mother's milk

my 3 year old is a poetess-in-the-making

sữa mẹ dúng:

mother's milk is like

dúng trái cam

like oranges

dúng trái dâu

like strawberries

dúng sà lách

like lettuce

dúng cà rêm

like ice cream

war on germs

I think the reason that the debate on vaccines is so heated on this is because it's an intensely personal parenting decision that is also intensely political. My take on all this is philosophical. The dominant metaphor and paradigm for larger Western society is warfare. The medical industrial complex is steeped in that framework, treating disease and bacteria as enemy combatants, and valuing profit over evidence-based protocols. So that's the context in which the billion dollar vaccination industry was developed.

When we look at the mortality rate associated with any given disease, let's say polio, we'll see that the mortality rate was dropping with the advent of industrialization and better sanitation--prior to the introduction of a polio vaccine. The early polio vaccines were "live" and many people who were vaccinated contracted polio from the vaccine itself before they recalled it. Most pro-vaccine lit only looks at the period immediately after vaccines were introduced as "proof" that they work. Without that larger historical context, yes, it's easy to attribute the salvation of the human race to vaccines.

Even with the recent pertussis outbreak, if you look at the population dying, it's typically very poor children, and in Cali, undocumented Latino immigrant children, who are more likely to have poor nutrition and poor health. Yet rather than address the underlying factors of poverty and anti-immigrant health policies, the DPH is telling the general population to vaccinate.

Let's look at Gardasil as another example--this vaccine for females which supposedly prevents genital warts, an STD, which can lead to cervical cancer. This was fasttracked onto the market and is the controversial subject of mandatory vaccination laws. It's been around a few years now and the deaths or sterilization or other vaccine injury of young girls is only beginning to make the FDA take a second look. What is manifestly clear to me, is that vaccines are a massive human guinea pig experiment funded and fueled by the pharmaceutical industry.

Anyways, I recommend Aviva Jill Romm's Vaccinations book over Dr. Sears. She is a midwife, herbalist and now MD. She actually explains the fine print of what are the benefits, risks & adverse reactions to vaccinations (i.e. what your doctor is supposed to tell you) AND how the disease manifests and it's risks so that one can make a truly informed decision. It's the only book I found to discuss the disease itself.

Final tangent (sorry there's no returns in here): It's only very recently that it's become profitable to understand the immune system and commodify non-invasive healing modalities (i.e. indigenous or traditional healing systems). Hence the sudden commercialization of probiotics as the "friendly" bacteria after decades of vilifying bacteria and creating the self-perpetuated problem of "super-bacteria" which are immune to antibiotics. From a holistic standpoint, the human body exists because of bacteria; we live in symbiosis with bacteria and it's not until our body is out of balance that the bacteria become harmful. In that context, we need to re-evaluate the supremacy of Western medicine and its paradigm over all other traditional modalities.

And as parents, we have to weigh and balance all those personal, political, social, financial factors and make the best decisions for our families. (As a side note, in true service of humanity, India patented their traditional system of healing under Creative Commons license to prevent the continued theft of "intellectual property/patent" by pharmeceutical corporations.)

growing pains

Babies are very smart and every thing they do has developmental purpose.

Having an experienced family chiropractor who worked with pregnant women and babies was my maternal salvation from the first time parent anxiety. My chiro mentioned to me how much the cranial plates shift in the first few years as babies' heads make fantastical growth. Sometimes, the cranial plates get a little stuck.

Ever notice how one eye seems smaller than the other at times? It's because the cranial plates near the ear of the smaller eye are a little stuck. Creating pressure in the cranium helps to alleviate the pressure and move the plates--so breastfeeding/nursing/sucking is physiologically and developmentally critical for babies in their cranial development. Sometimes when cranial plates get stuck and sucking doesn't help, the pressure of those cranial "growing pains" causes them to bang their heads or suck on random things or other "odd" repetitive behavior that the medical profession dismisses as phases or meaningless. So headbanging can sometimes help get the cranial plates get unstuck as a last (frustrated) resort.

Teething can also cause similar behavior. If you have access to a craniosacral therapy (chiropractor or massage therapist) it is very gentle and can really help babies to transition through all those growing pains without banging their heads in frustration. I highly recommend going at least once with your infant and asking them to show you how to do some of the techniques if you can't afford to go alot.

