Remembering the Pearls of Mothering Advice

As a new or expecting mom, it seems you are open to a lot of unwanted and un-asked-for advice. It's easy to feel overwhelmed by it all. It's hard to sift through it and figure out what to listen to and what to toss. Sometimes we even feel resentful when we heed someone's advice and find that it really doesn't work for us. And often, the well-meant tips and suggestions leave us feeling judged and inadequate. But sometimes, we stumble on some great wisdom and we're grateful that someone shared it with us.

Sunday was my 4th Mother’s Day and in that short time (oh but it seemed long, didn't it?) I am amazed how often I've completely changed my mind about parenting specifics. As I look back, I begin to see that my parenting boils down to a few generalities and otherwise, there is a lot of room for improvisation. Always. There isn't a lot of advice that remained constant through it all. Yet, if I had to pinpoint three things that I’m glad someone told me as a new mom they would be:

Sleeping

Whether you co-sleep or use a crib in another room, whether you parent to sleep or teach baby to self soothe, whether you believe in schedules or flexibility, it is helpful to know this:

Little babies can only be up for about two hours before they are tired again. Knowing this can make all the difference in how your days unfold. Knowing this can soften sleep struggles. Take note of when they get up and watch them after about two hours. It’s easier to put a sleepy baby to bed than to fight a baby who is either over-tired or not tired at all.

Eating

If you can, breastfeed. It’s the best choice for mom and baby. There are health benefits for both of you. But more importantly, it’s not just a way of feeding baby. It’s a beautiful relationship. It’s not always easy and there are definitely areas where support could be improved from community, employers, governments and often, families and friends. But it’s worth it. If you are struggling, find help from La Leche League, Dr. Jack Newman, Kellymom, a lactation consultant or public health nurse. You’ll be glad you did.

Parenting

Do What Works. I learned this from my older sister, mother of four. This means do what works for your family. Trust your gut and if something is working for you, keep doing it. Don’t worry about what other people or experts think you should be doing. Just do what works. And be ready to change your methods because what works today might not work tomorrow. What works for this child might not work for the next one. Parenthood is an ever changing evolving practice. It will take lots of rearranging to strike a balance between what works for your kids and what works for you but if you keep at it, you can’t go wrong.

How about you? What pearls of wisdom were you grateful for as a new mother?

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Creating Community at Home and in School

Healthy Families Conference Announcement

Vancouver, BC – On April 18-19, 2009 educators and parents from across the Pacific Northwest will gather to participate in an event designed to inspire, support, and connect the amazing individuals who contribute to building community for our children at home and in school.

Conference visionary Margo Running, of LifeWays Childcare Society, is launching this new conference in Vancouver because she hears educators and parents asking the same questions: “How do we simplify, slow down in order to give quality time to our children, in our home, in our care and in our school? How do we create a community around our children?” Margo says this two-day conference is packed with presentations, breakout sessions, workshops, discussion groups, and meals that will create a collaborative and participatory setting; each participant will gain a toolkit of resources and contacts.

The Healthy Families Conference is aiming to provide individuals with the skills and strategies they need to nurture strong relationships within their families and create strong ties for children within their community and is the first of its kind in Vancouver.

This conference has attracted some of the biggest names in parenting and early-childhood development. Peggy O'Mara (Editor/Owner of Mothering Magazine - Santa Fe, New Mexico) jumped at the chance to come to Vancouver for the opportunity to connect with this diverse audience of parents and educators; Peggy will be speaking on Finding & Creating Community.

Event Details – Healthy Families Canada is hosting the conference at the UBC Student Union Building (6138 Student Union Boulevard) on April 18-19, 2009. Registration is available online at www.healthyfamiliescanada.org and individuals can register at the early-bird rate of just $200 prior to March 15, 2009 (group discounts are also available). Questions about the conference can be sent to info@healthyfamiliescanada.org.

Media Contact – If you are a member of the media and would like to learn more about emerging stories regarding the Healthy Families Conference or would like to interview Margo Running or Peggy O’Mara please contact Corwin Hiebert by phone at 604-803-2019 or by e-mail at: corwin@redwagonmanagement.com.

