One Lovely Blog Award!

This was a lovely surprise!   My first blog award, from someone whose own blog is so inspiring and always keeps me coming back for more, Atlantamomofthree, a big thank you!  Have a look at her blog, it is full of informative articles, recipes, breastfeeding and childbirth thoughts and lots of laughs.

She also bestowed upon me the brilliant Yoda award which made me laugh so much, I am honored!!  THANK YOU!!  Please check out her blog Atlantamomofthree.

Image courtesy of http://www.atlantamomofthree.com
“You are a wise soul, with your understanding and care coming across in all your posts. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us, oh green one.”

I tried to look back into the history of the award, but like many other people, I failed to find out much about it’s origin.  The trail doesn’t go back much further than 2009 when the creator may have sent the original idea into cyberspace.  Several incarnations of the image exist, probably reinvented by people wanting a more aesthetically suitable image, but other than that I can find no concrete evidence about the origin of this award!

None the less, the award is a great way to show appreciation for great writing, research and photography.  Based on how proud I felt when I received the nomination, it is a really inspiring process to join in with!  So in accordance with the rules here I go…

Seven random facts about me…

1. I wanted to be a milkman lady when I was young.
2. I am trained to make false eyes.
3. I hate hate hate exercise.
4. The sun makes me very nervous.
5. My shyness manifests as verbal diarrhea.
6. I sleep on my face so spiders can’t crawl in during the night.
7. I rarely see anything to completion, too fickle!

My nominations are…

1. Goodnight Mush  Fabulous resource for baby wearing and passionate about breast feeding.  Gorgeous photographs and a lovely personal peek at life with two children.
2. Mummy Flying Solo  Makes me laugh without fail.  Inspiration on all things parenting and life, so grounding.
3. The Lady Likes Food  I just love her heart healthy but decadent desserts, but there is a whole host of other fresh, and interesting recipe ideas here.
4. Rambam Institute  This is a Jewish medicine blog, but there are always fascinating insights into health issues covering a range of areas, I like the pot luck lessons I learn here!
5. Analytical Armadillo  Breastfeeding, information, research, my heaven!

The rules for accepting the award are as follows…

1. Thank the blogger who nominated you and link back to their blog.
2. Post the award image in your acceptance post.
3. List seven random facts about yourself.
4. Nominate others for the award and notify them on their blog.

Kinda Crunchy

It turns out I’m kind of a crunchy mum, not as crunchy as the crunchiest of mums, but heading towards it fast!!

Who knew? I didn’t even realise how crunchy I was until I learned what it means and the principles it stands for.  I feel lucky that I am able to take the crunchy path and raise my little guy in the healthiest and safest way I know of.  It has been with the support of my family, when sleeping and breastfeeding have been hard, when my decisions and choices have been different to what they may have known, and for getting on board when my most crunchy moments arose that we are all a little bit more crunchy than we used to be.

So crunchy parenting originates from crunchy granola and the healthy hippie lifestyle that might be associated with it.  That’s a pretty bad definition, and the meaning of it is much broader than that.  For me I guess it is an extension of attachment parenting, and adds another level of trying to live a clean, natural, healthy, organic, unmedicated lifestyle.  I am no hippy, I am a modern, intelligent and informed woman.  I also love technology and science and education, and I think it is for these reason that I can make informed choices and decisions to live in a more natural way.

Here is what makes me kind of cruncy…

I’m a breastfeeding, baby wearing, co-sleeping mum.  I tried to cloth diaper but it ended in tears.  I don’t believe in crying it out. We try to be medicine free, plastic free and diaper free when we can.  I birthed natural and I delayed the cord clampers.  I cook as local and organic as possible, from scratch, everyday unless using up the leftovers!  I hate waste, always do my best to re-use, but I’m still trying harder to reduce in the first place.  And watch out, I might inflict one of my home made gifts on you if you are really unlucky!

New use for the sling!

I make several rods for my own back every day (as people keep telling me), and will continue to do so for as long as my little guy is a baby…it won’t be that long after all!

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My Breastfeeding Experience

For now I will begin with the story that put me on the path to starting my own blog.  My own journey to becoming a mother and my love affair with breastfeeding.

