Salt Lake City Based Photographer Timbra Wiist owns/operates Landslide Photography & Photographs the Journey of Motherhood (see bottom of page or sidebar for more info. . .depending on what this blog is choosing to do for the day).

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

"Baby" Wearing

breastfeedingcafecarnivalWelcome to The Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival!


This post was written as part of the Breastfeeding Cafe's Carnival. For more info on the Breastfeeding Cafe, go to www.breastfeedingcafe.wordpress.com. For more info on the Carnival or if you want to participate, contact Claire at clindstrom2 {at} gmail {dot} com. Today's post is babywearing photos. Please read the other blogs in today's carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 22nd through August 4th!




July 06. . . 4 weeks old. . .Fiji Oct 06. . . first Trip to the US. . . 4 monthsBack Home Oct 2006 . . .one time wonder, daddy does the carryingJune 07 (My sister carrying my daughter, day after her first birthday). . . Gardner Village July 07. . . Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Book Release PartyMarch 08 FINALLY got my mei tai. . .21 months Tried it out in OK
April 08 WAJuly 08. . . 25 months. . . Steve Miller Band Concert (awesome to be wearing her especially after dark) November 08. . . .UH YEAH. . .NKOTB concert November 08 Seattle. . . Just shy of 2.5 years. . . totally asleep
There was pregnant baby wearing in between
September 09 . . . . 4 weeks old. . .my view of a nursing babe in a mei tai at the Zoo same trip. . . Who says the Moby has a suggested weight limit? October 09. . . 3 years 3 months and 34lbs Special Ladybug Mei Tai made by my friend Heather . . . custom for my halloween costume January 2010. . . Carriage Ride in SLCWater "moby" Two Girls. . . two mei tais. . . 50lbs of pure L-O-V-E (3.5 years and 5months) And the babywearing rubs off. . .Summer 2010 October 2011. . . Gallivan Center Monster Block Party December 2011 Lights on Temple Square April 2011 Whitney Gardens, WABaby Wearing Flash Mob practices Summer 2011 :)
When a 5.5 year old still wants to be worn
It looks like this

Baby Wearing as a life-saving device on a vacation with a LOT of walking in the Happiest Place on Earth, when toddler needs naps all day long. . .Summer 2013 (3.75yo)
Another toddler baby wearer



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Partners in Crime

breastfeedingcafecarnivalWelcome to The Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival!

This post was written as part of the Breastfeeding Cafe's Carnival. For more info on the Breastfeeding Cafe, go to www.breastfeedingcafe.wordpress.com. For more info on the Carnival or if you want to participate, contact Claire at clindstrom2 {at} gmail {dot} com. Today's post is about your partner's role in breastfeeding. Please read the other blogs in today's carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 22nd through August 4th!






It's hard to say how my husband has helped our breastfeeding relationship. He was not breastfed, I was. I always knew that I would breastfeed. He never said things like "I'd like to feed the baby" or offered me formula on a hard night. I think we've both ridden the wave of parenthood and breastfeeding in a way that we just see where the wind takes us. In many things, he may think differently than I, but he lets me come to my own conclusions and other than asking when our children might wean, around the age of 3, we don't really discuss it much. Breastfeeding is just a part of our lives that we agree on, that we believe is perfect for our children, that we see as normal around here. I've undertaken the job of photographing breastfeeding women and volunteering to support breastfeeding women. My husband is a support in everything I do! Even recently, he has begun advocating for LLL and sending pregnant women my way, when he meets them through a local service effort.

I do think the most profound thing my husband has ever done to support the breastfeeding relationship of my children and I, is that he took a single photograph of my first nursing session with my first daughter. I don't remember if I asked him to, breastfeeding was not nearly as important to me then, as it is now, but I am thankful always, that I have that first nursing photo because breastfeeding DID become an extremely important part of my mothering and relationship with our children. I couldn't have asked for a better breastfeeding supporter than the one he has chosen to be.




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Monday, July 29, 2013

In Tandem

Monday, July 29th - Breastfeeding multiples: twins (or more!), tandem nursing singletons, even nursing more than one child through your breastfeeding years. Tell us about your experience.

breastfeedingcafecarnivalWelcome to The Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival!