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Review: The No-Cry Nap Solution

Usually I am wary of sleep books. My three year old son has resisted sleep since he was five months old. We tried everything. We read books. We struggled. Sometimes we just gave in and accepted that he wasn’t a sleeper. Somewhere in there I gave up on all advice about getting children to sleep. I quit reading the books and I followed my older sister’s tried and true parenting adage “Do What Works.” Since then we’ve added a family member (8 month old daughter) and we’ve seen that there are both similarities and differences in our children’s sleep personalities. We’ve attempted to do things a little differently with her and sometimes we’ve been successful and sometimes we haven’t.

Along came Elizabeth Pantley’s new offering, The No-Cry Nap Solution – Guaranteed Gentle Ways to Solve All Your Naptime Problems. Having read The No-Cry Sleep Solution when my son was a baby, I already respected Pantley’s approach and philosophies. She is well recommended by the docs (dad and sons) over at Dr. Sears and I respect her tireless efforts to spread the word about gentle ways to get your child to sleep. I too am fervently opposed to the Cry-It-Out approach so despite giving up on sleep advice, Pantley remained one of my favourite parenting authors.

The newest book in her No-Cry series did not disappoint in the least. Like previous offerings, this book is well-researched, sensitive and practical. She includes in-depth explanations about baby and child sleep patterns and about the science and benefits of naps. These sections were extremely helpful, provided several Aha! moments and paved the way for me to re-evaluate our daily schedule for both our pre-schooler and our baby. It gave me the background information I needed to discover why certain methods were working and others weren’t.

After some general discussion about sleep and naps, the rest of the book is organized around specific challenges and solutions. Each challenge is explained and followed by more than one way to solve it. The bonus here is that a busy mom doesn’t have to sit down and read the book cover to cover. After the first few chapters, it is easy to flip to the section that applies to you and come back whenever your situation changes to try something new. As long as you can get past the distracting references to other pages in every chapter, this small paperback will become a treasured reference book to come back to over and over.

Because the book is written for a general audience, it may feel daunting when the list of possible causes to catnaps includes so many possibilities that you don’t know where to begin. My daughter’s frequent wakings could be caused by teething, impending developmental leap (crawling) or separation anxiety. My son’s inability to settle for a nap could be caused by being over-tired or not tired enough. But Pantley is thorough; rest assured that she has guaranteed gentle suggestions for every possible scenario that you might face. Gentle solutions are not always easy solutions though and The No-Cry Nap Solution is certainly not a quick-fix manual. Some of Pantley’s suggestions have to be done over and over again before they work. It might take five times unlatching your nurse-to-sleep baby before you can sneak away. You might have to try several different methods before finding the one that works for you.

Sometimes a sleep-deprived parent will feel like it’s easier to just do what’s been working. Which brings me to my favourite thing about Elizabeth Pantley and The No-Cry Nap Solution: Pantley accepts that all families are different and she repeatedly asserts to do what works for you. She offers the log sheets and schedules to fill out and then says to go ahead and skip them if they don’t suit your personality. She describes sleep challenges like a baby that will only nap in arms and then explains that not all families will consider that a challenge. Her No-Cry Process for Peaceful Problem Solving was like a page torn from my parenting manifesto:

"Address only those problems that are true problems to you, and don’t create or imagine problems because someone else thinks you have them, no matter if that person is family, friend or expert."

As always, Pantley proves sensitive not only to differing parenting approaches and family situations but also to the child. Her suggestions are always gentle and never designed to cause the child distress and yet she recognizes that parents need practical ways to get their children to sleep so they can re-charge too. Her approaches are balanced and realistic in that the goal is rest for both parent and child.

The book is peppered with quotes and photos from real-life parents. The photos are sweet and sometimes funny. The quotes give a tired, frustrated parent hope, a glimmer of light at the end of a dark sleepless tunnel. Both give the book added credibility. The science and research are wonderful but it’s the fact that Pantley has tested these ideas on real families (209 in 18 different countries) that makes it feel like they might work in my own.