If you don't have access to craniosacral therapy, try giving her/him a light scalp/cranial massage. Feel for the grooves between the cranial plates above the ears, around the fontanelle (soft spot in back of head) and with your two thumbs gently gently move them apart. It won't feel like anything is happening or actually moving, but can help get it unstuck. Letting baby suck on something while you do this helps baby to move those cranial plates. I would do this while breastfeeding. There are other specialized techniques as well (like the ear tugging thing which I've been shown how to do but don't really know how to do so I leave it to the trained expert).

parenting equity

We live in a patriarchal society, so in a hetero family even a progressive family, gender is still going to be a struggle. I think white feminism (Stanton, Cody) did a huge disservice to women by demanding equality with white men (legal, political, biological) rather than equity. Historically, white women were emancipated based on the Stanton argument that white women could counteract the freed black male slave vote. Also, those white suffragettes and subsequent white feminists distanced themselves from motherhood as a form of unremunerated bondage and not coincidentally, the wage work of freed black women.

While that is all centuries ago, its legacy is this--Mothers are not valued in the mainstream power structure; the US is the ONLY 1st world nation that does not provide mandatory paid maternity leave. FMLA is a watered down approximation of a well meaning thought. If you are on welfare, you can only take of other people's children for pay, you cannot be paid to raise your own children. So the rallying cry that a "women can do anything men can do" is mostly true, but more importantly, men CANNOT do everything women can--give life and sustenance--and that is exactly what remains unacknowledged, unvalued, and unremunerated.
(ASIDE: the New Yorker had an interesting article a while back about the "liberating" American invention of breast pumps and how it forced mothers to go back to work sooner because now biology wasn't a barrier for women to be like men in the workplace.)

SAHM label is an effort to reclaim the degraded "homemaker."

All that to say that I don't take the gender dynamics as solely an individual couple's relationship problem, but a social problem. I struggle with it too, not because my husband is a patriarchal narcissist (far be it from true!), but because we live these socially imposed power dynamics and norms. And this all without bringing in other dynamics like race and culture.

Motherhood is still unpaid work.

The patriarchal nuclear family structure and the ruptures in extended family networks from immigration and American nomadic existence makes it so much harder; no grandmothers and elders live with us to raise our babies.

Dennis Brutus once gave met Tstsi Dengaremba's novel Nervous Conditions. And I think it gets exactly at the tension between Western feminism/norms and cultural roles.

Having exclusively breastfed and coslept until 1yo meant that my daughter was squarely attached to me which created its own cycle of emotional dependence. It wasn't until ~2.5yo that VL would ask for her Ba when she needed comfort or nurturing. Now this wasn't my husband's refusal or irresponsibility; he picked up the slack on all the household chores and other non-BF parenting so that I could nurture our child. When he was back at work FT, I voluntarily did all the diaper changes at night while I was on maternity leave in equitable appreciation of him working outside the home. For SAHMs, the household chores do fall on their shoulders more, because that is what is equitable. For families where both parents work outside the home, chores and parenting may be more negotiated in the 3 hours we have with the offspring before they go to sleep.

Until males start lactating (physiologicaly possible, if socially/cultural taboo. google it), the first few years fall squarely on the mother's breasts. I still struggle with what mainstream feminism enculturated in me and traditional/cultural roles.

January 7 at 10:12am

motherhood booklist

**new updates!**

it's been a while since my last booklist. so in honor of my new identity in life. it's time for my parenthood booklist

Pregnancy & Birth

• Hearts & Hands: A midwife's guide to pregnancy and birth, 4th ed, by Elizabeth Davis (master midwife) a guide to the care of a pregnant woman and her partner. for someone who only knows the hospital/medical model from TV and movies, this book opens up a new world of caring approach to life's most sacred rite of passage. i took the Hearts & Hands Midwifery Intensive to learn about the field and became a doula through it. i really appreciate Elizabeth's wisdom, sensitivity and spirituality. i'm looking forward to taking more classes with her in the future. who knows i may yet become a midwife myself.
  
• Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, by Ina May Gaskin (the Mother of Modern Midwifery) down-to-earth and centered in the natural wisdom of women's capacity to birth. positive birthstories along with evidence-based facts. i love the simple truth of the sphincter law. love your yoni.
• Complete Guide to Pregnancy & Childbirth by Sheila Kitzinger really talks about the hormonal & biological underpinnings of birth and breastfeeding. though the bias is towards natural birth, the book that equally values the birthing choices that women make, neat week-by-week progression with photos of a mom and graphics of baby and cool photos of waterbirth, homebirth and hospital birth.
• Birthing From Within by Pamela England an intuitive and creative woman-centered, woman-led approach to birthing from labor preparation to comfort techniques.
• Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year by Susun Weed.all the herbal remedies you need to support a woman's constitution before & during pregnancy, during childbirth and postpartum. i learned that all the plants considered weeds by american society are actually medicinal and stem from a long healer tradition of well woman care (or in modern parlance sue them for practicing without a medical license). so patriarchal hegemony didn't just burn some healer-midwives as witches, it also succeeded in vilifying the healer's plants which at that time couldn't be privatized and commidified as with medicine. after all these years post-grad school, i finally discover some meaningful relevance to Weber's thesis about the protestant ethic undergirding capitalism. that's my new excuse for not mowing our lawn. if only i could convince the City Public Works of that cuz you get majorly fined for not mowing your lawn and for having "weeds.
• kellymom.com okay so this isn't a book, but i found the info here on breastfeeding more informative than a certain lactation advocacy organization and even more helpful than my lactation consultant at times (though she was great for moral support!). i totally credit Lily for the referral
  

Parenting

• Our Babies, Our Selves: How Culture and Biology shape the way we parent by Meredith Small the biological roots for cultural parenting practices. reiterated for me why some of my instinctive/cultural modes of parenting like bedsharing, breastfeeding, and diaper-free were what's best for my child in spite of mainstream denunciation.
• Baby Matters: what your doctor may not tell you about caring for your baby by Linda Palmer, DC some folks call this the only book you need for attachment parenting. affirms the set of values as well as backs it up with scientific evidence. really changed the way i think of cow's milk.
• Meditations for New Mothers by Beth Wilson Saavedra nice little mother affirmations and thoughts to meditate on in the brief snatches of time you get between feedings, pottying/diapering, naps, etc.
• Mothering magazine great articles about natural pregnancy, childbirth and parenting
• Giving the Love that Heals by Harville Hendris & Helen Hunt (no, not that Helen Hunt) about personal transformation and conscious parenting; how to heal your own childhood wounds so you can stop passing on your baggage to your kids.
• All About Love: new visions by bell hooks okay so this isn't about parenting per se. it is about self-actualization and being a loving person.
• Smart Medicine for a Healthier Child, 2nd ed. this is a really great book we received from Szymon as a baby shower gift (awesome!) that lists common childhood ailments and gives you integrated treatments from western/allopathic medicine, homepathic, nutritional supplements, acupressure and herbal treatments. all those inconsolable, fever, projectile vomit ni
  
• Vaccinations: A Thoughful Parent's Guide by Aviva Jill Romm we're trying to make informed choices about vaccine scheduling.
• The Diaper Free Baby: the natural toilet training alternative by Christine Gross-Loh i liked this book for being very flexible and non-zealous about being diaper-free.
  

Honorary mentions

• Fathering Right from the Start: Straight Talk About Pregnancy, Birth andBeyond by Jack Heinowitz

of course, we still have her sausage wrists. although, with all the drumming she does, those too are ever so slightly leaner. still deeleeeshus!

Calloo callay, oh frabjous day! my favorite pre-pregnancy jeans fit.

ok, so there is some spandex involved but only like 3%.

milkman

[ed. note: i wrote this on 5.24.08 but was delaying the posting of it till i could finish transcribing the Nina Simone song. when do i have the time? hence, its over three months later and it's still missing a section, but it's almost complete.]

i know, very few posts since i gave birth. what can i say? the demands of motherhood is not an old wives' tale. i thought i couldn't handle being on call with a career as a midwife. and yet, here i am on 24/7 (and believe me, in the beginning it was 24 hours everyday with very little time for my own basic human functions) at the whim of a wee babe and no substitution possible. or so i thought.

male lactation is physically possible, just not socially acceptable.

i knew this curious biological fact. even made light of it in the baby registry. but it is true. just read this. it's my belief if more men nursed their children, their would less violence, less wars.

