The phrase ‘pro-choice’ has been primarily associated with a movement to allow women the legal right to choose an abortion.  The rationale behind this movement is grounded in the belief that a woman has absolute ownership over her body and unborn baby.  This post is not about abortion and I do not necessarily embrace the entire pro-choice movement as the concept of foetal rights introduces complexities for me.  I would however like to explore the meaning of pro-choice outside the abortion realm and what it means in the larger scale of a woman’s rights over her fertility and her body as a whole.

There have been several high profile cases where a woman has become pregnant in unusual (and some may say inadvisable) circumstances, whether naturally or with medical assistance. Michelle Duggar’s 19th baby, Josie, born three months prematurely. ‘Octomom’ Nadya Suleman.  This post in particular was prompted by coverage of  72 year old Rajo Devi Lohan who is now dying following an IVF pregnancy and birth which resulted in a healthy baby but severe maternal complications.

What enraged me about this coverage was the suggestion by a psychiatrist working for Fox News that a 72 year old woman was probably not ‘of sound mind’.   This is pure nonsense.  (Just ask my grandmother who completed a MEd last year at the grand old age of 77).  Lohan’s decision-making process was clearly heavily influenced by a cultural perception where she felt it was better to die than to be barren for the rest of her life.  This may be a difficult leap of logic for Westerners, but it does not make it an insane decision.  The same is true for Suleman or the Duggars.  In fact, one could argue in this age of media attention and poor employment prospects, their fertility choices were a calculated risk –  they both have greatly improved their earning potential and all their babies have thankfully survived.

Yet there is an immense amount of judgement attached to fertility choices.  Women are attacked for remaining childless, for only having one baby, for having more than two babies.  There are perhaps valid reasons for questioning these choices when the women then require resources from the community to support the children (The UK’s financial welfare system for example or even the question of global resources).  However I suspect these are a smokescreen.  The real outrage is directed at women claiming ownership of their own fertility rights.  Indeed not having enough or having too many babies is often specifically called ’selfish’ by the less sisterly among us.

These sentiments, the idea of a woman being selfish or of unsound mind hark back to decades of women being considered hysterics and hussies, incapable of making a rational decision about their body.  They are frequently directed at women who opt for home births, for example.  Meanwhile, men may reproduce as responsibly or irresponsibly as they choose and at worse are a ‘cad’ or a ‘player.’  Single mothers struggling to raise their children are pilloried in the Daily Mail/Fox yet the fathers are quickly forgotten.  A woman who abandons her children is an atrocity while a man who does the same is just shrugged away.

The truth is, fertility is a human right.  Why do we reproduce?  As the child-free contingent point out, it is probably illogical.  It’s a poor financial choice, it’s bad for global resources and it is a massive responsibility.  However it is a natural drive.  Even having one baby could be termed selfish, but it is necessary for the continuation of the species and it is something that many women want for reasons which might be instinctive, spiritual and all-encompassing.  It is rarely a choice of pure logic.

What is concerning is that society has repressed our reproductive rights.  It is difficult to survive on one salary with several children.   The US in particular offers little in the way of maternity leave or benefit and mothers are pressed to return to work as soon as possible.  We are effectively slaves as we have sold our freedom to reproduce – we are expected to raise our children in an appropriately consumerist way and this requires a certain level of wealth.  SAHMs are often called lazy, yet they’re doing something perfectly natural and normal – raising their children as generations have done.

Being pro-choice means that you accept a woman has full ownership of her reproductive organs and the way she chooses to use them.  You may not approve of her choices but criticising a woman for having several children or for being too young or too old to have children is as offensive and unpleasant as criticising a woman for having an abortion.  Why do we allow so many others to curtail our choices?  More worryingly, laws are in place to prevent certain kinds of birth in some states.  Though some may consider home birth risky and unassisted birth downright dangerous, if you are pro-choice, surely you accept that a woman may have her reasons for making a choice that you do not approve of and that it is ultimately her absolute right to birth her child however she wants.  There is far wider debate in this sphere.  Whether women should have a choice to smoke or drink alcohol or go abseiling in pregnancy.  Whether women should have a choice to reproduce when under the legal age for sexual intercourse (after all, why do we allow an arbitrary age which changes from region to region to dictate a behaviour encouraged by nature?).  This is why I cannot categorically say I am pro-choice as I do believe an unborn child should be granted certain protections.

