I'm just going to put it out there: Veganism is my religion. By that I mean that being vegan holds a place of importance in my heart akin to religion. It's easy for me to say this with confidence because I have no other religion in my life. I do not believe in god, but I do believe in compassion. Religion gives us a moral code to live by, affects what we perceive to be the meaning of life, and (ideally) leaves us with a feeling of doing right by our heart or soul. Veganism does all of these things for me and holds a place as dear to me as religion does for most folks. I might even argue it holds an even dearer place than religion for many people. Plenty of religious people do not actively think about their beliefs perhaps more than once/day at most--I know when I was a Christian, I thought about Christianity maybe when I said a prayer at night or went to church or choir, or got into a discussion about religion, but that was about it. That's not to say there aren't also deeply devout people who do think about their religion more frequently, but I would argue that the average religious person maybe thinks about their religion about once per day on average. Veganism is something I think about every time I eat or drink something, which is at least 3 times per day, often more than that because I snack a lot :) Moreover, when I was a Christian, even when I thought about my religion it wasn't always because I was following it--sometimes I realized I did something other than "what Jesus would do," and I felt bad about it, or sometimes I knew full well I was about to do something that Jesus would not do, but I justified it and did it anyway. With veganism, it isn't like this--I don't even consider justifying eating a steak and then repenting later. I follow veganism truly and with sincere conviction.
I am not alone in viewing this lifestyle to be like a religion. Recently, a hospital employee in Cincinnati claimed religious discrimination in being fired over refusing a flu shot due to her vegan beliefs: http://www.law360.com/articles/405559/vegan-allowed-to-claim-religious-bias-in-flu-shot-firing
This is important legal stuff--that veganism can and should be given the same respect as a religious practice would. Which leads me to my point.
Since when would it be socially acceptable to suggest to a Catholic that they are forcing their lifestyle on their kids? Since when would it be socially acceptable to ask a Jewish person if they are going to let their child attend a Christian church service to see if they really want to be Jewish? Since when would it be socially acceptable to expect a Protestant to leave all religious decisions in their child's hands? And if a child did stray from the religion their parents raised them with, since when would it be socially acceptable to openly talk about how maybe it is for the better and that the parent should not be upset?
Let me be clear, I do want my kids to eventually make their own educated decisions on the matter of veganism and for them to follow their hearts. But when those decisions are not educated and are based only on not wanting to be made fun of, and when those decisions are made at a tender age, and when they are met with everyone else's blessing, and when zero attempt is made to at least choose more humane versions of nonvegan food (grass-fed organic milk or cage free eggs for example) to better keep with compassion towards animals, then no, I'm not ok with it. I'm understandably upset; I'm understandably angry at society for making us vegans out to be some freak show acts and having no problem teasing a child for a vegan lifestyle (again, if your child were making fun of someone for being Hindu, I think you'd have a problem with it, but many parents would just chuckle along with their kid if they talked about how silly their vegan classmate is and how they asked them, "don't you just want to eat a pizza?"). I'm understandably frustrated for all the ways that loved ones have undermined my lifestyle choices for my family. This is a parental and societal failure on my part, not a genuine coming-of-age-and-making-your-own-choices-and-expanding-your-horizons process. We're not talking about what outfits my tween wants to wear and me being too overprotective. We're talking about my tween going against my religious beliefs in to avoid being made fun of and to gain acceptance and convenience---were this any other "legitimate" religion, you'd at least empathize with the parent. So please let me at least mourn over this, what I feel to be a terrible decision with moral implications. Of course I love my child unconditionally and will always love her no matter what she chooses to eat. But that doesn't mean I agree that this is a wonderful change in her life. So let's not treat it so lightly, and please, if you are a loved one in our lives, respect my beliefs. You wouldn't, in front of his parents, offer a bible to a Jewish tween that had recently decided to start attending a Christian church against his parent's wishes, so don't offer my child pizza in front of me either, ok? If she asks for it, fine--but she is still a child after all. If you wouldn't let your 11 year old stop attending your church, then you should understand that my agreeing to her making her own decision to go against my cherished beliefs is already more allowance than you would give your 11 year old, so let's take this one small step at a time. Soon she'll be making all her decisions on her own, and she's already receiving plenty of messages from society that there is nothing wrong with using animals for food. In the meantime let's just agree to middle ground--if my child asks for nonvegan food it can be provided, but that doesn't mean it needs to be encouraged.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Saturday, March 2, 2013
7 Things No One Ever Tells You About Babies
I would like to just get these 7 things off my chest, because I hear SOOOOOO many moms (even in the AP community) shocked when they encounter some of them and/or posing questions about them in looking for "solutions" to their "problem." None of these are necessarily "problems." All of them are totally normal!! But our society does us moms a disservice for not disclosing them before we embark on the journey of motherhood. So consider this a full-disclosure in attempt to make up for the fact that no one ever tells you these things!!
1. Many babies hate the car. Being out of mama's arms, strapped in, and traveling at a high rate of speed is a very foreign experience for a new human, and it can be unsettling. If baby dislikes the car, chances are she will scream continually, especially at red lights, no matter what music you play, toys you offer, style of car seat you use, or anything else you can think of to make the journey more pleasant. The screaming will distract you a million times more than any texting while driving ever could. The good news is that as long as that screaming still bothers you, you have not lost sight of what Dr. Sears calls "Belief in the importance of baby's cries." This is important not to lose sight of because crying is all babies know how to do to communicate and we forge a profound bond with them by hearing them with our hearts and being as responsive as we can. Of course, this may be impossible when you're behind the wheel. How to deal with it, then? There's no good solution except time. Most babies will grow out of their hatred of the car within a year or two. Til then, try to keep car rides to a minimum (can daddy run out to get the groceries? can you optimize the times you are out to take the shortest route, with the least amount of lights and traffic? etc.), and see if there is a time of day that baby is less likely to disdain a car ride. A tired baby may eventually fall asleep instead of screaming, for example. And finally, if there are older siblings or a partner who can sit beside baby in the car seat, this may at least help baby feel she is not alone, and it's always better to be upset in someone's company than be upset and feel alone.
2. Babies expect to be held constantly. It is in their evolutionary nature. Primates keep their vulnerable young close at all times, and we humans are primates. Baby is not born knowing that he is perfectly safe in his bouncy seat. He is born expecting that if an adult is not with him, he is vulnerable to predators. He will then cry as a defense mechanism to try to get a human adult to hold him again in those arms he knows as "safe." Holding babies is good for their growth and development, and they basically never want to be put down before they are old enough to be mobile. How to do what you need to do, then? Baby carriers offer a win-win solution. Baby gets to be near you, and you have a hand or two free to do the things you need to do.
3. It is normal for babies to wake many times each night. Babies have tiny stomachs that need frequent refilling. They also have a desire for closeness (see point 2). For these reasons if they are alone and needing snuggles or hungry and needing nourishment, they will wake up. Babies' sleep cycles are completely different from adults', and this is a good thing. They are still learning how to regulate their breathing at night while slumbering, so frequent arousal helps them not to fall into too deep a sleep from which they cannot wake. How to get some shut-eye, then? Bring baby to bed with you or keep baby near your bed. You can then respond quickly when they awaken, and minimize disruption to your sleep. Also try to realize that it is not appropriate to expect independent sleep for long periods of time for at least the first year or two of life--it may happen on occasion but likely not consistently. Fear not, though--eventually they do learn to sleep through the night, and babies who are nurtured with close proximity to a caregiver at night learn that bedtime is not a scary time. Thus the bonus is well-adjusted children who do not resist bedtime and have learned to sleep like a log.