This post was written as part of the Breastfeeding Cafe's Carnival. For more info on the Breastfeeding Cafe, go to www.breastfeedingcafe.wordpress.com. For more info on the Carnival or if you want to participate, contact Claire at clindstrom2 {at} gmail {dot} com. Today's post is about breastfeeding multiple children. Please read the other blogs in today's carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 22nd through August 4th!





My daughter was a few weeks old when a friend came to me shocked that another woman she'd been working with, who had a new baby and a little one around 3 or 4, shared with her that she was nursing both children. She was completely baffled, pregnant with her second child, but having a daughter around 5 years old, it was not something that she had ever considered. My mind was also blown. We laughed about it, were a little freaked out, then looked up "tandem nursing" in the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding to learn a little more about it, but both still left feeling completely weirded out by the idea. I think along with that was the view that nursing a child at the age of 3 or 4 was also very foreign to us. I guess when you LIVE in a foreign land, things ARE foreign at times. Still, I would never ever ever have considered it for me. In those same early months I'd read also that sometimes a toddler wants to nurse a time or two after a new baby comes along, but often doesn't remember how. . .this I felt fine with. At that time, I didn't even know that I would continue to nurse my daughter beyond six months, let alone for years and alongside another child!

A few months later we met a family who had adopted a baby girl, and she was nursing her. My mind could not understand, because at the time, she had three children, and they were aged 5 and 2. Surely she was not still nursing that 2 year old, in order that she would have milk when her adopted baby came along?

Still, on another day, my husband came home, fascinated with the sight of a woman sitting on the sea wall and her child standing in front of her, nursing. I'd heard stories of that. . .how people had no boundaries and would just let their 4 or 5 year old come up, lift mom's shirt and "drink from the tap" and a peewee baseball game or something. It had never been described in a context where it was portrayed as normal or natural that an older child would be nursing. It had always been shared as a story where a mother had never explained boundaries to her older child and it was "gross" and "weird" and "sexual." Now I know!

I was about 6 months pregnant and had read the book "Adventures in Tandem Nursing" when my husband asked me one day, "Do you think it's time to stop nursing her?" She wasn't quite 3 yet. The agreement around here, is that if he's not willing to read books on parenting and breastfeeding, I read them, share with him what I know and, particularly with regards to breastfeeding, ultimately make the decisions. I told him that weaning a child just before a new baby came along makes them feel displaced and set aside and that I would just see where the road took us. She did not stop nursing during my pregnancy, on her own, which lead me to believe she still had a deep need to nurse.

When my second daughter was born, the very first night, both girls nursed. Not together, but both to sleep. By day 3, my younger daughter was hospitalized and I was SO glad that I could come home to my toddler at night (then 3 years 2 months) to nurse her so sleep and to help ME with the engorgement from which I suffered, being able to pump at the hospital, but not being able to nurse my younger daughter much at all. She was on nutritive saline, so just was not nursing much at all.

I nursed both girls regularly for the next 10 months. As we neared my older daughter's 4th birthday we began discussing her being old enough not to nurse anymore. She would agree and we were limiting nursing by singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star at certain times each day, except for night time. I talked with a friend about weaning and she asked me if when I weaned, would it be a "hard and fast" date? I hadn't thought to leave things open ended, to suggest and lead her towards weaning, but to allow the nursing to fall off here and there. So it really was another year before she would wean entirely and even then she asked about once/year for the next couple of years. It is something both she and I miss, but not in a way that I wish I were still nursing her, in a way that I miss the little creature she was. . . however, I LOVE the little creature she is becoming. As my second daughter nears her 4th birthday, we are nowhere near ready to be done with this relationship and I have not even begun to suggest it. Each child is different and I have learned through breastfeeding her, how to better be her mother and wait for her to indicate to me that she is becoming ready to wean.





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Sunday, July 28, 2013

Bands, Bras, Tanks & Tees

breastfeedingcafecarnivalWelcome to The Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival!