I think these questions are worth asking.  Being ‘pro-choice’ is not as simple and as clear cut as it appears.

I hope that this will be the first in a trilogy of posts on alternative education on Shinemama. This one is perhaps the most practical and sticks to the facts, looking at how my family handles home education from day to day. There will be more philosophical thoughts on alternative education coming soon.

I started home educating my two daughters four months ago. A is nine years old (grade 3) and M is six (grade 1). The choice to HE came suddenly and was somewhat pushed onto us after difficulties at school.

We suspected this might happen and had our ‘plan’ mostly worked out, but it was still a big plunge into the unknown, and like opting for a home birth, it felt like a maverick move. Surely education, like birth must be handled by professionals.

Well, the first thing we did was discuss it with the children. I wanted them to be fully involved in the decision-making (and they were both certain they would prefer home schooling). Legally and technically speaking, home schooling is simple in California. There is a small amount of paperwork to fill out and file and then you can call yourself a private school. There must be a curriculum and attendance records must be kept but the curriculum can cover whatever the educator chooses. There are other options such as enrolling in a charter school or in ‘CAVA’ the Californian Virtual Academy, an online public school.

We opted for the K12 computer-based curriculum. CAVA also uses K12 and provides not only free access to K12 but also free computers for your children. However it comes with the drawback that you must answer to a supervising teacher. We felt we needed a little more space than that to ‘deschool’ the girls and figure out their needs.

I love the theory of unschooling and learning from life experiences, but I think within unschooling, children will still choose to learn about certain topics which will require reading and studying. Therefore, I really don’t have any concerns about providing a structured curriculum to cover the basics. The girls seem to enjoy this style of learning.

Currently, they are both taking Maths, Language Arts (English), History, Science, Art and Music. They are also taking Spanish through the K12 ‘Powerspeak’ add-on, a program which cleverly awards them play money for activities which they can spend on accessories for their avatars. I don’t think the music module is helpful – they learn far more in private piano class, but history, science and art are wonderful for introducing a huge variety of topics with lovely materials and activities.

Our days are pretty relaxed. The girls go to an outside activity five days a week – riding, gymnastics, dance and piano so that they see other kids and experience other teaching styles. I know there are several home school groups around but we just don’t seem to find time! So many places offer home school classes too. The science museum has excellent ones and private teachers love the fact the children can take classes in the daytime.

At home, we usually spend a couple of hours a day on computer-based classes. Generally we always do maths and English then pick from the other subjects. It’s flexible so we can have a day off or do extra. When we work, I tend to sit on the sofa with M and the laptop. We talk and read and complete activities. A is pretty much autonomous but I don’t want her to feel bored or abandoned so we talk and check in with each other and go over her assessments when she tells me what she learned in each lesson.

I also share the teaching with the other adults in the house. This tends to work out pretty well. We’ve found it has given us all more of an insight into how exactly the children are doing – there are no surprises or unpleasant phone calls from school. We also have a good understanding of their learning styles. Homework had become such a stresspoint for us at school – we only saw half the picture.

The rest of the time, the children play around the house or help out with cooking or shopping. A likes lego, building and science. M likes stories and dressing up. They both read. And read. And read. We’re lucky in San Diego to have so many museums and the zoo on our doorstep. There are always places to go and we never seem to be bored.

We don’t have many rules but I had to lay down a few guidelines. The girls’ computers are restricted so that the girls can only use approved sites during the day. Education City, Mathletics, BBC Schools and so on. No Club Penguin before 5pm! We also had to put a restriction on comic books and ‘Rainbow Fairies’ during ’school hours’ – there are so many other books to choose from.

In reality, our school hours are very flexible. We tend to sleep in and stay up later. This leaves evenings free for guilt-free dinner out or activities like laser quest. There’s none of the ’school night’ worry. Lessons are fairly short so we fit them around our activities.

There is a downside to HE. Sometimes I would love more time to myself and I wonder what the future holds. Ideally, I suppose I would like to have work based at home so I can both work and HE. The issues which I thought would worry me most have worked themselves out though. Socialisation is no problem – we seem to be out and about more than ever. The girls insist they have no wish to return to school.

