Monday, July 23, 2007

Hooray for Boobies

In preparation for the arrival of, alternately, our bundle of joy or our Wagnarian doom, Lil and I are attending a series of classes. These vary from impressively informational and thus useful, to a Sunday sermon from the pulpit of Holier-than-thou.

Last week we attended a breastfeeding class.

Guess which category this falls into.

Holier-than-thou breastfeeding teacher, or HBT for short, first let us watch a video not on breastfeeding, but on the delivery of a baby. It was a little more intimate than I was hoping for, but educational. Essentially, delivery is not much fun, and the gist from the HBT was that you should never, ever use any drugs of any kind at all or your baby will never be able to learn to breastfeed.

In fact, don’t even think about using drugs, local anesthetic, or an epidural, as this will cause a transference to the baby in utero, and he/she will grow up to be a crack/meth/heroine addict leaching off society and bringing down the moral values of our fine Republican country.

Hey, I just report the news.

Next HBT went into the benefits of breastfeeding - for fifteen hours. These include, but are not limited to, better nutrition, virus and disease-fighting, bonding, growth, wellness, literacy of the masses, poverty-avoidance, revolution against the bourgeoisie, reduction of racism, the question of alien life, and averting global thermo-nuclear war.

Yeppers, all that in a mother’s breast.

Is it any wonder why boys are so breast happy?

What struck Lil and I as odd was the fact that the HBT, upon her pulpit of virtue and righteousness, was preaching to the choir. We’ve already paid for the class. We’re already attending the class we paid for. We've already shown up to the class that we paid for and are attending.

We’re already onboard the Breastfeeding-Is-Good train.

Why are we stopping off in Fire and Brimestoneville?

Do we look like non-believers who require a demigogue and a ballpeen hammer to make it all stick?

Apparently, this is because breastfeeding is, unbeknownst to me, a very volatile subject, one on which the lines of battle have been drawn and you stand either with or against the cause. Whole wars have been fought between the Formula-ites and the Beastfeeders, neither winning a clear victory. In this world gone made, we do not spank the monkey, the monkey spanks us. If you’re with the cause, you need to be completely and utterly indoctrinated as to the where, whys, whatfors and whatnots of breastfeeding. This is so that, after your three hours of browbeating, you can go out into the world and pummell others with, if not your suprerior knowledge, then your superiority complex. If you’re against it, well, clearly you showed up to cause trouble and must now be pounded back in your place with histrionics and mad shrieking.

Woe be unto you who question the mastery of the HBT.

Toward the end of the class, HBT actually managed to give us some breastfeeding information apart from the propaganda machine. We had about two minutes of latch-on and feeding tips, another minute or so of Q & A, and then we were invited to wait after class to address specific questions, say about breast pumps, breast milk storage, baby-stomach capacity, concerns about illness, etc.

Call me crazy, but this late in the evening on a weekday with a pregnant wife, I just wasn't interested in much more the HBT had to say.

In fact, I was almost at the point where I wanted to go out and buy stock in a baby formula company just to be contrary. And not one of the better companies, but a shady factory that makes questionable claims and improvable statements. A company whose mailing address is a P.O. Box and whose bottom line is always about the profits in South American and African villages.

Hey, I said almost. Sheesh. I’m all for averting global thermo-nuclear war via breastfeeding our child. After all, we showed up to the class.

7 Comments:

At 10:27 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ah, your first encounter with a faction you will come to loathe even more than you do now: the parenting zealot. There are many flavors of them; in my opinion the breastfeeding ones are the hardest to take and the ones I was most willing to fake a seizure to avoid. But just for your edification, when dealing with a parenting zealot, please remember the following:

Everything they do is good.
Everything other people do is bad.
They are perfect. They make all the most perfect choices. Therefore, their children will be perfect.
Other people's children will be serial killers.
There is an absolute right and wrong way to do everything. EVERYTHING! The answers are black and white. There is no gray area. No "maybe," no "if it works out, then great." Don't question it!
And if you do the "wrong" thing then God help your poor sweet innocent children, who would be better off relegated to a janitorial educational institution now because they will never, I repeat, never fit in with the perfect children of the perfect parents who had all the perfect answers and did everything just perfectly.