This post was written as part of the Breastfeeding Cafe's Carnival. For more info on the Breastfeeding Cafe, go to www.breastfeedingcafe.wordpress.com. For more info on the Carnival or if you want to participate, contact Claire at clindstrom2 {at} gmail {dot} com. Today's post is about your favorite nursing wear. Please read the other blogs in today's carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 22nd through August 4th!

 
 

I sat in an LLL Meeting one time and heard a woman (who would later become one of my closest friends) say that she didn't care if people saw her breast exposed while breastfeeding, she just didn't want to lift up her shirt to expose her mid-section for the world to see :)  It occurred to me then that I felt the same way, but just didn't realize it.  I'd never invested much in nursing wear, I'd just figured out how to make whatever I was wearing, work with nursing.  After that discussion, however, I realized one of the best nursing wear ideas is just to use a "belly band" which some women are already purchasing to extend the life and limits of their shrinking shirts during pregnancy, so you can lift without showing off your new baby-less figure in the early months. In fact, at the time, someone had come up with and was marketing this very same product, as a nursing attire item.  It too me a while to put together that essentially she was just offering women a belly band! I really don't care much about modesty, so bare that midsection if you want :)

I have tried many different nursing bras and never have found the right fit.  I found a bra called a "T Shirt" bra at The GAP when my oldest daughter was about 7 months old and I bought three.  I loved those bras to death and wore them for about 5 years until they were so stretched and worn that they no longer served their purpose.

In the early days of both of my daughters' infancy, I found that I was just WET all the time!!!  Someone had either spit-up, peed, pooped, drooled, or fallen asleep in a puddle of sweat on me, or I was leaking from my breasts and my pores at all hours of the day.  I wore A LOT of tank tops.  I remember the first time I wore a t-shirt after my daughter was born and how I was confused by why my shirt was all wet on the chest, realizing later that I wore tank tops every day, so I was usually able to just wipe away whatever wet mess was on my chest, instead of soaking into my shirt.  I'm more of an "over the top" nurser than a "lifter" so scoop neck shirts and tank tops are the way to my heart.  Winter is not my friend :)

I did have ONE nursing tank that my mother gifted me, which I was never a fan of because it compressed my chest too much and caused engorgement or leaking.  Surely a larger size would not have caused this, but I was using it in the early days when I just didn't have time to be shopping around for new nursing tanks or spending an arm and a leg on them.

WOW. . .you can probably tell that I write these posts near delirium after 1am, because my thoughts are all jumbled up.  But there you have it. . . bands, bras, tanks and tees :)

 
 

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Saturday, July 27, 2013

The Breastfeeding Bible

breastfeedingcafecarnivalWelcome to The Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival!



This post was written as part of the Breastfeeding Cafe's Carnival. For more info on the Breastfeeding Cafe, go to www.breastfeedingcafe.wordpress.com. For more info on the Carnival or if you want to participate, contact Claire at clindstrom2 {at} gmail {dot} com. Today's post is about your go-to breastfeeding resource. Please read the other blogs in today's carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 22nd through August 4th!






I didn't really have need for "help" when I was breastfeeding, but I had some go-to resources for breastfeeding from the start. During a two week stay with my parents just before leaving the country (5 weeks before my daughter was born in that country), I picked up a few resource books from the book store. They would keep me occupied for the long flight, the next five weeks of waiting and hopefully be helpful in answering some of the questions I wasn't sure how to get answers for, once I moved away (on a local level anyway). I happened to pick up the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding as one of those books. I guess that pretty much sealed my fate :)

The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding was honestly a bit of a difficult read. The baby in the book is always referred to as "he" so as to distinguish mother from child, since "she" is always used for the mother. This was hard because I knew I was having a girl, odd thing, I know, but it was just a simple thing that made the book feel more distant for me. It's also a resource guide more than anything and eventually sections came that I wasn't super interested in, since I was reading it before my baby had even come along. But this book became a resource guide for all of my questions for the next several years. It answered many questions for me and was the voice of LLL in my home. It was the single most important book I read about breastfeeding. Later I would become a La Leche League Leader, and we refer to this book as our Breastfeeding Bible.

