Like every new mom, I tracked my baby’s number 1’s and number 2’s for the first couple of weeks to make sure she was getting enough breastmilk. She has never been big on the bowel movements. She saves them up and gives us one good one every 2-3 days. So I asked my midwife about this at our last appointment. Should I be worried? Nope, not at all. My girl is working just fine. I had no idea, but my midwife told me that breastfed babies can go for 10 days without a bowel movement. How is this possible?

Breastmilk is so perfectly formulated for your baby that very little goes to waste. When your baby’s saliva comes into contact with your nipple, it is telling your body what minerals and nutrients your baby needs. Your breastmilk instantly changes to meet your baby’s needs. Because it it always so perfectly formulated for your baby, your baby’s body absorbs so much of your breastmilk, some days all of it, hence no bowel movements. I had no idea. No wonder my girl is growing so fast!

So, if your baby doesn’t poo for 3 or 4 days, don’t sweat it. You are feeding her nature’s perfect food and her body is soaking it up. Of course if you are worried, call your midwife or doctor. But now you know, breastfed babies can go up to 10 days without a bowel movement. Just beware… when it does come, it may be HUGE.

So we were away camping for the Victoria Day long weekend. Not camping in a tent camping; camping in a 28 foot travel trailer with a 4-piece bathroom camping. It’s our mini-version of a cottage until we can afford a cottage. It’s a nice family campground, so it will work until like I said, we can afford a cottage.

This campground organizes a dance every long weekend. We have mostly refused to attend these dances. Drunken patrons claiming to be a “red-neck woman” a the top of their lungs and instructional songs telling me to “clap my hands and do the cha cha slide” — not my cup of tea. You have to drink yourself into a stupor to listen to that music… and the revelation hits… well this is a long weekend.

So as a family we took to the dance floor. As always happens the DJ has been the DJ for every dance and always plays the exact same torturous play list, moved into his AC/DC + Ozzy set. After chasing my daughter around to Blondie (Debbie Harry is my rock goddess!), I heard the familiar opening to Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train. Funny thing, as I started walking back towards my stroller-guarding husband, I felt a tingle in my breasts. Odd. Once the ever-familiar “Ai, ai, ai, ai” scream of Ozzy Osbourne opening opening the first heavy guitar riff, not one, but both of my breasts let down! Not a gentle let down, a full force, hands flew to the nipples to put the pressure on and massage the tingle feeling like a semi-pornographic water fountain let-down. I approached my husband straight-faced and in shock, and said “my breasts just let down to the sound of Ozzy Osbourne’s voice.” After a pause, we both doubled over laughing in the middle of the dance.

My husband has since tried to force my breasts to let down with his own “Ai, ai, ai, ai” scream, but I keep telling him “You have no accompaniment, and you’re not Ozzy.”

He wants to test it out a second time to see if it happens again. I’m fine with the memory.

Today as I nursed my daughter off the right side, I couldn’t help but notice the rush of milk into my left breast. Whoa Nelly! Am I Mount Vesuvius ready to rupture? Talk about intense let-down!

The let-down reflex was not like this with my eldest daughter - really I didn’t feel a thing except the instant endorphin “everything-is-great-in-the-world” rush. She would nurse and the milk would just appear, no tingle, no pressure, most certainly no “whoosh I am a water cannon with 150 psi”. This time, my girl starts to nurse and 30 seconds later I am pressing on my nipple trying to prevent a fountain of breastmilk. You know that fountain of the little boy peeing? I could be the model for a fountain of a mom holding a baby in her lap with naked breasts defiantly pointing forward like the masthead of a ship. Imagine the spectacle once the water is turned on. I’ll give you a moment to truly soak it in. Can you see it? Some would say it’s pornographic! I say it’s brilliant!

Amazing discovery today! I was in the bathroom doing my morning routine, and my youngest DD got cranky - I guess I took too long. I ran into the bedroom where she was on the bed and when I pulled down, or rather was about to pull down the diaper shirt she was wearing to pick her up I noticed a bubble of milky white fluid on her left nipple! Her left nipple was lactating - how amazing is that? She still has my hormones in her! She bled a smear a week or two ago, but I thought my hormones would be out of her body by now.

I checked her nipple and her ducts were full. I wiped the drop away and gently squeezed her nipple to see what would happen and another droplet appeared. For a split second I thought something was wrong, but quickly remembered this happens with some girl babies. So weird and so cool!

So, my girlfriend sent me a link to an article written by Rabbi Schmuley. Actually, she sent it to my husband with this message:

Please pass these links to Trace…
…..and stand the hell back!!
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/194/story_19451_1.html
or the summarized version:
http://www.shmuley.com/articles.php?id=277
(…getting DD out of earshot might help too!!)

Now why did she think I would need some space? I am a reasonable, rational individual. Perhaps she knows my passion for sharing the experience of breastfeeding. Perhaps she knows I believe men should be active partners. Perhaps she knows my passion. I read Rabbi Schmuley`s article and I understand what statements my girlfriend believed would incense me. And to some degree they do. Like what you may ask? Well…

The first point that irks me is that Rabbi Schmuley considers breastfeeding to be a “de-eroticization of a woman’s body”. The comment that breastfeeding turns breasts, the “most attractive body parts into a feeding station, an attractive cafeteria rather than a scintillating piece of flesh” is ridiculous. Why can`t the breasts be both a scintillating pice of flesh and an attractive cafeteria? Why is it one or the other? Breastfeeding can most certainly be considered sexy (as he also says thanks goodness), but more so, any husband should look at his breastfeeding wife with pride not jealousy. A breastfeeding wife is doing something that only she can do (feed his child!), and something that many women can`t do despite giving it their all. Yes, breasts are sexy to look at, but they also provide an important function, a function that truly is more important that just being a pretty appendage. Really, in what Jewish Holy Book does it say that a woman’s breasts were made for the primary pleasure of her husband and not to feed her child? Please tell me! A woman’s body was made for the primary pleasure of man? Considering that only woman can bear and feed children, I would think the woman’s body was made to birth and feed babies, if she so chooses. I wasn’t aware that the Jewish faith was so focused on carnal pleasure, I should convert to Judaism!