Amazingly, many of Pantley’s solutions did work for us, despite our track record. Some suggestions were new to us and have worked their magic in only a couple of short weeks. Others show promise but are not paying off just yet. Still others were old tricks that we found on our own through trial and error. Imagine my surprise when I read solutions in the book that I had learned to employ in our family while struggling with sleep for three years. It was like a message telling me that I do know what I’m doing. And thankfully for all of us, so does Elizabeth Pantley; this book is one more great reason why she is the trusted resource for all parents looking to help their children sleep better.

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Sneak Peek at Pantley's New Book

Just wanted to share with you how excited I am that I have been selected to review an advance copy of Elizabeth Pantley's new book The No-Cry Nap Solution. I should be getting my copy in early December and I look forward to reading it and sharing my thoughts with you. It's especially timely for me as I have been struggling with a few nap issues with my children so I really can't wait to get my copy.

From the publisher:

The No-Cry Nap Solution: Guaranteed Gentle Ways to Solve All Your Naptime Problems

Bestselling parenting author brings her solutions to your naptime dilemmas

Will your child only nap in your arms, in a swing, or after elaborate rituals? Does your child take cat naps--or none at all? Let world-renowned, trusted parenting author Elizabeth Pantley help you. She'll guide you with the same sensitive expertise and gentle approach used in her other No-Cry bestsellers.

Research shows that naps improve health, mood, growth, and well-being. Yet children often resist the naps they need. The results are fussy, crying babies and cranky, grouchy kids who also have trouble sleeping at night!

In The No-Cry Nap Solution Pantley explains to parents of children ages newborn to kindergarten the importance of napping to both behavior during the day and sleeping during (and through!) the night. She then shares with you her gentle, loving techniques--tested on families of all sizes and circumstances--and shows you how you can customize her solutions for your own family. Pantley addresses issues such as children who resist naps, dealing with schedule changes, turning short naps into longer ones, helping a child go from needing motion to sleep to "stationery"� sleep, nursing at naptime, solving daycare napping problems, and more.

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Breastfeeding and the Lack of Paid Maternity Leave in the US

In the wake of last week’s uproar over formula companies lobbying the government to change health policies, I came across an interesting article discussing the flipside of the breastfeeding issue. The author, Anne Hart, argues that women are intelligent beings who aren’t to be fooled by formula advertising and rather, the low breastfeeding rates have more to do with the United States’ lack of paid maternity leave.

Personally, I think she underestimates both the power of marketing dollars and the political power of lobbyists. See Peggy O’Mara (Mothering Magazine)’s most recent column A Quiet Place: Is Breastfeeding in Trouble? Though to be fair, Hart is concentrating specifically on the practice of giving formula samples out at US hospitals (a practice that has been banned by the WHO and UNICEF).

Despite this, Hart is totally on the mark about maternity leave. In the United States, women are only entitled to 12 weeks off work, and that’s unpaid leave. The National Geographic (August 2007) published a survey of 168 countries to see what maternity benefits were like around the world. The results showed shockingly that things need to change in the States. The United States are among only 5 nations that do not offer any paid leave at all (brown on the map below).


Considering that it can take more than 6 weeks just to get breastfeeding successfully established at all, how is a new mother supposed to also navigate the return to work AND continue breastfeeding, especially without adequate support? Is this why women are turning to wet-nurses?

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Breastfeeding & Birth News This Week

Nicotine in Breast-milk Shortens Baby’s Naptimes

Hmm…another reason not to start smoking again after your baby is born. A study reported by Forbes showed that babies’ naps were reduced by 37% when mothers smoked cigarettes before breastfeeding. Apparently nicotine shows up in breast-milk after about 30 – 60 minutes and disappears after 3 hours so mothers could time when they smoke, but really, once you’ve stopped why start up again? The article mentions that more research needs to be done if nicotine affects the babies in any other ways.


