The Pleasure Principle, With Balance

A woman I know has some strange beliefs about health and spirituality and loves to talk about them. Oddly enough, she has more than her share of health issues. But, she’s trying. Trying to eat well, purify her system and get to what she believes is a higher level of health and spirituality. While I see her eat the same ice cream, cheese and other “bad” stuff I do, what I hear is how these foods are terrible for the body and that a raw food diet is the way to go. She shouldn’t be eating it. Someday she’s gonna quit. She needs to eat only raw foods, go completely organic, and do some fasting. Fasting! Good grief.

I, on the other hand, consider myself a bon vivant—with balance. I go for the pleasure in life, while staying safe, healthy and relatively wholesome. And, I would say I don’t have any health issues that I know of.

Now I know everyone is entitled to their beliefs and we should try and be respectful. I realize that some might say I’m weird for not eating poultry or red meat, or wanting to have a natural childbirth without medication, or for any number of things. However, in my opinion, her assertions are way outside the realm of reality.

I’ve heard her talk about people living to be 900 years old in ancient times because of purer foods or whatever. I’ve heard about people who are allegedly so healthy, if they get cut, it will heal up right away. She believes health problems are due to spiritual and emotional conditions and cancer comes from people holding in anger or fear or something. She even suggested that the pain I felt during my natural childbirth was because of my diet not being pure enough and because my mind was supposedly conditioned to believe I had to feel pain. Kind of like in that book Oprah was promoting, The Secret, whose author says, “What we do is we attract into our lives the things we want, and that is based on what we're thinking and feeling.”

I have a real problem with that because it tends to blame the victim, in the case of cancer and other misfortunes that often people really can’t control, and because of the unrealistic expectations it sets people up for. I went into my childbirth experience fearlessly. I honestly thought I wouldn’t feel pain, but I did, or, at least felt something that I don’t know the words to describe that was akin to pain. And it’s because childbirth is tough, not because of a bad diet or my mindset. I can say with complete confidence that I had a great mindset for birth. Sometimes you just feel “pain”. Just like sometimes you just get sick and it's nobody's fault.

My philosophy is more in line, loosely, with Mireille Guiliano’s as described in French Women Don’t Get Fat, where the premise is to enjoy life and savor its pleasure—within reason. Even Buddha chose the middle way when he was faced with the examples of the ascetic monks who lived lives of denial, fasting, and the contrasting wild revelers who overdid everything. Why drive yourself batty subscribing to extremes when you can embrace real life and its pleasures healthfully and with balance?

In Praise of Prolactin Action

Sometimes I get a clear message from my baby to SLOW DOWN.

I am a skilled mama with strong biceps and a sling. I can multitask. I nurse and type. I nurse and cook. I nurse and clean. I nurse and…yes, go to the bathroom. I’m sure baby appreciates my ability and willingness to nurse on demand and fill her little belly with all the nutrients she needs, but sometimes, she lets me know that I need to sit down and do nothing but nurse.

She’ll get a little fussy at the breast. No position will be quite right for her. She’ll root a little. Then she’ll cry just a little. Slow down, mommy. Why don’t you just sit down with me, or better yet, lie down with me and take a break. Just nurse and let’s spend some quiet time together.

I heed this call and it’s wonderful. I feel the curious mix of relief and exhaustion as the milk flows. I now have an awareness of what’s happening with us. If she’s awake, sometimes she will gaze up at me and I will look back down at her and tell her I love her and ask her, “Do you like the milkies?” If she’s asleep, or nearing sleep with her eyes closed, I’ll marvel at her beauty and peacefulness. The exchange between breastfeeding mother and baby is amazing. To think, I am feeding my child from my body, straight from me to her, pure, simple, everything she needs right now. From me. Someday, she’ll need more. Someday I can make her healthy solids. Some day I’ll go back to work and earn money again to help support her. But for now, it is this nutrition and this nurturing.

As many nursing moms know, both mothers and babies benefit from breastfeeding. The nutritional benefits of breastfeeding are well documented. The World Health Organization says, “Breastfeeding is the ideal way of providing young infants with the nutrients they need for healthy growth and development. Virtually all mothers can breastfeed…[and] exclusive breastfeeding is recommended up to 6 months of age.” Additionally, mamas gain health benefits as well as emotional benefits from breastfeeding. As noted by La Leche League, “The child's suckling at the breast produces a special hormonal milieu for the mother. Prolactin, the milk-making hormone, appears to produce a special calmness in mothers.” Nursing also stimulates production of oxytocin, a hormone associated with a sense of well being—also produced during orgasm.

I definitely feel the calmness and pleasure. Although there are challenges to being a new mom—lost sleep, figuring out the new baby, figuring out new ways of relating to my husband, and more—I can definitely feel an underlying calm that almost defies the reality of the situation. And the times I’ve felt most stressed are the times I wasn’t tuning into my baby and allowing nature to do its good work. So nursing on cue can mean more than just feeding baby when she wants to be fed. It can mean taking the cue to slow down sometimes and just nurse. Moms deserve the break. Let the prolactin and oxytocin flow.

Sometimes It Helps to Have a Destination

Today I woke up after a rough baby night and just couldn't do my early morning run. Baby was up at 3 a.m. wanting to chit chat and gurgling around for at least an hour. Crazy thing was, I wanted to chit chat back with her, but knew it would set a bad pattern to engage her at that hour if I was trying to teach her the difference between night and day, so I had to just wait it out.

But, I digress. Too tired to run, I had to figure out what to do for a workout, and with low motivation, it needed to be good...Why not go to the library?

