The regular “little of this, little of that” feature from Like Mother, Like Daughter!
If you follow me on Instagram, you saw the picture of this cap with the ribbons ready to be attached. Probably this is one of the top five treasures of our family — beautiful lace (Belgian? do you know lace kinds?) that is similar to the lace of my mother-in-law's bridal cap (a true fantasy that none of the girls has been quite ready to embrace). I wonder if someone had gone on a trip to Europe long ago and brought them home? I know my husband was baptized in this cap — all of our children — their cousins — now our grandchildren — don't know how many others from before. I keep meaning to ask my sisters-in-law…
Anyway, the cap's ribbons were the worse for wear and I finally ditched them at Nora's baptism. This time around — we are getting ready for Eamon's baptism — I thought I'd look in my stash of ribbon to see if there is something — anything! that I could use.
Sure enough, the self-same ribbon was there in a jar, just enough to replace the old ones. It's clear that at some point I had merged my mother-in-law's ribbon with mine, little knowing that this scant 20″ would be ready to go at just the right moment.
So the key learning is obviously: Never Throw Anything Away.
Our links this week:
- Habou sent me this: amazing photos of bees in their stages of development — with a stunning video at the top of the page! Don't miss this.
- Not completely edifying, but fascinating nevertheless: The brother of Hermann Goering, Hitler's right-hand man, Albert, saved many Jews, often using his brother's influence and even name to do it.
- Are you board-game obsessed? The guys in our family are (not the Chief, other than chess). I wonder if they have seen this article about mathematical strategies for winning 14 popular board games. Is it just common sense? I couldn't focus long enough to find out.
- I hope you saw the cute pics of Sukie nursing Freddie in this week's {pretty, happy, funny, real} (and there is still more than a day to add your link, by the way). She also recommends these posts: Haley Stewart's advice for not feeling awkward when you really need two hands to get baby settled at the breast, Team Whitaker's thoughts on confident nursing, and this one of images of Mother Mary nursing dear Baby Jesus!
- In this post, I said we'd have info about baby carriers for you today, but this is proving to be more involved than I thought! Next week we'll have recommendations from the girls, but Sukie wanted you to know about Babywearing International, a group that has many local chapters so that you can get advice, try carriers out, and meet with others who have the same interests.
- From the archives: In the comments to that post, lots of people brought up nursing issues like thrush, oversupply, what kind of camis to wear, and whether to put baby on a schedule (spoiler: Auntie Leila says no to schedule, yes to rhythm). Just a reminder that we have posts that many have found super helpful — sometimes you just need a quiet chat around the kitchen table, not a flood of info. So do check out those past posts. They come up in reverse order — scroll all the way down for 8 random nursing tips that I just had to get off my chest, so to speak, and lots of other efforts to round up the collective memory.
A blessed Pentecost to all tomorrow! And a peaceful day of remembrance on Memorial Day.
NY Mom says
Oh my – so glad you posted the link to the nursing Madonnas! I just commented about them on Sukie’s previous post. If the Queen of Heaven can do it with style and grace, so can we!
Jenny says
I will refrain from saying too much about baby carriers except to say I did not get a functional carrier until my fourth child was a year old. I love this carrier so much that I contemplate having a fifth child in order to get to use it some more.
Katie says
Thank you for this past week of motherhood posts and for your work on the blog in general. It has been a big source of encouragement for me – and many – certainly in the face of popular culture today. I am slowly making the transition to staying at home full time after the birth of our first who is nearly 7 months old (but have been lucky with a part time schedule that has allowed us to breastfeed exclusively, no pumping involved). The decision to stay at home, while very exciting on my end and kindly supported by my husband, somehow often leaves me on the offensive, or very least defensive, when explaining it to others – even in the family. I REALLY loved your post on food, especially as you laid out #1 – which I think makes a fabulous mission statement: “We are committed to living on one income, with my role being to make the home on the day-to-day basis…It’s important because it brings peace in [our] family.”
As a quick anecdote, I worked in investment banking out of college! So I loved your Goldman Sachs analogy because I’ve literally lived it! 100 hour weeks?! Wow, amazing, gold stars all around! Staying home with baby, being available to nurse on demand and cooking food from scratch…? Get a life! The funny part is, I have more of a life now than during my 16 hour days at the office. Hard to believe, right?