4. Diapers are a modern invention--babies can learn to go potty from day one. This is a subject for a whole different post in order to give it proper attention. But suffice to say that in most places of the world, diapers are not accessible and/or are a luxury item that not everyone can afford. How do you handle the output, then? You can, if you choose, hold baby over a potty of some sort and help them go to the bathroom. Over time you can also associate a sound or signal (such as sign language) with their elimination, and this will serve as a way both for you to communicate that you have them in position to go and for the baby to eventually communicate back to you a need to go. This technique, in the West, has thus fittingly been dubbed "elimination communication," but it has basically been a way of life for most humans across the globe for most of human history until the advent of the diaper. And even if you don't want to do infant potty training full time, you can choose to just do it part time--maybe even just once/day. And even if you don't do it at all, the take away message is: don't worry about it being "too soon" to introduce the potty in toddlerhood--there is no such thing as "too soon," assuming you are not being coercive in introducing it. Any gentle introduction to the potty at any time will help with eventual potty training, whenever that takes place.
5. Natural human weaning age is an average of 4 yrs. This may seem long by societal standards, but it has been studied anthropologically by Kathy Dettwyler. She found that the natural weaning age of humans is anywhere between 2.5 and 7 years of age, with 4 years being the average. It is unlikely that any baby under the age of 1 that appears to self-wean is actually doing so--typically other factors are involved such as a nursing strike, weaning onto a bottle, mother becoming pregnant, use of artificial nipples and/or bottles, etc. But nurslings will eventually self-wean when they outgrow the need, which is usually after a few years if there are no outside factors artificially changing the dynamics of the nursing relationship, like those mentioned above. Furthermore, the World Health Organization recommends a minimum of 2 years of breastfeeding. So what to do when you fret that your baby's getting too old to be nursing? Relax--it is natural and appropriate to breastfeed your baby for years rather than months.
6. Pumping is a poor gauge of milk supply but it can affect your milk supply. No pump in the world is as efficient as your baby. So if you feel worried that you don't seem able to pump a large quantity, this is not necessarily an indicator of poor supply. Most mothers are able to make enough milk to feed their young. And if you're worried there are other gauges that are more accurate: Is baby gaining good weight? Does she have enough wet and soiled diapers? I call these the input-output gauges--where there is output, there must have been input. In other words, if you see the effects of sufficient breastmilk, then you can deduce the cause: that you have a sufficient supply. But also beware, pumping can affect your milk supply if you pump a lot. This is precisely because a pump is not as efficient as a baby, and your body will make milk based on a supply-demand balance. If there is less "demand" because the pump isn't as efficient at "demanding" milk, then the supply may decrease as a result. How can you mitigate this, then? If you can get your supply well established in the first few months, before relying too much on pumped breastmilk to feed your baby, you will be less likely to suffer the worst detrimental effects of pumping on your supply. Plus if you can wait a few months, you are closer to the time when baby can also have solids for nourishment, so that if your supply takes a hit, baby can obtain calories from food, too.
7. If you become pregnant while nursing your baby, you can continue nursing, but you most likely will lose most, if not all, of your milk. While it is true that some women nurse through a pregnancy without suffering so much as a dip in milk supply, it is much more common for mom to suffer a significant or total loss of milk supply. Nursing may still be beneficial for bonding, and maintaining potential to tandem nurse after the new baby is born and milk returns, but if your nursling is very young when you become pregnant again, you must be aware that you may end up needing alternate food if your supply drops. This is NOT something you can usually do anything about! Unlike the supply-demand principle that rules during a typical breastfeeding relationship, once pregnancy hormones enter the equation, all bets are off, and the hormonal changes generally do not allow the supply-demand principle to hold. So increasing demand by nursing more often does not mean your supply will respond. Also typical lactogenic foods or supplements for increasing supply tend not work either. How to keep your nursling getting breastmilk, that perfect food, then? Well, if you can, it is better to space out pregnancies so that, at the very least, your nursling is well into solid foods before you become pregnant again (ie. not until your nursling is at least 9 months to a year old). This way if you do lose your milk, your nursling will be able to compensate with eating more foods, and you can keep nursing for comfort and bonding if you choose. Of course it's possible you didn't intend to become pregnant as soon as you find yourself pregnant again, and maybe your baby is still very young. If this is the case, you can still nurse your baby, but you may need to supplement partly or entirely so you should carefully monitor baby's weight gain and wet/soiled diapers, look for signs of dehydration, etc. If you need to supplement and you are committed to breastmilk for your baby, you can look into donor milk. If your baby will not take a bottle, you could try what is called a "supplemental nursing system" or SNS for short. This consists of a tube that is inserted beside your nipple as the baby nurses. The tube then goes to a pouch full of the supplement of your choice. This way the baby is still getting the natural feel of nursing but obtaining supplemental calories from donor milk or formula.
1. Many babies hate the car. Being out of mama's arms, strapped in, and traveling at a high rate of speed is a very foreign experience for a new human, and it can be unsettling. If baby dislikes the car, chances are she will scream continually, especially at red lights, no matter what music you play, toys you offer, style of car seat you use, or anything else you can think of to make the journey more pleasant. The screaming will distract you a million times more than any texting while driving ever could. The good news is that as long as that screaming still bothers you, you have not lost sight of what Dr. Sears calls "Belief in the importance of baby's cries." This is important not to lose sight of because crying is all babies know how to do to communicate and we forge a profound bond with them by hearing them with our hearts and being as responsive as we can. Of course, this may be impossible when you're behind the wheel. How to deal with it, then? There's no good solution except time. Most babies will grow out of their hatred of the car within a year or two. Til then, try to keep car rides to a minimum (can daddy run out to get the groceries? can you optimize the times you are out to take the shortest route, with the least amount of lights and traffic? etc.), and see if there is a time of day that baby is less likely to disdain a car ride. A tired baby may eventually fall asleep instead of screaming, for example. And finally, if there are older siblings or a partner who can sit beside baby in the car seat, this may at least help baby feel she is not alone, and it's always better to be upset in someone's company than be upset and feel alone.
2. Babies expect to be held constantly. It is in their evolutionary nature. Primates keep their vulnerable young close at all times, and we humans are primates. Baby is not born knowing that he is perfectly safe in his bouncy seat. He is born expecting that if an adult is not with him, he is vulnerable to predators. He will then cry as a defense mechanism to try to get a human adult to hold him again in those arms he knows as "safe." Holding babies is good for their growth and development, and they basically never want to be put down before they are old enough to be mobile. How to do what you need to do, then? Baby carriers offer a win-win solution. Baby gets to be near you, and you have a hand or two free to do the things you need to do.
3. It is normal for babies to wake many times each night. Babies have tiny stomachs that need frequent refilling. They also have a desire for closeness (see point 2). For these reasons if they are alone and needing snuggles or hungry and needing nourishment, they will wake up. Babies' sleep cycles are completely different from adults', and this is a good thing. They are still learning how to regulate their breathing at night while slumbering, so frequent arousal helps them not to fall into too deep a sleep from which they cannot wake. How to get some shut-eye, then? Bring baby to bed with you or keep baby near your bed. You can then respond quickly when they awaken, and minimize disruption to your sleep. Also try to realize that it is not appropriate to expect independent sleep for long periods of time for at least the first year or two of life--it may happen on occasion but likely not consistently. Fear not, though--eventually they do learn to sleep through the night, and babies who are nurtured with close proximity to a caregiver at night learn that bedtime is not a scary time. Thus the bonus is well-adjusted children who do not resist bedtime and have learned to sleep like a log.
4. Diapers are a modern invention--babies can learn to go potty from day one. This is a subject for a whole different post in order to give it proper attention. But suffice to say that in most places of the world, diapers are not accessible and/or are a luxury item that not everyone can afford. How do you handle the output, then? You can, if you choose, hold baby over a potty of some sort and help them go to the bathroom. Over time you can also associate a sound or signal (such as sign language) with their elimination, and this will serve as a way both for you to communicate that you have them in position to go and for the baby to eventually communicate back to you a need to go. This technique, in the West, has thus fittingly been dubbed "elimination communication," but it has basically been a way of life for most humans across the globe for most of human history until the advent of the diaper. And even if you don't want to do infant potty training full time, you can choose to just do it part time--maybe even just once/day. And even if you don't do it at all, the take away message is: don't worry about it being "too soon" to introduce the potty in toddlerhood--there is no such thing as "too soon," assuming you are not being coercive in introducing it. Any gentle introduction to the potty at any time will help with eventual potty training, whenever that takes place.