Rickets on the Rise

The Toronto Star reported in July that cases of rickets, a childhood disease which causes deformations of bones, are on the rise again. Rickets was widespread from its first medical description in 1650 until its eradication from North America in the 1930s. Rickets is caused by Vitamin D deficiency and it seems that the rise in rickets cases comes from over cautious mothers. Vitamin D is added to milk, but families aren’t drinking as much milk as they once were. Vitamin D is absorbed by exposure to sunlight but we are covering our kids in sunscreen and clothing to guard against skin cancer. I’m sure tv and video games have also reduced the time that kids spend outdoors as well. And Vitamin D is not found in breast-milk so exclusively breastfeeding means infants may need a Vitamin D supplement. For a discussion on vitamin D for breastfed babies, check out Today’s Parent (featuring comments from Dr. Jack Newman). See also Breastfeeding and Other Foods or Some Breastfeeding Myths.

As the Star says: “The obesity crisis has brought to light the lack of outdoor activity in both adults and children. Mix this with fears about hormones in milk, skin cancer from sun exposure and mercury in fish such as salmon that contain plenty of vitamin D – and a deficit is created.”

The interesting point about the rise of rickets (for me anyway) is that rickets was a major reason for death in childbirth. Women who had suffered from rickets as children often had deformed pelvises and couldn’t birth their babies. The history of rickets is part of the reason for the still common diagnosis that some women are too small to deliver a large baby (resulting in planned cesarean births). I’m interested to see whether rickets does indeed become widespread again.

In any case, the article recommends living a balanced life: drinking milk, eating fish, spending time outdoors. Everything in moderation, including moderation.


Brace Yourselves

As I suspected last week, the report into the case of the homebirth death in Quebec has started a shit storm of reactions. The latest from today’s Vancouver Province had me so angry that I can’t even begin to formulate a response. I am sure it’s only the beginning too.

I invite everyone to write the Province cool-headed, well-informed letters with sources and suggestions of where to find more info on both the safety of home birth and the insanity of our current maternity system.

We need to find that middle ground where it’s not home OR hospital. What about birth centres? What about home for low risk birth and hospital for high risk birth? What about changing the hospital system so that people actually want to birth there????

My first suggestions, once I calm down, will be to have Ms. Lakritz read Born in the USA: How to Heal a Broken Maternity System by Marsden Wagner and the most recent issue of Mothering Magazine with its pieces on Cesarean Birth and on Homebirth in Holland. Hmm, maybe we should also get her started on Gentle Birth Choices by Barbara Harper and the classic, Immaculate Deception II by Suzanne Arms.

Please post your comments here on what you think of Ms. Lakritz’ commentary.

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Breastfeeding & Birth News This Week

In the news this week…

Early cord clamping may harm baby
The BBC ran a story about the benefits of delaying clamping the umbilical cord following birth. A UK expert has warned that clamping the umbilical cord straight after birth does not benefit mother or baby and may actually be harmful. Clamping should be delayed at least three minutes because it increases babies’ iron stores.

Victoria is Canada's caesarean capital
Nearly 4 in 10 women give birth via caesarean section in Victoria, the nation’s title holder for highest caesarean rate for the second straight year. BC, at 30.4%, also has the highest rate in the country. Many factors are cited including advanced maternal age, heavier mothers, falling VBAC (vaginal birth after caesarean) rates and decreased willingness to endure longer labours. Dr. Jerome Dansereau, chief of obstetrics at the Vancouver Island Health Authority, says that given the upward swing the rate could go to 50%. "There is no one who could have predicted what we see today," he says, "and there is no one who can predict when it will stop." Read the article.

Junk food diet during pregnancy leads to obese babies: study
CBC reported a British study on pregnancy and obesity. The study looked at rats and discovered that babies whose mothers had over-indulged in junk food while pregnant showed a preference for sugary high fat foods and became obese. It appears that helping your child develop good eating habits begins in the womb. More details...

Mount Allison study taking a look at breastfeeding
Two researchers at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick are studying the decision making process behind choosing to breastfeed or bottle feed. They plan to track 50 women during their last trimester through the first six months with baby to try to discover why so many women abandon breastfeeding. They plan to look at “women's interpretation of health promotion messages; their intentions regarding infant feeding; and any changes over time in their physical, psychological, and social experience of breastfeeding.” Find out more...

