There have been some sad stories in the news these past few months. I can't get them out of my head. My thoughts are a bit scattered, so please bear with me.
There was the young mom who shook her baby to death because he wouldn't let her play a game of Farmville.
Another whose 13 month old baby drowned in the tub while the mother was in another room checking Facebook.
A third mother who drove her car with her 4 children into a river (one child managed to escape).
The first thing most people think upon hearing stories like these is, "That woman never should have been a mother." or "She was a terrible, irresponsible person" or "She is a bad mom". I don't see it that way.
What I see is a lack of proper support and care for the mother. Mother's needs are not being met. (Disclaimer: I'm sure these same thoughts apply to fathers, but since the stories I'm citing are about moms, that is who I am going to talk about.)
In the first story, it appears as though the mom needs more time to do something for herself and more education about how to parent. If there was another care taker (relative, babysitter, neighbor, friend) available to help out for an hour or two each day to watch the baby, then maybe she would have been able to satisfy her need to play games while someone was supervising her child. It is also possible no one warned her about the effects of shaking a baby. Maybe a class about child care the first few months could have prevented her child's death. I think people also don't realize that even a person who knows not to shake a baby may end up doing it. For some people, something happens in their brain when a baby won't stop screaming, and they can't help or stop it. They have to be strong enough and aware enough to set the baby down and get some space before harm the child. It is difficult to imagine this until you've gone through it, but I can remember a time or two when I felt that urge and had to suppress it. Not everyone has the ability to do that. Also, she may have been suffering from post partum depression. In that case, she would have needed someone to talk to or a support group until she started to feel better.
The second story hits close to home for me. I often stand just outside the door of the bathroom, checking email, text messages, and facebook on my phone, while my toddler is in the tub. It makes me nervous to do this, but there is still part of me that just needs a few moments to myself so I can be a better mom to my son after his bath is over. Maybe it was really difficult to get him into the tub that night and I just need a break. Maybe he was slapping me in the face and I needed some distance. What I'm saying is that anyone can make a decision like this woman did, and it doesn't mean she is a bad mom. Losing her child is punishment enough. I guarantee she will never make the same mistake again. She learned her lesson and is not a danger to others. Like the mother from the first story, what this mother needed was time to herself, someone to watch her child while she did something for herself. She needed more support and did not know to ask for it, or had no one that could offer it.
The third story is a bit different. A mom who commits or wants to commit suicide is in desperate need of a professional to talk to. She needs to learn how to express her feelings in a way that they will be heard and have her emotional needs met. Rather than accuse her of being an unfit mother, why don't we ask what we can do to identify warning signs, give proper support, and prevent another mom from taking her life and the lives of her children? There is a comment on this story from a woman who went through a similar struggle, but was fortunate enough to have professional help. Why is the only person empathetic to this woman's situation someone who has gone through something similar? Why can't we all learn to be empathetic and not be critical or judgmental?
Our society is not designed to support mothers. Maternity leave, when available, is so short. Child care is so expensive, and becoming less available as the economy worsens. In general, we live far away from extended family, so are often left on our own to take care of our kids and figure out how to parent. We are, for the most part, without role models and without guidance. Some of us have the resources (mental and financial) to seek out the support we need, but I would bet the majority of mothers in the US either can't afford it, don't realize they need help, or don't think it is possible that anyone could or would want to help them meet their needs.
What about mental health of parents, in general? What do we know about it, when do we talk about it, and how are parents educated about warning signs and when to seek help? Post partum depression is starting to get the attention it deserves, but there are so many other feelings and emotions that we need to talk about, identify, and work through.
The comments on these stories prove my point. People want to hurt these moms, they think the mothers should be killed for taking a life - but they don't understand the mental state these moms are in. It doesn't happen to everyone, but some people just can't cope with children the way others can. Crying babies affect people in different ways. Different moms need different amounts of time away from the kids. These women have already suffered the worst tragedy there is, and now they are suffering through tremendous punishment in prison and through public criticism.
What if these mothers had adequate help with child care, took parenting classes, and had their needs, whatever they may be, met? What if these mothers had the support and guidance they needed to take care of their children?
