Feminist Fare Friday: Edition #7.

Todays feminist fare is brought to you by boobs. Why? Because God knows that the sight of any part of one gets the whole damn internet/media/complete strangers in a crazy uproar! So without further ado. I give you the boobs of....

1. Amanda Palmer. This past June, the UK's Daily Mail reported on her little nip slip (and practically nothing else) after her show at Glastonbury. Amanda wrote this lovely little ditty for them.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/RRWp4B0qsW8[/youtube]

2. Tina Fey. It seems that last weeks Emmy's were so far from exciting that the only thing anyone wanted to talk about the next day, aside from Bryan Cranston being ROBBED, was Tina's nipple. So, talk all you want people, IT'S JUST A BOOB!

[youtube]http://youtu.be/NEqG---qVp0[/youtube]

3. Breastfeeding Moms Everywhere. It is World MilkSharing Week and human milk donations all over the world are helping to feed babies. Whether it is in our own informal milk sharing mother communities or through donations to milk banks, for some of these babes, every drop counts and is a labour of life and love! In honour of that, and for breastfeeding in general, I'd like to re-post this beautiful spoken word poetry from Hollie McNish.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/KiS8q_fifa0[/youtube]

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

XO

natasha~

Nothing in life is ever really 'FREE'

I am confused. And I don't want to add fuel to the fire of the ridiculous and never ending how you feed your baby Mommy Wars, but I am serious. I am really confused.

New Your City has a new initiative called "Latch On NYC". It is aimed at promoting breastfeeding in the city's many hospitals. In order to do this, the plan is to limit access to "free" formula samples and any advertising and marketing materials from the formula companies that are distributed to new mothers and their babies in the first few hours and days after birth.

And there is a lot of hulabaloo about it all over the interwebs this week. Especially because it is World Breastfeeding Week.

A lot of people are quite upset about it and like in this article from Cafe Mom think that this is removing a woman's choice in how she feeds her baby (it is NOT). Some media outlets are sensationalizing their headlines and falsely interpreting it as a BAN on formula in hospitals (again, it is NOT). Some are using all those ugly words again, like bullying, breastapo, etc.... to describe the initiative and the counselling that mothers will (and should always) receive about breastfeeding while still in hospital.

The source of my confusion in all of this goes back to my first paragraph. You see those airquotes around the word FREE?

Yeah, that.

You know that old saying that if it something seems to good to be true, it usually is? I think this applies here.

Because in the long run, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING  "free" about the formula samples that are given to new moms in hospital. NOT. ONE. DAMN. THING.

Here is just a short list of what is the COST of these freebies:

1. The average cost to formula feed an infant for the first year of life is in the range of $1350.00 to $2160.00 and can be as high as $5000.00 if the child needs a specialty formula. NOT FREE.

2. Research PROVES that giving formula in the first few hours and days after birth can significantly compromise the breastfeeding relationship between mom and baby. No more breastfeeding = more formula = NOT FREE.

3. On most cities Food Bank MOST NEEDED ITEMS List you will ALWAYS see Baby Formula. And this one really gets to me. So often it is the lower income families that seem to get the least amount of support and information about breastfeeding. They leave the hospital with samples of the most expensive brands of formula and then can't afford it on their own! DEFINITELY NOT FREE.

4. The public health and economic savings that could be had with more breastfeeding versus formula feeding are well documented as well. For most working parents (especially in countries with no paid maternity leave), babies who are sick more = parents who have to take time off of work = lost wages = NOT FREE.

5. The only thing that IS free here is the free advertising and marketing that the formula companies are getting from hospitals and health care workers. This is a quote from Dr. Laura Sinai, from the American Association of Pediatrics 2012 Leadership Forum taken from the ammendment to divest from formula marketing in pediatric care.

"There is no “gift” in a “gift bag” except that  from the healthcare system applying a seal of approval to the formula manufacturer without compensation. Research reveals that when a health care provider distributes a formula manufacturer’s goods, the recipient interprets that action to indicate that formula feeding is superior to breastfeeding and that the brand distributed is superior to the alternatives."

So Mamas, here is my request.

Before you believe all the hype and crying foul about New York's new breasfeeding initiative, lets really examine who is getting what for FREE here and see this initiative for what it has the potential to be. A really good step in the right direction for moms and babies everywhere!

OK?

