Gina Crosly-Corcoran is confused:
I am brave (foolish) enough to admit that while I totally and completely support any woman’s right and choice to feed her babies however she needs to, I still, deep down in a place I don’t like to admit, don’t really “get” it when a woman chooses, without any medical or social barrier, not to breastfeed. To me it’s sorta like deciding not to take prenatal vitamins because you just don’t wanna, without recognizing that they do help build a healthier baby. I will NOT be all sanctimonious about it, I’m just saying I’m human and that one’s a head scratcher for me. We have lactating boobs for a reason: to feed the babies we make.
Kind of like:
I am brave (foolish) enough to admit that while I totally and completely support transgender people, I still, deep down in a place I don’t like to admit, don’t really “get” when a man or a woman chooses to be the opposite sex. To me it’s sorta like deciding not to get married because you just don’t wanna, without recognizing that heterosexual families are what nature intended. I will NOT be all sanctimonious about it, I’m just saying I’m human and that one’s a head scratcher for me. A man has a penis for a reason, and a woman has a vagina for a reason: to be the gender that they were born to be.
See! Not sanctimonious or judgmental at all!
OT: French women least tolerant to breastfeeding in public. https://today.yougov.com/news/2013/09/11/french-women-least-tolerant-public-breastfeeding/
Men have nipples for.. !?
Evolution: we all start out as girls in the womb, then we are differentiated by our genes.
Anyone who calls herself a feminist and then turns around and makes passive-aggressive jibes about what a woman does or does not choose to do with any part of her body loses any right to call herself a feminist. This goes for breastfeeding and birth as well as everything else outside of that realm too.
TFB is a jerk, but I don’t get the example.
Biological sex is not the same thing as gender. Sex is a physical reality, while gender is socially created, and not innate. People conflate the two, but they are not the same.
You DO get to choose whether or not you conform to the gender role society has assigned to your sex; women can like math and pants, men can like dresses and nurturing, etc.
You DON’T get to choose to your sex. You are either a male, or female (intersex people still have only X and Y’s). No amount of surgery, hormones, desire, need, can change your natal sex.
I guess if you said that you don’t get why anyone would want to take on the gender role designated for the other sex, and that having a penis means you must be masculine, having a vagina means you were meant to be feminine, I would get it. the way it’s written is confusing.
Back on topic- Gina is a jerk. but I dont care if she is bewildered by my choice to FF my son just because I wanted too. her opinion means nothing, she is such an essentialist, and thus irrelevant to me.
I’m pretty sure Dr. Amy was using the transgender example to illustrate how stupid the argument was to begin with. I don’t think she actually “doesn’t get” the difference between sex and gender or why some people identify as transgender.
So do not have time for that kind of closed-mindedness….
I had twins years ago and found breast feeding to be easier than bottle feeding. Can breast feed two babies at once not so with bottles. Plus it was a great way to lose the pregnancy weight and then some!
That’s not true–I also have twins, and we often had it where one person was bottle feeding two at once. When they were tiny infants, we used a boppy (one baby on each side of the boppy, their heads met in the middle-top area, bottle in each hand.) When they outgrew the boppy, we’d put them in bouncy seats, and either sit between them on a footstool, or put the seats on the coffee table and sit in front of them on the couch. Again, one bottle/hand.
We did the one-person-feeding-two-babies with bottles so my husband and I could take shifts and get some sleep at night, and also because the twins were synced in terms of when they ate and slept so they were hungry at the same time.
I have a picture of the boppy set up, which I can’t get to now, but if you’d like I can post later when I’m home.
Well done, I’m popping your medal into the post. Next prize is for RELEVANCE.
Can she at least have a cookie?
Make that a lactation cookie.
The awesome thing about formula feeding twins, in my experience, is that both parents get to bond with the babies through feeding. Sure, dad could bond by bottle-feeding breast milk, but then mom has to add a few hours of pumping on top of the several hours of breastfeeding to her daily schedule… which I personally found all but impossible.
So what?
She also begins with the wrong premise. Prenatal vitamins have not been shown to be of any benefit in a low risk woman with a healthy pregnancy.
