Milk and Motherhood: October 2022

 

What I'm learning

To be honest, now that our breastfeeding course is finished and launched, my learning brain is on a bit of a hiatus. What I'm needing to re-learn is patience and presence as launch winds down and I don't need to be spending as much time on social media promoting it. (That being said, the launce sale ends tonight at midnight if you meant to snag it at 30% offand haven't done so yet).

What I'm reading

In fiction, sorry not sorry I'm still working my way through all the Jenny Colgan books I can get my hands on via the library. What can I say? When I find something I like, I'm all in! I mostly read before bed and these are perfect because they are long, have a great sense of place, and they aren't scary or suspenseful. Many of them also involve people eating yummy food, which is a plus! The one I most recently finished was Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop of Dreams.

In non-fiction, I just started M is for Mama! I literally JUST started it, though, so I don't have much to say except that, well, the author has A LOT of kids.

What I'm listening to

Organic Olivia started a podcast in 2020 and she just came out with an episode called, "So You're Thinking About Having a Baby" and it was fun to listen to her venture into a new area of learning. Of course, there were some breastfeeding inaccuracies in the episode since the guest is a mom and acupuncturist, but not a lactation consultant, so be warned your nipples do NOT just have to "burn" during feedings for a month until your baby "just figures it out." I reached out and told her I'd love to do an episode called, "So You Had the Baby... Now What?" ;-)

Also, the Freely Rooted podcast had a PHENOMENAL episode on femininity this past week with two fantastic guests. I learned so much and it made me more passionate than ever about presenting an appropriate and Godly model of femininity for my daughter to grow up with so she's not looking to the world to tell her what it means to be a woman.

What I'm cooking

The baby's allergies mean I can't eat chicken, eggs, and dairy among other things and I'm getting pretty tired of turkey, beef, and pork. I ordered some other things from US Wellness Meats last week to add some variety. I'm most excited for the duck drumsticks... I miss roasted bone-in chicken so much! I also got some lamb sausage, liverwurst, and beef bone marrow.

What I'm feeding my kids

Now that my oldest two are past toddler and preschool ages, it's fun to see persistence pay off when it comes to putting food in front of them and letting them try it. They will try most things, and I'm super grateful. Today I made a braunschweiger (a type of liverwurst) dip and added it to a little snack plate with homemade crackers, raw A2 cheese, apple, and this dip. My daugher tried two crackers-full and my son kept going. It was an effort not to make a bit deal about how excited I was, lest I freak them out and make them wonder why it's such a big deal. Even the 10 month old ate a few bites of braunschweiger. The recipe for the dip is here!

If you want to be a little lower-key about sneaking in organ meats, Force of Nature ancestral blends are the easiest way to do this. We use them at least once a week. Especially when it's in something like tacos or spaghetti sauce, I swear you can't taste anything different. You can use this link for $15 off your first order if you want to try it!

POSTSCRIPT: 

Our Nourished Beginnings breastfeeding and postpartum course launched last week and it's been SO FUN seeing what the launch team things of it and seeing you all purchase it. I'm SO excited to start getting feedback from mamas-to-be who are taking the course, once they have their babies. If this is you, reply to this email and let me know what you think of the course material so far!

Breastfeeding and the Eucharist

I didn't write this. A mama named Lillian Keil wrote it on October 7, 2014 on a blog called Hilltop Diaries shortly after Noah was born and I immediately loved it. The internet is fickle, so I'm copying it here in case the link I have stops working one day. 

I always thought communion was a little weird.

I became a Christian when I was 20. Though my love for Jesus came easily, my acceptance of church traditions did not. Communion struck me as a pointless relic of orthodoxy. The vague cannibalism implied by “this-is-my-body” and “this-is-my-blood" made me wonder if the whole thing wasn’t just a misquote of Jesus. Didn’t the church have more important works of justice to do than sit around feeding each other stale wafers? Sure, the bread of life and cup of salvation sounded beautiful, but drinking grape juice from a plastic thimble was never the transcendent experience I hoped it would be.

It wasn’t until I became a nursing a mother that I began to understand the Eucharist. 

