Accepting (too much) responsibility

My brother’s wife Shari is pregnant, and I am so delighted. They’ve been trying to have a baby for several years, so I am thrilled for them, but I am also vicariously enjoying her pregnancy. I get to talk about being pregnant and think about being pregnant and remember my own pregnancy and my children’s baby days at the same time that I am really really glad I am not pregnant myself.

Breastfeeding scares Shari. Any woman in her right mind, in my opinion, should be scared by the idea. I’m not a big fan of the cow imagery that some women evoke when talking about nursing, but all the books and La Leche folks and whatnot make it absolutely clear that for the first, oh, say the first month, you don’t do much else besides breastfed—an absolutely unimaginable thing. Because I didn’t know any recent mothers and had practically never even held a newborn, I read all the books voraciously and dutifully, but I didn’t believe them. I can remember reading about one woman said she couldn’t find time to take showers and thinking “what’s her problem?” Shari might be doing that now, except that she and Matt were married and close by when Will was born, and her own sister has a baby about his age too, so she has a much more realistic vision of motherhood than I ever had.

I’ve loaned her all my books and my breastpump, I gave her my bottle sterilizer and all Will’s old bottles, I promised for her baby shower present to buy her a breastfeeding present (the bra pads and lanolin and GIANT water bottle and whatnot she’ll need to make her life a little smoother), and I’ve tried to answer her questions and reassure her while still letting her know that it’s just plain hard. She emailed me at work the other day to ask whether I nursed Laura and Will right away when they were born and whether I gave them any formula the first few days, and I emailed her back and said basically, let’s get together, because we need to talk about that.

I am not a breastfeeding nazi, and frankly I resent that phrase, with its suggestion that women who actively support breastfeeding somehow equate to Hitler. I understand that overaggressive behavior people talk about when using that phrase, on a couple of levels, though. Women are often ugly to new mothers, without meaning it maybe, but every time a woman on the street tells you that your child needs a hat or socks—or why are you using that bottle, don’t you know breast is best?—that suggestion, not matter how gently phrased and how well intentioned, represents a judgment on the poor new mother: you’re not doing it right. And God knows that’s the last thing a new mother needs to hear, unless she is somehow really endangering her baby’s life.

But I also see the other side, why those lactation consultants are so determined that you do not give your newborn a bottle in the hospital even though the nurses are so determined that your baby will starve if you don’t: because every bottle of formula you give at the outset makes it that much more difficult to establish breastfeeding when you get home. When Laura was born, she and I both had a fever, and they wouldn’t let me see or hold her until twenty-four hours after the fevers cleared up. Who knew twenty-four hours could be so long? The nurses kept cheerily urging me to pump, which I did to absolutely no apparent result—even with the hospital grade breastpump I’d be lucky to get a few drops of milk. Nobody told me not to worry about this, that my milk hadn’t come in yet and this was normal, and so instead I would sit hooked up to the giant pump, not at all a conducive environment for milk-let down, I might add, and worry about those first drops of milk, that “mother’s gold,” and how Laura would never have them, how she’d be developmentally delayed as a result. I just knew she’d probably die. Or at least grown up to be a wino.

So I need to tell Shari this story. And I need to tell her at least one other. When Will was born, I was teaching at MTU. I taught online classes from home the last month of the spring semester, and stayed home with him through the summer, so the start of the fall semester, our first separation, was tough. Laura was eighteen months old when she started daycare, and I thought I would die if I had to leave my four-month old boy with strangers, no matter how well credentialed. I did it anyway, because I both have to and want to work, but my lord. I used my breastpump in my office between classes, and in the first days of the semester I put a do-not-disturb sign up on my door.

Very unusually, the dean came by my office for some reason or the other while I was pumping. He didn’t knock, but later in the day he stopped me outside his office to ask his question, and then expressed concern about the sign on my door, how it was unwelcoming to the students. “I was using my breastpump,” I told him, and while he didn’t exactly cringe, I could see this wasn’t a conversation he really wanted to have. “I’m glad I didn’t knock,” he said, and that was that. At the time, I stewed over this conversation for days, worrying about my sign, furious that I could be told I was unwelcoming when in fact I needed and was entitled to privacy. I could ignore the students who knocked and pretend not to be in my office, but if the housekeeping staff knocked and got no answer, they would come right on in, and there I’d be, whoosh whoosh whoosh. I finally arranged this elaborate plan with the housekeeping staff in my building, fortunately just two women, that I would put a big neon pink sign on my door that read “I will be back at ___.” And I would put a time on a post-it over the blank. When that sign was over my keyhole, that meant I was inside and not to come in. I still use that sign now, although just for changes to my office hours, thankfully—I was so thrilled to pack away my breastpump.

Three years later it occurred to me for the first time to wonder why I didn’t ask the dean what he would suggest as an alternative to my sign. I might have asked if he’d like to provide a nursing room for me and any other faculty or staff (although MTU is so teeny that I was the only pregnant person on campus, except for one or two students). Honest to God, it never occurred to me until today to ask these questions, and while I wandered around in a lost and demoralized way telling people this story about the lack of support I received trying to come back to work as a new mother, everyone expressed outrage, but I can’t recall anyone suggesting that I ask for support. Maybe someone did, but evidently I just understood it was my responsibility to take care of the problem.

The dean never had to breastfeed—how was he supposed to know what to offer if this was the first time the situation came up? In my own defense, he could have done some research—but why didn’t I ask for what I needed instead of trying to work it all out myself? Why did I sit nursing and stew about the work I wasn’t doing instead of pay attention to the books that advised me to nap when the baby napped? I remember thinking then the advice books were naïve, and I still do think that. Until those new mothers can believe they are not responsible for everything, that will never happen—and I don’t see anytime soon when mothers won’t be the ones responsible for those things. Shari has a lactation room at work, so she’ll be a step up from me when she starts—but she asked me at dinner the other night, “do you really have to feed them every three hours?” and didn’t believe me when I told her it’d be more like every two hours. I understand. I didn’t believe it either.

I’ve been sitting on this blog entry for a couple of days trying to come up with some lovely conclusion, something that pulls all these threads of politics and gender and mothering together, and I can’t do it. Hell, it took me three years to think about asking the dean to set up a nursing room, so clearly I have to mull these things over for quite some time. So I’ll just post this before it gets any longer and stop worrying about no conclusion. Evidently this isn’t a topic concluded in my mind anyhow. Maybe by the time Will’s six, I’ll be done thinking it over.