Posting of a reader's comment to earlier breastfeeding entry

Below is a comment one of this blog's fine readers posted in response to my entry about breastfeeding. Unless you're really zealous about keeping up with my blog (which I would love to think some of you are) you would likely miss it and that would be a shame. I've only made two changes, substituting where she wrote her daughter's name with the words "my daughter."

So does breastfeeding make our children smarter, healthier? Who the hell knows, but I certainly like to think so. I will tackle healthier first. I breast fed my daughter for the first year of her life. She is now over two and has been sick one time. Could be a coincidence, yes, but I will certainly take all the credit for that and will pat myself on the back and feel a great sense of pleasure that perhaps my sacrifice was worth it and really did help my little one to be so healthy.

All of those early days of chapped nipples and the months of waking through the night for feedings and the eternity of locking myself in a closet at work with a breastpump and the funny days traveling through airport security with a breastpump with most security guys either asking what it is or just blushing trying not to look at my insanely large, milk filled chest.

I remember one day in particular, I flew one morning to South Texas for a meeting. Arrived, went to my meeting then back to the airport that afternoon to return home. My breast were simply going to explode. I got through security and went to the end of the terminal hoping to find a more secluded restroom. No one there, great. I closed myself in a stall with a little battery charged pump that was really just useful in emergencies. It buzzed away as it worked (I can almost feel that odd let down sensation just talking about it). Then the door squeaks as someone enters and as my machine buzzed away loudly I could hardly handle the mixture of humor and embarrassment as it must have sounded like a woman in the stall with a vibrator. I still wonder what was going on in the mind of the woman that came through those doors. Anyways, it is hard not to believe that it made a difference.

If you asked my husband he would say that natural childbirth was the key. He swears every wonderful quality about her is all attributed to the natural childbirth. Which I have to say just makes swell will happiness because when I first told him how I planned to give birth naturally in water he was basically terrified! And how I find a new love for him when I catch him having a conversation, with "the guys" of all people about the benefits of natural child birth. Really he will tell just about anyone how much he believes in natural childbirth. It always seems out of character for him to actively engage in such a conversation and I really do love it!The health theory I can't help but believe. Our science has just not been able to duplicate the immunity boosting power of our breasts.

Does breastfeeding make our babies smarter? I tend to think my daughter is incredibly intelligent and really amazes me constantly with her development. But I am not sure I attribute this to breastfeeding. I think this part has more to do with how we raise her than the breastfeeding. My instinct tells me that the correlation between the two is just that mothers who choose to breastfeed also tend to be the ones that take a more active, educated role in raising their children and just happen to be the personalities that will make more personal sacrifices for the good of this child.Oh, I can hear it now. The rumblings bruised egos.

With such a touchy subject, if anyone actually reads this and for whatever reason couldn't or wouldn't breastfeed, someone is going to get all pissy. We've all seen it before in a hundred other blogs, one person said something and everyone takes it as a personal attack. Yeah yeah, that banter is just an energy drain.

Yes, of course there are plenty of women out there that couldn't breast feed or even chose not to and are perfectly good mothers of happy smart kids. However, I can't stop myself from saying, if you chose not to breastfeed in spite of knowing all of the research supporting it's benefits...I will let you fill in the rest.

Hey, I think this is my first blog entry ever!
August 21, 2008 11:28 AM

Me and my "buddy"

My husband's company has a new first lady and she's apparently "enthusiastic...." This bodes ill for me.


In a fit of benevolence, the expatriate-coordinating team at my husband's company has decided to put together a "buddy system" for us trailing spouses. I prefer to conduct most of my personal relationships electronically. I'm not opposed to an e-mail buddy but that, apparently, isn't what the expat team and first lady have in mind.


The first uncomfortable rumblings that something was afoot came a few weeks ago when I got an e-mail saying "Hi! I'm the new coordinator, we're putting together a buddy system. X has arrived and we would like you to spend the afternoon to show her different stores, where you get your nails done, how you change money etc. She's available this Thurs. or Friday."


I'm supposed to tour super markets with this women and they're telling ME when SHE's available. Was I just volunteered- note the passive rather than active verb tense- for a fucking welcoming committee?


I declined apologetically, citing a looming deadline and some departing guests; legitimately mitigating circumstances that did exist but wouldn't have actually hindered me from complying with the request were I a welcoming person. I also sent what I hoped would be a subtle indication that I would never be adequately prepared to buddy up with someone for the afternoon but would also still fulfill my karmic duty to offer assistance to another human being.

I told coordinator that I'm a member of a baby group with a very large e-mail list and that the group served as an information clearing house for many things like what schools are in which neighborhood, doctor referrals etc. and that if new-arrival spouse were interested to please pass my e-mail along and that I would forward her to the group coordinator.

E-mail, e-mail, e-mail, the word was splattered all over my response.