My experience of breastfeeding has been very straightforward; my kids were both good latchers and grew steadily. Once I got over the initial shock of milk coming out of my boobs, I found it all quite simple and peaceful. By some mysterious process, my body produced the perfect nourishment for my babies. There was nothing gross about this transmission of fluids; I quickly ditched the nursing cover and breastfeed on demand. For food! For healing! For sleep! For comfort!

When Simon was a few months old, an acquaintance asked if I was breastfeeding. When I responded in the affirmative she said, "I knew it! I could tell by the way he looks so adoringly at you. He’s like ‘You’re all I need, Mom.’" 

Perhaps this is what Jesus had in mind for the Eucharist. Through the breaking of the bread, God invites us into the nursing relationship: the meeting of all our needs.

I think about the cracked nipples and the itchy thrush, the aches and fevers of mastitis, the midnight trek across the house to feed a crying baby, fatigued to the point of nausea: "This is my body, broken for you.”

I think about the times I missed out because of the chore it was keeping Simon fed, the chained-up feeling of pumping at work, the moments when I wish desperately for a break: “Poured out for you and for many…”

I think about God, who has given me these children and the means to sustain them, who is present in the Eucharist and in my nursing chair, who by these rituals invites me to participate in His life-giving power: “Do this, in remembrance of Me.”

Amen.

A Day in the Life with 3 kids!

I just want to start by saying, this is what I DREAMED of. For so long after Rosie was born, I still felt like I wasn't done having babies and our family wasn't complete yet. We loved Noah and Rosie so much, but I still felt like someone was missing. It was Isaac! Our house and lives are overflowing with chaos now, but I'm so incredibly grateful for it.

That being said, the fact that I sat down to start writing this at 2pm and already felt overwhelmed at the thought of transferring the day onto paper, probably means I need to give myself grace for the fact that, well, our days are a little much right now and even when I don't feel like I did anything, I also somehow never sat down and rested either. So... the first 8 months of three kids was just PURE chaos. It got pretty rough. Right at 8 months, Isaac's allergies had finally responded to the correct elimination diet and we did some daytime nap training, and two weeks later he started WALKING. 

So while some of it got easier, other aspects of it got much crazier. However, at that point we did also get to start a homeschooling rhythm again during morning naps, and that has made a huge difference for me, Noah, and Rosie to have some predictability and stability again. Co-op and soccer also started right at that same time so it feels like we got whisked right out of newborn land and into 3-kid-chaos land.

No days are *exactly* the same, but our days definitely have a rhythm to them now, and nights are better (but not great). Our weeks have a rhythm, too: On Mondays, the big kids have co-op; on Tuesday and Thursday, Noah has soccer; on Wednesday, my parents often help in the afternoon and then Rosie has dance class; on Friday, we go to Moon Hollow for scones and coffee.

Last night, I got in bed at 10pm and Isaac woke up right after that. I nursed him and let him fall asleep in my bed because he'd had a really rough day and an allergen exposure. I finally fell asleep around 11pm, and he woke up at 12:45am. I nursed him and he wriggled around for a bit, so I finally put him in his crib at 1:15am. He slept there til 4:15am! Ross brought him to me and I nursed him and then Ross took him back. I thankfully fell asleep again until 7:30am. 

When I got downstairs, Noah was awake watching Isaac in the playroom because Ross had a 7am work call he took in the basement. Ross left for the office after that call, around 8:15, right after Rosie woke up.

At that same time, I ate an oatmeal bar, adrenal cocktail, and breakfast sausages while simultaneously feeding everyone else and not sitting down. I made my coffee around 9am and sipped on it while taking Isaac up for his nap. He nursed and we rocked for a few minutes and sang "Skiddamarink-a-dink-a-dink" and I laid him down with his pacifier.

I went downstairs, finished my coffee, sent a work email, texted a client, and then started homeschool around 9:45. That was a mistake with Isaac's shorter naps lately, because he woke up shortly after 10 so it was a fairly abbreviated day in which we only covered poetry, math, handwriting, and history. We also usually do natural history and some math for Rosie, too. I can't believe our first term is almost over! Doing an abbreviated subject list, and the same one every day, has allowed for progress over perfection this term and it's made a world of difference.