Glad you said that, I’m hopeless at taking mine!!
Folic acid BEFORE conception and in the first few weeks after has shown to reduce risk of spina bifida. Folic acid pills /=/ prenatal vitamins. Taking them after those first few weeks, when the spinal column has closed (or not), also up in the air. I puke mine up from about week 8-39, but I take them like clockwork beforehand. However, I know someone with a history of babies born with cleft palate issues that was on a different vitamin. can’t remember which one.
Yeah, every single thing I read about prenatal vitamins basically said I was paying to pee them out. My own doctor was like “Meh, you’re fine not taking them” when I wanted to stop taking them because they kept making me puke.
Really? The two things may mean something different in the US and the UK, but I was under the impression the folic acid in the first trimester at least would reduce spina bifida risk.
Ideally, folic acid should be begun 3 months before conception, and there is now a recommendation to continue it after the first trimester. Women in fertility treatment are routinely prescribed it from the outset.
Here in Israel, folic acid is given separately from prenatal vitamins.
Assuming adequate and well-balanced maternal nutrition, most vitamins are superfluous.
I take ‘healthy start’ vitamins provided by the NHS, and have done whilst TTC and throughout pregnancy. They contain folic acid and Vitamin D, the two supplements recommended in the UK for pregnant women. However, because of our latitude, our ability to get Vitamin D year round is impaired- obviously not true of either the US or Israel.
I wouldn’t say obviously not true in the US, especially in the northern part among people of color.
I was under the impression all the US except Alaska was below the relevant latitude line, but a quick google suggests it’s a bit further south than I thought. With that in mind, it would be surprising if a prenatal vitamin containing vit D showed no benefit at all to a US cohort, no?
It’s not even just about people of colour either- I’ve been told during both pregnancies that in the UK we’re seeing increasing Vit D deficiency even amongst white people (I am very pale myself so I think the midwife was trying to impress the importance of supplementation on me). It’s more of a risk for women whose skin is darker, but none of us can assume we’ll make sufficient Vitamin D. We are of course further north than the US, but I think the point holds. With that in mind, I’d be surprised if prenatal vitamins containing Vit D would be shown to have no benefit at all, if taken by sufficiently northerly populations.
My Vitamin D levels were checked in my routine first-trimester blood work, just like my iron levels. Vitamin D level testing is now part of many routine physical exams. Why not just supplement everybody? Because D is fat-soluble and therefore persists in the body, and the level of supplementation that one person genuinely needs might be toxic to her neighbor.
That’s an interesting point you raise. When I was trying to conceive my son, my OB put me on Vitamin D3 – I can’t remember the dosage. This was in addition to a prenatal & folic, and I’ve continued all three through breastfeeding and now that I’m trying to conceive again. Is Vitamin D poisoning a large concern?
No, I don’t think vitamin D overdose is a common problem. But if you take the high-dose supplement without need, you might. Also, for a laugh, search for “Gary Null gets a taste of his own medicine.”
Thanks! I’m on 1000 iu, 25 mcg once daily. Got a little worried there that the unsolicited med advice I received from my NCB friend was actually accurate:
“The moms in my moms’ group (in other words, “The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding”) say that you can OD on vitamin D supplements, so I intentionally let myself get bad sunburns every day to combat vitamin D deficiency instead.”
Don’t be too sure — those who dress “modestly”, either for religious reasons or to avoid sunburn or the risk of skin cancer, are prone to Vitamin D deficiency here in Israel. In fact, studies here have shown surprisingly large numbers of Israeli women to have both B12 and D deficiency. Most GPs now add tests for these problems to standard blood work.
What Israelis have high levels of is Vitamin C, with all the citrus fruit available.
Folic acid reduces the risk of NTD, but has to be taken before the neural tube closes (4-6weeks post LMP).
There is evidence that women should take supplemental calcium and vitamin D in pregnancy.
Iron supplements are useful for women at risk of anaemia.
Vegans should definitely consider a prenatal multivitamin.
Otherwise…eating a healthy balanced diet is probably sufficient for most people.
Don’t most people get enough folic acid through supplemented foods, these days?