22nd century

there is no oxygen in the air

men and women have lost their hair

ash and faces, legs that stand

ghosts and goblins walk in this land

when tomorrow becomes yesterday

and tomorrow becomes eternity

when the soul, when the soul goes way beyond what life has taken

and there are no more babies born

when there is no one and there is everyone

when there is no one and there is everyone

tomorrow will be the 22nd century
tomorrow will be the 22nd century
tomorrow will be the 22nd century

will it will it will it it will be
it will be

it will be---.

ahhh---
ahhh---

the 21st century was here and gone

and the 20th century was the dawn

and the beginning of the end was the 21st when the 20th century was at an end

1990 was the year when the plague struck the earth
1988 was the year when men and women struck out for freedom

and bloodletting was the thing that was

people said there was no cause and there was no reason and no cause

1972 was right all the way drums and buildings all through the day blastin
right wing left wing middle of the road...
...
sidewinder back swinger back lash whiplash

race stalkings red stockings
liberation of women liberation of men

liberation of animals, prevention of cruelty to animals, men and beast

flyin, and i'm flyin, flyin things
revolution of music, poetry, love and life
sex changing changin changin
man is woman woman is man
even your brain is not your brain
your heart is a plastic thing that can be bought
there are no more diseases that can be caught

man became the thing that he worshipped
man too late became his god that was the day

that man and woman truly became born

man became his good man became his evil man became his god man became his devil

tomorrow will be the 22nd century

tomorrow will be the 22nd century

tomorrow will be the 22nd century

it will be

it will be

it will be---.

written by Obeah Man, sung by Nina Simone

the politics of milk

when i was a keiki, my ohana wen go to da Havai'i-kine State Fair. there we met LaniMoo. talk about your sacred cows. i can remember her standing outside the billowing white tent where the cows were being kept. an ambassador to her species adorned with her melia lei & haku lei, victorian blouson & muumuu, and her celestial name, LaniMoo was brown-skinned, two-breasted, two-legged, native & regal like the nubile Havai'i-kine ladies in the parades. only she was not really a holy cow, she was a haole cow. and dis heifer had a lockdown on immaculate conception. (they just re-launched a new mascot, her son by "surprise virgin birth" Kawika. given how they fertilize cows, weo the less said about that the better, though mike rowe has a lot of funny things to say.)

basically, milkcows were an invader species brought by the haole plantation owners in 1793 when they colonized the island of Havai'i. since everyone in the world are naturally lactose-intolerant in adulthood except for northern europeans, and hawaii-kine being no exception, i imagine profits were pretty limited. in the mid-50s introduced Lani Moo the bovine mascot so named by a haole kid. then in the mid-1970s they got smart, they started corporate-sponsoring the local youth soccer league and producing the propaganda about cowmilk's benefits. my dad being no stranger to propaganda (and no coincidence, like most brownskins, a lover of soccer) was militant about it. we all had to drink cowmilk. lots of it. my siblings being kids by then and over their (breast)milk drinking days by a decade maybe didnt catch on or get the brunt of this militancy. me being the baby, i was cowmilkboarded. and i came to have cowmilk all the time. gallons. and ice cream. and cheese oh i came to love cheese. i've been colonized by cowmilk.

i didn't stop drinking cowmilk until college sometime after my ex moved out. and then on a foster freeze & berkeley marina date with T. in 1999, i had the gut-wrenching realization that i am indeed lactose-intolerant, a "problem" i share with 95% of adult humanity, that i promptly & temporarily solved with lactase supplements. though there's not fixing anything with ice cream, lactase or no. nowadays its a moot problem since i've stopped consuming so much cowdairy products. and last year in an effort to treat my allergies & chemical sensitivities, i went on a strict dairy- & gluten-free diet. and indeed, my allergies & sensitivity cleared up. so i got lazy. then when i was in that last couple of months of pregnancy, i wanted ice cream and went on a bender. so i had haagen daz on a stick once a day. gotta love costco for bulk purchases.