So Isaac was up at 10:15 and we took another 15 minutes or so to wrap up our lessons and I finished folding the clean cloth diapers. Then enters one of the times of day where I don't even know WHAT I'm doing, but I'm constantly moving, getting interrupted, putting out fires, breaking up arguments... it's not my favorite. Today during this time, Isaac spilled my coffee (swiping at whatever he can reach on the table is his newest trick), I monitored/helped Noah and Rosie tidy up the office, I fed Isaac, made crackers, salami and liverwurst, and carrots for everyone's lunch, then ate my own lunch while standing and making Sunbutter caramel because the kids saw a picture of caramel apple slices and I'd been saying I was going to make them.

So the big kids decorated their apples while Isaac lost his mind, I whisked Isaac up for nap, and then went back down to tidy up the chaos in the dining room at 12:30pm. During that time, Rosie heard that Isaac wasn't asleep yet. Even though I told her not to, she ran upstairs to "rescue" Isaac from nap time. I brought him downstairs when it was clear he thought rest time was over and let him play while I finished cleaning up the lunch mess and texting my 1pm client.

Then I found Isaac happily playing in a poop-filled toilet. The toilet tank is finicky and it doesn't always flush, and a child had forgotten to lock the lid, so Isaac made a beeline for his favorite activity.

So I cleaned HIM up, texted my client I was running late after Mom and Dad texted that THEY were running late, got Isaac down just after 1pm, got to my computer, and saw my client got her time zones mixed up and couldn't meet for another two hours. SO.

I caught up on Voxer with my course co-creator, replied to Instagram messages, finally actually started this blog post, ate a handful of the (hopefully) allergen-free muddy buddies my mom brought over, and Isaac woke up right after 2pm. I took him downstairs, and came back up to finish my thoughts here. Then I sent two course-related emails.

At 2:30, I took a super quick walk in the sunshine before getting on my call at 3pm. Did a virtual prenatal consult from 3-4pm, visited with my parents briefly before they left, then started warming up dinner whilst eating more handfuls of midday buddies and feeding the kids snacks of muddy buddys and beef jerky and elderberry adrenal cocktails. *Sigh* the snack of champions. Kind of.

Dinner was mostly leftovers from last night, praise the Lord. I reheated the turkey loaf and boiled and mashed some potatoes with a bit of turkey bone broth. Rolled the mashed potatoes into little balls and served them to Isaac along with the meatloaf. He INHALED this dinner. Meanwhile, I realized I hadn't actually SAT DOWN to eat all day, so I sat briefly and ate with him, even though it was just barely 5pm. 

Ross was stuck in major traffic on his commute home, and Rosie decided she felt too sick (just sort of sniffly) to go to dance and I didn't even argue.

Ross got home after 6, I made plates for the kids, and I went upstairs to hide. Spent about 20 minutes on Instagram, fed Isaac after Ross got him showered and ready for bed, and tucked him in. By that point it was a little after 7, and I spent another 30 minutes on Instagram.

Then I made some collagen hot chocolate and sipped it while pumping and watching Somebody Feed Phil on Netflix. This time last year, I was balancing my hot chocolate on my baby bump and I still really miss that sometimes.

After that, I wrapped up this blog post. It's currently 9:20 and I'm beyond ready for bed. It's almost comical how interrupted and disrupted and exhausting life is these days. It's crazy and I love it, but I want to take time to remember it and pay attention, too. Not just get through it. These kids are pretty special and I KNOW these are the golden days.

I'm going to go eat a small serving of soaked oatmeal (will bake the full batch in the morning, but I often sneak a small helping the night before), read some of my latest Jenny Colgan novel, take some Earthly sleep tincture, rub some magnesium lotion on my feet, and go to bed. I may or may not actually fall asleep before Isaac (likely) wakes up around 11. Although maybe not because he was so uncomfortable today, he had Zyrtec at lunch and Advil at dinner, which is super rare.

Whew!