The second point, likening extended breastfeeding to an extra-marital affair has to be taken humourously. Rabbi Schmuley says “when a mother gives her breasts to her son and takes them away from her husband, the effect on the marriage can feel the same.” What about giving her breasts to her daughter, does that change things? Considering breastfeeding takes anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, I don’t think any woman is taking her breasts away from her husband for any amount of time that a man can’t handle. Are men that breast or sex obsessed that they can`t chill out during the short-lived breastfeeding run? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that during the National Immunization Survey for 2004 only 41.5% of women were breastfeeding at 6 months which dropped to less than half at 12 months. Of the 30.5% of moms who breastfed exclusively to three months, only 11.3 were exclusively breastfeeding at 6 months as recommended by the APA and the WHO. Considering that virtually all new moms can breastfeed if they have accurate information and support, those numbers are tragically low. Women sacrifice their bodies and lifestyle for 40 weeks and longer to bring babies into the world, am I to suppose that men are so selfish that they can`t sacrifice having their wife`s breasts all to themselves for a lousy 3 months? Besides, if a woman “takes them away from her husband” for any extended amount of time, there is something else going on there that has nothing to do with breastfeeding. But this runs into the longer point.

“If breast-feeding gets in the way of the marriage—if it means that a husband and wife never go out on dates, or that the mother is so tired from always waking up with the baby that she has no energy to ever be intimate with her husband—the child will probably end up worse off”. First, even a formula fed baby will wake up in the middle of the night rendering the mom too tired to be intimate with her husband, so this argument doesn’t wash. Breast or bottle, babies wake up for a variety of reasons, not all of them stem from hunger. The only solution to keep a mom awake and her libido intact is to keep her in bed… asleep! Maybe dads should hire a night nurse to get up with the babies, whether breast- or bottle-fed. Maybe that will keep mom bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and ready to go.

The bigger issue here is blaming breastfeeding for the lack of intimacy in a marriage. If breastfeeding is contributing to the breakdown of a marriage, something was wrong with that marriage long before the breastfeeding started, maybe the under-lying issue should be dealt with instead of yammering on about the need to stop breastfeeding. Can breastfeeding lead a husband to stop seeing his wife as a woman and begin to see her as the mother of his children? Sure it can, but NEWS FLASH, she is both his wife and the mother of his children. Children CHANGE things: schedules, routine, lifestyle, family roles. If you don`t want things to change, you shouldn`t have children. Rabbi Schmuley says this change from wife to mother is “a negative trend that has begun in his mind that can only subvert his erotic interest.” It doesn`t have to be negative at all, what about loving your wife even more now that she is the mother of your children? What about finding her even sexier? Why must a woman lose her sex appeal for birthing and breastfeeding a baby when a man retains his even while his nightly snores wake up the neighbourhood?

Rabbi Schmuley concludes that breastfeeding “should always remain subordinate to the romantic and passionate needs of a marriage” especialy if it is contributing to the loss of erotic desire in the marriage. As I said before, if there is a loss of desire in the marriage, it most likely has nothing to do with breastfeeding. Deal with the real issues instead of finding a scapegoat. If breastfeeding should remain subordinate, I would certainly hope the husbands out there would have something extra-special to offer and entice with besides a generic roll in the sack. More often, the loss of desire in the bedroom is a result of boredom. Women may hide behind breastfeeding instead of hurting their husbands feelings. “Ì need to breastfeed” sounds much better than `Honey, you bore me in bed” even while it needs to be said. I certainly wouldn’t shun breastfeeding for a mechanized, automatic, predictable, lackluster romp in the sack - I’d prefer the oxytocin bliss to the predictability of “now we do this, and then this, and then this…” any day. Maybe my girlfriend was right… thank goodness I edit. I mean don’t even get me started about the men-shouldn’t-watch-the-birth-of-their-children-for-fear-of-de-eroticizing-the-crotch argument, good lord. I cannot say anymore, it’s almost midnight, my husband is in bed and I have to breastfeed my daughter.

So, I’ve been wearing a Bravado Nursing Bra - the classic design for a few weeks now and I have to ask: What is the big deal? Who do so many nursing moms claim this bra is their favourite? I don’t get it at all. The snap is not one-hand-easy, I have yet to unsnap ot snap it with one hand (I can when I wear my Warner’s). It is not as supportive as my Warner’s, and nowhere near as comfy as my Warner’s. Am I wearing it wrong? Do I have the wrong size? What is the deal? I thought I would spend the extra money, I figured it has to be a beter bra. It costs more. And yes, I was seduced by the claim that cup fabric stretches and contracts with your swollen pregnant/nursing breasts. I loved the claim that this bra would be the perfect bra to wear through the pregnant/nursing transition. I am finding that I am not so impressed. If I lie on my side through the night, the cup does not keep my breast in place, which means my breast pad does not cover my nipple.

Come on ladies - what is the deal with the Bravado? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Please tell me because right now my reply to “Bravado is the #1 nursing bra” is “My Butt!”