I was concerned about keeping up with grade levels but it amazes me how much work we can do in a very short time. I feel M in particular can do more work in a day at home than she did in a week at school. The classes on K12 are very focussed with specific and clear learning objectives. They’re not endless worksheets and repetition. I find the curriculum very thorough too. Occasionally a little too thorough.

M desperately needs one on one attention and when she has it, she can soar but this just wasn’t feasible at school. At home it is no problem.

And what I love is that the children can explore subjects in as much detail as they choose. If something catches their interest, we can pull out books, visit museums and drift off on a flight of adventure to learn more whether it’s cooking or crochet or computer programming or Mandarin!

Overall, it’s been easier than I expected. It’s not for everyone as not everyone wants to be tied to the home like this (sometimes I question whether I do!) but I do think anyone could do it, especially with a good curriculum and teaching guide (such as K12) to help. We have also worked hard (with a little help from the IKEA Trofast shelving system!) to provide an organised, Montessori-influenced environment where the girls have access to materials and activities so that they can explore whatever they choose when they want.

I’m coming to the end of the final module of my MBA. I started on that path ten years ago as a bright-eyed 21 year old software developer with vague notions of one day being a powerdressing consultant. It’s been a long, long process with several pauses during which I had two babies, completed a BA in theatre at a bricks and mortar university then moved across the world and had a third baby.

I accelerated the MBA over the last two years and decided to pick a specialism in healthcare and the life sciences. It turned out to be a serendipitous choice. My home birth revitalised a rabid interest in birth matters and the life science specialism allowed me to combine my birth and management studies into a dissertation on how the NHS might cope with managing doulas.

So now I find myself at a crossroads. Home-educating and breastfeeding are part of my life and I’m more t-shirts and piercings than shoulderpads. But I want to keep studying, keep going, keep learning and I want to be challenged. I also want to be in a position to make positive changes in the world.

Here’s the thing.. my impression is that the only qualification which counts is MD. (Please, PLEASE challenge me on this. I’d welcome a debate!)

Personally, I adore midwives. I’ve met several over the last year or so who are among the wisest people I have ever met. They are on top of the latest evidence, constantly learning, reading, gaining experience and absorbing knowledge. They have the emotional intelligence, spiritual intuition AND the science.

Yet if we’re playing ‘birth top trumps’ the midwife always loses out to the doctor.

And in American society, the doctor is king. They can deliver babies, cut people open, prescribe medicine, make diagnoses and declare deaths. They get a cracking salary. They can also make all sorts of pronouncements that are often ‘the voice of experience’ rather than coming from any kind of evidence.

And many will say fair enough, they went to medical school for a long time.

And this is where I hit a snag.

I would quite like to go to medical school. I would love to learn about cell biology and anatomy and all that stuff. I’m a good student. I’ve juggled motherhood and studying in various fields for years.

Yet the barriers are massive. They’re almost insurmountable if you have young children. “It’s about stamina.” I hear. You have to go full time. You can’t do med school part time. You have to be dedicated. It has to be your number one priority. Your spouse will have to deal with the funny hours. You won’t see your children. You need to do it early in life or you’ll never pay off the debts etc. etc. etc.

I ask why? Why can’t you learn more slowly? Why all the macho stamina stuff? Why is it a study course tailored to young, childless people? Why is the med-school recruitment target audience made up of people who have not yet had a baby or even much life experience out of academia? At my school, the ‘clever girls’ were groomed to be doctors following a straight, clear path from school. And well done to them. It’s not an easy path. They were smart figuring out what they wanted to do before children. But some of us needed a little more time to figure out what we want to do – then find it’s too late.

Things are changing slowly in the UK – St George’s for example offers a fast track course aimed at getting older students in and trained. There are post-bacc courses in the US too. But there are no part time med schools. You have to dedicate yourself to it entirely. You can do law or business part time. You can do a PhD part time. But medicine is different. Why?

