Hedra, Part Two

I only wish I actually did ask for help every time I struggled.

Last reason I don't like the Super-Mom thing - I've been there. I bought into the Super-Mom title just a little. First time mom equals insecure, much of the time. From that first-time perspective, everyone else knows what they're doing. Everyone else looks like they have it together. I felt like I was just kind of making it up, and hoping it was close enough, and hoping more that nobody looked too closely and noticed that I was faking my confidence half the time, and the other half I just got lucky.

My competitive streak combined with that made it harder for me to ask for help. I wanted to be a better mother than my own mom - who is a decent mom, all in all, so that was a high bar. She never had help. She never had books, or resources. She didn't have a spouse who thought this was a core job for her. She never had medical reassurance, social backup, or La Leche League. She was doing this in the 50's and it Just Wasn't Done. Me? To compete, I had to do it equally alone. Sorta. At least I shouldn't ask for help, you know? Because to be a Real Mom, I had to be a Super-Mom. I had to do it alone, prove I was worthy. Prove I was better. Bad combination with the insecurity, there.

I have four kids, two older than the twins, so you'd think that I'd have figured out by the time I had the twins that if I struggle, I need to get help. Call me a slow learner.

With my eldest, I struggled - cried through feedings for five and a half weeks until he figured out how to not clamp down too hard on my breast. I asked my friends to check his latch. I asked the midwife (who was also a friend) to check his latch. But I was deep-down terrified of calling a lactation consultant. If I asked a Professional, that was admission of failure. I could ask peers or non-specialists without trouble, but calling in qualified support? That would be proof that I was not a Real Mom, and certainly not a Super-Mom. I couldn't fail, and asking for help equaled failure.

I still shake my head over my stupidity on that. Not only did I pay for my stubborn insistance that I needed to do this All By Myself, but my son did, too. It turned out that he had an oral aversion with devensive behavior from being suctioned roughly at birth, which was why he was clamping down. If that had been managed and addressed as an infant, he might not have ended up in a feeding clinic with aversive feeding at five years old. He will always have a different relationship to food than the natural and welcoming relationship he could have had, because I was determined to be better than my mom. That's a painful admission. I may be smart, but being stubborn about earning my label was dumb.

Skip forward four years, and I did it again. I suffered through bad latches and blisters for four months. See, I'd earned my badges of 'breastfeeding mama' and 'Super-Mom' by nursing my eldest for more than three years. I knew how to do this, and I was NOT going to give up my hard-won label by calling for help! Instead, I poked around the internet until I ran across a method for allowing an infant to set their own latch instead of helping too much. I tried it with him, and ta-DA! It worked. He just got confused when I helped too much. By choosing to not hold his hands out of his own way, and not shove his face into his food, I got good latches from then on. He needed to be in charge of the process. Great! See, I really am a Super-Mom.

Sheesh. I want to go back in time and smack myself in the forehead. I know some of the need for the label was driven by that deep-down flicker of insecurity. First, over being a first-timer, and second, over the first time parenting siblings. But isn't everything a first when it comes to parenting? The learning is constant, so clearly the new experiences are, too. Having the label of Super-Mom was salve for all the times that I struggled and blew it. The label gave me something to cling to.

And then I started learning about labels, as I learned about siblings. Hmm. Maybe this label wasn't such a good thing. I learned not to apply labels to my kids (mostly - I still struggle with that), and I learned how damaging and limiting they can be.

But it took another three years to figure out that they were just as bad applied to me. Eventually, even 'Breastfeeding Mama' started to feel uncomfortable. It put a line between me and anyone who had tried and struggled and had to stop. It put a line between me and those who were afraid to even try. It put a line between me and every woman who had not had enough supply. It stole common ground from all of us.

At that three year point, I had the twins. I didn't have time, energy, or the luxury of holding onto a label. I called in reinforcements. I called in my family for help, I joined the multiples club, I called on friends - I'm going to need help, I can't do this alone. I can't even do it with my usual support system. The excuse of multiples made that a little easier, but it was only an excuse. Being a mom is hard. We all need support. We evolved to parent in community, not alone or in pairs. Support for breastfeeding is part of that.

At least this time, when I reached the point where my pumping supply (I was working) was not keeping pace with the needs of two babies, I only hesitated for three days before I called the lactation consultant. She had some good advice for me, which I really already knew, but which I did actually need to hear from someone else to be willing to follow it. I didn't want to add another pumping session in the morning. But with the allergy history in my family, adding solid foods to fill the gap at 4 1/2 months was not the best plan.