Breastfeeding moms quitting too soon, officials say
A government survey in the States has discovered that while initiation rates of breastfeeding are at an all-time high of 74%, mothers are quitting too soon, with 30% exclusively breastfeeding at 3 months and only 11% at 6 months. Looks like the Mount Allison study is coming none too soon. More...

Codeine Warning for Breastfeeding Moms
The FDA issued a warning this week for breastfeeding mothers taking codeine for after-pains to watch their babies carefully for signs of life-threatening side effects. Codeine is derivative of morphine and has been used safely for many years. Those at risk are women who are “ultra-rapid metabolizers” of the drug. The genetic condition is uncommon and not tested for. Read the story.

Be a green parent
Metroactive, a Silicon Valley news site, listed green parenting as #46 in their list of 50 Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint.

46. BE A GREEN PARENT. San Jose's Angelica and Sergio Martinez went deep green after their son Marciello was born. "We started Los Antepasados to share the healthy and sustainable ways of our grand ancestors." They recommend breastfeeding, using cloth diapers like Fuzzi Bunz and making simple baby food from scratch, like smashed bananas or sweet potatoes. Give and get hand-me-downs to clothe young 'uns.

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July is Attachment Parenting Month

In honour of attachment parenting month, I'd like to share a couple of valuable links for those of you who are curious or who have questions about attachment parenting.

My sister, mother of four, sums it up like this: "Do whatever works." To me, that is the essence of attachment parenting. Responding to your baby's cues with whatever works for them, which often means feeding when they are hungry, holding them when they need to be near you, sleeping close by, and taking breaks when you are tired. Doing what works also means responding to your child as an individual: what works with one, won't necessarily work with the next one. And of course, do what works also implies trusting your instincts rather than listening to the baby trainers and constantly saying to yourself, "But the book says I should..."

For more info:
Dr. Sears' 7 Baby B's
Attachment Parenting International's 8 Principles of Attachment Parenting

And for all of you out there who think that Attachment Parenting is a couple of dirty words, I draw your attention to the concept of Balance in both of the above articles. Attachment Parenting is not about sacrificing yourself for the needs of your baby. It's about responding sympathetically and with love to baby's needs without forgetting to take care of yourself.

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Becoming Breastfeeding-Friendly

Mothering Magazine Issue 140
by Peggy O'Mara

I've just returned from giving a television interview about breastfeeding in public. I was asked to comment on the situation involving Emily Gillette and her 23-month-old daughter. Shortly after boarding a commercial airplane, Gillette was asked by a flight attendant to cover up with a blanket while she was breastfeeding. When Gillette declined the blanket, the flight attendant demanded that she and her family leave the airplane. As this was the last flight of the evening from Burlington, Vermont, Gillette and her family were forced to find accommodations late at night and fly out the next day. Their offense: breastfeeding in public.

Gillette lives in New Mexico, where 82 percent of mothers initiate breastfeeding and 70 percent are still nursing at three months. That first statistic surpasses the national average of 70 percent initiation, and tops the US Health and Human Services goal of 75 percent initiation by 2010. She is already part of a breastfeeding culture. Gillette is also part of a breastfeeding culture as a reader of Mothering magazine. Ninety-six percent of our readers initiate breastfeeding, and 80 percent are still nursing at one year and beyond.

These mothers are following the recommendations of the World Health Organization, which encourages breastfeeding for at least the child's first two years. In other words, they are following doctor's orders.

The risks of not breastfeeding are significant. The 2005 Progress Report on Breastfeeding, issued at the 49th Session on the Commission on the Status of Women, concludes that increasing the incidence of exclusive breastfeeding in the US would reduce the rate of death for children under five by 19 percent.

According to UNICEF, if infants worldwide were fed only mother's milk for their first six months, at least 1.3 million lives a year would be saved. In the first two months of life, an infant who is not exclusively breastfed is up to 25 times more likely than an exclusively breastfed baby to die from diarrhea, and four times more likely to die from pneumonia.