When we moved back to the US (much sooner than planned) and my daughter was only 6 months old, I knew I needed a support system or at least to make some friends! And when you've been transplanted to a new place where you know very few people, but now have a baby, it's easy to know that the place to look for friends is somewhere where people will have babies, a bonus was somewhere where there would be like-minded moms. I visited a La Leche League meeting two months later, and that was all because The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding is a La Leche League publication, so it had resource information on how to find meetings. I'd never even heard of LLL before opening that book. I didn't know that within that book I'd find a link to one-to-one resource and personal relationships that have now lasted years. I didn't know that picking up that one book on breastfeeding would set the course for my mothering decisions, my future friendships and even a (current) lifetime of volunteering to support other women who are breastfeeding.

The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding was the single most go-to resource I could have ever stumbled upon!





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Friday, July 26, 2013

Success is in the Eye of the Beholder

breastfeedingcafecarnivalWelcome to The Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival!



This post was written as part of the Breastfeeding Cafe's Carnival. For more info on the Breastfeeding Cafe, go to www.breastfeedingcafe.wordpress.com. For more info on the Carnival or if you want to participate, contact Claire at clindstrom2 {at} gmail {dot} com. Today's post is about helping other moms succeed in their breastfeeding journeys. Please read the other blogs in today's carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 22nd through August 4th!




I am a La Leche League Leader.  I have been such for the past (very nearly) 5 years now.  Since I began leading meetings, I have helped mothers through what is referred to as "email help" and has not been used much until more recently.  Taking phone calls around this house, becomes a nightmare, so I stuck to what I could do in the middle of the night, without poor reception, even on a snowy December evening, and when everyone is tucked into bed so the house is quiet for a little while.

Email help is an especially fun monster, because you can totally overload the recipient with TONS of information.  It's important to ask questions and to read between the lines of an email that a mother sends.  At first, this was hard to do, but as I've worked to help mothers with breastfeeding questions of all types, over the past five years, I've learned to read, write, read again, edit, read again, ask questions and then edit again before sending.  Many times I only have one or two emails that a mother will exchange with me, so it's important to find a balance between asking the right questions and giving enough information, but not overwhelming a mother with unnecessary information, which is why asking questions becomes very important.

I also lead meetings in person.  For me, these are sometimes informative, but many times a meeting together of the same mothers month after month with a few new voices here and there.  Some return, others never show up again.  The window for offering appropriate support to a breastfeeding mother who is struggling, is limited.  Sometimes there is pain, sometimes there is lack of support elsewhere or a recommendation to wean because of tooth decay, mother's health, baby's health, a lack of appropriate information on the part of the care provider, pressure from other family members, a sense of isolation for the new mother, a food allergy or even a physical issue that it seems like too much trouble to rectify.  A mother must already come with resolve to push through and make the changes, sacrifices or efforts to break on through to the other side, or many times, breastfeeding is lost when the answer may have been more simple than believed.  We offer one-to-one mother-to-mother breastfeeding support for all women who are interested in breastfeeding and my hope is that the support offered gets each mother to where she wants to be, for herself, not for me, not for others around her, but for she and her baby.

I hope that I've helped mothers succeed in their breastfeeding journeys.  I know that I've had friends from all parts of my life get in touch to ask questions or to let me know that my support at a time in the past was invaluable to their decision to try breastfeeding, continue breastfeeding, or seek out other options for meeting their personal goals.  This is becoming more frequent as I make a bit of a name for myself as the one to go to for breastfeeding information, and as I know have a bit of a rapport after having been an LLL Leader for 5 years.  As a newbie, it was hard to put myself out there with people I've known since high school, or family members, or even new friends.  I'm sure that some of my long-time friends (and acquaintances) never thought we'd be exchanging breastfeeding questions and answers at 30, when we were 17 and flirting with boys.  But I guess we all grow up sometime!

My goal as a La Leche League Leader is to offer moms the support they are seeking and sometimes answer for them the questions they don't know they are asking.  As I remain a Leader for longer and longer, I am learning how to do this more easily and how to support mothers in all different circumstances with all sorts of decisions to be made about their own breastfeeding journeys.  I hope that I am helping ALL of them succeed in their own eyes!




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Thursday, July 25, 2013

Milk Machine Mama

breastfeedingcafecarnivalWelcome to The Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival!