So, my question for you – or, really, my plea (!)- is, what does the collective memory have to say about infant sleep? Please tell us! My 6/7 month old is a great sleeper, as long as she’s within an inch of me. We started out with a sidecar cosleeper and that worked great for nearly 5 months – we each had our own space but were right next to each other all night for nursing. Well, as she woke up to the world, it’s become much more difficult to lay her down asleep without her waking up and losing it. We’ve done a bit of bedsharing after reading Le Leche League’s new book (Sweet Sleep) on how it can be a very safe environment. Especially when mom and baby both think of the breast as the main food source (vs a bottle), because both parties are naturally inclined to keep baby there. So, that has worked except for my immense guilt surrounding (a) might I somehow harm her? (b) keeping it quiet from family and friends who have been very vocal about the safety issue and a baby’s need to learn independence by sleeping in their own room alone. (Note – both my mother and MIL had their babies sleeping in the nursery day 1 which, as they often tell me, worked great for them – hint hint. Of course, even the AAP now recommends room sharing for 6 months for SIDS prevention, but I swear our mothers would have been happier if we had disregarded the new research). My husband is very supportive of whatever option maximizes everyone’s sleep, including bedsharing.
I’m really not concerned about the independence issue since studies have shown that by age 5 there is no difference between a baby who was sleep trained and a baby who was not. But I’m a little concerned about the safety and I can definitely see the temptation of letting her Cry it Out. She has outgrown her side car, so we moved her crib into our room, but the past few nights of trying to put her in there have been disastrous. Listening to her cries definitely has a physical effect on me, and I’m just not ready to go through that. Having also read the study that Cry it Out babies have higher stress cortisol levels than other babies, I do not believe these babies are really learning independence, but rather that they have been abandoned (if only momentarily!) and there is no reason to cry. Not the message we’re trying to send.
Woosh, this is a lot of info. But, please! I think we have gotten to a point where there is no collective memory at all with infant sleep. My mother in law keeps asking if she’s sleeping through the night or is she still getting up just once or twice? She gets up *a lot* and it pains me to discuss it because the implication is that I’m doing something wrong. When we bedshare I can let her nurse and drift in and out of sleep without issue. I cannot tell you how much googling I’ve done about all of this. It has been exhausting and terrifying and has gotten me nowhere!
I haven’t even gotten to naps yet, but of course, any tips you have there are more than welcome too.
Thank you again for sharing so much hope with us. One who has hope lives differently. I love that on your sidebar and think of it often.
Lisa says
Katie, Congratulations on your transition from the corporate world to home. I’m sure Auntie Leila will have good advice for you. I found that in all things mothering, it was best to do what I and my husband felt was right and not listen to well meaning family and friends. There are lots of good, safe ways to raise children. You don’t have to justify yourself to anyone but your husband. Quit googling. It will only give you anxiety! Do what feels right to you.
Leila says
Katie, maybe you can email me with your question? You can copy and paste it 🙂
God bless,
Leila
priest's wife @byzcathwife says
Our 4 children slept (either in our bed or later in a crib) in our room for the first year to 18 months. They would sleep for 2 hours and then wake up and nurse- for the first year. Now, the youngest is 5 and they all sleep well (8 to 7- no nightmares)….it gets easier!
Robin says
Dr. Sears’ advice saved my sanity with my firstborn. He has tips for safe co-sleeping (and research to back it up!) at askdrsears.com.
Luana says
Oh, yes, auntie, please share with us your baby-sleep wisdom!
Thank you!
Jessica Archuleta says
What a gorgeous gown! We have a very lovely baptismal gown that I am itching to take out of the bag to baptize our new baby. I look forward to it being passed on over the generations. So far seven (soon to be eight) of our children have been baptized in it and two nieces. Thanks for sharing the pictures and story about yours. 🙂
Kathryn @ Team Whitaker says
Oh how sweet of you to share that link on breastfeeding! You’ve got some nuggets in there. And, that gown is absolutely stunning!