and now i'm the dairymaid for our daughter. she is six months now and still exclusively breastfed. all 18lbs and 12.4oz of her. pure mother's love buttermilk.

breastfeeding. so not controversial. even our HMO sez mothers should breastfeed at least until 6 months. and i plan on breastfeeding to two years at least.

weo, we went to our 6 months check up yesterday. when our osteopathic-cum-medical pediatrician found out VL was still being exclusively breastfed, he said i should start giving her iron supplemented food right away because breastmilk has low iron after 6 months and no, i couldn't just take more iron supplements as the mommy. well, i took him at face value and was doing my own educational reading about starting solids, and i read in the evidence-based book Baby Matters and on kellymom.com that because cow's milk in formula commonly inhibits the development of intestinal villi ("leaky gut" syndrome) and as a result causes gastro-intestinal bleeding and malabsorption, because of that, formula & babyfood had to have extra iron to compensate for the loss of blood & iron. whereas breastmilk has lactoferrin an easier-to-digest form of iron and one that boosts baby's ability to resist bacteria like E. Coli. and breastfed babies at 6mos+ that are not given iron-fortified foods have a higher iron level in their blood than breastfed babies who are given iron-fortified food. the iron they use to fortify baby foods actually leaches the lactoferrin iron in breastmilk! so the standard for how much iron is "needed" is still based on babies who take formula and are therefore iron-deficient, and then applied to breastfed babies which in turns makes breastfed babies, iron-deficient! out-dated research based on formula companies' & dairy industry's profit-motivated "science". ridiculous.

we very quickly realized VL couldn't tolerate cowmilk. not because we gave her any, but because i consumed it. those last trimester haagen daz ice cream bars were still in the freezer after all... i'm piecing things together here, the puzzle of my digestive system. in thinking back to my dairy-full childhood and the cowmilk formula supplementation i was given the times i was hospitalized as an infant, which eventually overtook & ended the breastfeeding aft 6 months, i remember all the unexplained sometimes bloody gastro-intestinal problems & poor digestion i had as a kid and even now as an adult. i was always having to poo in a cup. and there was never a solution or explanation. a while back, when i was recounting my allergies and chemical sensitivities to my brother, he said it was prolly all the milk i drank as a kid. maybe there's something to that. maybe the cowmilk colonization that has degraded my digestion.

and cowmilk, cowmilk is so innocuous seeming. but as i teased my larger-than-your-average-vinamese-midwestern friend Linh, cowmilk is for cows; drink cowmilk, become a cow. and like a bad joke, her son was allergic to cowsmilk. and it seems there is something to that, even though there is a billion dollar dairy industry which tries to tell you otherwise; cowmilk is implicated in a over a dozen diseases. human milk is the perfect human baby food. it contains all the proteins, carbs, sugars, hormones, biotics, immune defense that a baby human needs to grow into a human adult. cows' milk contains all the proteins, carbs, sugars, hormones, biotics, immune defense that a baby bovine needs to grow into an adult bovine. wait, not just rancher-added rGBT growth hormones, we're talking grow-a-baby-hormones-intrinsic-in-lactation kinda of hormones. setting aside industrial propaganda-driven medicine, societal norms and dominant culture, on an intuitive level, what makes us think it's okay for a human baby or child to consume all the proteins, carbs, sugars, hormones, biotics, immune defense that cows' milk contains? app

with synchronistic irony enough, i came across this 1912 digitized book; Honolulu was the site for a major USDA experiment in standardizing and regulating dairy production because of high level of infant mortality resulting from milk consumption:
infant mortality and the connection to cows' milk (1912).

we must know that there is something species-specific about mother's milk because we don't consume the milk of any carnivores for example (in addition to it being very hard to milk a tiger). And indeed, we do know there are differences among mammalian milk:

A comparison of mammalian milk from a 1912 USDA Honolulu experimental research on reducing the infant mortality resulting from cows' milk.