Now I’m not suggesting that doulas or midwives are second best. They’re a different thing entirely. And there are some massively influential ones – Peggy Simkin, Ina May Gaskin etc. etc. But they don’t carry as much weight in the medical world as they should. Hospitals NEED more doctors like Dr Biter who is rightly all over the news at the moment. Doctors who have PERSPECTIVE and are aware of why natural birth is important and when they should let it take its course. Doctors who carry weight with their peers. Who have the same level of education and authority.

But that education is not easily available to women with children. Especially women who are reluctant to put their children into full time day care.

There’s a feminist issue here. Why should wanting to care for your children preclude you from accessing that education? Why shouldn’t women with children study and gain the experience to become peers with doctors? So many mothers become doulas or even midwives yet for a hands-on mother to become an OB/GYN is difficult to the point of near-impossibility.

And doulas and midwives will always be ‘put in their place’ beneath the OB/GYNs. The patriarchy is stifling.

How can mothers get their voice and experience heard when we’re always told we’re ‘not as good’ or ‘not as clever’ or ‘not as educated’ or ‘don’t carry as much authority’ as the wise doctor and we don’t even have a chance to access the education?

For several months, I’ve heard the legend of Dr Robert ‘Dr Wonderful’ Biter. There’s even an ‘I love Dr Biter’ Facebook group. Being a natural sceptic I reserved judgement until Thursday night, when I volunteered at Mamafest, San Diego. He arrived fashionably late and seized the stage with a powerful, heartfelt address to the mothers and birth aficionados present. And then I saw what the fuss was about. Here was a charismatic man with something deeply important to say and alluding to horrifying oppression.

I don’t want to paraphrase and I didn’t take notes, but the message I received is that birth is sacred: Women have a special and wonderful power in birth. And it is being stolen from them. Dr Biter blamed fear. Fear and anger. Charitably, he didn’t blame greed, but I would guess that greed is the third culprit in this cruel trinity.

Dr Biter’s patients leave dazzling testimonials. He gives them choice in how they give birth. He doesn’t railroad them into unnecessary caesareans or pump them with artificial hormones to force or urge on labour. Others allow fear to overrule choice. Birth cannot be micromanaged and risk can never be erased. Too often, meddling introduces new risk.

Dr Biter gives his patients time and allows their bodies to work. He has never had a malpractice suit against him.

Yet he has now lost his privileges to deliver babies at Scripps Encinitas hospital. This was the reason he was late to Mamafest. He had to meet with lawyers. He truly is being oppressed.

Why? Well, the reason is confidential. But there are many questions. Is it because he doesn’t bring enough revenue in through unnecessary caesareans? Is it that other doctors are losing their patients to ‘Dr Wonderful’? Is it simply that he makes others look bad because he shows faith and confidence in his patients, treating them as intelligent, incredible humans who are capable of birthing their own babies, while others see birth as a process which requires intervention and management to work?

Shinemama has thrown away scepticism because all I heard from Dr Biter was sense. And in the last two days, I have heard he is willing to work unpaid as a doula to his existing clients at another hospital. A doctor working as a doula! Where others would let ego get in the way, this is a man who has put his patients first.

So I joined more than a hundred others outside Scripps Encinitas this Mothers’ Day morning to rally in support. Present were Biter-delivered babies, birth professionals of all stripes and people who recognise injustice.

Scripps Encinitas remain silent.

Support birth choices. Support doctors who support birth choices. Support Dr Biter.

Up there, look twice. That’s a chimpanzee skeleton. And yesterday, I took a trip to the Darwin exhibit at the San Diego Natural History Museum where this little chap was on display. In Darwin’s time, the reigning philosophy was that humans were different from animals. So it goes that humans are created in God’s image.

Later at home, I watched Stephen Fry’s discussion with Craig Ferguson and Fry made the astute observation that if an alien were to watch our behaviour, they would perhaps consider torture, murder and violence to be the worst parts of our nature and our capacity to love and to make love (and I would add, our capacity to nurture our young) would be the most wonderful things. Yet the word ‘fuck’ is considered horrific and shocking, while polite society can talk about torture and murder cheerfully in public (Oh, the traffic was MURDER tonight, darling!) How have we got here, that a description of an act which celebrates our humanity, our aliveness and our ability to reproduce is so obscene?