In NZ Iodine is also recommended in pregnancy, along with folic
How is it that T”F”B can accept medical science for nutrition in pregnancy, but not for labour and delivery?
Gina’s also now claiming that it’s a public health issue, and citing Melissa Bartick’s study to show how formula is killing babies and costing us millions.
More proof of the ‘foolish’ thing then.
Taking a prenatal vitamin = 5 second commitment. Breastfeeding = 30-45 minutes every 2-3 hours around the clock for weeks. Not. The. Same.
If you’re breastfeeding 7 hours a day, I hope you love it. I would be peeling out of my skin with sensory overload. And buying formula.
Didn’t love it at the time! That’s for sure!
The beginning was the same for me, too. I loved it. Meanwhile, I sooooo much understand those who hated it, would have hated it, would hate it, and maybe use(d) the obvious opportunity to do otherwise.
Bit of a fail on the old not being sanctimonious there, Gina. Foolish would be about right. Taking vitamin tablets is the exact same thing as taking responsibility for entirely nourishing another human in a process that is time consuming and often painful.
You know, I would argue that choosing to breastfeed these days, when such high-quality formula is available, is actually profoundly anti-feminist. But one of the cool things about feminism is that it (ideally) also supports the freedom of women to make profoundly anti-feminist choices, such as staying at home to raise children and dressing in a sexually provocative manner.
Is dressing in a sexually provocative manner anti-feminist? 🙁 I do it every once in a while; it’s great fun, as to me, my sexuality is a very important part of my identity as a woman.
I must be a bad feminist. I wore a tight game day t shirt to work, one that showed off more cleavage than usual. I liked how I looked and felt good about myself, and I work in an extremely male dominated field, in an extremely male dominated office.
And cooking is s very important part of my identity as a woman. I also breastfeed, though that’s not part of my identity. That’s my point, that we should feel free to embrace our own decisions because they are right for us, and not try to shoehorn them into our ideology.
I became a lot happier once I decided to not give a shit if my hobbies were too girly.
I like to sew, I like to bake, I like pretty dresses with ruffles. I enjoy putting on makeup and doing my hair I am also an engineer and a gamer and I have not shaved my legs in probably three months because I could not be bothered. These things are not mutually exclusive and have no bearing on my worth as a human being.
Feminism!
But you specifically called out dressing provocatively as an anti-feminist choice – that was where I lost you?
(I don’t consider cooking to be anti-feminist, I consider the expectation that the woman should do the cooking to be anti-feminist. The choices to cook or not are equally feminist, IMO, if they are both choices – that’s the key part.)
Feminism is not manifested in the choices we make, but the ability to choose.
Dad was a stay at home parent for a year or so when I was very small. Why is Mom staying home and running a small daycare (1 or 2 kids plus my sib and me) more anti-feminist than Dad doing the same thing a couple years earlier.
Why would choosing to breastfeed be anti-feminist?
Because, even under ideal circumstances, it involves quite a bit of discomfort and expense while not having any long-term benefits and nearly no short-term benefits.
How does that make it an anti-feminist choice?
If we accept that as true, I still don’t think that those reasons makes choosing to breastfeed anti-feminist. Other than the discomfort (which is highly variable between individuals, to me ideal circumstances would imply minimal discomfort), formula feeding also involves quite a bit of expense while also not having any long-term benefits and nearly no short-term benefits. I would call infant feeding choices feminism-neutral. If there is a lack of choice, that would be anti-feminist.
I would say that the expectation that a woman breastfeed is a twitch anti-feminist, but to me that is more a factor of anybody but the woman having a say in how she uses her body. In my perfect world the expectation is that the parents will get food into the child however it makes the most sense to them and everyone else butts out unless the child’s life is in danger or they are asked for their opinion.
In terms of feminist issues I am sticking with equal pay as my hot button issue though.
Which makes it about as anti-feminist as wearing high heels.
I found it to be very comfortable and not expensive. And enjoyable.
Choosing to breastfeed (or not) is no anti feminist. FORCING or SHAMING someone for not breastfeeding is, though.
Choosing to breastfeed is a choice compatible with feminism if it’s what you choose. Helping other women to breastfeed if they wish to by ensuring they have the necessary resources is feminist. But I have to say advocating for other women to choose breastfeeding is not.
