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).

Saturday, July 16, 2011

In the Public Eye

Welcome 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 nursing in public. Please read the other blogs in today's carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 18th through the 31st!
 
 
I was not so bold with my first daughter. Seriously, at 15 months old, I thought people would think I was crazy for still nursing her, I was the person who would try to let her nurse quickly while using a bathroom stall at an event. I actually, probably got MORE bold when she was 18 months old, about nursing in public, than the six months after her first birthday, and this was completely because of the supporty system that began to develop around me. Support is key. . . seeing OTHER mothers around us, nursing their babies without a hiccup or a second thought, is NECESSARY. . .sometimes to show little people who are watching and will grow up to be parents someday, sometimes just to show peers and give peers the confidence to nurse and be reminded it's NORMAL.

Now, I have a second daughter, nearing the 2 year mark, and I feel like she is still such a baby. I can't believe that 15 months felt "big" with my first daughter. I had not yet embraced that I would be an "extended nurser" nor did I live my life with the understanding that TWO is really a minimum recommendation for breastfeeding. After 2 years of nursing my first daughter, I began to find my stride and began to embrace my parenting, my views on sleeping arrangements and nursing as well.

Do I think nursing in public is necessary? YES! People are watching and learning and understanding, no matter what age they are. For my friends who still haven't found their footing, I want them to find confidence in being with other nursing moms. For my daughters, and for the children of others, I want them to SEE breastfeeding, hear it spoken of, to understand the risks associated with not breastfeeding, so that breastfeeding, as an art, is not lost, because it is being seen and it is being woven into our every day lives!

When a child has either 1) not been breastfed, 2) not been encouraged to explore the idea of breastfeeding even in a family where children are breastfed or 3) not experienced/seen younger siblings or other people close to them, nursing, I want to be sure that they see other mothers around them nursing their children, and how natural and normally it fits into the flow of life. That there isn't "stuttering" around it, it's just something that happens while everything else is happening around us too.
 
 
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Friday, July 15, 2011

Maybe means?

Welcome 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 language and breastfeeding. Please read the other blogs in today's carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 18th through the 31st!





There are so many directions to go with this, and I'd love to just site Dianne Wiessinger's Watch Your Language, but won't follow down that path.

Language can influence so many things in life. I appreciate what a friend once said to another friend, when he'd offended him and then hadn't seen him for a while. When they discussed what the problem had been, the one man said that the words of the other had bothered him, and the first man replied with "Well, I can't know everyone's dictionary dude!"

Sometimes you just have to give it your best effort, to say what needs to be said in an appropriate manner, and realize that part of the responsibility lies with the hearer. If you are on the one side of breastfeeding information, the support side, there is a tendency to over-analyze how every single word will be interpreted and read into. As soon as you have analyzed all the angles and all the ways that what is being said can be internalized as, here comes a third party to hear it all in a completely OTHER way.

Sometimes I'm just a mom, and I realize that people just SAY STUFF, without thinking, that they're just doing their best to support and give information and talking from what they know. Sometimes, the "lay" mom, is just hearing "lay mom" jargon. She's not internalizing and analyzing the way EVERY word was put together, when it comes to ANYTHING, even breastfeeding. She's looking for support and information. Maybe she's looking for wording that will make her feel justified in making a decision that she thinks others will look down on. Maybe she's looking for wording or information to support a decision she wants to follow through on but doesn't feel she has the support for elsewhere. Maybe she's just looking to hear others talk about breastfeeding being normal, so she can feel in good company. Maybe she's listening for all the horror stories of other nursing moms, because she feels alone. Or maybe, or it could be, perhaps she's. . .You could say ONE sentence and fifteen different people would hear it differently.

We do our best, to share the information and understanding we have, with the words that seem right for the situation. The hearer also must take responsibility for what she hears, and why she hears what she hears. My husband, he never tells me "maybe." Why? Because to me, "maybe" means "yes." To my five year old "maybe" sounds like "no" (because it means, not right now), and to my husband, "maybe" just sounds like "maybe." We hear what we want to hear, we take what we WANT to take, so when we are the speaker, we just do our best to say what needs to be said.





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Nursing Photos

Welcome 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 Wordless Wednesday: Breastfeeding Photos! Please read the other blogs in today's carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 18th through the 31st!




5 days1 month and that's all I have until she's nearly 2 MILK FACE
23 months3rd birthdayThe day her sister would be born, nursed a nap, I went into hard labor. . . woke up, we headed to the birth suite. . .3 years, 2 months 18 days 4 days. . . after 20 hours of not being able to nurse my baby due to a medical prodecure11 monthsalmost 17 months




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Green Milk

Welcome 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 the environment and breastfeeding. Please read the other blogs in today's carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 18th through the 31st!


I grew up during a recycle, reduce, reuse campaign. . . it's always been there. I've always been aware of it. I haven't always understood why it's important. I would say that I was already a mother before I really understood how petroleum use is part of the problem when it comes to the creation of NEW materials, and why it is important to reuse what you can. I mean, sure, we reused plastic tubs and got money for aluminum cans, but I didn't understand the WHY for a very long time.

I can honestly say, environment was NOT one of the factors for me when breastfeeding my baby. I understand now, how much I have saved in money, in time, in effort and even in the use of resources, by breastfeeding my babies. I understand now that resources, like petroleum, are used to create cans of formula, and I've not contributed a dime to that production. I am not responsible for the crude oil made into gas that is used by trucks to transport this product to store. Or in need of a plastic bag at the grocery store to transport said item from the store to my home (again, or with the gas to get to and from the store). Nor have I tossed a single empty can into landfills. And maybe this is just a springboard for the other decisions about food I help make for my family. I've never fed either of my children from a rice cereal box, or purchased a jar of baby food. Because most of my children's nutritional needs were met at the breast for at least the first year, and the other foods they ate were generally whole foods I made into puree or froze as baby food, and because this again, has been a springboard of a focus on whole foods in our family, I believe it's likely we create less waste, less packaged foods.