I can already hear people responding to this with thoughts like, "I'm a stay at home mom of 5 kids, and I don't need help, I don't need time to myself, I don't need anything". Well, good for you, but that just means that your needs are different, and that is wonderful that all your needs have been met! The needs of the mothers in these stories have not been met. So what could we do to help them? What could we do to help mothers, in general, before these types of tragedies?
Why are people compelled to criticize these women? Why isn't anyone compelled to wish that these women had what they needed to be the kind of mother we expect them to be?
I don't have any answers to this. I just wonder, if we all thought about these cases from the mother's point of view (if we could be so lucky to learn enough about them to do so), considered the mother's needs immediately before the incidents, if her needs had been met, what would have happened? What if we raise our kids to think in this way, to meet the needs of their partners and friends, and care for one another?
-NinaMama
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Because I make my own baby food.
Feeding my kids has always been difficult for me. I set high standards for myself that I can not easily achieve. What I want is to always feed my kids homemade, organic, healthy meals. What I actually feed them is a random assortment of things that range from healthy to pre-made/processed junk. I've gotten to a comfortable place with this, though, as I now accept the reality of my ability. Here is the story of how I got to that place.
Introducing solids to my first born was a bit scary. I strictly followed my pediatrician's protocol - wait until 6 months, then begin with mashed up avocado, banana, and fully cooked egg yolk. Skip the rice cereal, as it has no nutritional benefit, it is just a vehicle for artificially added iron which the baby can get naturally from other sources. For example, raw liver (frozen, and from a very high quality butcher). I chose to skip this as I did not trust my own judgement about what a fresh liver should look like, but I did like the idea of having a natural source for this vital mineral. You can learn more about this controversial first-food on the Weston A. Price website.
After weeks of this, my baby still was not eating much. He just didn't seem interested. I had a bit of success when I added a lot of breast milk to the mashed up egg yolk, watering it down so that it was similar consistency to milk. But even then, he wasn't that interested.
I was at the grocery store one day with my husband. We were walking by the baby food section and he says to me, "Why not just try the rice cereal? It isn't going to hurt him. Lots of kids start out on this and they are all fine. Just try it and see if he likes it. If not, no big loss." ... That sounded logical, but I was still hesitant, because I thought feeding him rice cereal was pointless, from a nutritional POV, and I wanted to do better than that. So I bought the cereal with the MOST additives: vitamins, iron, pro biotics, DHA, (and of course it is organic). Even though the cereal itself is just a vehicle for these other things, at least he is getting a good dose of the other things.
I get home and read the label to see how to prepare the cereal. The directions are vague, and it makes me mad. This is the first time I've prepared rice cereal - I want to know *exactly* how much cereal and *exactly* how much and what kind of liquid to mix in! Instead, it says "Pour into bowl, add liquid, stir". It didn't take long to figure out that it really is just that simple, and that I could figure out the correct proportions of cereal to liquid as I went along and add in more cereal if I wanted it thicker or more water or breastmilk if I wanted it thinner, but MAN that was a frustrating time.
Anyway, I now consider rice cereal to have been my son's "Gateway Food". The first time I gave him this rice cereal he ate it all up! I was so surprised, he had never eaten so much in one sitting before. Maybe it was just the right time, maybe that day he woke up ready for solids, or maybe it was something about the flavor, temperature, or consistency of the rice cereal. Despite the nutritional void, if nothing else, this cereal taught him how to eat, and that is a huge benefit that you do not typically associate to a first food. After that one bowl of rice cereal, he eagerly ate up everything else I'd put in front of him.
This opened up a new challenge for me. Avocado, banana, and egg yolk are all easy in the sense that preparation requires little more than a fork to smash it with. But now that we've graduated to rice cereal and beyond, what will he eat? I want to feed him home made, organic, healthy foods - but what? I don't cook often, I somehow don't have time to even boil a potato for him. I don't want to buy pre-made jarred foods. But what else can I do? So I buy the pre-made foods, organic at least, and feel guilty for it. He seems to like them, it can't be all that bad...