In the end, I was laid off from work and got to stop pumping entirely. That helped, but that actually wasn't what made the difference. What made the difference was that I got over the label, so I could just be a mom. A mom like every woman who has ever had a child is a mom. I'm a particularly lucky mom in some ways, and a completely blundering and dense mom in other ways. I have some talents, and some blind spots, like everyone. By just being a mom, I could ask for help without waiting for it to be too late.

So please don't call me a Super-Mom. I'm a mom. Just like you.

Hedra, Part One

This post was written by Hedra, who blogs at Hands Full of Rocks.

I successfully breastfed all my kids, including the twins. While I didn't do completely child-led weaning, I did nurse past the two-year mark for each of them. I met the WHO guidelines, as well as the minimum weaning-age preference of the American Academy of Family Physicians. All that is satisfying, but it can also be misleading.

Some people have called me Super-Mom because they couldn't imagine succeeding with breastfeeding twins, or they know someone who couldn't. Or they can't imagine nursing past a year, or they know someone who couldn't or didn't. Or they couldn't imagine breastfeeding at all, or they know someone who didn't even get a fair shot at trying.

I don't like being called Super-Mom. It puts me in a one-up position, which means it also places whoever said it one-down. I am uncomfortable with people putting me above them. It is fundamentally untrue. Worse, it makes life harder for everyone.

There is no such thing as a Super-Mom. We're all just moms, just humans. We differ in skills and resources, training, temperament, style, and intentions. Our histories differ, our lives differ, our networks differ, our values differ, even our goals may differ. But we're all in this together. We really are all human, with no super-powers and no skills that are outside the human range. I'm not genetically modified, and I'm not digitally edited.

When it comes to breastfeeding - whether that's a singleton, twins, or more - it isn't too hard to understand why we use the term. Breastfeeding isn't all that easy, and there are so many challenges that get in the way beyond the physical stuff. Many women do not meet their own goals, fall short of their dream. We may try to make these entirely normal moms feel better by calling the succeeders "extraordinary". I understand the effort to pad the painful parts by distancing the success stories. My successes were never smooth or easy, even if they sometimes look that way from a distance.

Or, someone might use the term Super-Mom as praise, as a way to laud or celebrate what we see as shining examples. We try to make those who did what we want to do understand that we know how hard it may have been to get there. But that's not super-human, either.

Calling breastfeeding success extraordinary, for whatever reason, is entirely the wrong perspective. What is more accurate is that breastfeeding can be hard, or can be easy, and can even be both at different times, even different days or hours. What is also correct is that our resources - personal, family, support, guidance - can also vary on as small or large a scale, can change, can hold us up or let us down. Putting those two patterns together means that normal women, every day, will meet their goals, and normal women, every day, will struggle, and normal women, every day, will not meet those same goals. There is no measure for this that can apply, and no label. It's life. We're human. It just feels worse because we're moms.

The second reason I don't like the term Super-Mom is that it forces women on both sides of the line to attune themselves to the label. Labels are traps, if we buy into them. The more detailed the label, the more a trap it becomes. Super-Mom is that kind of label. The woman who sees someone else as beyond human norm has placed the boundary between herself and that kind of success. The woman who accepts the warm feeling of pride when the label is applied to her also has placed a line between her current moment and the rest of her life - which I can guarantee is not going to be 100% shining moments. To hold onto that perfect label, she'll have to fake it and lie a lot, or work insanely hard some days to continue looking perfect, or will have to accept that she really isn't superhuman, which then might hurt even worse.

Back to my experience... Breastfeeding twins as a normal human woman was hard work. It took effort and planning and support and guidance, and it didn't hurt that I had previous breastfeeding experience. I had a lot of pluses on my side, making it not outside my personal human capability. Right at the edge of that capacity, fairly often. I walked back and forth over the line of 'able' - fortunately, humans evolved to be able to recover and rebound, as well.

The first and most important part of succeeding as a normal woman with breastfeeding twins was having reassurance that it was possible. Talking to twin-moms and lactation consultants who had seen it done allowed me to believe that it was possible. Just believing that at least some normal women can do this is huge. It stops feeling totally insurmountable, and lands instead at least no farther out than the edge of human capacity. I might slip one way or another over that edge, but it is within my grasp.

The second and maybe even more important for the 'on the ground' effort was having a partner (my husband) who felt the same way. He knew I was human, knew it would be hard, and was willing to help in any way he could. Having him tell me (when I was frustrated by another crushing moment) that my only job was lactating, and he would handle the rest... it's more than most women get, and some days more even than I needed. What I needed most was knowing that he believed in me, and trusted me to find my way - or ask for help. This was not blind worship from a distance. He doesn't consider me Super-Mom, either. It was just a faith in me as a person, that I will fight for what I want, and that I will ask for help when something is beyond me. We may not have been taught to do that as women, but having a child to fight for makes a difference.

Some difference, anyway.