5. Natural human weaning age is an average of 4 yrs. This may seem long by societal standards, but it has been studied anthropologically by Kathy Dettwyler. She found that the natural weaning age of humans is anywhere between 2.5 and 7 years of age, with 4 years being the average. It is unlikely that any baby under the age of 1 that appears to self-wean is actually doing so--typically other factors are involved such as a nursing strike, weaning onto a bottle, mother becoming pregnant, use of artificial nipples and/or bottles, etc. But nurslings will eventually self-wean when they outgrow the need, which is usually after a few years if there are no outside factors artificially changing the dynamics of the nursing relationship, like those mentioned above. Furthermore, the World Health Organization recommends a minimum of 2 years of breastfeeding. So what to do when you fret that your baby's getting too old to be nursing? Relax--it is natural and appropriate to breastfeed your baby for years rather than months.
6. Pumping is a poor gauge of milk supply but it can affect your milk supply. No pump in the world is as efficient as your baby. So if you feel worried that you don't seem able to pump a large quantity, this is not necessarily an indicator of poor supply. Most mothers are able to make enough milk to feed their young. And if you're worried there are other gauges that are more accurate: Is baby gaining good weight? Does she have enough wet and soiled diapers? I call these the input-output gauges--where there is output, there must have been input. In other words, if you see the effects of sufficient breastmilk, then you can deduce the cause: that you have a sufficient supply. But also beware, pumping can affect your milk supply if you pump a lot. This is precisely because a pump is not as efficient as a baby, and your body will make milk based on a supply-demand balance. If there is less "demand" because the pump isn't as efficient at "demanding" milk, then the supply may decrease as a result. How can you mitigate this, then? If you can get your supply well established in the first few months, before relying too much on pumped breastmilk to feed your baby, you will be less likely to suffer the worst detrimental effects of pumping on your supply. Plus if you can wait a few months, you are closer to the time when baby can also have solids for nourishment, so that if your supply takes a hit, baby can obtain calories from food, too.
7. If you become pregnant while nursing your baby, you can continue nursing, but you most likely will lose most, if not all, of your milk. While it is true that some women nurse through a pregnancy without suffering so much as a dip in milk supply, it is much more common for mom to suffer a significant or total loss of milk supply. Nursing may still be beneficial for bonding, and maintaining potential to tandem nurse after the new baby is born and milk returns, but if your nursling is very young when you become pregnant again, you must be aware that you may end up needing alternate food if your supply drops. This is NOT something you can usually do anything about! Unlike the supply-demand principle that rules during a typical breastfeeding relationship, once pregnancy hormones enter the equation, all bets are off, and the hormonal changes generally do not allow the supply-demand principle to hold. So increasing demand by nursing more often does not mean your supply will respond. Also typical lactogenic foods or supplements for increasing supply tend not work either. How to keep your nursling getting breastmilk, that perfect food, then? Well, if you can, it is better to space out pregnancies so that, at the very least, your nursling is well into solid foods before you become pregnant again (ie. not until your nursling is at least 9 months to a year old). This way if you do lose your milk, your nursling will be able to compensate with eating more foods, and you can keep nursing for comfort and bonding if you choose. Of course it's possible you didn't intend to become pregnant as soon as you find yourself pregnant again, and maybe your baby is still very young. If this is the case, you can still nurse your baby, but you may need to supplement partly or entirely so you should carefully monitor baby's weight gain and wet/soiled diapers, look for signs of dehydration, etc. If you need to supplement and you are committed to breastmilk for your baby, you can look into donor milk. If your baby will not take a bottle, you could try what is called a "supplemental nursing system" or SNS for short. This consists of a tube that is inserted beside your nipple as the baby nurses. The tube then goes to a pouch full of the supplement of your choice. This way the baby is still getting the natural feel of nursing but obtaining supplemental calories from donor milk or formula.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Nighttime Nursing--A Blessing in Disguise?
With all the talk of tired parents of babies, anyone who decides to become a new parent should be aware that it can mean losing sleep. I have dealt with nightwaking, and I get that it's frustrating and exhausting. I get that it's hard to be rational when your sleep is being interrupted. In those moments, I feel irritated and incapable of thinking clearly. What I often fail to remember in those moments is how good I have it.
When I say I have dealt with nightwaking, I do not mean that I have trudged across the house in the middle of the night to calm a baby whose eyes are open and filled with tears. What I mean by "nightwaking" are those rare occasions when my baby can't seem to settle. He fusses, rolls around, finds his way to me, nurses with his eyes still closed, rolls away from me, but can't get back into a deep sleep and so he repeats the process, often crying a little in his sleep, apparently as frustrated as I am. This cycle can repeat for up to 30-60 minutes, during which time I go from mostly asleep to half asleep to mostly awake...*But* my feet never touch the floor and I never leave the warmth of the family bed that I share with my 16 month old....And eventually he settles back into a deep sleep and I shortly follow him into dreamland.
And these occurrences are rare! Of all three of my kids, my son is the only one for whom such unsettling occurred at all! And even for him, it only happens quite infrequently--maybe when he's getting a tooth or feeling ill or had an overstimulating or disruptive day. Almost always my nights with my babies have been very peaceful. Yes my 16 month old still nurses during the night, but what that means is that he latches on without ever opening his eyes, and half the time I don't open mine either. I'm only vaguely aware (consciously, that is...Dr. James McKenna's research has shown that, subconsciously, cosleeping nursing moms are keenly aware of their baby's presence) that he's even nursing. My sleep is more disrupted by a thunderstorm or a fire whistle than by the negligible disruption of nightnursing. It is so easy--seriously! And we both wake up well-rested.
Plus there are benefits for both baby and mama:
For mama: Nightnursing prolongs breastfeeding infertility, allowing moms help with childspacing so that they are less likely to become pregnant again too soon. Nightnursing burns more calories, so you literally shed your pregnancy weight in your sleep!
For baby: Nightnursing gives more opportunities for caloric intake, fostering good growth. Nightnursing also gives babies more fat-rich milk, good for brain development. In addition, nightnursing gives baby more chances to receive antibodies to help ward off illnesses.
For both: Nightnursing promotes bonding and good sleep for both mama and baby.
Now I would be remiss not to mention that I did nightwean my daughters--the first between 16 and 18 months old and the second around 2 years old. The first was due to the fact that I had become pregnant with her sister, and suddenly those hormonal changes made my nipples way more sensitive, so that I really wasn't only "vaguely aware" of her nightnursing--I was instead waking up fully and feeling very irritable from the nipple sensitivity. The second daughter was nightweaned when I started going back to school and was busy working on homework until late into the night and found I would sometimes pass out with her if I ran back to the family bed to nurse her back to sleep when she stirred, thus not completing my homework and falling behind in my classes. I can't say that nightweaning them wasn't without tears, but it's MUCH easier, in my opinion, to explain to a toddler: "honey, nursies need to rest and you need to rest too, we sleep when the sun is down, you need to sleep too. here is a sippy cup of water if you're thirsty then you need to get back to sleep." and offer some cuddles instead than it would have been to an infant who really could use the calories and doesn't understand what you're explaining anyway. Assuming I hadn't experienced pregnancy symptoms or a schedule that was at odds with nightnursing, I'm sure I would have allowed my girls the benefits until they naturally nightweaned on their own--that is my current plan with my son.
Finally, let me tell you something about time. It's sometimes hard to get a good perspective on time when you are constantly being asked if your baby is sleeping through the night, or feeling pressure to get your baby falling asleep independently. But by the time you have your third you start to realize something. You look at your 10 year old and your baby and you understand how quickly they go from infancy to being a tween. You realize how precious and fleeting this time is when they physically need you so intensely. And if this thought occurs to you in the wee hours of the night, you might find yourself deciding to open your eyes and glance down at the sweet innocent one contentedly nursing in his sleep. You might drink in the sight of him laying in the moonlight, stroking your hair and seeking nighttime comfort from you. You might remind yourself to commit this sight to memory and hold fast to it, because with another breath, he'll be a half-grown young man. Now is the time to cherish and savor these moments because tomorrow they'll be gone forever.