As these outstanding benefits and unacceptable risks make breastfeeding not a lifestyle choice but a health mandate, it is only a matter of time before the US as a whole becomes a breastfeeding culture. In order to do this, however, obviously we must have more breastfeeding. And in order to increase breastfeeding, we must encourage mothers to nurse in public. Breastfeeding in public is essential to successful breastfeeding because babies simply cannot wait to be fed. Whether bottle-fed or breastfed, babies need to eat often; if they are in public with their parents for extended periods of time, they will have to be fed.

No one gives a second thought to bottle-feeding in public. In fact, images of baby bottles are ubiquitous in popular culture and are sometimes even used in public places to designate nursery facilities. Despite the health mandate, a society saturated with such images can make a new mom feel that breastfeeding is out of the ordinary, or even abnormal. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, lack of public support for breastfeeding is one of the obstacles to its success. Fortunately, studies show that 93 percent of people in the US are just fine with breastfeeding in public.

When we published "Taking Down the Almighty Bottle," Stephanie Ondrack's article about breastfeeding in a bottle-feeding culture (Mothering, July-August 2006), our Art Director, Laura Egley Taylor, wondered whether a universal symbol for breastfeeding existed. We were surprised to find that it does not. While Canada and Singapore have such symbols, neither image is in wide use or compatible with international signage styles. The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), along with the US Department of Transportation, created the 50 standard symbols used by US sign companies today, but they did not include one for breastfeeding.

So, from July through mid-November 2006, Mothering held a contest to create a universal breastfeeding symbol. We received more than 500 entries from both the design and breastfeeding communities. A public vote was held on www.mothering.com, and votes were solicited from the major breastfeeding organizations.


The winning symbol was designed by Matt Daigle. Matt has been kind enough to assign his symbol design to the public domain, which means that it is copyright-free. We have made downloadable images of the symbol available free, and offer stickers for sale. I encourage you to use this symbol. Most important, we hope that a universal symbol will increase public awareness of breastfeeding. The symbol could also be used to designate baby-friendly and breastfeeding-friendly facilities in large public spaces.

Of course, breastfeeding does not require a special place. As the Canadian government's slogan says, it is appropriate "anytime, anywhere." The purpose of the symbol is not to segregate breastfeeding in any way, but to help better integrate it into society by better accommodating it in public.

For example, sometimes there is nowhere comfortable to feed the baby—or, for the mother separated from her baby, nowhere to plug in an electric breast pump. Mothers welcome private places in public where they can collect themselves and their children. This symbol could designate such places.

How do we use the symbol? We've already gotten a photo of the symbol posted on the front of a store in Redding, California, that sells cloth diapers, baby slings, and breastfeeding supplies. While we'll all probably want to use it as a bumper sticker, it is more about a specific place than a point of view.

The symbol will be most appropriate and helpful in large, public places where people remain for extended periods of time, such as airports, malls, and amusement parks, as well as conventions, expos, and other large international events. It could also be used in professional offices, retail establishments, or restaurants to indicate that these places are breastfeeding-friendly. However, its absence should not imply "breastfeeding-unfriendly," for breastfeeding in public is a basic human right. The symbol could also be used in businesses to designate a specific lactation room, as now required by law in California.

In public places, the use of this symbol could follow in the tradition of the family bathrooms one sees in large airports. These breastfeeding- and baby-friendly places could be located in or near restrooms, which often are the only private places to be found in otherwise public spaces. If such restrooms also have a comfortable chair and perhaps an electric plug, they could accommodate the feeding needs of most infants. And, like changing tables, they should be available to moms and dads. Everyone wants to feel welcome in public, and we feel welcome as parents when our needs are accommodated.

We once published an article on Sweden that included photos of the various signs used there to indicate child-friendly facilities (More Than Welcome: Families Come First in Sweden by Brittany Shahmehri, November-December 2001). One purpose of a breastfeeding symbol is to help more US families feel more welcome in public. The TV reporter asked me today why I thought some people were uncomfortable with breastfeeding in public. First, it's a cultural bias. Many of us, like Emily Gillette, are part of a breastfeeding culture and are therefore so accustomed to seeing breastfeeding that we hardly give it a second thought. Others, like the flight attendant, are presumably part of a bottle-feeding culture and are thus unaccustomed to breastfeeding, particularly to extended breastfeeding. It is common for human beings to be suspicious of things they are unfamiliar with.