Gearing up to start solids with baby#2. What a different animal! He seems eager and ready to eat at just 4 months. This throws me for a loop - I thought I had to wait until 6 months, but why? He seems so ready now at 4 months. His pediatrician supported me, saying if I thought he was ready, go ahead and start. So I did, finger feeding him a few bites of smooshed banana at 4 months old. He was thrilled, and made a fuss in the moments between each fingerful.
I remembered hearing about something called "Baby Led Weaning" on one of my parenting lists. I looked that up and got the book. First, it reminds me to wait until 6 months to introduce any solid foods. Their reasoning is that a baby's digestive system isn't ready even if they seem to be showing signs of interest in food. That there are small holes still in a baby's intestines and food particles can move through those holes and develop into food allergies. I'm not quoting from the book, and my recap here does not sound very scientific or convincing, but this is how I remember it. Anyway, it was enough for me to decide to wait a couple more weeks or maybe months, just to be safe. I knew there was a good reason I waited until 6 months with my first kid.
The title is a little misleading. It should be called "Baby Led Feeding". They advise that babies should continue to be breastfed for as long as possible, but they call it "weaning" because any introduction of solid food means the transition to no milk is beginning. Did that make sense?
The basic idea in this book is that jarred semi-solid baby food is a modern invention by Gerber, and that babies don't actually need to start their solid food adventure with spoon fed slime. Rather, if they have the motor skills and motivation to grab something off your plate, bring it to their mouth, chew on it, and swallow it, then they ought to be allowed to do so. This is the kind of common-sense parenting that I love. And I love finding a book to support an idea that feels right to me, but for which society, in general, does not accept. We are so used to believing the product packaging that we have forgotten how to trust our own instincts. "But won't he choke on that?" - no, probably not. Babies have a reflex to spit out chunks of food they can not chew or swallow. Their gums work surprisingly well for grinding up food. If something does get stuck, they'll throw up and it'll come out. If that doesn't work, I do know how to do the baby Heimlich. Gerber processed baby foods have been around less than 100 years. Prior to that, this method of letting a baby explore food and learn through experimentation is how all babies learned to eat.
Another thing I love about this approach is that it makes so much sense developmentally for a baby. More specifically, MY baby. I keep trying to spoon feed him the slimey jar food, and all he wants to do is grab the spoon and try to do it himself. I remember getting really frustrated with my first born for stealing the spoon, preventing me from being a good mother and making sure he had the proper amount of nutrients in his belly! JUST LET ME FEED YOU DAMMIT. But now I know how important it is to just let him (talking about the 6mo now) have the spoon, not to fight it, not to care how much actually gets in his mouth. I know now that he is working on the mechanics and learning something that is equally as important as whatever nutrients he may ingest in the process. I feel free, now, to just let him eat! Or not eat. Whatever he ends up doing is fine. I'll still breastfeed him later, which is where he'll continue to get the majority of his nutrition for another 6 months.
I'm empowered now with various ways of feeding my baby. Store-bought organic semi-solid food, home made organic semi-solid food (when I manage to do it, not beating myself up over it this time), organic enriched brown rice cereal, and whatever happens to be on my plate.
There is the new challenge: Making sure that what is on my plate is healthy enough for my child. The standards by which I feed my children are waaaaay higher than the standards I set for myself. I know I need to correct this imbalance, but I am not someone who likes to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Most of my meals come from the surrounding restaurants. While they serve fairly high quality food, I still don't know exactly what is in there, and it makes me nervous to let my baby have it. I often do anyway, but not without an appropriate helping of mom-guilt for me.
Oh I just remembered something else - broth! Waldorf education believes the way to start babies out with solid foods is with a good veggie broth. This allows their digestive system to be introduced to new foods in a very subtle way, allowing for a slower, smoother transition. Just throw a bunch of stuff into a pot, let it simmer for an hour, and strain it. I did this last week for the first time (always intended to do it with my first and never did), and it was surprisingly easy and tasty. My baby drank a lot of it, and I served the softened veggies to him and my toddler, too. He mostly played with them, but did manage to suck on a fist full or two. Now I feel like I can check this off my baby-to-do list. Next time, I intend to freeze some so I can just have some good veggie stock on-hand when I want it. I could use it in his rice cereal instead of plain water.