I'm glad that I've made a decision to breastfeed, because it DOES impact the environment in a positive way, and it is a chain reaction, the decision to breastfeed has impacted the way our family eats and makes decisions about food, therefore reducing our waste and our use of resources for the production of certain types of food (including transportation). We continue to grow and change as a family, and one area that is a constant focus is making our diets "cleaner." What cleaner, greener, was is there to start your life out, than to be a breastfed baby?

 
 
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Quiet Influence

Welcome 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 how the mothers before you influenced your choice to breastfeed. Please read the other blogs in today's carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 18th through the 31st! 
 I don't think in my whole life I ever wondered if I would nurse my children. I wasn't SUPER exposed to breastfeeding, not that way I assume my own children will view their experience when they become adults (or maybe even as older children and teens), but it was sort of just a given. I was 4 when my sister came along. I don't remember a lot about whether there were bottles or nursing going on. I don't remember any pumping when my mom went back to work, nor do I remember cans of formula sitting around. I know from conversations with my mom, that she nursed me about 6 months and that she nursed my sister exclusively for about 3 months before going back to work, and then in the evenings for some time after that.

When I think of my first discussion about breastfeeding with my mom, I think about my cousin being born when I was 11. My aunt had gone back to aerobics and was working out a lot and my mom talked with me after a phone conversation about how my aunt reported her milk being "sour" since she'd been working out so much. I do NOT know if she stopped working out or stopped nursing :)

After I was married, but before I had children, I remember a friend of mine had her second little girl, and my mom shared with me one day about how this friend had a breast infection. I remember saying that I'd never be so committed to breastfeeding that I'd be willing to go through infections for it! A few years later, this same friend had a third child and one day she and I, along with a third woman, were in a discussion about bed sharing. She explained that often times their middle child still slept with them, I was completely horrified. How could someone get pregnant AGAIN while a toddler was sharing their bed?! Now I know.

When I became pregnant with my first daughter, I'd read things here and there. I was committed to breastfeeding for six months ONLY. I would never nurse her to sleep, because I didn't want her to associate eating with sleeping or vice versa. I would move her into her own room at six months old, we would not share our bed with her. That lasted about 12 seconds! I'd picked up a copy of the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding just before moving out of the US, about a month before she was due. This was a fascinating read, but hard for me to get into. . . I did not see anything "beautiful" about breastfeeding, it was utilitarian. It was not a "relationship" or something a mother "enjoyed" it was just the way you were SUPPOSED to feed your child. . . that also lasted about 12 seconds.

A long time female friend of my husband's wrote one day, just before our daughter was due, to let him know that if I had any questions about breastfeeding or needed any support, I could email her. I never did, but it really stuck with me, that someone reached out to me, the way that I now attempt to reach out to new mothers who might not have a support system for breastfeeding, because it has become SO important to me.

When my first daughter was 8 months old, I visited a La Leche League meeting. I'd passed that magic "six months" I'd always anticipated nursing to, we were sharing our bed, and we were sharing a house with my parents. I think my mom was already becoming uncertain of my decision to continue to nurse until at year! I would come home shocked about children who were still nursing, and we would discuss the lunacy of it, until eventually I became a lunatic too :)

I've written to those ladies who talked with me about bed sharing and breastfeeding, to tell them that I wish I hadn't judged their parenting because I have become THAT parent. The response of "We knew, you weren't a mother yet, we just let you take your own journey" was so heart warming and forgiving. I want to remember that way of allowing people to take their own journey, especially as I watch my only (and younger) sister, moving into a life of marriage and child bearing in the next couple of years. I want to talk about how much breastfeeding means to me and my children, without being too worried about what decisions she will make. I want to give her a book here and there that has given me the tools and information I've needed along the way, while walking my own path. I want to be forgiving IF she is ever able to admit that she thought I was a crazy hippie and she'd never follow in my footsteps.

I am thankful for the women who quietly influenced me to embrace motherhood in a way I NEVER thought I would or intended to. I am thankful for the women who quietly said "I'm here if you have a question" or quietly endured my judgements and mouth agape :) I'm thankful for the mothers who have surrounded me through La Leche League over the past 4+ years as I made discoveries about myself, my child and my ideas of parenting. I am not so good at "the quiet" but I hope that I can quietly influence others to breastfeed and embrace motherhood by listening, offering information when asked, and most of all, allowing them to make their own discoveries as they venture into motherhood, a journey we can NEVER understand until we are THROWN into it.
 
 
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Thursday, February 3, 2011

Surgeon General's Call to Action

Read entire document You may be required to create a free account to view this document. . . .Photo of Utah pair, Lisa and Sophia, on page 19 of Call to Action (you will need to type in page 29 at the top of the document). The Call to Action was published/given on January 20, 2011 from Washington DC.
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Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Final Posters

These posters were put together to be used on a local level as well as possibly on a national level. As far as I am aware, only one of my photos was used in the Call to Action published on January 20th by the Surgeon General. Many of the photos used in the Call to Action seemed to be from those Coalitions who chose the story prompt regarding medical support (and a few "work place support"). But I am thrilled and honored that one of "OUR" photos got in. Way to go Utah! You can visit www.utahbreastfeeding.org to see the posters on the site as well as the Call to Action information. Each Poster was created three separate times. The first edition reads "Utah Opens Its Doors To Breastfeeding" with information for the Utah Breastfeeding Coalition and La Leche League of Utah. The second edition reads "Our Baby Friendly Community" with the same website information, the third has the "baby friendly" tagline without websites.
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