Thanks,

Natasha~

P.S. If you would like a bit more perspective on this issue, I highly recommend that you read AskMoxie's post and also Dr. Jay Gordon's guest post from Susan Berger, IBCLC on the Huffington Post.

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This is the Day 4 post for the Summer Blog Challenge {31 posts in 31 Days}.

Check out these great posts from our other participants too!

Zita at The Dulock Diaries.

Meaghan at MagzD Life

April at This Mom's Got Something to Say

and Aramelle at One Wheeler's World

World Breastfeeding Week: Reason #576...

...that {extended} breastfeeding works for us.

Instant comfort for little Miss L after her first wipeout on her new bike.

Before:

After:

It is always more than just food.

Especially now.

To find out more about World Breastfeeding Week 2012, please check out the site HERE.

Now what about you? How has breastfeeding made parenting easier for you {and your babies}?

Natasha~

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This is Day Three of the #31Days of Summer Blogging, AKA the Summer Blog Challenge. 

Check out the contributions of our other participants today.

April starts her alphabet-inspired posts over at This Mom's Got Something to Say.

Meaghan is the daughter of a cop... and is thankful for the job they all do for US at  MagzD Life.

Zita is probably still writing... check her post out soon at The Dulock Diaries.

And Liam is trying to recruit more suckas to do this crazy challenge!!

I'm Sexy and I know it....

I have big boobs. It's true.

They kinda popped out the summer between Grade 8 and Grade 9. Like REALLY popped out!

And boys, men and some women too have been staring at them, talking about them, and trying to {and the privileged few getting to} touch them ever since!

I have know of the power of my boobs for a long time and yes, I was and am kind of obsessed with them. {Seriously, ask my friends, I really do love my girls!}

I spare no expense when it comes to housing them in the finest European bras (the ones that actually fit a gal with a 32 E bra size) and I highly recommend that all women go and get a proper bra fitting and a proper bra (I thought I was a 36 C before that!). None of this, buy 2 get 1 free {insert mall lingerie store here} cheap lingerie for my mammaries. ONLY the BEST!

I have always known the power of sexy that my breasts possessed, but I had no idea of their true powers until I birthed my first child. These two amazing appendages MAKE MILK! Amazing, nurturing, nourishing milk for my child!! And man, did he need it. At a mere 3 pounds 13 ounces he was a skinny little monkey. And my boobs? Well, they where easily twice the size of his tiny little jaundiced head!

See!

Breastfeeding a preemie is hard work. Heck, breastfeeding any baby is hard work. And it became abundantly clear very quickly that the sexy that I was feeling about my breasts a mere 9 months before this moment, while lounging on the beaches of St. Lucia (where said preemie child was conceived), was quickly replaced by wanting them to feel comfortable, not chafed or cracked or bleeding or thrush-ridden or plugged or all the other things that happened to me and my girls once we wholeheartedly embarked on this breastfeeding journey.

For a while, sexy left me. I wore the most basic of nursing bras and tank tops and focused all that I could on this little baby boy and making sure that my breasts and I were doing what we should and could to help him grow and thrive.

Around the 6-month mark, we finally got into our breastfeeding groove and had a good thing going on. Little C had grown enough so that boob and baby head were about equal in size and we found a position and a way to breastfeed that made us both happy. (Side-lying FTW!) It was around this time as well, that I started to lose more of my baby-weight and needed to update my wardrobe a bit.

And then... sexy started to creep back into my life. I was still fully committed to this breastfeeding gig, but now I wanted pretty nursing bras and matching undies. I wanted nursing tops that were not just over-sized t-shirts with a not so well-concealed or flattering boob flap or cut-out.  The search was on. I managed to find a few brands that I fell in love with and proceeded to buy a bra or top in every color or style that they had (Big shout out here to BOOB nursing wear and the amazing selection of nursing bras that they have at Milkface.com.) Having a nice nursing wardrobe serves two purposes in my mind. Number one, it makes a mama feel good about herself and the way she looks. And two, it makes it a lot easier to just keep on nursing for the long haul.

At this point you may be asking yourself, "Why is Natasha going on and on about her boobs again? And what is with all this 'feeling/looking sexy' talk?"  Well, it has recently come to my attention (HA! Insert sarcasm font here) that SEXY and BREASTFEEDING are two words that when placed together in a sentence (or a thought) make a lot of people VERY uncomfortable!