differences between human and cow milk

the term breastfeeding itself is a "sacred cow", reserved only for humans, but truly all mammals breastfeed. isn't it wrong that we humans, we living in a Euro-American cultural context try to breastfeed a bovine? and i guess other people are questioning why we as a society would rather feed a baby another species of milk than milk from another mother.
common sense in 1912

i recollect that when VL was in the womb she would kick and stretch out her legs so hard, that you could see the bump on the top of my abdomen. we were amazed. when she was born her legs were stretched out straight unlike any newborn the midwife had ever seen and she even had to rate VL's leg reflex apgar a little lower for it. a few days later, when our chiropractor Dr. Aaron did a homevisit (his partner Dr. Eileen came for a couple of hours during labor), he noted that VL was having digestive issues and the tension in her back and legs was her way of trying to resolve it. he did an adjustment and her legs instantly relaxed. we thought oh maybe its her newborn immature digestive system, but i immediately harked back to her straight leg propensity in utero and then, like many things, the thought passed. when i had a postpartum ice cream bar, she cried and cried all night. it's not colic. like Linh' son, my baby is allergic to cowmilk protein. and we're still trying to figure out if by extension, she is allergic to beef protein which by some cosmic coincidence i had stopped eating in '03 due to boils and other things, and had only resumed eating last year. even now, some days her digestion (and mine own) is really off. and it seems that i will have to go back on a strict allergen-free diet--no beef, no pork, no dairy, no soy, no corn. we'll see about the wheat.

so despite the pediatrician's recommendation, i will wait until VL is developmentally ready to eat solids (not quite there yet) and i will not feed her processed, dehydrated, reconstitute simulacra of food fortified with artificially derived chemicals aka baby cereal.


more 1912 common sense about the connection of nutrition to health

i'm getting so tired of having to be our own educator & advocate when it comes to our family's health. i wish the western allopathic modality of medicine as its practiced in the US which pays lip service to "breast is best" and which has become the modern standard worldwide, i wish that it was evidence-based, instead of this janky presumptive "truthiness" paid for by the blood money from profiteering industries. and yes, babies die from this. i mean i know that is my job as her mother to make the best choices for her and do the educational prep that requires, and at the same time, with everything we have to do, it would be nice to have an ally in her medical care...

postscript... i just read the last few chapters of Baby Matters including "the Dangers of Cow's Milk" and "Allergy Matters". three things i learned: 1) "early exposure [under the age of 1] to cow's milk protein a risk factor for childhood diabetes, but 3 or more glasses of milk per day during childhood leads to a quadrupled risk of diabetes" [the author goes on to cite other scientific studies which show correlations between cowmilk and a full spectrum of diseases common in developed countries like cancer]. 2) Colic, ear infections, eczema, cradle cap, among others "normal phases" for American babies all have a direct correlation with food allergies. 3) if the mother has allergies, she is likely to pass on that immunological response to her child though not the specific trigger (mom could be allergic to onions and baby may be allergic to cows milk) and should avoid all potentially allergenic foods in the third trimester. no one ever told me that!

i'm lookin over my life, my health, VL's birth and being, and my postpartum recovery (i had hives! and mastitis!) and understanding it and the human immune system in a whole new way. i'm a little stunned at the breadth & depth of it actually.

the connection with food is so fundamental, ingrained, cultural and giving up something (like flan) feels like a sacrifice and yet, the eating of it has caused me a lifetime of gastro-intestinal damage & hemorrhage and i've been unknowingly embarking on the same path for my daughter. i gotta decolonize my mind, decolonize my diet, decolonize my colon.

the cure for cancer

Dr. June Meymand runs a cancer center and says breast milk protects her patients' healthy cells, while killing the cancer at same time.

breastmilk can cure cancer!!!

why the heck are we spending millions on cancer research? we should be paying those millions to mothers and socially supporting breastfeeding.

i guess instead of making mama yogurt for VL, i should donate it! for all you lactating moms, here's your local milk bank info:

CALIFORNIA
Mothers' Milk Bank
751 South Bascom Ave
San Jose, CA 95128
Phone (408) 998-4550
FAX (408) 297-9208
mothersmilkbank@hhs.co.santa-clara.ca.us
www.milkbanksj.org

find your local milk bank
http://www.hmbana.org/index.php?mode=locations

and if you are no longer lactating... http://www.kellymom.com/bf/adopt/relactation-resources.html