Really, we simply haven’t moved on from that time Darwin lived in, when humans denied their animalness. To be civilised was to live with rituals and trappings and unnatural appearances. And isn’t this how we still live? In a culture which sees body hair as disgusting? Which sees silicon enhanced breasts as perfect and functional breasts as ‘icky’?

Of course some of these things are mere aesthetics and fairly harmless. And some of our rituals serve very valid purposes whether they be to reduce the spread of disease or to keep our chosen sexual partner from rivals.

But there are those which are actively harmful and serve no valid purpose.

No national medical organisation supports routine circumcision for health purposes. Even the American Association of Pediatrics, a deeply conservative organisation doesn’t recommend it. Outside the USA, national health organisations actively argue against the procedure. The Australian College of Paediatrics describes it as ‘a traumatic procedure performed without anaesthesia to remove a normal functional and protective prepuce [foreskin].’

The British Medical Association “does not believe that parental preference alone constitutes sufficient grounds for performing a surgical procedure on a child unable to express his own view.”

Evidence supporting links to ‘penile cancer’ and HIV reduction is shaky to say the least. Penile cancer is an extremely rare condition which almost invariably affects elderly men. HIV transmission should be prevented with a condom. The difference circumcision makes to either condition is questionable. Compared to the severe risks (including infections, adhesions, penile damage, haemmorhage, sexual dysfunction, psychological trauma) this painful surgical procedure carries and the trauma it causes the newborn, it is fairly clear to see that the cons outweigh the pros. The foreskin is not a loose flap of skin, it is a healthy, functioning tissue.

Circumcision was popularised in the USA with the help of Dr Kellogg.

“A remedy [for masturbation] which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision…The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind…In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement. ” — Dr. John Harvey Kellogg

It bought into the puritanical belief that masturbation was unhealthy and wrong. Yet the practice continued to the modern day, with dubious explanations about ‘hygiene’ or ‘health.’ As can be seen universally by the policy of national professional bodies, circumcision serves no such purpose. It is a cultural and social ritual. In fact, one of the most common reasons given by parents opting for circumcision is ‘So he looks like his daddy’ thus perpetuating the cycle.

But to revisit Darwin, the ‘hygiene’ argument is intriguing. Is circumcision just another way of marking ourselves as separate from animals?

Birth is animal. Parenting is animal. The bond with a new baby is instinctive, fuelled by hormones and chemicals. The protective instinct is overwhelming. How powerful is this social conditioning that it overrides that instinct enough to allow the newborn to be removed from the warmth of his mother and strapped down to a cold table and cut in this way.

My question is this. If we are created in God’s image, surely we arrive in this world perfect. Why taint what God has created with our manmade meddling?

Facebook has threatened the fantastic lactivist group Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene! with closure for ’sexually explicit’ pictures – yet nowhere in law could the pictures posted meet with the definitions for explicitness.

With a quarter of a million members making this one of the strongest and devoted Facebook campaigns, plus dozens of other pro-breastfeeding groups, it is absurd that such adolescent threats can pop up in an otherwise savvy corporation.

The irony is that Facebook could not even ask a breastfeeding woman to move from the sidewalk outside their building, such is the strength of legal protection for breastfeeding in California where both Facebook and Shinemama are based.

I’m tempted to take a trip to Palo Alto to sit out there myself and breastfeed. Time for a nurse-in?

Breastfeeding and natural birth are emotive subjects and sadly surrounded in controversy.

These two subjects trigger all kinds of feelings in women and for those who wanted to breastfeed or who wanted a ‘natural’ delivery but did not succeed, for whatever reason, those feelings are often tinged with deep sadness, regret and guilt which can contribute heavily to postnatal depression.

This poses a great dilemma for educators. We are charged with not building up ‘unreal expectations’

Why natural birth is ‘difficult’

In American hospitals, the chips are stacked against anyone wanting a delivery without interventions as labour without augmentation with pitocin (artificially increasing the intensity and regularity of contractions) is increasingly rare. The spiral of interventions is fast and furious. Pitocin often makes contractions unmanageable by the body’s own hormones, which makes epidural pain control essential, which restricts the body’s ability to push and the woman’s ability to move and remain upright.