When I say I have dealt with nightwaking, I do not mean that I have trudged across the house in the middle of the night to calm a baby whose eyes are open and filled with tears. What I mean by "nightwaking" are those rare occasions when my baby can't seem to settle. He fusses, rolls around, finds his way to me, nurses with his eyes still closed, rolls away from me, but can't get back into a deep sleep and so he repeats the process, often crying a little in his sleep, apparently as frustrated as I am. This cycle can repeat for up to 30-60 minutes, during which time I go from mostly asleep to half asleep to mostly awake...*But* my feet never touch the floor and I never leave the warmth of the family bed that I share with my 16 month old....And eventually he settles back into a deep sleep and I shortly follow him into dreamland.
And these occurrences are rare! Of all three of my kids, my son is the only one for whom such unsettling occurred at all! And even for him, it only happens quite infrequently--maybe when he's getting a tooth or feeling ill or had an overstimulating or disruptive day. Almost always my nights with my babies have been very peaceful. Yes my 16 month old still nurses during the night, but what that means is that he latches on without ever opening his eyes, and half the time I don't open mine either. I'm only vaguely aware (consciously, that is...Dr. James McKenna's research has shown that, subconsciously, cosleeping nursing moms are keenly aware of their baby's presence) that he's even nursing. My sleep is more disrupted by a thunderstorm or a fire whistle than by the negligible disruption of nightnursing. It is so easy--seriously! And we both wake up well-rested.
Plus there are benefits for both baby and mama:
For mama: Nightnursing prolongs breastfeeding infertility, allowing moms help with childspacing so that they are less likely to become pregnant again too soon. Nightnursing burns more calories, so you literally shed your pregnancy weight in your sleep!
For baby: Nightnursing gives more opportunities for caloric intake, fostering good growth. Nightnursing also gives babies more fat-rich milk, good for brain development. In addition, nightnursing gives baby more chances to receive antibodies to help ward off illnesses.
For both: Nightnursing promotes bonding and good sleep for both mama and baby.
Now I would be remiss not to mention that I did nightwean my daughters--the first between 16 and 18 months old and the second around 2 years old. The first was due to the fact that I had become pregnant with her sister, and suddenly those hormonal changes made my nipples way more sensitive, so that I really wasn't only "vaguely aware" of her nightnursing--I was instead waking up fully and feeling very irritable from the nipple sensitivity. The second daughter was nightweaned when I started going back to school and was busy working on homework until late into the night and found I would sometimes pass out with her if I ran back to the family bed to nurse her back to sleep when she stirred, thus not completing my homework and falling behind in my classes. I can't say that nightweaning them wasn't without tears, but it's MUCH easier, in my opinion, to explain to a toddler: "honey, nursies need to rest and you need to rest too, we sleep when the sun is down, you need to sleep too. here is a sippy cup of water if you're thirsty then you need to get back to sleep." and offer some cuddles instead than it would have been to an infant who really could use the calories and doesn't understand what you're explaining anyway. Assuming I hadn't experienced pregnancy symptoms or a schedule that was at odds with nightnursing, I'm sure I would have allowed my girls the benefits until they naturally nightweaned on their own--that is my current plan with my son.
Finally, let me tell you something about time. It's sometimes hard to get a good perspective on time when you are constantly being asked if your baby is sleeping through the night, or feeling pressure to get your baby falling asleep independently. But by the time you have your third you start to realize something. You look at your 10 year old and your baby and you understand how quickly they go from infancy to being a tween. You realize how precious and fleeting this time is when they physically need you so intensely. And if this thought occurs to you in the wee hours of the night, you might find yourself deciding to open your eyes and glance down at the sweet innocent one contentedly nursing in his sleep. You might drink in the sight of him laying in the moonlight, stroking your hair and seeking nighttime comfort from you. You might remind yourself to commit this sight to memory and hold fast to it, because with another breath, he'll be a half-grown young man. Now is the time to cherish and savor these moments because tomorrow they'll be gone forever.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Wake-up Call for Vegans
The holidays are always a time when people indulge in food that may not be the healthiest. This is true of omnivores and vegans alike. The difference between the two is that vegans often like to pretend their alternatives to meat-based rich holiday foods are actually healthy. Here's where I need to call out my fellow vegans who believe this. Here's where I need to make a plea to demand more, because only then will food manufacturers do better in providing truly healthy alternatives.
I've got news for you, vegans: Soy is NOT a health food. I've got more news for you: You probably ate too much soy even *before* going vegan. And even more news: Seitan is only the lesser of the evils, as we become more aware of the prevalence of gluten sensitivities.
We've been led astray, vegans. In our fervor to find a healthier diet style, we have embraced other foods that, in some ways, aren't much better than the foods they replaced. Soy is implicated in numerous health problems from breast cancer to thyroid function to hormone imbalance to nutritional deficiencies due to the negative impacts of phytic acids. You can find countless scientific journal articles of study results on some of these issues. Meanwhile we are told soy is healthy for us, a complete protein, but when you dig deeper, those painting the picture of soy as a health food tend to fall into two categories: those involved with marketing soy for financial gain or those who would love to think soy is healthy for them (mainly vegans, vegetarians, and menopausal women wanting a natural alternative to treat the symptoms of menopause). We need to ask ourselves who is likely to be more impartial. We need to face the hard truth that our beloved tofu may not be so beloved for our bodies, instead of believing the convenient lie.
Furthermore, we need to start reading labels. Soy derivatives are in practically every bread, cereal, cracker, margarine, soup, and chocolate bar on the market. Add up all the soybean oil, soy lecithin, textured vegetable protein, and soy sauce that even omnivores eat, it's likely to add up to more soy than in the touted healthful Asian diets. It then becomes clear why replacing cow's milk with soy milk, cheese with soy cheese, and meats with soy-based meat alternatives sends us to soy overboard very fast!
Those of us who have begun to realize the dangers of soy may turn to nut or rice milks and seitan-based meat substitutes. But it is becoming increasingly clear that gluten is not as easily digested by humans as we once thought. Elusive gluten sensitivites are often difficult to track down; often the only way to diagnose gluten sensitivity is to eliminate it in the diet and note if this causes the disappearance of symptoms. Sometimes it does; sometimes it's inconclusive. But one thing that is clear is that we don't fully understand all the ramifications of consuming the vast amounts of gluten in the typical Western diet. Not to mention that seitan products often contain soy in the form of tamari or soy sauce added to give a saltier flavor.
So if soy is unacceptable and seitan is not the greatest either, what's left? Simply put: nothing for anyone without time to make homemade veggie burgers, homemade veggie sausages, and other such meat substitutes. For this mother of a busy family of 5, I do not have that kind of time. We need to demand more. Time has shown us that food manufacturers have eagerly tapped into the faux meat market and more and more convenience foods have become available to vegans, vegetarians, and those seeking to reduce their meat consumption. It is "easier" now to be vegan than ever, except that you must be willing to accept high levels of soy, sodium, and wheat in your diet for the sake of convenience. That makes your Thanksgiving tofurky not much more healthy than the real deal. But if we stop buying these poor excuses for "healthy" alternatives, companies will be forced to re-think their tired go-to's of soy and seitan when devising meat alternatives.
