Parenting

La Leche League Conferences – the biggest and best parenting conferences in Ireland.

LLL conferences are a highlight of my year.  I love the atmosphere, I love the information and I love the warm, calm feelings I return home with.  Last year’s conference was particularly good for me as it gave me the words for the kind of parenting I believe we are attempting in LLL.

My children are all teenagers now and at the moment parenting them seems so straightforward compared to when they were little.  I wish I had known then what I know now – don’t panic!  I worried that their bad behaviour would become some kind of awful pattern that would turn them into awful adults.  Thank goodness for LLL.   Thank goodness for other LLL Leaders from whom I gained so much over the years. Also I learned so much from the books in the LLL library.  Each book I read helped me learn and practice something new.   

I learnt so much too from my kids.  However outside of LLL I was often made to feel that I was being soft on my kids and I didn’t have the language or the confidence to explain what I was trying to do.  I knew that in LLL we didn’t use the naughty chair or time out – I didn’t always know why but I didn’t like the idea of them.  I knew we didn’t smack.

However I didn’t know what positive action we should take.

Last year’s conference sessions at last showed me what we do do.  That is we work on connecting with our kids.  We don’t try and control them or their behaviour, but we do work on connecting with them.  It seems such a simple phrase but I do believe it encompasses much of our parenting style alongside point 10 in our philosophy – From infancy on, children need loving guidance which reflects acceptance of their capabilities and sensitivity to their feelings.  I know it is something I try and do and it seems to be working.  This connecting crucially started with breastfeeding.  It continues in other ways now but every aspect of my life is affected by working on, attempting, trying to connect with my children and enjoying those relationships.  I suppose this is still hard to vocalise when others are criticising my kids’ behaviour, but at least I know what I am doing and that my goals are long term.

Perhaps we underestimate or under emphasise the value of bonding in the breastfeeding relationship as we are nervous of accusing others they are not well bonded.  But if in a few years it was proved that formula was no worse than breastmilk I wouldn’t care.  Breastfeeding was worth every minute, every second.  It was the most amazing connection with my children.  Breastfeeding taught me to be a mother.  I know if I had not breastfed my children I would not have the relationship with them now that I have.  As I said earlier mine are all teenagers now and it is a great stage.  I love them being teens.  They get on better, the relationships between them are developing and we all like spending time together.  (Of course we still have our ups and downs.)  So let’s not be defensive about breastfeeding.  Let’s celebrate how wonderful it is and how good connecting with our kids is well beyond the time when we are breastfeeding.  And

                                                            Never ever panic!!

This article is based on a talk I did at the March 2010 meeting of La Leche League of East Antrim.Posted on June 18, 2010 by Breastfeeding Resources NI

I was reading recently, in the very interesting book by Cathy Watson Genna, ‘Supporting Sucking Skills in Breastfeeding Infants’, about mother-baby interactions in the early days. Turns out that what we generally think derogatively of new mums as having ‘cow brain’ is actually the less instinctive part of the brain taking a back seat to allow the more instinctive part of the brain to take over and improve mother- baby interactions. This helps mum and baby get to know each other and helps with breastfeeding. Sadly the battle of the sexes often seems to stop women going with the flow of their body and brains or women are criticised for their struggle to remember things after birth when in fact it is the incredible power and adaptability of their bodies that is working on the survival and thriving of their infants. It is as though the easy availability of breastmilk substitutes which in the west do support survival of babies ( although mortality and morbidity of non-breastfed infants is higher) has taken away the knowledge and power from babies vital need to be with his/her mother.

At the La Leche League of Ireland conference in March2010 Dr Nils Bergman talked about the need for a paradigm shift in the way we think of babies. Bottle feeding and separation of mother and baby have become the norm. However the biological norm is breastfeeding and for babies to be carried by their mums. Imagine the life babies were designed for – babies were designed for life without fires, clothes or weapons. So babies needed mum for protection – not safe to be left on the forest floor. Babies are born very immature compared to other mammals due to bigger brains needing to pass through narrower pelvises ( caused by walking upright). No other mammal needs carried for 1 year. Other primates hold on to their mums much earlier.

Humans are very adaptable. Relatively few babies exclusively breastfeed till 6 months and then into toddlerhood, so it is hard sometimes to see how healthy a population they can be. We don’t know the full long term affects of not breastfeeding. The Department of Health is starting to realise there is research on long term risks of not breastfeeding. Most people are not the biological norm – not carried regularly, breastfed for short time or not at all. Also many don’t want to believe the risks of formula as they used it for their babies. You are doing the right thing by breastfeeding. It could be many years till we know the full risks of the experiment of not breastfeeding.