Case in point, THIS amazing photo.

Taken by a very talented Russian photographer, this image captures a wonderful breastfeeding moment with a beautiful and dare I say sexy Mama and her cute little chubster of a baby. Is it an art piece? Yes. Is it 'real life'? No, not for the majority of us. It is a photo shoot. Just like those newborn babies wrapped up in gauze and placed in a bowl pictures are not "real life"... this to me follows along those same lines. It is a shot taken to be shared or cherished of a time in their lives that was special and beautiful. End of story.

Or not...

There has been some talk over the interwebs that photos like this one, of an obviously very attractive woman nursing a child (and perhaps in a posed and not a "natural" position) only serves to perpetuate society's obsession with the 'sexualization' of breastfeeding. Just take the Time Magazine cover shot with the lovely, tall and gorgeous Jamie Lynn Grumet. Would the reaction to that particular cover photo been as dramatic, had the image they printed been one of what more people would associate with all us "crazy hippie"  attachment parents?  A barefooted, cross-legged sitting, hemp-skirt-wearing, no make-up, hair in a long braid (or better yet, in dreads) breastfeeding earth mother!!??

I just don't know...

What I do know is this. I LIKE to feel sexy.

Nothing gets me out of a frumpy, dumpy mood like having a shower, putting on my favourite {nursing} bra and matching undies and wearing something that really makes me feel and yes, even look sexy! And while I am out and about looking and feeling all sexy, chances are my daughter is going to want to nurse at some point. And wherever and whenever, I will nurse her. And perhaps because I am looking so fine, someone is gonna glance over and see me and think, "Damn that is one fine mama...oh, wait... What?? Is she nursing that baby? WTF? OMG!"

It really is a bit of a mind-fuck if you think about it.

And it has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the mother, the baby or the breastfeeding and EVERYTHING to do with the observer, or in the case of photos on the internet or on blog posts or on magazine covers, the reader.

It is a juxtaposition of two seemingly conflicting ideals that society holds.

That of the WOMAN and that of the MOTHER.

If you see a beautiful woman, your mind thinks a certain way. If you see a mother, your mind thinks a different way. (I am no student of psychology, but I am sure Freud or Jung or one of those guys had a lot to say about this whole topic!)

And herein lies the crux of the matter.

Mothers ARE women! Women ARE mothers. They are one and the same. They are beautiful, sexy, hot, smart, sassy, intelligent human beings. They are also caring, nurturing, loving, tender and protective beings.

They... WE, are all these things and then some. Just because someone can't wrap their head around the fact that a mom can be or look sexy or sultry or what have you AND be the mother that her child needs (and in this case and a lot of cases, a breastfeeding mother) is just a very sad state of affairs.

And it all really just comes right back to the boobs.

And yes, yes, we hear over and over again the same rhetoric, "Breasts are made for feeding babies." My question to everyone then is this? Have we forgotten that those same breasts probably had a lot to do with all that...ahem... fun stuff that was done to actually MAKE all these little nurslings?

Let's be real Mamas. Breasts are sexy!  YOU are sexy! And your breasts, well they make milk too! And sometimes you are a sexy mama feeding your baby with your breasts!

Nothing wrong with that!

Cheers and chest bumps Mamas and Happy first day of WORLD BREASTFEEDING WEEK!!

Natasha~

I'll  leave you with my favourite cover of LMFAO's 'I'm Sexy and I know it.'

Enjoy!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsvlsuLau5c[/youtube]

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Today's post is Day ONE of my Summer Blog Challenge!

31 Days of posts coming your way this month!

And I have convinced at least one of my friends to join me.

Check out Meaghan's first post today at MagzD Life.

UPDATE at 10:30 PM:

Three more lovely bloggers are joining in on the fun!

Check out April's Day One post over at This Mom's Got Something to Say,

Liam's post over at In The Now,

and Zita's post on her blog, The Dulock Diaries.

Confessions of a lazy breastfeeder.

I have something to confess. I am a lazy, lazy breastfeeding mama.

Case in point. My three and a half-year old daughter still nurses at night.

Which means 2-3 times a night she gets out of her bed, walks to our room, crawls in to bed with me and nurses for anywhere from 1 minute to 30 minutes depending on how sleepy I am. And since I am usually quite sleepy, it's closer to the half hour mark than not.