There are a few such products on the market--Sunshine Burgers, So-Delicious coconut ice cream and yogurt, and Daiya nondairy nonsoy cheese come to mind, as a prime examples. But there is a decided paucity of soy-free, wheat-free wholesome vegan prepared foods to choose from. And yet there are plenty of viable alternatives that could be pursued. Take Hemp-Fu for example, an alternative to soy-based tofu made from hemp and sold in Italy: http://www.armoniaebonta.it/vediProdotto_EN.aspx?id=7 A quick google search will turn up tons of *recipes* for non-soy tofu and tempeh and veggie burgers and roasts, but very few commercially sold products premade, demonstrating both that soy-free, wheat-free meat alternatives *can* be made and that despite this, they are *not* being made commercially. There's no reason there couldn't be more to choose from except that vegans are just as happy to gobble up soy and stick their heads in the sand, so that there's no need for food manufacturers to be innovative or come up with alternatives. Now is the time to demand more.
Once there's demand, supply will follow. In the meantime, this Thanksgiving, I'll be cooking up a Celebration Field Roast, which is at least soy-free albeit high in sodium and gluten. In addition, I'll be making my gravy with Coconut Aminos instead of Braggs or soy sauce, my mashed potatoes will be made with almond or hemp milk, and my veggies will be smothered in soy-free Earth Balance margarine. I'll do my best to minimize the amount of soy and gluten in our feast, while optimizing for how much I do not need to make from scratch. This is my compromise for the time being, but of course at no point will I delude myself into believing it to be the healthiest meal possible--it will be healthier than most people's feast, and some day maybe with a little more progress in the faux meat and faux dairy market, it will be what I'd consider a healthy enough meal to be truly thankful for.
I've got news for you, vegans: Soy is NOT a health food. I've got more news for you: You probably ate too much soy even *before* going vegan. And even more news: Seitan is only the lesser of the evils, as we become more aware of the prevalence of gluten sensitivities.
We've been led astray, vegans. In our fervor to find a healthier diet style, we have embraced other foods that, in some ways, aren't much better than the foods they replaced. Soy is implicated in numerous health problems from breast cancer to thyroid function to hormone imbalance to nutritional deficiencies due to the negative impacts of phytic acids. You can find countless scientific journal articles of study results on some of these issues. Meanwhile we are told soy is healthy for us, a complete protein, but when you dig deeper, those painting the picture of soy as a health food tend to fall into two categories: those involved with marketing soy for financial gain or those who would love to think soy is healthy for them (mainly vegans, vegetarians, and menopausal women wanting a natural alternative to treat the symptoms of menopause). We need to ask ourselves who is likely to be more impartial. We need to face the hard truth that our beloved tofu may not be so beloved for our bodies, instead of believing the convenient lie.
Furthermore, we need to start reading labels. Soy derivatives are in practically every bread, cereal, cracker, margarine, soup, and chocolate bar on the market. Add up all the soybean oil, soy lecithin, textured vegetable protein, and soy sauce that even omnivores eat, it's likely to add up to more soy than in the touted healthful Asian diets. It then becomes clear why replacing cow's milk with soy milk, cheese with soy cheese, and meats with soy-based meat alternatives sends us to soy overboard very fast!
Those of us who have begun to realize the dangers of soy may turn to nut or rice milks and seitan-based meat substitutes. But it is becoming increasingly clear that gluten is not as easily digested by humans as we once thought. Elusive gluten sensitivites are often difficult to track down; often the only way to diagnose gluten sensitivity is to eliminate it in the diet and note if this causes the disappearance of symptoms. Sometimes it does; sometimes it's inconclusive. But one thing that is clear is that we don't fully understand all the ramifications of consuming the vast amounts of gluten in the typical Western diet. Not to mention that seitan products often contain soy in the form of tamari or soy sauce added to give a saltier flavor.
So if soy is unacceptable and seitan is not the greatest either, what's left? Simply put: nothing for anyone without time to make homemade veggie burgers, homemade veggie sausages, and other such meat substitutes. For this mother of a busy family of 5, I do not have that kind of time. We need to demand more. Time has shown us that food manufacturers have eagerly tapped into the faux meat market and more and more convenience foods have become available to vegans, vegetarians, and those seeking to reduce their meat consumption. It is "easier" now to be vegan than ever, except that you must be willing to accept high levels of soy, sodium, and wheat in your diet for the sake of convenience. That makes your Thanksgiving tofurky not much more healthy than the real deal. But if we stop buying these poor excuses for "healthy" alternatives, companies will be forced to re-think their tired go-to's of soy and seitan when devising meat alternatives.
There are a few such products on the market--Sunshine Burgers, So-Delicious coconut ice cream and yogurt, and Daiya nondairy nonsoy cheese come to mind, as a prime examples. But there is a decided paucity of soy-free, wheat-free wholesome vegan prepared foods to choose from. And yet there are plenty of viable alternatives that could be pursued. Take Hemp-Fu for example, an alternative to soy-based tofu made from hemp and sold in Italy: http://www.armoniaebonta.it/vediProdotto_EN.aspx?id=7 A quick google search will turn up tons of *recipes* for non-soy tofu and tempeh and veggie burgers and roasts, but very few commercially sold products premade, demonstrating both that soy-free, wheat-free meat alternatives *can* be made and that despite this, they are *not* being made commercially. There's no reason there couldn't be more to choose from except that vegans are just as happy to gobble up soy and stick their heads in the sand, so that there's no need for food manufacturers to be innovative or come up with alternatives. Now is the time to demand more.
Once there's demand, supply will follow. In the meantime, this Thanksgiving, I'll be cooking up a Celebration Field Roast, which is at least soy-free albeit high in sodium and gluten. In addition, I'll be making my gravy with Coconut Aminos instead of Braggs or soy sauce, my mashed potatoes will be made with almond or hemp milk, and my veggies will be smothered in soy-free Earth Balance margarine. I'll do my best to minimize the amount of soy and gluten in our feast, while optimizing for how much I do not need to make from scratch. This is my compromise for the time being, but of course at no point will I delude myself into believing it to be the healthiest meal possible--it will be healthier than most people's feast, and some day maybe with a little more progress in the faux meat and faux dairy market, it will be what I'd consider a healthy enough meal to be truly thankful for.
Friday, October 5, 2012
The Burden of Atheism
Many atheists I know claim they feel liberated by the fact that they do not believe in an afterlife. They claim it allows them to cherish the life they have and feel satisfied in the finality of death. While I agree that not believing in an afterlife does allow one to make every moment of one's life count and never take our time being alive for granted, I have a different outlook on mortality than what these atheists say. Furthermore, I think it's important to voice this outlook, because I often feel ostracized both from the religious and from the areligious because of my outlook. I suspect, though, that I am not alone in this persepctive....
Life to me is like this:
You find yourself on some type of a plane which seems built for long-term travel. You have no clue how you got there. But you have a full tank of fuel and find the plane on some apparent autopilot about to take off. You've never been on a plane before and you only have a vague clue what "taking off" might even mean, but soon you find yourself speeding ahead and it's a little disconcerting. But then you feel the lift under the wings of the plane and soon you are rising, rising to what you do not know. You swallow hard as you go through the changes in altitude and eventually you make your way through the clouds and level off. Your journey is born.
As you look around you see you are not alone. Vague voices you now recall having heard on your radio are speaking to you and you see the wings of other planes in your family, in formation beside you. Their voices sound reassuring. They seem to be showing you your way. You trust them instinctively and follow.
Soon all their jargon makes sense to you and you are quickly learning how to pilot on your own. Sometimes their instruction helps you; sometimes your observations help you; and sometimes you learn things by trial and error. But the feeling is exhilarating, as is the view around you. The sun reflects off the clouds whose shapes are constantly changing. Sometimes holes in the clouds reveals spectacular mountain peaks, oceans, rivers, or fields below. Sometimes the sun rises or sets and turns the clouds brilliant colors. Every sight you take in is new and gorgeous.
Eventually, you notice patterns develop in the weather and the sunrise and sunset, in the moon and stars above, and after some time you get the hang of it all and you hear less and less direct instruction from your more experienced family planes in the sky. Indeed, the other planes wander father and farther away, giving you more and more freedom of the sky. Soon you are on your own, independently piloting your own plane.