For what it's worth, my 3yo is an amazing eater whose favorite food is an Indian dish, Chicken Tikka Masala (from a restaurant, of course).
This morning, my 6mo shoved half an egg yolk into his mouth all by himself, gagged a little because it was so dry, then continued on playing with the other half, crumbling it all over himself and dropping bits onto the floor. In his short life, he has already tasted a couple of burritos, eaten rice (the whole grain, not in cereal form), corn (gummed an eaten cobb), veggie broth, fist fulls of sweet potato, banana, avocado, and probably a lot of other things that I've already forgotten. He's a good eater already!
-NinaMama
Introducing solids to my first born was a bit scary. I strictly followed my pediatrician's protocol - wait until 6 months, then begin with mashed up avocado, banana, and fully cooked egg yolk. Skip the rice cereal, as it has no nutritional benefit, it is just a vehicle for artificially added iron which the baby can get naturally from other sources. For example, raw liver (frozen, and from a very high quality butcher). I chose to skip this as I did not trust my own judgement about what a fresh liver should look like, but I did like the idea of having a natural source for this vital mineral. You can learn more about this controversial first-food on the Weston A. Price website.
After weeks of this, my baby still was not eating much. He just didn't seem interested. I had a bit of success when I added a lot of breast milk to the mashed up egg yolk, watering it down so that it was similar consistency to milk. But even then, he wasn't that interested.
I was at the grocery store one day with my husband. We were walking by the baby food section and he says to me, "Why not just try the rice cereal? It isn't going to hurt him. Lots of kids start out on this and they are all fine. Just try it and see if he likes it. If not, no big loss." ... That sounded logical, but I was still hesitant, because I thought feeding him rice cereal was pointless, from a nutritional POV, and I wanted to do better than that. So I bought the cereal with the MOST additives: vitamins, iron, pro biotics, DHA, (and of course it is organic). Even though the cereal itself is just a vehicle for these other things, at least he is getting a good dose of the other things.
I get home and read the label to see how to prepare the cereal. The directions are vague, and it makes me mad. This is the first time I've prepared rice cereal - I want to know *exactly* how much cereal and *exactly* how much and what kind of liquid to mix in! Instead, it says "Pour into bowl, add liquid, stir". It didn't take long to figure out that it really is just that simple, and that I could figure out the correct proportions of cereal to liquid as I went along and add in more cereal if I wanted it thicker or more water or breastmilk if I wanted it thinner, but MAN that was a frustrating time.
Anyway, I now consider rice cereal to have been my son's "Gateway Food". The first time I gave him this rice cereal he ate it all up! I was so surprised, he had never eaten so much in one sitting before. Maybe it was just the right time, maybe that day he woke up ready for solids, or maybe it was something about the flavor, temperature, or consistency of the rice cereal. Despite the nutritional void, if nothing else, this cereal taught him how to eat, and that is a huge benefit that you do not typically associate to a first food. After that one bowl of rice cereal, he eagerly ate up everything else I'd put in front of him.
This opened up a new challenge for me. Avocado, banana, and egg yolk are all easy in the sense that preparation requires little more than a fork to smash it with. But now that we've graduated to rice cereal and beyond, what will he eat? I want to feed him home made, organic, healthy foods - but what? I don't cook often, I somehow don't have time to even boil a potato for him. I don't want to buy pre-made jarred foods. But what else can I do? So I buy the pre-made foods, organic at least, and feel guilty for it. He seems to like them, it can't be all that bad...
Gearing up to start solids with baby#2. What a different animal! He seems eager and ready to eat at just 4 months. This throws me for a loop - I thought I had to wait until 6 months, but why? He seems so ready now at 4 months. His pediatrician supported me, saying if I thought he was ready, go ahead and start. So I did, finger feeding him a few bites of smooshed banana at 4 months old. He was thrilled, and made a fuss in the moments between each fingerful.
I remembered hearing about something called "Baby Led Weaning" on one of my parenting lists. I looked that up and got the book. First, it reminds me to wait until 6 months to introduce any solid foods. Their reasoning is that a baby's digestive system isn't ready even if they seem to be showing signs of interest in food. That there are small holes still in a baby's intestines and food particles can move through those holes and develop into food allergies. I'm not quoting from the book, and my recap here does not sound very scientific or convincing, but this is how I remember it. Anyway, it was enough for me to decide to wait a couple more weeks or maybe months, just to be safe. I knew there was a good reason I waited until 6 months with my first kid.