I always love hearing stories of triumph and will to beat the odds and succeed at this womanly art.  At every hurdle there is help at hand, in the shape of a tin of formula and a bottle.  Want a good nights sleep…formula.  Faster weight gain…formula.  Mastitis…formula. Pain…formula. It goes on and on.  Even well meaning, so called supporters of breastfeeding are all to fast to sabotage mothers hard work.  Even one bottle of formula has the potential to start a slippery slope of decreased milk production.

The key for me was education.  I spent hours reading everything I could get my hands on.  I searched for information about every twinge I felt, the length of a feed, the space between feeds, breast pumps, nipple shields, blocked ducts, cabbage leaves, thrush remedies, homeopathic remedies…the list of google searches was endless.  The result, I was prepared for the struggle of my own breastfeeding experience and I knew not to give up, on my body, or my little guys ‘virgin gut’.  More on that later though.

In the main my pregnancy was straightforward (read more here).  My own mother had c-sections with my sister (transverse) and I (breech) so for me, it was section all the way, even before I was pregnant, it was all I knew.  Epidural, tidy scar and the clincher… a steely bladder when I need one.  The reality was a lot different, for which I am truly grateful.

I  started pregnancy yoga early, at 14 weeks.  On day one our yogi, Linda, pointed at her groin and emphatically told us that birthing was a primal thing!  I imagined the grunting and groaning and sweating and swearing that I would not be doing.

Pah “I just don’t see me ever getting primal” I declared from my lotus position in my leopard ensemble, waving my manicured hands and flicking my freshly washed and straightened hair.

How wrong I was!

With the training of my wonderful yogi and the support of my class of fellow warrior women, my fantastic husband and my lovely mum, I labored hard and was privileged and blessed to have a very primal (deafeningly loud), drug free, intervention free and beautiful birth.  From the spontaneous rupture of my waters in the midwifes face to the delayed cord clamping and natural placenta birth my every request was met.

Back home things started well.  When the midwife made her first home visit, she asked if this was my second baby?  We looked so comfortable nursing happily in our comfy chair that she assumed I had done it before.  When I mentioned the pain I was experiencing at latch she said it would improve with time and that I was doing everything right.

I persevered.

At each feeding the pain worsened, I would grit my teeth, literally curl up my toes, and stiffen my whole body.  Even with tears in my eyes, no professional could give me a reason for the pain.  Health visitors, lactation consultants, counsellors and advisors… it took nearly six weeks to self diagnose ductal thrush causing the deep tissue stabbing pain and direct those professionals in its treatment and for the symptoms to make themselves visible to the ‘professionals’.

I toyed with the medication I was prescribed.  Tablets for me, cream for my boobs and gel for the little guy.  I cried every time I had to administer him with the gel in his mouth.  I put off taking every tablet I should have swallowed and ultimately I prolonged the whole episode.  It took some stern advice from a fellow lactavist to really knuckle down and beat this thrush from my pounding breast.  The house smelled of vinegar for weeks, the washing machine never really recovered from three weeks of non stop boil washes.

Was it worth the effort…you bet.  I remember sitting in the kitchen nursing my little guy and tentatively asking my mum, “I don’t think this is hurting as much as usual.’  Almost ten weeks of pain that sometimes made even a car journey excruciatingly painful, slowly came to an end.

Only one lady (I like to call her the breast whisperer) got up close and personal with my boobs.  She found the most likely cause of the thrush, as is so often the cause with breastfeeding  problems, was our latch,  To every other health care professional and to myself the latch looked fine, but the pain told a different story.

She watched his sucks intensely, listened to his swallows closely, tried to find his rhythm and pattern of feeding.  She bought him in to land like a plane onto my boobs, released his latch and repeated from a different angle.  Undignified, yes.  But I finally experienced what it should feel like to latch the little guy on correctly at the start of a feed.

It is because of her help that our feeding became enjoyable, and even more than that, became something that I am proud to have continued for so long.  Writing this, I should stop by and say thanks to her, I really should let her know the impact she has had on our lives.

If you are in the swing of breast feeding, you feel passionately about it or you just have more milk than you know what to do with…have you ever considered donating to a milk bank.  Read more about my milk donation journey and learn how to go about donating your own milk here.