Somewhere in the back of your mind you know you only have a finite amount of fuel, but you're more focussed on the journey in the undertaking, and you know you have an ample supply left. You may chance to witness other planes. though, that, even with plenty of fuel end up caught in a storm or maybe try a tricky maneuver and crash to the ground. You might even experiment with some of these reckless moves yourself, but somehow you manage to keep your wits about you and not flirt with disaster too much. And somehow you are lucky enough that nothing as freakish as a lightning strike or bad storm has come your way and threatened your flight.
You sometimes find your independence exciting; sometimes lonesome; sometimes dull. But all in all, it is what it is and it's all you know. You sometimes contemplate what lies ahead. Maybe you even try to vaguely plan for it--at least in little bits anyway: perhaps the next hour or the next day. If you are lucky, you may find an attractive looking plane that comes your way. Your path flirts with the other plane's and perhaps you become a duo.
After some time with your cohort, you decide to beckon more planes of your own design from the earth to join you. You talk to them over the radio and figure out how to remotely launch them up into the sky. With your guidance you help them take off and soon they join you, protected near your wing, helped along with your radio and remote maneuvers... What a responsibility you now have! Other lives in your hands....
There's that fuel gauge again... Could it really be nearly half empty already? Where has all the time gone? But you distract yourself again watching your little family of planes in interacting formation, the newer ones testing out the ropes now and then, learning how to pilot for themselves.
Those planes you brought into the sky quickly start becoming more and more independent, and your fuel seems to be burning faster and faster. As you do from time to time, you reflect upon your situation. You've seen other planes crash and burn. You remember the planes that helped bring you into the sky. They are nearing the end of their fuel now. You know your time with them is limited.... And you know your own time is limited....
You visit your parent planes. They are happy to see you and the new ones you've brought into the sky. But the fuel keeps burning...
The flight is sometimes quite routine. You've seen that kind of cloud a thousand times now, flown over that landmark more times than you care to think of, and done countless repetitions of these maneuvers. Though it often feels a bit pointless, you also catch a glimmer of beauty that does not escape your attention. A flicker of light, the dazzle of the stars... And the planes you've brought to the sky, now independently flying, sometimes come to visit and make merry with you.
Some of your equipment may even have some pathological problems now, but nothing that seems to prevent the flight from proceeding. And the fuel gauge reads lower and lower. This last half of a tank has surely been burning faster than the first half. How could it be this depleted already? By now those planes that brought you up have long exhausted their supply and met their demise below. You've moved forward, for what else is there to do? Yet you know your fate is no different than theirs...
For thinking about these realities and accepting them at face value for their obvious inevitability, you've been met not with commiseration but with harsh words. You've heard some on their radios saying that people like you are the reason so many planes are led astray, because you won't accept on faith that after your fuel is exhausted and you apparently crash to the ground, you actually survive this aboard an invisible aircraft of grandiose design, beyond detection of our meager physical radar. And if you'd only just believe in this, you would be saved. It sounds beautiful--never to have to worry about an end to your journey. But try as you might you cannot make yourself believe this as much as you would like to. And despite the accusations that your lack of faith is leading you and other planes astray, you find that knowing your fuel will one day be exhausted makes you revel in each moment you have, and inspires you to help others see the beauty all around them and enjoy it while it lasts.
Yet despite this silver lining, you still see the cloud as being a cloud. The fuel as being the fuel. And the ground awaiting your demise as the ending to your journey. And the truth is... It is downright terrifying to know that all you know will come to an end. All you feel; all you see; all you experience. Over. You try to make the best of this realization in your every day actions. But it haunts you. It creeps in from time to time. In the quiet darkness of the night or the long shadows of the afternoon sun. You know as surely as the sun sets, so will your time on this, the flight of your life. There is no comfort in this thought, nor can you force yourself to believe something that to you seems nonsensical, just to give you some sort of relief to pondering your own mortality.
So you move forth again, sometimes going through the motions, sometimes realizing something profound, sometimes perfecting a better way to fly, and sometimes passing on a bit of your wisdom to those with more fuel in their tanks, hoping that in some small way a part of your influence, if not your plane, will go on long after you have fallen to the ground. And in these actions you reach a contemplative peace... That is, a peace that will last... at least until the next time you think too hard on that ever-shrinking supply of fuel...
Life to me is like this:
You find yourself on some type of a plane which seems built for long-term travel. You have no clue how you got there. But you have a full tank of fuel and find the plane on some apparent autopilot about to take off. You've never been on a plane before and you only have a vague clue what "taking off" might even mean, but soon you find yourself speeding ahead and it's a little disconcerting. But then you feel the lift under the wings of the plane and soon you are rising, rising to what you do not know. You swallow hard as you go through the changes in altitude and eventually you make your way through the clouds and level off. Your journey is born.
As you look around you see you are not alone. Vague voices you now recall having heard on your radio are speaking to you and you see the wings of other planes in your family, in formation beside you. Their voices sound reassuring. They seem to be showing you your way. You trust them instinctively and follow.
Soon all their jargon makes sense to you and you are quickly learning how to pilot on your own. Sometimes their instruction helps you; sometimes your observations help you; and sometimes you learn things by trial and error. But the feeling is exhilarating, as is the view around you. The sun reflects off the clouds whose shapes are constantly changing. Sometimes holes in the clouds reveals spectacular mountain peaks, oceans, rivers, or fields below. Sometimes the sun rises or sets and turns the clouds brilliant colors. Every sight you take in is new and gorgeous.
Eventually, you notice patterns develop in the weather and the sunrise and sunset, in the moon and stars above, and after some time you get the hang of it all and you hear less and less direct instruction from your more experienced family planes in the sky. Indeed, the other planes wander father and farther away, giving you more and more freedom of the sky. Soon you are on your own, independently piloting your own plane.
Somewhere in the back of your mind you know you only have a finite amount of fuel, but you're more focussed on the journey in the undertaking, and you know you have an ample supply left. You may chance to witness other planes. though, that, even with plenty of fuel end up caught in a storm or maybe try a tricky maneuver and crash to the ground. You might even experiment with some of these reckless moves yourself, but somehow you manage to keep your wits about you and not flirt with disaster too much. And somehow you are lucky enough that nothing as freakish as a lightning strike or bad storm has come your way and threatened your flight.
You sometimes find your independence exciting; sometimes lonesome; sometimes dull. But all in all, it is what it is and it's all you know. You sometimes contemplate what lies ahead. Maybe you even try to vaguely plan for it--at least in little bits anyway: perhaps the next hour or the next day. If you are lucky, you may find an attractive looking plane that comes your way. Your path flirts with the other plane's and perhaps you become a duo.
After some time with your cohort, you decide to beckon more planes of your own design from the earth to join you. You talk to them over the radio and figure out how to remotely launch them up into the sky. With your guidance you help them take off and soon they join you, protected near your wing, helped along with your radio and remote maneuvers... What a responsibility you now have! Other lives in your hands....
There's that fuel gauge again... Could it really be nearly half empty already? Where has all the time gone? But you distract yourself again watching your little family of planes in interacting formation, the newer ones testing out the ropes now and then, learning how to pilot for themselves.
Those planes you brought into the sky quickly start becoming more and more independent, and your fuel seems to be burning faster and faster. As you do from time to time, you reflect upon your situation. You've seen other planes crash and burn. You remember the planes that helped bring you into the sky. They are nearing the end of their fuel now. You know your time with them is limited.... And you know your own time is limited....
You visit your parent planes. They are happy to see you and the new ones you've brought into the sky. But the fuel keeps burning...
The flight is sometimes quite routine. You've seen that kind of cloud a thousand times now, flown over that landmark more times than you care to think of, and done countless repetitions of these maneuvers. Though it often feels a bit pointless, you also catch a glimmer of beauty that does not escape your attention. A flicker of light, the dazzle of the stars... And the planes you've brought to the sky, now independently flying, sometimes come to visit and make merry with you.
