.”  If only Ms. Jong had fol­lowed her own advice. (more…)

I really had to take a deep breath when I decided to write about this. I don’t want to unduly frighten any­one and I want par­ents to know that I feel their frus­tra­tion. It’s so darn hard to be a par­ent these days. And this week was a doozy for some of you.

As many of you know, last week Abbott Labs, mak­ers of Sim­i­lac infant for­mula issued a vol­un­tary recall of some of their pow­dered prod­uct. The FDA then responded with a press release (view FDA press release). There were more than 5 mil­lion cans of for­mula in this lat­est recall. That’s right — it’s not the first and I wish I could say it will be the last. Past recalls have included every major man­u­fac­turer of infant for­mula, not just Abbott. This time the recall made the national news, but they don’t always. We here at Colum­bia Cen­ter posted the recall to the front page of our web­site imme­di­ately, along with infor­ma­tion on how to find out if you had any of the recalled prod­uct. (more…)

Last Fri­day news came to my fam­ily that some­one spe­cial to us had sud­denly died the night before. He was ener­getic, healthy and inspir­ing — and he was far too young. It left us all in that crazy place that grief takes us — where we have to think about the big­ger issues and to put day-to-day issues into per­spec­tive. And most peo­ple don’t like doing that. AT. ALL. It’s not one of my favorite places to be, but I talk about birth and begin­nings all the time here so it’s about time I men­tion a cou­ple of things about the other end of the cir­cle of life. (more…)

Last night I watched the rerun of the sea­son finale of “Glee.” Yes, we are gleeks at my house and I missed the finale the first time around. One of the char­ac­ters gave birth in last night’s episode, to the music of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhap­sody.” I love that song but never before asso­ci­ated it with birth. Tonight I think I get it: the the­atri­cal­ity … the inten­sity … the soar­ing feel­ing … the sweet ending.

The other day I was talk­ing with a new mom. She was still on her high after giv­ing birth two days before. Her eyes sparkled as she described push­ing her baby into the world. She was proud — and rightly so. Her hus­band was in awe of what she had done and she was prac­ti­cally glow­ing. Her amaze­ment at her own strength reminded me of why I do what I do.

Birth is dra­matic. (more…)

We live in a coun­try where there’s free­dom of speech but I can promise that the found­ing fathers never dreamt of iPhones, the inter­net or text mes­sag­ing. Super­model Gisele Bund­chen this week was inter­viewed by Harpers Bazarre UK and spoke about giv­ing birth to her 8-month-old son, Ben­jamin, and how much she loves breast­feed­ing. In her exu­ber­ance she said that she thought breast­feed­ing should be the law. She was refer­ring to how peo­ple in the US react to breast­feed­ing. And she has been skew­ered for this quote from the inter­view. Since the mag­a­zine arti­cle came out she has since issued a state­ment to clar­ify what she said.

Let’s all take a deep breath and think for a moment:
How many of us have shared our excite­ment, our joy over our chil­dren and being par­ents? How many of us have made state­ments that would seem a lit­tle extreme to peo­ple who don’t know us? And how many on bad days have said things that could allow strangers to believe that we are bad parents?

Let she who has not spo­ken extremely throw the first stone.