I know she doesn't "need" to nurse at this time, I know I "should" have night-weaned her months/years ago, but I didn't.

Oh, I have tried, more than a few times, really I have, but two happy sleeping people always seemed to be more important to me than one crying and then fitfully sleeping baby and one miserable mama.

I am also quite the lazy breastfeeder in other ways. If Princess L gets hurt, either physically or emotionally, the quickest way to soothe her is with a quick pit-stop at the boob. If she is bored, she will come over, tell me I smell like "boobie-breasts" and ask if she can nurse. 95.7% of the time I will oblige her in her requests to nurse where and when ever she wants.

Now, given that my daughter is three years old and we do communicate quite well, we do have some breastfeeding rules. We don't nurse at my in-laws place anymore (out of respect for my MIL, who has never said anything directly to me, but I just know that she is not comfortable with us still nursing). I also often place a time limit on nursing, especially when it is one of those "I'm bored" moments. And L knows that I don't want everyone to SEE my boobs and will now cover them with her hand or my shirt if we are nursing out in public. You know, 'cause she is a considerate little nursling like that.

The past few months have been quite the upheaval for our family with selling our old house, packing, moving and then unpacking and settling into the new house. I am pretty sure that nursing has provided Princess L with A) some much-needed Mama time and B) a sense of normalcy amongst all the chaos. It has also given me a moment to stop during our busy days, look at my beautiful girl and really appreciate her and all her little quirks as I stroke her super soft hair and just breathe her in.

Last weekend I thought we were near the end of our breastfeeding relationship. And we still very much might be. In the past week she has stopped asking to nurse before bedtime. This was exactly the way weaning happened with Little C. Just before his third birthday, he stopped all nursing except his morning nurse and cuddle, and then the day after his birthday we were done. (He still comes in for his morning snuggle though and it is one of the best moments of my day!)

Weaning Little C just didn't seem as bittersweet. I was tandem nursing at that time and L was just over 14 months old, so my mama milk was still in high demand. This time around it is different...

When my girl finally stops nursing, so too will I. There are no more Natural Urban Babies coming into this house, my body will no longer nourish a child and my >5 years of breastfeeding will come to an end. That is a long freakin' time to be making milk for my babies and yes, I am damn proud of it. I feel that it is one of the major accomplishments in my life!

So you know what, I am going to continue to lazily nurse my child, still not bother with any kind of 'night-weaning' and let her have her 'booby-breasts' when and where ever she wants if that is what makes her happy.

Because it IS coming to an end...

And I am not very good at good-byes.

Not to the breast milk, nor to my beautiful breastfeeding boobs either!

{BIG Sigh....}

Natasha~

Passion and Compassion

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.

~Erma Bombeck

Oh Erma, how I wish this was more true.

Compassion. A feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.

As mothers we (are supposed to) have it in spades.

For our babies, who need us 24/7 to nourish, nurture, love and keep them safe.

For our husbands and partners, who for the above reasons need us as well and because they are there for us when we need them. Sharing our lives, bringing home the bacon, or doing the stay-at-home parent thing while we go back to work.

And for our fellow {wo}man. Our sisters, our friends, the stranger with 4 kids under 4  struggling at the grocery store, the new mama doing her best to figure this all out, the grandmother who has been there and done that and now looks on with a touch of nostalgia in her eyes.

BUT...

Throw in any bit of information about how you feed your baby, how you get your baby to sleep or what you do to discipline your child (just to name a few polarizing parental choices) and BAM!!

Our compassion and understanding seems to revert right back to judgment!

Especially on the interwebz!

Why am I bringing this up you ask? Am I being like one of the many blogs and sites out there trying to stir up page views by "fueling the mommy wars" as they like to say?

GOOD GAWD NO!! Please know that this is NOT my intention at all.

This post is being written because over the past few days, I have had a lot to think about. I have had a chance to see things from a different perspective and have come to some personal conclusions that have left me needing to write it all down to make sure I completely understand what exactly happened and why.

The other night, I got riled up. Full on, blood boiling, hands shaking, MAD! I was on Facebook (mistake #1) and followed a link to a site that had posted an article about the cancelled #GNO Twitter party. The post asked if indeed the party was in violation of the WHO Code of Marketing for formula manufacturers and I commented and said that yes, it absolutely was. A few replies later, the author stated that the party was shut down by a bunch of women who have a PERSONAL BIAS against women formula-feeding.