Some of your equipment may even have some pathological problems now, but nothing that seems to prevent the flight from proceeding. And the fuel gauge reads lower and lower. This last half of a tank has surely been burning faster than the first half. How could it be this depleted already? By now those planes that brought you up have long exhausted their supply and met their demise below. You've moved forward, for what else is there to do? Yet you know your fate is no different than theirs...
For thinking about these realities and accepting them at face value for their obvious inevitability, you've been met not with commiseration but with harsh words. You've heard some on their radios saying that people like you are the reason so many planes are led astray, because you won't accept on faith that after your fuel is exhausted and you apparently crash to the ground, you actually survive this aboard an invisible aircraft of grandiose design, beyond detection of our meager physical radar. And if you'd only just believe in this, you would be saved. It sounds beautiful--never to have to worry about an end to your journey. But try as you might you cannot make yourself believe this as much as you would like to. And despite the accusations that your lack of faith is leading you and other planes astray, you find that knowing your fuel will one day be exhausted makes you revel in each moment you have, and inspires you to help others see the beauty all around them and enjoy it while it lasts.
Yet despite this silver lining, you still see the cloud as being a cloud. The fuel as being the fuel. And the ground awaiting your demise as the ending to your journey. And the truth is... It is downright terrifying to know that all you know will come to an end. All you feel; all you see; all you experience. Over. You try to make the best of this realization in your every day actions. But it haunts you. It creeps in from time to time. In the quiet darkness of the night or the long shadows of the afternoon sun. You know as surely as the sun sets, so will your time on this, the flight of your life. There is no comfort in this thought, nor can you force yourself to believe something that to you seems nonsensical, just to give you some sort of relief to pondering your own mortality.
So you move forth again, sometimes going through the motions, sometimes realizing something profound, sometimes perfecting a better way to fly, and sometimes passing on a bit of your wisdom to those with more fuel in their tanks, hoping that in some small way a part of your influence, if not your plane, will go on long after you have fallen to the ground. And in these actions you reach a contemplative peace... That is, a peace that will last... at least until the next time you think too hard on that ever-shrinking supply of fuel...
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Reflections on Sense of Direction
"It's that way, mom!" I shouted, pointing at the right branch of the fork in the road.
"I don't know," she responded, "I think it's the other way."
We were a tad lost in New Jersey and I was a giddy 7 year old anxious to get to the beach. The right branch seemed to take us to a lower elevation and the trees seemed to thin out, so even though I had no proof, it just felt like that was the way to the ocean.
But my mom went the other way. Soon she realized she wasn't getting closer to our destination and stopped for directions. This was 1984, before everyone had cell phones and gps. No we were relying on a good old fashioned paper map--you know, the kind you can unfold but then never figure out quite how to refold properly.
Anyhow, it turned out that I had been right. Had my mother listened to me, my intuitive sense of direction would have led us straight to the beach. She marveled at this briefly but to me it had seemed obvious.
Ah the 80s, when kids like me roamed around for hours in the woods unsupervised til our moms called us for dinner. And not "called us" on our mobile phones but "called us" as in shouted our names repeatedly throughout the neighborhood. If you took too long getting home you would get an earful, so it helped to know all the shortcuts through the forest, especially when you had a penchant for wandering much farther than your mom probably realized.
My sister and I and some of the neighbor kids would sometimes play kickball, but what we really loved to do was explore. We would pretend we were trailblazers on a new frontier and go deeper and deeper into the wild. We soon learned that the easiest paths were to stay near the creek that wound through the trees. This creek was a tributary of Brush Creek (aka Bushy Run) which was a tributary of Turtle Creek which flowed into the Monongahela River which joined up with the Allegheny River in nearby Pittsburgh to form the Ohio River. The Ohio River then ultimately dumps into the Mississippi River whose basin is the deltas in New Orleans which flow out to the Gulf of Mexico.
I had never been to New Orleans (still haven't) but as a child I was utterly fascinated with how things were connected. It was so cool for me to contemplate sending a message in a bottle down our little creek and thinking that maybe one day it would be found by a child in Louisiana. I was also naturally drawn to the water. Creeks, streams, rivers, lakes, and especially the sea called to my heart. I could spend hours listening to the water rush down a stream or the waves crashing to the shore. I felt at home wading, swimming and splashing. I never wanted to leave the water, even at a pool. When my mom would try to tell me it was time to get out of my grandparents' pool or the ymca pool, I would sneak under the water, acting like I didn't hear her-she literally had to drag me out! And when my recurrent ear infections would flare up I wouldn't tell my mom that my ears hurt because I didn't want to miss my swim lesson-I ended up needing tubes in my ears as a result. But every second I could spend in or near the water was worth it in my young mind.
So as we tread upon the deer paths near our neighborhood creek we would "discover" "new" features, mainly "waterfalls." We'd mark how far our explorations had taken us based on the number of waterfalls.we'd passed since the common entrance to the woods. If you passed waterfall #1 you'd embarked on a sizable journey, but if you made it to waterfall #2, you had done some serious exploring. Then there was the rare occasion when you could brag "I made it past waterfall #3!"
I believe these early explorations along with my natural attraction to water were what allowed me to sense which way it was to the ocean that summer day. Besides, I could just smell the sea with our car windows rolled down and notice which way the ocean breeze seemed to be blowing the leaves on the trees. It wasn't magic or divine intervention that told me, but rather, paying attention to nature's subtleties.
As I got older, I learned more about geography. I loved studying maps. Like those days in the woods, I turned my map into a journey. I imagined taking various roads or highways and pictured the towns and cities I would pass through. I would use the map's legend to give me an idea how big the town was, whether the road was two or four lanes, if there were parks or bodies of water nearby. I soon learned that many back roads seemed to meander along rivers or streams just as my paths through the woods meandered along the creek. I noticed that major highways more often took direct routes but sometimes had to wind around mountains or tunnel through them. I became proficient at estimating the distance from one place to another and even using the mileage markings to optimize a driving route from point a to point b. I could also come up with alternate routes in case of traffic or construction. And I could tell you which way was most likely to give you the most scenic route to your destination. All of this I could do long before I was old enough to drive.
Yet on vacations my mom & stepdad never listened to me. Every year they would have their maps and their AAA trip ticks and still get confused somewhere and end up arguing about which way to go. I gave up trying to talk sense into them and just tried to stay out of it.
Nor did they take my suggestion of booking a hotel room at a decent logical midpoint of our journey on two day drives. Instead, my stepdad insisted he did not want to be obligated to stop at some "arbitrary" point but wanted to see how far we could get the first day and then find lodging. It reminds me now a little of my 8 yr old holding her need to use the bathroom until she's desperate and then assuming there will always be a restroom available.
The flaw in this logic seems obvious, yet it took my stepdad seemingly by surprise one year when we were driving back from Florida. When he finally agreed we had driven far enough the first day, it was rather late and we were in Va. We stopped at hotel after hotel but they were all without vacancies. We kept driving north as we searched... and it got later and later... and eventually we were in WV...still no vacancies. Finally my stepdad gave up and decided to just push through til we got home... Thus he ended up driving the whole journey all at once and we arrived home at around 5:00AM. It was absurd and completely avoidable.
The summer after I graduated from high school I got my driver's license and shortly thereafter entered college in the mid 90s, attending a small school in the central Pennsylvania Amish country. It was the era of cheap gas and when my mom bought a new car she gave me her old 1989 Acura Integra and I used to take it on countless road trips. My college sweetheart and I would spontaneously decide to drive to Maryland or New Jersey or just some obscure little town in Pennsylvania. All we ever took with us were snacks and our PA Atlas and Gazetteer. And we always found our way around. People were amazed at our exhaustive knowledge of PA geography--we could pretty much tell you where just about any random town in PA was located.
When we married a few weeks after college graduation, we decided to drive to Sedona, Arizona for our honeymoon, a 2,000 mile trek. We explored all over AZ for a week, and on the way home, we purposely took a different route home so that we could see more of the country along the way. We never got lost.