Second, it is also common for human beings to be fascinated with things they have seldom or never seen before, to stare and gawk and appear rude in the face of the new fascination. Sometimes people who are unfamiliar with breastfeeding interpret their quite normal fascination as prurient or are simply embarrassed by their own responses. People new to seeing breastfeeding may interpret their inability to stop staring as evidence that breastfeeding has sexual overtones. It does not.

Both of these reasons, however, are prejudices, and we cannot afford to accommodate prejudice if we are to be a healthy society. There is nothing inherently offensive about breastfeeding—quite the contrary. When a person feels uncomfortable, it is his or her beliefs, not breastfeeding itself, that are the problem. This lack of comfort is not a legitimate reason to impose those beliefs on others. People who are offended by breastfeeding just have to get over it, or remove themselves from the situation.

Mothering has often run into this sort of fear and prejudice. I was amused to read last fall that another parenting publication had proudly announced the radical act of publishing a photo of breastfeeding on their cover. We've been doing that for years, and have sometimes been dismayed to find that our magazines have been removed from newsstands or covered up, even in natural-foods stores.

In all cases, we have found that the act of removing the magazine from the shelves was a reactive response to a customer complaint, and often in violation of the store's existing policy. Without exception, the store management apologized to us and, if there was not already such a policy in place, instituted a written policy for distinguishing between pornography and images of breastfeeding. And they always put the magazine back on the stands.

Emily Gillette has filed a complaint against Delta Air Lines and Freedom Airlines with the Vermont Human Rights Commission. Breastfeeding is protected in Vermont under the state's Public Accommodations Act. Gillette wants to make sure that breastfeeding is protected on these two airlines as well.

We, too, want to protect breastfeeding. Imagine with us a breastfeeding-friendly society. As this issue was going to press, we heard about a nurse-in at national airports in support of Gillette's request. One of the goals of the nurse-in is to introduce the new breastfeeding symbol. We're eager to see how it is accepted, and where it goes. Please send us photos of the symbol in use. And keep on breastfeeding.

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Sweet Home Birth Boxes - the supplies you need no matter what your birth plan includes!

Power to the Working Moms!

I would like to appologize for not posting lately. I returned to work 3 days a week at the end of November and I'm still finding it to be quite an adjustment. I'm enjoying the work and enjoying being out of the house a bit but life has sped up to the point where it feels like we are all running on a treadmill set a tad too fast for us.

I am thankful that I'm only working three days a week. I am thankful that my sister is watching my son so I didn't have to find daycare. I am thankful that I can take the skytrain downtown so my commute is under forty-five minutes.

However, I miss my son. I miss being home to work on the projects I started while on maternity leave. I struggle to get dinner served on time. I struggle to get out of bed in the morning (my son has slipped back into the habit of night nursing four times a night since I went back to work).

I am in awe of those moms who work full-time, dropping kids at daycare, commuting. I don't know how you do it. I hear the big answer is a crock-pot.

I wanted to post some resources for working moms:

• ivillage


• family education

I would love it if you could share some other tips and resources. Please post a comment and let us know what works for you.

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Sweet Home Birth Boxes - the supplies you need no matter what your birth plan includes!

Mindful Parenting

• To the best of our ability, live without expectation, anticipation or regret. Learn to be present in the moment. There is a mystery to behold right now.
• Accept what is happening now for what it is. Be honest and non-judgemental in this moment - don't deny reality or expect things to be different than they are. A Buddhist saying is, "Don't push the river."
• Make a conscious and considered decision to take whatever action or non-action seems best in this very moment.
• Let go of this moment because a new one is already here. Move away from spending too much time in hindsight. It detracts from being aware of the Now.
• Surrender the Ego. Our desires to be seen and honored can get in the way of being able to teach and to listen.
• Enjoy life's ironies. A famous Zen saying is, "Life is one continuous mistake."
• Pay attention to inner guidance. The way comes from within and is only found in stillness.

Special thanks to Sarah Juliusson.

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Sweet Home Birth Boxes - the supplies you need no matter what your birth plan includes!