Cue my blood pressure shooting through the roof! REALLY? A personal bias against these mothers? ME?

In a fit of frustration and with a very strong desire and intention to have a real conversation about all of this on my personal Facebook Page with my Facebook Friends, I posted a status update requesting this. (mistake #2)

What happened next was 4 hours and 153 comments of a very passionate discourse. It was FILLED with emotion, it was exhausting, and in the end I did not feel like it got us anywhere and did not even come close to the conversation I was looking for.

And I should have known better.

I should have given myself 24 hours to cool down after I read the original post and then figured out if I did indeed need to have this discussion... AGAIN. (And perhaps not on Facebook, where filters are often off and we say or type things when we probably should have left well enough alone.)

Here is what I have learned in the last few days after some personal reflection and thanks to a very long note from a friend that helped immensely. This topic, these breast milk and formula feeding conversations, regardless of how you frame them, will ALWAYS be a case of 'the chicken and the egg" and I fear that there will never be a 'right' answer or a 'winning' side. And as Albert Einstein himself said,

Doing (or in this case, saying or asking) the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

My very smart friend, who did take 24 hours to formulate her response to my original post, also very wisely said that,"Breastfeeding (or the ability or choice NOT to) is a 'heart' issue." Meaning, that most mothers can't help but talk to you from an emotional level on the subject. And in one of the many side conversations that were also going on that night, another dear friend sent me a message and said that, "A breastfeeding mother is changed forever emotionally." I can not emphasize enough how much I agree with her on this and firmly believe that breastfeeding changes us on an emotional, physical and biological level. What I also learned that night is that a mother who desperately wanted to breastfeed, was told from a trusted source that she could not, had to supplement with formula, felt judged for that decision and who continues to harbour guilt and shame for it, is also FOREVER EMOTIONALLY CHANGED.

Both are mothers, both have struggles and triumphs, both are doing the best that they KNOW HOW for their children and themselves and neither deserves to be judged or criticized for her decisions.

I am a very firm believer in the saying "When you know better , you do better." Trust me, I knew a lot more going into my second pregnancy and having Princess L than I did with Little C. Do I wish I was better informed the first time around? Absolutely. But hindsight only serves to build frustration and regret, and I really don't have time for either of those in my life. If I was to have a third child (not gonna happen y'all!) you can bet I would even more, very differently than I did in Round 1 or 2.

Being an advocate for something (anything really) doesn't mean condemning or judging people's past, present or future choices. There should never be any  "You should have..." or "Why did/didn't you...?" in advocacy conversations. There should only be, "Here is the information and resources we know and have NOW, please listen, read, hear what I have to say and make your decision(s) with them in mind. Thank you."

Which brings me back to compassion.

As mothers, I think we need to have way more compassion in our conversations, especially our online ones.

Having discussions about "heart" topics in not a bad thing, but we must keep in mind not only our own hearts, but those of the people we are communicating with as well. If someone is being defensive about something, we need to do our best to find out why? Don't be afraid to ask about someone's feelings and experiences, find out what is behind a person's hurt or anger. Be compassionate.

This becomes even more important in the world of advocacy and especially so in the world of motherhood. There will always be things that come easier to some than to others, there will always be things that work for you that don't for me, and there will always be new information coming forward that may or may not change the way we do all of these things.

In these matters of the "heart", that are so deeply rooted in us and our identities as mothers, that rouse our passions and our emotions to such heights, let us not forget that we are all mothers doing the best we can for our beautiful babies and travelling this long and dusty and often pot-hole filled mothering road together. Let us hold each other up, pass the canteen and keep on moving forward.

And here is something else that I think needs to be said about any 'how I feed my baby' conversations,be it in person or online (and please feel free to correct me if I am wrong and completely off on this one). I think that the mothers who CAN and DO breastfeed, whether it is an easy road or not, may need to have a teensy bit more compassion for the mom who did not or can not do so. For whatever the reason, be it misinformation, lack of resources and support, personal choice, medical reasons or whatever the case may be, we need to show compassion along with our passion. Because deep down, I am pretty sure there exits an element of guilt or regret or failure in all these mamas about the one thing their bodies are supposed to do for their babies.

Thank you for reading and I do appreciate your comments...

