Overcoming Difference Through Milksharing

I've been having tons of fun reading and posting everyone's pieces for World Milksharing Week's Blog Carnival. After musing on it forever, I finally wrote my own today, about finding my place in the milksharing community.

I am a transgender man. I am in a gay relationship. I breastfeed my kiddo.

And I can tell you right now that I feel a deeper connection to our Mormon and Mennonite milk donors than I do to many of my other friends and community.

My past experiences as an LGBT person encountering religious folk have generally not been pleasant. Among many other comments, a Muslim friend once told me that being gay is worse than committing murder (I hadn't yet transitioned at the time), and a Christian noted that queer people burn in hell forever. My partner and I posted on Human Milk 4 Human Babies that we were a gay couple looking for milk for our baby, and assumed that LGBT-friendly donors would self select. We hoped that others would remain silent.

When I first realized that one of our milk donors, we'll call her Sherry, was Mormon, I was totally shocked that she would want anything to do with us. We had received her milk through a friend, and I thought that perhaps the original donor just didn't know much about us. We met for the first time a few days later, and Sherry gushed over our ten day old boy. In fact, I believe she said to him something like, "You make my uterus ache! Holding you makes me want another baby."

At that moment, I realized that Sherry and I had much in common. We both love holding babies, we are both attachment-minded parents, and we both really care about the health of babies – all babies. Sherry's milk maintained my son's normal gut flora on his fifth day of life, while a feeding of formula would have altered it, for the worse, for weeks to come.

Some Christian donors have told us that they don't understand everything about who we are, but they are open to learning, and they have a whole lot of respect for our commitment to breastfeeding and human milk. I am learning that there is great variety amongst individuals' religious paths. Not every Christian I meet is like the woman who once hurled the phrase "Jesus loves you" at me as if it was some kind of insult.

Outside the milksharing community, I often get comments like, "You're sure letting the baby run the show, aren't you? You know he would be fine. Formula isn't evil. It's ok to cry." I am simply responding to my son's needs – to be picked up, to nurse, to have human milk. I feel misunderstood, defensive and embarrassed when someone criticizes my parenting in this way. I know that I have done my own reading about everything from the risks of formula feeding to the effect of excessive cortisol in the brain of a baby who is left to cry. It's not that I lose confidence in what I'm doing when I listen to such remarks, but I very quickly feel that I am an unwelcome, "other" kind of person ("other" being a word I had previously associated only with being transgender in a cisgender world.)

A few years ago, I would never have guessed that my family's strongest, most supportive parenting community would include people who are aligned with religions that have deeply conservative threads. The milksharing community is incredibly diverse in terms of ethnicity, family structure, sexual orientation, financial status, religion, and language – it is expanding rapidly all over the world.

When one parent goes to the trouble to express and store her milk, and she posts on a social network to find someone to give it to so it won't go to waste, we know that she values human milk. When another parent responds to her post and drives across the city to pick up that milk rather than buying a can of formula from the corner store, we know that he or she prioritizes normal infant nutrition. Donors and recipients meet on the common ground of good health. It is that simple.

More American Dogs Get to Co-sleep Than Babies

One of the basic principles of attachment parenting is "safe sleep," meaning that a loving parent attends to his or her child's emotional and physical needs at night as well as during the day. Many attachment-minded families find that sleeping together with their baby is the best way to accomplish this. However, the vast majority of American parents choose to put their children in cribs in separate rooms at night. A surprising number of dog owners, on the other hand, allow their dogs to sleep with them and report that they, and their dogs, enjoy it. It's a dog's life – just not for babies.

I believe the very first time I considered co-sleeping of any kind, I was thinking of dogs. I was eight years old, and our family dog was obviously ill, whining in pain. My parents chained him up outside so that he couldn't run away. Before bed, I went out to visit him and was frightened to see and hear him suffering, but I wanted to be with him. My parents made me go to bed, and the dog was dead by morning. I still hate knowing that he was in pain and all alone during that awful night.

When I was ten, we brought home a new puppy. Mom locked her downstairs in the mudroom and put down newspaper in case she peed. We went to our beds (separate ones) that night to the sound of ceaseless crying and yelping. Mom explained that the puppy was used to sleeping with her litter mates and that she was lonely. This was the first of many times that I begged to be allowed to have our dog sleep with me in my room. I was told the puppy would get used to her new surroundings eventually, and that we had to leave her on her own. This was a normal part of growing up for every dog.