What a horrible person I am. I never took my prenatal vitamins.
I stopped after the first three months. The vitamins made me feel terrible, and I saw no convincing evidence the baby needed the vitamins after the first trimester. In the unlikely event I ever have another baby, I am going to try asking to just take folic acid by itself.
I felt guilty for not being able to stomach the prenatal vitamins, but my doctor told me that it was fine for me to “mix my own” – folic acid, iron + c, other b vitamins in the morning with calcium, magnesium, vitamin d, manganese in the evening, and maxolon so I could actually eat in order to get the rest. (Everyone I saw was happy with that, but obviously talk with your medical providers)
I’m managing 5mg folic acid and a chewy calcium/vitamin D, which I knock back with my cyclizine. I took prenatals until they started triggering my gag reflex last week. The Omega oil capsules had to go pretty much as soon as the BFP appeared.
At the moment starchy, salty things and fruit seem to be agreeing with me- Marmite on hot buttered toast, miso soup, mango and pineapple chunks, baked potatoes and cloudy lemonade are what I’ve been mostly eating.
I know I need to up my iron, but at present I don’t think I could keep any meat or green veg down. I’ve been taking prenatals for MONTHS, and my haemoglobin was fine during previous pregnancy, even though I didn’t take iron, so I’m hoping my built up iron stores are going to last until I can stomach a steak or some broccoli…
Omg yes, cloudy lemonade! I’m nearly full term now, but that stuff has so helped me get food down both pregnancies. There must be something in it that appeals to the gestating amongst us.
Vegemite on hot buttered toast was amazing when I was pregnant, sooo yummy!
I sympathise with the loss of the omega oil capsules – fish oil always disagrees with me, but it’s so much worse when I’m pregnant, and all of the prenatal vitamins have it. I’m currently trying high strength krill oil and it seems to be helping my joint pain without making me feel sick. (One of my gym junkie friends suggested it because its working for him – his hip is messed up from Perthes Disease.)
I did something like this too, since the prenatals made me puke too. I took a regular vitamin with whatever amount of folate the doctor suggested in it, and a separate iron pill, with food. I think I didn’t start the iron pill until the 2nd trimester at which point the nausea was largely gone.
I had thought the issue with folate was that it had to be taken so early in pregnancy, to be useful, that they decided to just fortify food so everyone who even just _might_ get pregnant gets enough?
I just stuck with a regular multivitamin. I didn’t find those made me sick (or constipated…. sheesh!), and they are pretty much identical to prenatals… lower on calcium, iron and folic acid, but not by a whole lot.
I ate a lot of fortified cereal and juice. Prenatal vitamins gave me horrific reflux and terrible nausea. I puked a lot of them up before the little printed numbers had time to come off, no matter when, how, or what I took them with.
Yeah, I also couldn’t stomach them. Total cereal, on the other hand, actually digested.
I did Frosted Flakes and Applejacks, at least until the GD made eating sugar too mathematical to enjoy.
None here either. Well-balanced diet as much as I could manage it, but basically I ate whatever the heck I felt like. I placed a bit more emphasis on things like not getting drunk.
But she’s NOT judging. Nope. That wasn’t a judgment at all.
(She’s a moron. Anyone who hires her to work with new mothers better save up for the inevitable lawsuit)
Good lord she’s a nasty piece of work.
No, she’s just a dumb, insecure bunny. Can’t think why anyone pays attention to her.
She speaks with confidence. Those who lack confidence-perhaps because they are trying to navigate a new experience with minimal support-figure that she must know what she’s doing, to be so confident. The vacuum gets filled with her nonsense, and on we go.
Sad.
She speaks with false confidence. When you have real confidence you don’t go after click-bait approval that this type of fb announcement will instigate.
Quite right, good call. Trouble is not everyone can see the falseness.
Like the false hope peddled by cancer quacks.
I think she’s just thick, personally.
The same feminist that stated if women aren’t going to breast feed they should cut their breasts off.
Seriously?
I would gladly let her pay for my reduction. I don’t plan on ever breastfeeding again.