Please keep them respectful and compassionate.

Much love,

Natasha~

Photo Credit: Lawrie Cate's Flickr Photostream

Repeat after me... Breastfeeding is not OBSCENE!!

...and yet, the breastfeeding witch hunt rages on... And very strongly on Facebook again!

More breastfeeding pictures have been removed, people's accounts have been blocked or suspended and there is much confusion about what Facebook's actual policy on breastfeeding photos is or if they even have one.

You would think that they do have one based on this response from Facebook's own Help Centre.

But in an article published in the Vancouver Sun yesterday, Facebook's Canadian publicist said that,

"...although Facebook does not have a specific policy regarding breastfeeding images but given that Facebook’s policy is no nudity it would be best not to post (breastfeeding images),.."

The mixed messages from Facebook are enough to make my head spin!

For the whole back story and media updates I will direct you to my friend Jodine Chase's blog. She has been chronicling this most recent battle daily since it all started on Sunday when Emma Kwasnica, founder of the Human Milk 4 Human Babies milk-sharing network (which ironically started on Facebook), had her breastfeeding pictures flagged, removed and her Facebook account suspended for 24 hours and then another 72 hours after that.

In a show of solidarity with Emma and ALL breastfeeding mamas and their rights to post these photos on Facebook and as a kind of virtual nurse-in (and yes, I will re-address my stance on nurse-ins in general in another post), I asked my fellow mamas and followers on the Natural Urban Mamas Facebook page to post their breastfeeding photos.

And the response was amazing...

All night long and well into Monday mamas posted amazing, beautiful, funny, newborn, toddler and everything in between BREASTFEEDING photos all over the Natural Urban Mamas wall!

But I wanted to do more.

And so I made this.

I hope you like it.

I hope you will share it.

And I hope that not one of you backs down or ever feels like you need to cover up or "do that somewhere else" while breastfeeding, whether in real life or virtually by not posting or removing your nursing photos from social media sites like Facebook.

This is for you Emma and for all of the breastfeeding mamas out there fighting this battle and working tirelessly every day  to make the sight of a breastfeeding mother the normal, commonplace, not-really-a-big-deal, just-a-baby-eating, thing that it really is!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdvVVAtTo4Y[/youtube]

Give those babies some Booby Snacks Mamas!

Natasha~

Video music credit goes to:

The Star Wars Theme by John Williams

Booby Snacks by Moorea Mallat, www.songsforbreastfeeding.com

Dog Days are Over by Florence and the Machine, www.florenceandthemachine.net

All tied up.

The topic of tongue and lip-tie has come up quite a few times lately in regards to it's effect on the breastfeeding relationship and the health and well-being of both mama and baby. I asked my friend Joanna to share her breastfeeding journey from this past year. This is her story.

A year ago my husband and I welcomed our beautiful son into the world. Nursing my baby was something I was passionate about and was so looking forward to creating that special bond with my new baby.

I started breastfeeding him a few hours after his birth and it hurt. I remember my doula saying to me a million times “If it hurts, you’re not doing it right.”  So I continued to try to improve his latch. Several hours after he was born the pediatrician came to check him out.  The first thing he said was “Your son is tongue-tied (ankyloglossia – medical term), he needs his tongue snipped or you won’t continue nursing.  Make an appointment with my office.”

I had never heard of this before.  Our Lactation Consultant (LC) confirmed his tongue-tie and at a week old we had our son’s tongue-tie snipped (frenectomy).  The procedure didn’t seem to bother him at all.  The anterior tongue-tie was easy to diagnose once you knew what you were looking for: our son’s tongue was heart-shaped at the tip, he couldn’t poke his tongue out, and he had very restricted movement with his tongue.  Basically the frenum (the skin under the tongue) was tight and short.  Straight away I could feel a difference nursing, but it still wasn’t painless.

By 7 weeks of age our son was gaining weight beautifully, but I was still having issues with nursing. We’d been battling thrush for 5 weeks due to the nipple damage my son was causing while nursing and he made a clicking noise with his tongue.  He would also lose his latch frequently, and he was always full of gas which made him very cranky.  After nursing my nipples were always flat and the tips of them blanched.  When he wasn’t nursing and wasn’t asleep he was unhappy – despite being held in arms constantly. My LC came back at my request and her conclusion was that his latch was still poor, he couldn’t get his tongue forward enough to get the nipple into the back of his throat and that’s why we were still having these issues – his tongue was still restricted.  She advised us to continue to work on the latch.