This post was written as part of the Breastfeeding Cafe's Carnival. For more info on the Breastfeeding Cafe, go to www.breastfeedingcafe.wordpress.com. For more info on the Carnival or if you want to participate, contact Claire at clindstrom2 {at} gmail {dot} com. Today's post is about breastfeeding in special circumstances. Please read the other blogs in today's carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 22nd through August 4th!





My second daughter was born in an amazing and fast water birth at Great Expectations Birth Care just a mile or so from my home.  Everything was awesome and perfect and wonderful.  The next day my mom mentioned that she looked a little "dark" and then by the time the day 3 check-up came, she was definitely very jaundiced. She wasn't waking to nurse much, but I was waking her and felt like she was nursing wonderfully.  My midwife came by to do her check-up and said "she's not a little yellow, she's a pumpkin!"  We ran a blood test and got some numbers back and raised huge red flags.  Such huge red flags, that our own pediatrician, upon hearing them, said he'd never heard a number so high in 35 years for biliruben.  He sent us for an outpatient blood draw in the ER, which came back still too high and eventually we were sent to Primaries.

My little one was immediately put under bili-lights while a doctor talked and talked and talked at us!  They ran another blood test to see where her biliruben levels were and decided it was time to do a blood transfusion.  I wasn't able to nurse my little one from the time we got her to the hospital, taking her out from under the lights was too risky as she needed all of the help available to her.  Soon they were putting a line in her umbilicus in order to draw blood out as they put new blood in.  Once this was done, I wasn't allowed to hold her anymore, let alone nurse her.  Unfortunately, this was done around 2am and the blood for my baby wasn't available and "washed" until after 7am.  The procedure took something like 2 hours to complete.  Then they left the lines in her, in case she needed a second treatment of new blood.  She never did.

I was told that her biliruben count would go down, then spike again and begin falling. . .it never did. . .it just went down and down and down.  We waited with baited breath each time there was heal prick, to know whether our baby was getting better and closer to being held, nursed and going home again!  I was still nursing my older daughter, so here I was, driving 30 minutes home to nurse her to sleep, then showering and heading back to the hospital to be with my other baby.  Very early in the morning my husband would take off to head home and be in bed with my older daughter, as she woke up. . . she slept hard through the night and never knew the difference.  My sister slept on the couch all week.

I pumped many times throughout the day while at the hospital.  Have you ever used a hospital grade pump?  It is SO industrial and you can watch every little bobbin and pin and pump and compression.  I felt like I was in a dairy every time I used it. . .the paintings of nursing women in my curtained stall, did nothing for me.  Day 3 is a horrible day for a baby to have to stop nursing for a medical reason.  Even with an older nursling, I could not avoid engorgement and just an overall sense of constantly being full.  After fighting with hospital staff over the use of bottles (even with pumped milk) for my severely tongue-tied (but having no trouble nursing) 5 day old baby, I got a nasty call asking if I was going to come nurse my baby!  And then some semi-threats that if I was not available every 2 hours on the dot, they'd be FORCED to give her a bottle!  I was more than pleased to nurse my baby after 20 hours of not being able to hold her, but with all of the nutritive saline in her, she wasn't nursing much at all and the pumping continued for the duration of our stay in the hospital (about 4 days).

I realize that MANY mothers have situations much more difficult than mine, but this was my personal hell as I went through it and my heart goes out to those who have had to make more difficult decisions and accommodations in order to continue breastfeeding their children.




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Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Wordless Wednesday: Nursing Photos

breastfeedingcafecarnivalWelcome to The Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival!

This post was written as part of the Breastfeeding Cafe's Carnival. For more info on the Breastfeeding Cafe, go to www.breastfeedingcafe.wordpress.com. For more info on the Carnival or if you want to participate, contact Claire at clindstrom2 {at} gmail {dot} com. Today's post is babywearing photos. Please read the other blogs in today's carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 22nd through August 4th!



Today we were born

5 days old
nearly 2
just over 2
just over 3
Today (in about 6 hours) her baby sister will be born
6 hours later. . . . here she is
nearly 1
nearly 2
nearly 3
Nearly 4




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