Make no mistake, Rob, for many people, this is a battle and sides are being chosen now. To them, if you end up on the wrong side before your baby is born, you can forget it. You'll be on the outs with the in-crowd and their evangelical beliefs about infant feeding and diapers and sleep-training and meaningful parent-child interaction until your kid graduates from high school. It's up to you to decide whether you care about that or not. (We decided we didn't. The decision was made easier by the fact that most of the alpha-parents out there are the same ex-popular kids we hated in high school.)

Hey, breastfeeding is great. I breastfed. I enjoyed it. Kenneth liked it too. Then we ran into some serious issues, and I stopped. And then I fed Kenneth formula. He didn't sprout horns or contract Ebola or becoming a drooling idiot (well, he does drool, but other than that he seems pretty smart). I would have liked to have breastfed for longer than 6 months but it didn't work out. The kid seems fine, despite the lack of breastfeeding until age 4 and also despite the fact that I had, GASP, a C-SECTION!!! WITH DRUGS!!! Before I even went into labor, no less! Who knows, I guess time will tell if my terrible parenting choices will result in Kenneth being an antisocial misfit with a low IQ. I imagine I'm going to feel pretty terrible in 21 years when all those perfect children of the perfect parents are graduating from Harvard, and my kid is either sweeping streets or sitting in a bell tower somewhere with an automatic rifle.

I am really sorry you had such a bad experience. Had I known in advance your class was scheduled over 2 days I would have told you that only about 4 hours or less of that would have been worthwhile time. Eric and I took one parenting class, 2 hours, that covered basic infant care, breastfeeding, diapering, etc. and it was plenty.

As a former breastfeeder, I can say that best way to learn breastfeeding is to do it, and to have people close to you who are supportive and can offer advice. That can be a mom or mom-friend who breastfed, people at a mom's group, a lactation consultant, an online community, etc. No amount of reading (or 15-hour classes) would have prepared me for the first time our little yuppie larva clamped on to my nipple with great force, looking for a meal. Fortunately, this is something humans have done for millennia, so with some instinct-following and good support Lil will be able to figure it out.

My advice to you is to guard yo' grill, dog, because this is just the beginning. Breastfeeding is the first of many ultra-major-crucial choices you will make for your son that everyone will feel free to comment about. Wait until the day you take him outside with no hat on.

 
At 11:21 AM, Blogger Whiskey Tango said...

You took a baby outside without a hat on? For Shame! He'll probably become a male stripper in a seedy Oklahoma bar now.

Seriously, though, there's a lot of crazy people out there who will want you to subscribe to their brand of crazy. Develop your own brand of crazy and let Porter help you develop it.

 
At 12:02 PM, Blogger RobRoy said...

I hear the male-stripper union in Oklahoma have it going pretty good these days.

Can I get a number for that.

 
At 1:23 PM, Blogger Whiskey Tango said...

1-800-peeners?

 
At 2:15 PM, Blogger RobRoy said...

Why do I get the feeling that this is not a real number?

 
At 1:06 PM, Blogger Kimberly El-Sadek said...

Aha...the holier than thou parent brigade. Mini-me was born in the midst of a heat wave in Oregon, not a place typically associate with ubiquitous A/C. First short outing at the end of the first week was to visit my mom's office. The old ladies tut-tutted because my daughter didn't have a hat on. Hello? It's 90F outside, nobody needs a hat! I met the holier than thou natural birth torturers and the you must be Elsie the cow for the good of your baby shortly in the month before delivery. Guess what...epidurals are the shit especially during a long, induced labor and playing Elsie the cow just wasn't for me after a few weeks of a permanently attached hungry baby so soy formula it was. Result being a much happier, well rested mom and a pretty content baby.

 
At 7:03 PM, Blogger Michelle said...

Oh Rob, I pity you guys. I think that since most women give up on breastfeeding within the first 3 weeks, they are trying to guilt moms into sticking it out these days. I would wait and see how it goes and if Porter has any troubles latching in the hospital, then call in a lactation consultant.
Epidural? I can personally attest to the fact that they make a world of difference to a mom who has been in hard back labor for 12 hours. And both my boys latched on with no difficulties. Ryan was such a natural he decided not to give it up for 18 months....not sure if that's a pro or con but it's what happened.

 

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