The title is a little misleading. It should be called "Baby Led Feeding". They advise that babies should continue to be breastfed for as long as possible, but they call it "weaning" because any introduction of solid food means the transition to no milk is beginning. Did that make sense?
The basic idea in this book is that jarred semi-solid baby food is a modern invention by Gerber, and that babies don't actually need to start their solid food adventure with spoon fed slime. Rather, if they have the motor skills and motivation to grab something off your plate, bring it to their mouth, chew on it, and swallow it, then they ought to be allowed to do so. This is the kind of common-sense parenting that I love. And I love finding a book to support an idea that feels right to me, but for which society, in general, does not accept. We are so used to believing the product packaging that we have forgotten how to trust our own instincts. "But won't he choke on that?" - no, probably not. Babies have a reflex to spit out chunks of food they can not chew or swallow. Their gums work surprisingly well for grinding up food. If something does get stuck, they'll throw up and it'll come out. If that doesn't work, I do know how to do the baby Heimlich. Gerber processed baby foods have been around less than 100 years. Prior to that, this method of letting a baby explore food and learn through experimentation is how all babies learned to eat.
Another thing I love about this approach is that it makes so much sense developmentally for a baby. More specifically, MY baby. I keep trying to spoon feed him the slimey jar food, and all he wants to do is grab the spoon and try to do it himself. I remember getting really frustrated with my first born for stealing the spoon, preventing me from being a good mother and making sure he had the proper amount of nutrients in his belly! JUST LET ME FEED YOU DAMMIT. But now I know how important it is to just let him (talking about the 6mo now) have the spoon, not to fight it, not to care how much actually gets in his mouth. I know now that he is working on the mechanics and learning something that is equally as important as whatever nutrients he may ingest in the process. I feel free, now, to just let him eat! Or not eat. Whatever he ends up doing is fine. I'll still breastfeed him later, which is where he'll continue to get the majority of his nutrition for another 6 months.
I'm empowered now with various ways of feeding my baby. Store-bought organic semi-solid food, home made organic semi-solid food (when I manage to do it, not beating myself up over it this time), organic enriched brown rice cereal, and whatever happens to be on my plate.
There is the new challenge: Making sure that what is on my plate is healthy enough for my child. The standards by which I feed my children are waaaaay higher than the standards I set for myself. I know I need to correct this imbalance, but I am not someone who likes to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Most of my meals come from the surrounding restaurants. While they serve fairly high quality food, I still don't know exactly what is in there, and it makes me nervous to let my baby have it. I often do anyway, but not without an appropriate helping of mom-guilt for me.
Oh I just remembered something else - broth! Waldorf education believes the way to start babies out with solid foods is with a good veggie broth. This allows their digestive system to be introduced to new foods in a very subtle way, allowing for a slower, smoother transition. Just throw a bunch of stuff into a pot, let it simmer for an hour, and strain it. I did this last week for the first time (always intended to do it with my first and never did), and it was surprisingly easy and tasty. My baby drank a lot of it, and I served the softened veggies to him and my toddler, too. He mostly played with them, but did manage to suck on a fist full or two. Now I feel like I can check this off my baby-to-do list. Next time, I intend to freeze some so I can just have some good veggie stock on-hand when I want it. I could use it in his rice cereal instead of plain water.
For what it's worth, my 3yo is an amazing eater whose favorite food is an Indian dish, Chicken Tikka Masala (from a restaurant, of course).
This morning, my 6mo shoved half an egg yolk into his mouth all by himself, gagged a little because it was so dry, then continued on playing with the other half, crumbling it all over himself and dropping bits onto the floor. In his short life, he has already tasted a couple of burritos, eaten rice (the whole grain, not in cereal form), corn (gummed an eaten cobb), veggie broth, fist fulls of sweet potato, banana, avocado, and probably a lot of other things that I've already forgotten. He's a good eater already!
-NinaMama
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