So she calls herself “Feminist” and struggles with the idea that women will read the same information and make different choices to what she made. Either she has to accept that other women have the freedom of choice and the intelligence to make the right decisions for their family or she should hand back her “Feminist” badge.
I don’t think she has a real badge, Karen. She wears a cardboard one she got from a cereal packet.
Brave, huh? I don’t think that word means what you think it means. I also think you’re confused about the word “feminist”.
And sanctimonious too. She was right about ‘foolish’ though, I’ll give her that.
But she will NOT be all sanctimonious about it. Ha.
I have a uterus that fills up with bloody tissue every month for a reason — to make a home for a baby. So every period must be a failure. Why am I not having more babies? That what my uterus is for! I don’t “wanna?” What kind of excuse is that. This is what my body was made for. I know I can get pregnant. I know I have enough money and time to support more children. Why am I not having more? Don’t I understand what my purpose is? And what about all those ladies with working parts that have NONE? The horror!
I’d better dress in black for one week a month, to give my uterine lining its proper respect in death and mourning. Only then will I be able to move on.
I’m sure that there is a quack somewhere on the internet charging big bucks to perform some kind of uterine lining healing/reclaiming ritual.
I’m pretty sure that that’s what Judaism’s menstrual laws are. Or, as I like to phrase it, “So long period, hello again libido, let’s go get laid.” But that only costs me, like, $5 a month.
We have already seen much talk in NCB circles about “healing births” after a CS. Oy.
Here is the crazy thing. There is a lot of stuff in the world that I don’t get. I don’t get why people watch sports, I don’t understand why people wear heavy eyeliner, I don’t understand why some people say math is hard. There is a giant sphere of things completely outside my experience.
So I shrug my shoulders, move on, and resist the urge to post about it on facebook because whether or not I get something doesn’t change its reality, and there is no rule saying that I have to understand other people’s choices in order for them to be considered legitimate.
I personally don’t understand what moves women to breastfeed through difficulty. The reading that I have done says that the benefits are marginal and short term. Every mother friend of mine describes the process somewhere between mildly annoying and aggressively awful. My mother described nursing as one of the seven circles of hell. But most of my mom friends breastfeed. They are adult women who made a choice and even if I do not understand it, I will support them and do whatever I can to make their time with me easy. That is part of living in polite society and part of having relationships with other three dimensional human beings. Why is that so hard for this lady to understand?
Win.
I have, to date, made three baby slings, a custom plus sized boppy pillow, a nursing cover, a hat that looked like a boob, and a pretty dress with a nursing slit.
I think I am doing pretty good on the support for a process that I mostly view as “huh. You do you, I guess”. 🙂
Rock on! And a custom plus sized boppy would be a great gift for bottle feeding parents as well.
Oh, for sure! And I make just as many things for my formula friend, there is just only one, so the list is smaller 🙂 She mostly wants onesies with stupid things sewed on the front which is quick, fun work 🙂
I saw a great maternity tee once, on ThinkGeek. It said, “Loading, please wait”.
I have that shirt! And a patient of mine came in to the office shortly before Halloween, 37 or so weeks along, wearing at shirt with bloody handprints and reading “LET ME OUT” on it. Halloween seems like a fun time to be pregnant.
Have you ever seen the pregnant skeleton costume? That’s funny.
I was planning to dress as a pumpkin, complete with green hat, but I still wasn’t terribly round.
I saw that too! So when I went in to hospital for my last, I left a Facebook status with “Baby 99.99% loaded, buffering…buffering”
My favorite (twins-related of course) was: “Ha, ha! I LAUGH at your one baby!” I didn’t actually buy it, but it still makes me giggle.
My sister has twins (4 yrs old now). I should have thought to get her a shirt like that.
She has no filter. None.
You nailed it.
I think it’s because she has absolutely no capacity to care about anyone except herself… not even her own children…
That’s interesting, because many of my mom friends have raved about how much they loved it. I FF, but that’s why when people ask me whether it’s really important (because they know I’m a scientist who cares), I always tell them that whether or not they think it is important, they should consider the possibility that they will enjoy it.