Why breastfeeding is ‘difficult’

Similarly, breastfeeding is challenged by unfair tactics – caesareans make breastfeeding more difficult, criticism of bedsharing threatens one of the most natural ways for you and your baby to share closeness, triggering hormones which aid milk production and more subversively, marketing of formula milk (free samples on the labour ward for example) hints that it is condoned by medical professionals, that it is just as good as breast milk. Most critical of all is the lack of support. Few of us are lucky enough to have experienced family around us who can help out with breastfeeding. Not enough professional breastfeeding counsellors are available (although the NCT in the UK or La Leche League in the US are always great places to shout for help with breastfeeding if you need it!) and maternity wards are understaffed – they simply don’t have the time or resources to give every woman the support she needs to breastfeed. According to the USA’s CDC figures for 2003, 71% of women tried to breastfeed in hospital. By 6 months, only 36% of women are still breastfeeding at all and only 14% still breastfeeding exclusively. Figures for the UK Office for National Statistics 2005 are worse, showing only 35% of women exclusively breastfeeding at one week and only 3% at five months.

The World Health Organisation recommends breastfeeding until two years and exclusive breastfeeding up to six months.

It’s a gloomy picture isn’t it? And for educators teaching to a hospital curriculum, the challenge is nearly insurmountable. How can we tell women they can have the birth they want and feed in the way they want when the odds are so heavily against them? Aren’t we just setting them up for failure? Isn’t the guilt just compounded when we teach that bottlefeeding increases their baby’s risk of SIDS or leukemia.

Can you plan for birth?

One argument I come across is that birth is ‘random’ and that birth plans are frequently laughed at by hospital staff. “The one way to jinx your birth is to write a plan” they say. Well, while it is true that birth can be unpredictable, it’s not the same as saying that it is completely out of control. A percentage of births are easy – labour is relatively short and the baby comes without too much effort. Another percentage of births are very difficult. No matter what the mother or the staff do, the baby is badly positioned or ’stuck’ and needs intervention to be delivered. I would suggest that a large percentage of births fall somewhere in between – that a natural delivery is feasible, but if poorly managed, they may be written off as a ‘failure to progress’ and progress to caesarean or instrumental delivery. It is for this large group that active birth is so crucial. Staying upright, moving around, drinking raspberry leaf tea, using a doula, using a birth ball, swaying the pelvis, relaxation and visualisation may all swing the balance, stave off stress and help labour to take its natural course.

Breastfeeding is very similar. A small amount of women may never be able to breastfeed, another percentage will find it easy. Most will need some support and to overcome a few obstacles to really settle into it. Once again, the right support can really swing the balance, yet as we have seen that support is frequently lacking.

The real difficulty for educators is that attitude makes a difference. Imagine a scale from one to ten, when 1 is “I don’t want to breastfeed”, 10 is “I definitely want to breastfeed” and 5 is “I want to give breastfeeding a try.” Those pregnant women who score themselves nearer to 10 are more likely to succeed in breastfeeding than those who score a 5. They are more likely to seek help, support and push on through difficulties. Similarly, a scale from 1 to 10 might exist for giving birth without an epidural. Those who are dead set against an epidural will be likely to try anything else first.

Of course, in both cases, nothing is guaranteed, no matter how determined you are. And it is possible that someone scoring a ‘1′ that they don’t want to breastfeed might have a change of heart and try anyway, or someone scoring a ‘1′ that they definitely want an epidural might realise in the delivery room that they are coping fine without. But scoring higher definitely boosts the chance of success.

Education is likely to raise those expectations. A woman who originally scored a ‘5′ that she might like to try breastfeeding (perhaps her family all formula-fed) could well shift her score up a few notches if she learned how it might benefit her baby. Similarly, a woman might become more determined to try birthing without an epidural if she learned more about the pro’s and con’s.

The difficulty here is that it sounds as if I’m arguing that success depends on determination. I do believe determination plays a part in both birth and breastfeeding, but as I have already pointed out, it is only part of the equation. Occasionally birth or breastfeeding have real physical reasons why they cannot work. Sometimes the support just isn’t there and sometimes women just don’t have access to the information they really need (their doctor perhaps tells them that an epidural is very safe and that they don’t need to suffer).