After doing an hour's worth of work from home, I got the idea. I recently had a wave of renewed interest in things French as we're going to Quebec City and Montreal this fall and are planning a trip to Provence and Cote D'Azur for next summer. Plus, with the sorry state of worker leave (maternity/paternity/vacation) in this country (contrasted with the luxe French way) and butter from the croissant I had for breakfast still on my fingertips, I had to feed the need and get some books to help transport me. The high temperature for the day was supposed to be 96 degrees (Fahrenheit), so we had to get an early-ish start and be quick about it. I'd finish up my work later.

So, off we trekked to the library. Three miles away, six miles round trip. I brought the stroller as well as the Maya wrap, which baby started out in, so we could alternate for both her and my comfort. I made sure to drink alot of water and breastfed baby throughout the trip to keep her hydrated, too.

It was definitely a decent workout and I got a set of CDs and workbook to learn some French as well as Mireille Guiliano's latest book French Women for All Seasons. (I'd previously read her book French Women Don't Get Fat and really enjoyed it.) I also grabbed an Umberto Eco book I saw and a book of bear poems to read to the baby (the latter, that is). I was set.

Walking home, I felt a sense of accomplishment. I'd found a great way to work in some good exercise and make a little bit of an outing of it. And I thought...it was cool to have a plan, to have destination.

Throughout most of my life I operated without a plan, letting whatever happened to me shape my future. I had a variety of interests and achievements. Playing flute, singing, writing and drawing as a child. Doing well at sports as a teen. It never all came together in a plan, though. I had no clear idea of where I wanted to be. Somehow, through the course of my 20s, over different relationships, jobs like waiting tables and selling leather sofas, I cobbled together a college education. I won't go into any more details in this post, but suffice it to say that I didn't plan much til I met my husband who is a big-time planner. Let me tell you, it helps to plan!

Both our plans for the future trips and my goal for the day of making it to the library on foot with a 6-week old provided me with inspiration. In future posts, I'll give more specific examples of how planning has allowed me to have a better life. For now, I'll just say that having a plan--a destination--in mind allowed me to have a better day.

Childcare Crisis

Two beautiful children are dead because a young mother couldn’t find a babysitter.

The tragic story of one-year-old Triniti Campbell and her four-year-old brother, Shawn Campbell Jr. dying after being left in a hot car when their mom couldn’t find someone to look after them while she went to work shines a truly hideous light on the childcare crisis in America today. This may be an extreme case, with a mentally unstable woman making an unusually deadly mistake, but often it takes something this dramatic to get people to sit up and take notice.

I can picture the beleaguered young mother as described in the Associated Press report, and my heart breaks for her and the children. Police found her crying and yelling, "Oh, my babies" and said she stated she wanted to die and asked officers to kill her.

I’m sure if her employer had to choose between giving her a pass on work that day or having her children dead, he or she would have made the right choice. Of course, the mother is responsible for her actions, certainly not the employer, but to a troubled single mom the choice may have been to lose a job that fed and housed the kids or take a chance and hope they’re OK in the car for a while. Was she not sane? Was she temporarily flustered? Where was the father? The grandparents? It’s clear she’s remorseful and as the case unfolds in the media we may learn more about her and what really happened. It’s also clear that she needed a little help.

Most people will probably sit back and say what a monster she was or how stupid, but instead I would encourage them to check out MomsRising, a grassroots, online effort to mobilize people to build a more family-friendly America, together as a non-partisan force for 2008 and beyond. As Illinois Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama said, “Despite all the rhetoric about being family-friendly, we have structured a society that is decidedly unfriendly... What's missing now is a movement. What's missing now is an organization. That's why MomsRising is so important."

Today, I ordered their book The Motherhood Manifesto and will begin my journey to try and do something about the poor way mothers and children often fare in our contemporary culture.

Time Management

I finally got a clue about how to manage my time after five weeks with my new baby. Instead of being lazy and playing around on the Internet all morning, this week I decided to GET STUFF DONE during this time that she usually is mellow and often sleeping.

See, I used to lollygag around during her sleepy mornings and eventually get to errands and the things that matter later in the day. By then, she could be cranky. This week, I tapped into the power of flowing with the baby's schedule and it's working great.

Monday, I went running in the morning for about a half hour, pretty much right after we wake up, while my husband is still home. I found that the baby is very happy and doesn't cry when she first wakes up for the whole day, and my husband is just milling around getting his breakfast and surfing the Web and would welcome the addition of some googly baby conversation while he does this. Plus, he's very supportive of me getting back in shape. So we all win. I figure I will do this three times a week and once on the weekend for starters and build from there.

After running, I nursed the baby and cuddled for a while, catching up on my web surfing and talking to her a bit til she fell asleep. Then I got down to business prepping my dinners for the week. My husband and I take turns cooking dinner every other night (except for when we occasionally go out). I made the topping for middle eastern cous cous, some eggplant parmesan and the dough for calzones while the baby slept. She did wake up for a bit, but I was able to nurse again and put her in her swing for a little while and then finish up as well as do some other random household chores as well as some upper body and ab exercises.

Now the key isn't for everyone to follow this exact schedule, but instead, be mindful of what schedule your baby seems to be keeping and try to work with it because I think it quickly becomes clear to moms that when you try to go against the baby's nature when it is so young, nobody is happy and you get very little done. You also have to try and fit in little things when you can. You may not get to do an hour long exercise DVD when you have a five-week-old baby. But you can do toning exercises here and there and lift some dumbells. It all adds up.

Being in tune with my baby's schedule helped me optimize the use of my time and thereby make the time I spend in the evenings with my husband more pleasant, too, since we wind down in the afternoons and neither I nor baby are harried, and everyone is happy!