When our son was 9 weeks old he commenced a breast refusal that lasted 10 days.  He would only nurse at night when he was asleep.  I was expressing milk and we were syringe feeding him during the day.  When he finally started to take the breast again during the day, he then became a very fussy nurser.

At three months of age, the thrush had gone but we had been dealing with severe gas issues in our baby for two months and I had no fuel left in my tank.  Every night he had wakeful periods on and off from 2am until mid-morning – he was writhing around in pain and passing gas.  We’d seen a chiropractor and a craniosacral therapist, tried Chinese herbs, and colic remedies, but no one could solve the gas issues.  The paediatrician labelled it colic and also said reflux medication might help.  The doctor requested x-rays and ultrasounds of his abdomen just to make sure nothing serious was wrong.  The results were all negative. We were frustrated and burning out.

I then went to Australia with our son to get some much-needed support from my family.  We came back to Canada when our son was 5 months old and was still very gassy but the nipple pain had reduced considerably and he was nursing much better. However a few weeks later he went on another breast refusal.  It was much the same as last time and I was very frustrated.  Nobody could suggest anything that I hadn’t already tried, such as nursing in the bath, wearing him, staying at home in bed etc.  I finally managed to get him nursing during the day again by nursing him to sleep for his naps while standing up, and rocking him in our ring sling.

Nursing in one of our carriers at the Edmonton Heritage Festival – 6 months old

When our son was 6 months old I felt pretty good about our nursing relationship, everything was going well and he was taking in lots of milk.  Then at 7 months of age I started to get regular pain while nursing again.  I wondered what had changed and why it had to put a damper on my one month of nursing bliss!  I got talking to a new friend who is a lactation educator and she asked if he was lip-tied (maxillary fraenum).  I remembered my LC had checked for that when I’d had her back to my house when our baby was 7 weeks old and she had said no.  So I told my friend that he wasn’t.  She insisted on taking a look and her reaction was pretty obvious – he was severely lip-tied.  She explained that his lip-tie was preventing him from flanging out his top lip to create a good seal and take in enough breast tissue.  He had been using his gums to hold the latch.  The reason why I was experiencing more pain now was that he had cut his top teeth he had to use his teeth to maintain the latch rather than his gums. She told me that if we didn’t get the lip-tie fixed he would most likely prematurely wean.

So I began a search. Who could fix his lip-tie?  No one seemed to know.  While I had this fantastic network of LCs, lactation educators, nursing moms, and IBCLCs, no one could suggest anyone to take my son to.  Finally after 2 months of searching on the internet I found a pediatric dentist in Albany, New York, one Dr. Lawrence A. Kotlow. At the same time my friend, Natasha, from Natural Urban Mamas, posted a link to a blog from a mom who had flown halfway across the States to take her daughter to this dentist.  As I did more research I discovered that mothers were flying from all over the USA and the world to take their infants to see Dr. Kotlow for tongue-tie and lip-tie revisions.  Dr. Kotlow has easy-to-understand instructions on how to diagnose tongue-ties and lip-ties in your own child, and low and behold, I came to the conclusion that our son had a Class IV lip-tie (the most severe – the lip-tie goes in between the two front teeth, causing a gap, and is connected into the hard palate) and a posterior tongue-tie (where the tongue is thickly and tightly tied at the base of the tongue).   Not only that, I also came to the conclusion that all of our son’s gas issues, colic behaviour, breastfeeding refusals, fussiness nursing in public (and in general), plugged ducts, thrush, and my nipple pain was because of both of these ties. Dr. Kotlow has written a publication linking colic/reflux issues with tongue-tie and lip-ties.  Reading this article was like reading a story about my child.  The marvellous thing about Dr. Kotlow, is that he uses a laser to revise the tissue in the mouth.  Laser is fast, pain-free, and creates an anaesthetic effect.  It takes a very short period of time to heal, involves no sedation, and can be done in the dentist's office.