I would love to see the guilt taken out of these aspects of parenting. I would love to see women feel comfortable and happy with their choices. What stood out for me is that in the UK’s 2000 birth survey published by the Department of Health, ninety percent of women who gave up breastfeeding in the first six weeks wanted to continue. So who is to blame when it goes wrong? Clearly not these mothers.

The answer is complex. It comes down to a lack of support, from maternity wards to policymakers, from employers to public baby ‘unfriendly’ venues, from formula marketeers to family. There is a great need for education and for professional support. There is a massive demand for breastfeeding counsellors and consultants. I hear so many stories of women whose ‘milk never came in’ when they weren’t shown attachment techniques, skin-to-skin contact, frequent feeding, co-sleeping and so on. When they thought colustrum wasn’t enough. Similarly, where birth is concerned, there is a need for education, for evidence-based decision making in hospitals rather than unhelpful policies and procedures, for doulas and for the opportunity for women to really get active and work with their bodies rather than with hospital demands for restrictive monitoring, fasting or bedrest when not strictly needed.

What we need is to stop blaming ourselves. To have strength, determination and hope so that it can go right whenever it is possible, and when it occasionally doesn’t, we can be gentle on ourselves, and once we have mourned what was not to be, we can regroup and move forward.

xx

Pink, white, zebra striped

The Facebook statuses rolled this week as people responded to one of those silly memes. The first wave went. ‘Post your bra colour, don’t tell the boys!’

The second wave went, ‘Post your bra colour, don’t tell the boys, it’s for BREAST CANCER AWARENESS.’

Hmm. Now, putting aside feminist rhetoric, I thought the first version was some lighthearted, childish fun.

The second wave I found more sinister and I’m going to try and articulate why.

Almost all of us know someone who has been affected by breast cancer and we all want to do our bit to help. However, we are all very well aware of breast cancer. This meme isn’t going to fund research and it isn’t educating women. I find it astounding that people will exploit this wish to ‘do good’ to get their friends to join in with a game. What does it say about our need to belong and to make others belong that we will use emotive subjects like this?

Now, I heard one theory that suggests people have a lot of sympathy for breast cancer because it is so random, there is nothing you can do to protect yourself from it (apart from try to live a healthy lifestyle).

Now this is partly true. Fit, healthy women get breast cancer. Men get breast cancer.

But there IS one other thing you can do to protect yourself AND your daughter from breast cancer.

Breastfeed.

Breastfeeding has some great health benefits for all women, but this is particularly important for premenopausal women who have a close family member (mother, sister) who has had breast cancer. Did you know that a recent study found breastfeeding for these women cuts their risk of getting premenopausal breast cancer by a staggering 59%? (Stuebe at University of North Carolina, published in the Archivesof Internal Medicine, Aug. 2009)

Additionally, it cuts your risk of heart disease, osteoporosis, cervical and ovarian cancer and high blood pressure.

Even more staggeringly, if you breastfeed your daughter (even if only for a short term) you cut her risk of developing breast cancer by 25%. (“Exposure to breast milk in infancy and the risk of breast cancer” Freudenheim, J. 1994)

Additionally, if you breastfeed your baby for ONE month, you cut their risk of childhood leukemia by 21%. Keep on for six months, you cut that risk by 30%. (Robison, L. at University of Minnesota, 1999)

Breastfed babies also have lower lifetime risk of obesity, diabetes, asthma, SIDS, ear infection, respiratory infection, bacterial meningitis, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s etc. etc. They also have fewer admissions to hospital.

Sadly, bottle v. breast is often seen as a lifestyle choice, and even more sadly, those who want to breastfeed are very frequently not given the support they need. Lactation counsellors are few and far between and hospitals don’t have the time or energy to help new mothers breastfeed. Formula manufacturers market in unethical ways and to new vulnerable mothers, implying their product is the same as breast milk (which as we can see, it isn’t.) And new mothers aren’t always protected in their choice to breastfeed. California has laws protecting breastfeeding mothers in public places, sadly not all of the US follows suit.