I find breastfeeding to be sometimes really great (usually when passing the formula section at the grocery store without having to spend money, my budget is TIGHT), and sometimes annoying (gotta get a boob out…again…, and I’m already “touched out” and it’s only noon).
Formula has it’s own annoyances though, no feeding is completely “pain-free”. You gotta do what works for your situation, and if you need the world to praise you for it, then it’s not actually working because you’re shifting the cost onto the rest of us.
That is the point though, right? My understanding of feeding choices doesn’t matter. For morally neutral benign choices like feeding your kid, my one single job is being a decent person and not being a dick.
It isn’t my job to audit other peoples choices.
People have to stop telling her what their infant feeding and child raising choices are. She can judge the nebulous group of “formula feeders by choice” all she wants, but if she doesn’t know who they are and isn’t attacking them personally/directly, then who cares? She may as well be talking to a wall. Or maybe a well, since if you yell down a well, it echoes. just like her (relatively) tiny following.
She forgot to mention she also can’t help judging if the medical or social reasons are valid or if you tried hard enough.
Well, because, like…
See, like prenatal vitamins have actually, like proven, data to support their usefulness in decreasing birth defects. While breastfeeding benefits are totes confined to premature infants and babies in areas without safe drinking water, see.
But I’m not judging you, either.
She slipped though—she said “We have lactating boobs for a reason.” That’s a loophole—lots of women’s boobs DON’T lactate, or don’t lactate sufficiently, or maybe they lost their breasts to cancer.
Anyway, I think we can all agree that its fine if this continues to baffle GCC for the rest of her life.
oh, but that’s her “medical” free pass.
She has her name on Twitter as VaGina. I really can’t get past that.
I thought people were just calling her that to mock her until you pointed that out. She did that to herself. I have no words.
We should all send her tampons. Organic, of course.
http://www.lovelyish.com/2009/08/21/how-to-knit-your-own-tampons/
Wow. Total perfection in this context.
In their intended context…I can’t even begin.
It’s as though the people who want knitted tampons have no clue whatsoever of the reality of what’s involved in the maintenance of them. I mean, when I knit something that a client is going to buy, I *never* make it whilst envisioning it’s meant to be inserted into a menstruating vagina. Because SANITATION! To say nothing of the danger of TSS. I’m sorry, but my hand-knitted crafts are far more valuable.
O. M. G….
Oh no. That is a BAD plan.
Do not reuse porous, absorbant materials, knitted into tampons with lots of tiny holes and crevices for bacteria and yeasts to live in.
That is a recipe for TSS and recurrent thrush.
Silicone menstrual cups on the other hand, are safe, clean and environmentally friendly.
I want to try the cups, because I’m all eco crunchy… but tampons just do such a good job of, for lack of a better word, drying things out so I don’t get spotting in days post…
Well, what I _really_ want to try is ablation, but my ObG doesn’t recommend it. 🙁
They make ‘disposable’ cups, I think the brand is Instead. Cheap way to try it out. Quality is not near as good as the silicone ones made to last for years, but it’ll give you an idea of what it’s like.
Instead is a totally different design from the mooncup/diva/etc.
LOVE love love my ablation.
Argh, I want one. But she gave me reasons why it wouldn’t be a good option for me – thin lining due to decades on hormonal BC and her experience with them not eliminating periods to the user’s satisfaction in ‘younger’ (I’d be ancient if I wanted to have a baby, but I’m apparently ‘younger’ by any other measure) women being at the top.
The silicone cups have two other benefits.
1) mild suction, this anecdotally can shorten duration of bleeding.
2) because they don’t dry things out and are very comfortable, you can use them both for days with very light flow or spotting and you can also use them the day you expect your period to start.
I would consider investing in one.
MeLuna have the biggest range of sizes, firmness and grip style.
You had me at ‘range of sizes.’ I’ll look into it for sure, thanks.
Yep.
Geez… Will they really wash those bloody teabags, dry them and re-use them??! It sounds SO very un-hygienical and disgusting!
I’d worry about TSS. Isn’t TSS enough of a danger with regular tampons? (The section here on Rely tampons is scary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_shock_syndrome#History )
L. Oh. L.