By this time our son was 10 months old and he was also having issues with speech and with eating solid foods.  His speech was impeded because his tongue couldn’t move to the roof of his mouth, and this same tongue restriction was not allowing him to chew food properly.  Food mostly got spat out half-chewed or he gagged on it.  His nursing was also getting worse with my nipples getting more and more damaged and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could deal with the constant pain.  He was pulling off the breast constantly, gagging while nursing, and was also leaving teeth indentations in my areolae as he attempted to maintain a latch.  We made the decision that we were going to travel to the other side of the continent to see Dr. Kotlow!

At the same time I met a local mother whose past year roughly reflected what I’d been going through, except that her 10 month old had struggled to maintain weight due to frequent and lengthy breast refusals. They were scheduled to visit Dr. Kotlow a week after we met, but before she left for Albany we decided to make one last-ditch effort to get the revisions done locally. We both called dozens of dentists in our town and couldn’t find anyone that would use laser to revise tongue-ties and/or lip-ties on infants under two years of age.  She had even seen a pediatric plastic surgeon who said he would do the revision using a scalpel under general anaesthetic, but not just so she could continue to breastfeed her son.  I’d have to wait nearly a year to get the surgery done. This was not a viable option for me on many levels.

My new friend made the trip with her son to New York State to see Dr. Kotlow and we went a month later. Both of us are amazed at the profound difference it has made in our sons! Dr. Kotlow is committed to helping mothers have pain-free nursing and his office staff are just as supportive. The procedure took 10 minutes. My son came back to me drenched in his own sweat, red-faced, and crying, more from being away from me than any pain and an hour later he was eating, playing, nursing and then sleeping!

Nursing was unbelievably different.  The first thing I noticed was how wide he could now open his mouth.  Dr. Kotlow said the lip-tie was so tight that it prevented him from having full range of movement in his jaw.  I also noticed how much more breast tissue he had in his mouth and that his top lip was flanged outwards!  But the best thing I noticed was that it was pain-free! Yay! Dr. Kotlow checked him out the next day and showed me the stretching exercises we were to do four times a day for 14 days.  These exercises are critical post-procedure as they stretch the revised area to ensure the tissue does not heal back together.

Since the procedure was done we have noticed big differences in our boy.  Not only has his nursing improved but so has his speech and eating.  He is pronouncing sounds much more clearly. You can now see him use his tongue with a much wider range of movement to chew food.  He is no longer gagging on food and his smile is different too! He is also able to suck out more milk with each nursing session and sleep more soundly.  He isn’t losing his latch anymore and he isn’t fussing at the breast while nursing. He has even started to ask me for milk by signing ‘milk’ – this is a totally new experience for me and something that melts my heart. And I am still pain-free!

It has been a frustrating journey and definitely not the nursing journey I envisioned having when our baby was born.  It is amazing how many people I have met and am continuing to meet who are also having nursing issues due to tongue-ties and/or lip-ties.  While anterior (the tip of the tongue) tongue-ties are easily diagnosed by pediatricians and LCs, posterior tongue-ties and lip-ties remain poorly diagnosed.  Lip-ties are much easier to diagnose once the top front teeth have erupted through the gum.  However, once diagnosed, the real problem is finding someone to do the revisions locally.  Just recently, a local dentist, Dr. H. Sekhon from Lewis Estates Dental Centre, performed three lip-tie revisions using laser.  I am grateful that there is now a local dentist performing lip-tie revisions and would love to see him pursue further training with Dr. Kotlow.

Throughout our nursing relationship, many people have questioned why I have decided to continue nursing.  I guess stubbornness and determination on my part comes into play here, but I also believe that my son has a right to nurse for as long as he chooses to. Of course I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the love and support of my husband and family in Australia, and the wonderful network of babywearing and breastfeeding mamas I have found in my local area. I feel nursing strengthens our bond and our relationship. I am so grateful that we now have the opportunity to continue our nursing relationship into my son’s toddler years.

Joanna is a mother of a one year old boy, Xavier, and a 18 month old puppy, Bailey.  Her and her husband came to Canada from Australia almost three years ago for an adventure and to further their careers in environmental management with the public service.  Both are passionate about sustainable development and love the natural environment.  Joanna has studied journalism, international relations, biological sciences and environmental management and has graduate and post-graduate degrees in these fields.  She is a straight talking Aussie who loves to be around people and animals.  She likes to stay fit by playing many different sports, wearing her baby on her back, and hiking in the Rockies. Joanna is now pursuing her passions for babywearing, breastfeeding and birth support in between and while caring for her family.