Most women WANT to breastfeed. Nine out of ten mothers gives up breastfeeding before they hoped to. Most just weren’t given the support they needed to combat simple problems like thrush, a poor latch or blocked ducts (all of which can seem like agony but can be overcome with support.) Many were fed myths or unnecessarily worried by health professionals tutting over such vague things as ‘poor weight gain’ or ‘milk not coming in’ (diagnosed far more frequently than actual occurrence.) Some have had their breastfeeding relationship interrupted by custody or immigration or incarceration or hospitalisation. Some have been sabotaged by nipple confusion caused by unnecessary pacifiers or bottles.

I don’t blame mothers for not breastfeeding. It is tough at first. It needs support, from our family, from society, from experienced breastfeeders, from the government, from the policymakers of society.
Most of us don’t have that support.

Breastfeeding is a matter of public health. It should be an absolute priority for public health officials, the government and health care professionals of all stripes.

So, it’s not just about ‘awareness’ – there is something we can actually DO about breast cancer and about the health of our babies in general. We can educate on the importance of breastfeeding. We can show people where to get the help they need to be successful breastfeeding (La Leche League or the National Childbirth Trust (in the UK) are both good starting points.)

We can and should urge policy-makers to understand how important this is. If you could reduce childhood leukemia by 25%, wouldn’t you?

I took a note from Empowered Birth and changed my facebook status from ‘zebra striped’ to this:

Breastfeeding reduces your chance of getting breast cancer (and the longer you breastfeed, the lower your risk). AND it also helps your daughter reduce HER chances of getting breast cancer. So post THIS instead of your bra colour today.

I feel much more comfortable with that.

Hope you’ve all had a restful holiday. Here’s to a happy and SHINEy new year to all you wonderful Shinemamas.

Katharyne x

I spent a fabulous couple of hours on Saturday with the ladies from Insight Pink, a unique group for women who feel they are transitioning from the period of their twenties and early thirties.

Read what they have to say about me here. (I was very touched by your kind words, ladies. Thank you.)

It was fascinating to learn from them and their experiences, and how we all deal with this process of ‘growing up’ differently. There seems some expectation that by your mid-thirties you’ve figured it all out and are settled, but some of us seem to bounce off in completely new directions!

As Baz Luhrman said:

“The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.”

There are no ‘rules’ now. Career, relationships, family, housing, travel, leisure, finance are all part of what we probably have to figure out at some time or another as women, yet there is no clear order to do them in or proportions to arrange them in. There is pressure from family, friends, finance and of course our biological clock and sometimes it seems very hard to do the ‘right’ thing because it always seems like something is being neglected.

Fitting babies into this mix can be very daunting and understandably so. Babies come with a whole other set of pressures and responsibilities.

I’m perhaps a little simplistic. I believe that babies always manage to ‘fit in’ somehow. I also think there is far too much pressure to be a perfect parent, to read all the parenting manuals, to establish routines and discipline early on and to always have your baby looking ‘perfect.’ It becomes about ‘active parenting’ which can quite honestly be stifling and stressful for all concerned.

I think you can do an amazing amount of ‘parenting’ by instinct, without actually worrying about ‘parenting’. Your baby’s needs in the beginning are very simple – lots of love, sleep, milk and interaction. Co-sleep and breastfeed and all you need to buy are nappies/diapers and a few clothes. And a sling is invaluable for going out and about. (My experience of complex ‘travel systems’ is that they’re very expensive and the baby outgrows them quickly. My son was already too big for the pram part of one I looked at in a shop when he was three months old! You really can get by with a sling until the baby is old enough for a simple stroller.)

This type of parenting is called attachment parenting. Demand feeding is a key part of this, so you keep your baby with you in the early weeks so that he (or she) can feed when he needs to. I actually found demand feeding very liberating. There’s no watching the clock, screaming babies or worrying, you just settle for a feed as soon as your baby shows signs of wanting one. You also don’t run into the problem of not being able to go out because it’s naptime – you just take baby with you and let him sleep in the sling.

A big secret of attachment parenting is that keeping your baby close to you releases the hormones which keep your milk supply plentiful and having each other close by and smelling one another is reassuring and good for the mental and physical health of both you and your baby. (There’s a reason nature made babies’ heads smell so yummy!)

Anyway, do take a look at Insight Pink’s blog. They’re a fascinating, smart, articulate group of ladies and true Shinemamas-to-be!

And if you would like me to come and spread a little SHINE by talking to your group or organisation, drop me an email!