As an adult, I learned that dog trainers seem to agree that sleeping together (at least in the same room) is important for bonding with one's animal, and the practice is far from rare. As Cesar Milan, the "Dog Whisperer," notes, "It is perfectly natural for a dog to sleep with other pack members, and it is also a powerful way to bond with your dog." A 2007 survey by the American Pet Products Association of over 2500 American pet owners found that a whopping 43% of dogs sleep in bed with their owners. When I adopted my current dog, she wanted to sleep with me and I obliged. This was the first time in my life that I slept with another living creature. I loved it.

After I read about safe infant-parent bed-sharing, it seemed natural to me to sleep with our baby, too. What else would we do? Let our dog cuddle with us in bed while our infant cried in the other room? If sleeping together is so beneficial for bonding with a pet, why wouldn't it be great for bonding with baby, too? However, a 2006 study in Kentucky found that only 15% of infants and toddlers aged two weeks to two years sleep with their parents. Is it possible that Americans are better in tune emotionally with their pets than their babies?

I wanted to do anything and everything that could be helpful to the breastfeeding relationship, including bed-sharing. What we discovered, however, is that co-sleeping is just as important for Ian's relationship with Jacob as it is for mine. I am fortunate to spend hours and hours nursing and wearing our baby during the day since I am the one who gets to stay home from work. Someone once asked Ian if he is jealous of our breastfeeding relationship, and he responded with an emphatic "No! I get to co-sleep!" Every night, all three of us cuddle together. Especially when he was younger and easier to move aroud in his sleep, I'd nurse Jacob down and then slide him over to Ian who would tuck his arm around him without even waking up. This way Ian got his fair share of skin-to-skin time and felt well-connected to our baby.

Nowadays our dog frequently snoozes by herself on the couch (maybe because the baby wakes up so much at night!) and then joins us for snuggling in the morning. But if there's a thunder storm, she always ends up in our bed, and from time to time, she chooses to be with us from the start of the night. I have no doubt that Jacob's nighttime preferences will change, too, as he grows and develops. One thing is for certain though: our bed will always be open to whoever needs it.

Night Weaning, and Why We're Not Ready for it

A friend asked me the other day if I have night-weaned Jacob yet. Barely even thinking, I responded with an emphatic, "No! That's definitely not a good thing for him right now."

This Mom went on to describe her reasons for night-weaning her youngest child and how difficult it had been. She had to go back to work and was simply exhausted from being woken up frequently to nurse at night. Sounds familiar to many of us, I'm sure. "The first night he cried for five hours. My husband had me wear head phones so that I could get through it. The next night he only cried for about three hours. Pretty soon we got down to ten minutes."

Since embarking on this mysterious and beautiful parenting journey, I have come to understand why sleep deprivation can be used as a torture technique. It genuinely feels horrid. I have been known to say when I'm getting to an extreme of exhaustion, "I want to die I'm so tired!!"

But I also cannot picture night-weaning anytime soon, so I guess it's all the more fortunate that I do not yet have to go back to work. Jacob just turned one, and he is going through an extraordinary developmental stage that is demanding for everyone involved. Frankly, he thinks he is too busy to nurse much during the day, and I believe him! He is learning to walk, to climb stairs (though not to go back down them), to eat solid foods, to share toys, and to cope with strong emotions. And he will soon surpass his dads in his confident use of electronics. During the daytime he is rushing to grow up, which leaves only the nights for being a baby with an intense need for both human milk and touch.

I understand why people night-wean their kids, and I don't blame them for wanting to do it. But I think about my poor little guy trying so very hard to explore and establish his independence in his waking hours, and I know that now is definitely not the time for us. If it is painful for me as an adult to lose sleep, I am sure it would be even more so for him to go without the comfort of nursing while he attempts to process the huge adventures of his days. It is hard work to be a baby.

As my many attachment-minded friends love to remind me, we will get through it, and this too shall pass.

Lesbian parents get an A+

Recent research shows kids of lesbian moms are flourishing.

Now, when will they do a study on us fantastic transgendered birthing parents?!