I thought it was the end but it wasn't. This week there was an e-mail from Ms. coordinator-cum-camp counselor to the collective trailing spouse group for "a meeting" to discuss the burgeoning program. AND just in case any of us were going to make up an excuse not to attend the very last line of the e-mail said "new first lady" is "fully supporting" this effort, full of ideas and "very enthusiastic." I.E to any of you wives out there of men who work for her husband, whose entire livelihoods at this point depend on their whims, get your asses over here now.

I've yet again dodged a bullet. I will be out of the country and unable to attend. Another wife, this one much higher up on the pecking order as defined by her husband's position, will also be unable to attend BUT in her stead started a list of pertinent information with contact numbers, referrals etc for just about everything from doctors to bagel deliveries.

Aha! Here was my chance to yet again stress that an electronic body of knowledge to be passed to all newcomers was the best, least-intrusive option and still allowed adults to then carry on with their lives as adults, meeting others by getting involved with their children's schools, or play groups or by attending the once a year company-sponsored "meet and greet" people, where people can pair off as they so choose.

So, again I sent referral information, stressing how "great" it would be to gather a list with all of our collective knowledge that would pretty much cover the entire city and hand it out to all newcomers. I haven't heard anything back.

I'm still trying to figure out why I find the whole thing so plainly insulting. I'm sure that as is my wont, I'm being ridiculous. Perhaps even with a 15-year plus remove, I'm still so scarred by high school and middle school that I inherently recoil at anything vaguely resembling a pep squad.

I say pep squad because I'm sure the intent of the group isn't for me to say 'Hi! Actually, I still hate not having a car, my first 8 months here were an unmitigated, personal hell, thanks to corrupt personal relationships that people in the company's housing department have with local realtors and oh yeah, even though I'm supposed to as per the e-mail, I'm not going to tell you who my money changer is because, though we all do it, HAVE to do it, it's illegal here, and to reveal our money changer is like revealing a cocaine dealer, I can't just tell you his name, I have to get his permission first and anyways, I don't know you and am not really willing to put stress on that relationship because of you so sorry you and your husband just have to figure that one one your own. But hey I'm your buddy Tallulah :) Call me anytime.

No I dare say that's not the buddy system they have in mind.

The only glow I know is spray on....

I was at the beach this weekend. With the kind of confidence and indifference to social standards that comes with age and the forced pragmatism of marriage and motherhood, I proudly displayed my 5-months pregnant and never-quite-recovered- from- the- last- 2- pregnancies body in the type of cute, trendy bikini that has only been designed in the last five years or so as pregnancy became fashionable.

Then I saw the pictures. There were one or 2 perfectly lovely shots that screamed beaming, fertility goddess but the sun, the camera, and my spine had to line up just perfectly to achieve it. Otherwise, the pictures revealed way too intimately what motherhood and aging has wrought on my body.

A more doughy face, lined neckline, increasingly pillowy triceps and by far the worst- completely shapeless, fat-pocked thighs. My first thought, despite years of feminist inculcation and a healthy dose of mostly useless gender theory classes in college-my husband deserves better than this.

Pity set in and I did what I always do when I'm in a bad mood, I tried to pick a fight with my husband. It went something like this.

"Well you noticed me because you thought I was hot, I'm not hot anymore"
"You're beautiful."
"Fine, but I'm not hot anymore and you fell in love with a hot woman."
"I think you're hot."
"I appreciate you saying that but its not possible as I'm quantifiably not hot anymore"
and on it continued with me badgering him, not going to be satisfied until he admitted that yes I cheat on you all the time because you've gotten fat, allowing me to transfer my self-loathing on to him by blaming him for my current, decrepit state.

I said something about the "shallow underpinnings of our relationship" that was based on hot sex with a hot woman and how those underpinnings have been kicked out from under us and so now there's nothing left and what does he have to say about that?

He mumbled something and was soon snoring.

Ok so I'm over it and not hating and blaming anyone but impatient for the weight gaining to end and for the first time in my life very seriously considering plastic surgery.

I'm in the plastic-surgery capital of the world. The women are puffed and buffed to cartoonish proportions, they inspire laughter rather than envy because they're so out of this world BUT it's got me thinking.... Hey just nip here, a tuck there, a lift here. I don't want bigger I just want buoyancy again. And those thighs, can't you just vacuum that shit out??

Here you can get it done at any mall and there's plenty of personal references to make sure you're seeing a real doctor. In a nod to social justice, the services extend all the way to the poor, who can pay on generous installment-plan terms, while middle-class women can win office raffles.

I told another post-baby friend of mine that I was seriously considering partaking in Caracas's services. She immediately knew of what I spoke and said "yeah me too."

Our husbands as handsome as they ever were with maybe just a few more grays, our children, the ones that really glow, with their apple cheeks, their shining eyes and bouncy hair and us, literally deflated.