Sheila says
Please know I love you and your blog, Leila! However, I feel I must convey my disappointment over the Nursing Madonna link. Perhaps I am just a disordered Western-er, but I believe the exposed breast of Our Lady in much of art is distasteful, and perhaps even irreverant. I liken it to what Alice Von Hildebrand described as to “tear the veil”. For more on that phrase see the section entitled “vulgarizing the holy” and the “analogy and the Virgin birth” at: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/document.php?n=999
Leila says
Dear Sheila,
Of course I take any qualm of yours very seriously, but I have to say that I think here there is a disconnect. Alice von Hildebrand’s critique is directed towards something much different from these images! She is questioning a contemporary author’s lack of delicacy in discussing sexual matters. (Her critique itself it seems to me has some merit — and Christopher West himself agreed, by the way — but also goes too far — see Janet Smith’s defense here: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/janet-smith-responds-to-alice-von-hildebrands-critique-of-christopher-west/
Personally, I tend to be more on von Hildebrand’s side of things. I think it’s best to err on the side of reticence and modesty. Somewhere Thomas Aquinas says that even speaking of chastity can be unchaste!
However, breastfeeding isn’t a sexual activity! And these images aren’t contemporary! Yes, there is a sensual element to the breast, as there is to every curve of the woman’s body, and perhaps more than most of the curves in a certain way. Yet, feeding the baby from the breast is not sexual.
I’d say that if anything, our culture has become weirdly Puritanical (but not in a historical way — more in an abstract Gnostic way) about this subject. The photos in this post are from the past: http://www.buzzfeed.com/southerndisposition/25-historical-images-that-normalize-breastfeeding-jlw6#.dgZDOV40p
I think it’s very interesting to consider that while the standards of modesty and propriety are *much higher* in these photos than ours are (just think of the clothing you witnessed being worn at Holy Mass today), breastfeeding is simply taken for granted and not covered up.
Truly, these pictures are a necessary re-education….
I have noticed that photos from today, featuring movie stars or models nursing babies, tend to add a definitely sexual and even aggressive note to the whole idea — the woman is staring at the camera in a suggestive way, rather than gazing on her baby or simply engaging in what’s going on around her as in the older pictures. Often the stance of their bodies is not curved into the body of the baby — or the clothing worn is rather sexy — or in some way something is conveyed to show that her mind is on sex rather than nurturing her baby — or at least that she knows that the VIEWER’s mind is on sex.
It’s as if our culture just *can’t* believe that there could be an activity involving the body that isn’t sexual.
It’s just hard for me to believe that all those centuries’ worth of art depicting Our Lady breastfeeding baby Jesus are wrong, and we are right! How can that be? Instead, I think we’ve just gotten a bit warped.
Modesty is always going to have an element of relativity to it. In our own times, we need to be comfortable in our milieu, and clearly today that means not exposing the breast fully.
But some things are objectively true — it’s normal, natural, and God’s will that the baby nurse at the breast. Thus, I think the relative norms CAN be conditioned by seeing things from a different perspective, especially in light of how things were done in the past. If there are standards as to what is irreverent, and of course there are, I personally would trust those of the 14th or 18th century more than ours. Sadly, I fear we have standards that lack calibration to reality.
Mary Eileen says
Wow that baptismal gown is GORGEOUS!!!! What a treasure!
And, I cannot get enough of the breastfeeding photos. Those images of a mother smiling at her beautiful baby while the baby is nursing, for me, conjure up such a deeply happy, warm feeling. It is all fitting. Such tenderness.
It seems evident that we object nowadays to images of breastfeeding, including images of the Blessed Mother, because we have been conditioned to view almost every single part of the body as inherently sexual or a tool for being sexually attractive. Being so generally licentious has caused us to feel hyper-prudish about any exposure of the body at all. Sad.
Kari says
I love the line from the carol “In the Deep Midwinter:” “…enough for Him whom cherubim worship night and day, a breast full of milk and a manger full of hay.” Yes, we sing it in church….no one seems terribly uncomfortable singing about it…
Kari
Ashley says
I always enjoy seeing the links you all share. A while back you posted a link to a recipe at Alexandra’s Kitchen, and I discovered a new favorite cooking blog, so thank you!