When we separated and I took a job in Florida, I thought nothing of driving back to PA alone to visit family. I also took random road trips alone when I lived in FL. I loved going to St. Augustine (which was a really straightforward journey), but I also drove to Tampa, Lakeland, Orlando, and all over Brevard County where I lived.
Over the years, I continued collecting state atlases and using them to find state parks and campgrounds for cheap road trips. Eventually, I did start using google maps, too, but usually just to plan my tentative route, always leaving re-routing options open in my mind for spontaneous changes of plan or to avoid congestion. The latest technological innovation of smart phones has allowed me to avoid traffic before I even get stuck in it, since google has real-time traffic, and I can re-route before we get snarled in it. That said I hate GPS and never plan to own one. I don't like to be told where to go and just follow like a mindless robot, thank you. I have driven alone to Chicago, Myrtle Beach, New York, Baltimore, Allentown, and countless other places. I've also walked alone while pregnant all over Manhattan. I can handle it and I trust my sense of direction.
So when my new husband's parents worriedly kept calling us when we were on our way to DC for my brother-in-law's wedding, to be sure to give us detailed directions, I thought they were just being overprotective of their youngest (my husband). Thankfully he just went along with it, "yeah, yep," etc. but we were writing nothing down. The route there was ridiculously straightforward. I was not sure how anyone could possibly get lost on such a journey. As we got closer to the metro area, though, the red spots started popping up on google traffic, as I had anticipated they might. I'd already selected a plan b, and a plan c and d to re-route around traffic. We had to go with plan c, due to plan b becoming red the closer we got. But it was very simple to do, and even though it took us through a residential area with speed bumps and stop signs, we got there much faster than we would have if we'd have blindly stuck with plan a or whatever major highway directions my well-intentioned mother-in-law was giving us.
Then I came to learn that it's more than just overprotection motivating my in-laws. When my husband showed me the typed up directions to their condo in the Outer Banks, I was just like, "wow, really??" They had sent them to be sure we had every step laid out and everyone's phone number in case of emergency. He went on to explain that they had a whole vacation binder of info at their house.
I was awe-struck. Part of me admired their planning ahead (unlike the family vacations I experienced growing up). But mostly I felt it was very ocd of them. I thought about the almost ritualistic vacation traditions they followed, as described to me by my husband, and began feeling anxious about our upcoming trip with them. This will be my first vacation with the in-laws and they seemed to have every last detail planned out in cookie cutter fashion.
Cookies-that's how it was! Like following a recipe. When I cook, I rarely follow a recipe strictly. I like to be able to tweak things or go in a different direction than I first thought I would. I like that kind of freedom and spontaneity. So it is with travel plans-I like a little flexibility.
Don't get me wrong, I do like having a general plan (like booking a hotel room), but the details are better left to circumstance, in my opinion. Like when I took my girls to FL and let them choose which places to go to and when-we saw things I never knew existed when I lived there. Or the last minute re-routing we took on our way to my brother-in-law's wedding. Had we stuck with the "recipe" I can guarantee my husband would have been late for the rehearsal. Besides, hadn't my in-laws ever seen the National Lampoons Vacation movies? Hadn't they learned anything from Clark Griswold about the pitfalls of too much planning? The lesson I took away from these movies was that the more intricate your plan, the more bound it was to fail.
And what in life really follows our plans that precisely anyway? Isn't it better to stay open to the possibility of re-routing or taking the scenic way or detouring or doing something else a little different? There's almost always more than one way to get somewhere. The coolest highway I found in FL is a little two-lane road through the sparsely-populated wilderness between the Atlantic coast and the Kissimmee area. It has a speed limit of 55 mph and there are never any cars on it. Plus, it's FREE. You can totally avoid the tolls and enjoy the quiet serenity of this region and get there almost just as fast as you could have on the major highways. But if you go to google maps, and ask for directions, you won't see this pop up as an option. Like Robert Frost, I prefer this less-traveled-by road.
So thank you to my in-laws for their good intentions in providing us fool-proof directions, but I like playing the fool sometimes--throwing caution to the wind, leaving doors open, and trusting my instincts and sense of direction. We'll see you at the beach, but I can't say yet how we'll be getting there :)
"I don't know," she responded, "I think it's the other way."
We were a tad lost in New Jersey and I was a giddy 7 year old anxious to get to the beach. The right branch seemed to take us to a lower elevation and the trees seemed to thin out, so even though I had no proof, it just felt like that was the way to the ocean.
But my mom went the other way. Soon she realized she wasn't getting closer to our destination and stopped for directions. This was 1984, before everyone had cell phones and gps. No we were relying on a good old fashioned paper map--you know, the kind you can unfold but then never figure out quite how to refold properly.
Anyhow, it turned out that I had been right. Had my mother listened to me, my intuitive sense of direction would have led us straight to the beach. She marveled at this briefly but to me it had seemed obvious.
Ah the 80s, when kids like me roamed around for hours in the woods unsupervised til our moms called us for dinner. And not "called us" on our mobile phones but "called us" as in shouted our names repeatedly throughout the neighborhood. If you took too long getting home you would get an earful, so it helped to know all the shortcuts through the forest, especially when you had a penchant for wandering much farther than your mom probably realized.
My sister and I and some of the neighbor kids would sometimes play kickball, but what we really loved to do was explore. We would pretend we were trailblazers on a new frontier and go deeper and deeper into the wild. We soon learned that the easiest paths were to stay near the creek that wound through the trees. This creek was a tributary of Brush Creek (aka Bushy Run) which was a tributary of Turtle Creek which flowed into the Monongahela River which joined up with the Allegheny River in nearby Pittsburgh to form the Ohio River. The Ohio River then ultimately dumps into the Mississippi River whose basin is the deltas in New Orleans which flow out to the Gulf of Mexico.
I had never been to New Orleans (still haven't) but as a child I was utterly fascinated with how things were connected. It was so cool for me to contemplate sending a message in a bottle down our little creek and thinking that maybe one day it would be found by a child in Louisiana. I was also naturally drawn to the water. Creeks, streams, rivers, lakes, and especially the sea called to my heart. I could spend hours listening to the water rush down a stream or the waves crashing to the shore. I felt at home wading, swimming and splashing. I never wanted to leave the water, even at a pool. When my mom would try to tell me it was time to get out of my grandparents' pool or the ymca pool, I would sneak under the water, acting like I didn't hear her-she literally had to drag me out! And when my recurrent ear infections would flare up I wouldn't tell my mom that my ears hurt because I didn't want to miss my swim lesson-I ended up needing tubes in my ears as a result. But every second I could spend in or near the water was worth it in my young mind.
So as we tread upon the deer paths near our neighborhood creek we would "discover" "new" features, mainly "waterfalls." We'd mark how far our explorations had taken us based on the number of waterfalls.we'd passed since the common entrance to the woods. If you passed waterfall #1 you'd embarked on a sizable journey, but if you made it to waterfall #2, you had done some serious exploring. Then there was the rare occasion when you could brag "I made it past waterfall #3!"
I believe these early explorations along with my natural attraction to water were what allowed me to sense which way it was to the ocean that summer day. Besides, I could just smell the sea with our car windows rolled down and notice which way the ocean breeze seemed to be blowing the leaves on the trees. It wasn't magic or divine intervention that told me, but rather, paying attention to nature's subtleties.
As I got older, I learned more about geography. I loved studying maps. Like those days in the woods, I turned my map into a journey. I imagined taking various roads or highways and pictured the towns and cities I would pass through. I would use the map's legend to give me an idea how big the town was, whether the road was two or four lanes, if there were parks or bodies of water nearby. I soon learned that many back roads seemed to meander along rivers or streams just as my paths through the woods meandered along the creek. I noticed that major highways more often took direct routes but sometimes had to wind around mountains or tunnel through them. I became proficient at estimating the distance from one place to another and even using the mileage markings to optimize a driving route from point a to point b. I could also come up with alternate routes in case of traffic or construction. And I could tell you which way was most likely to give you the most scenic route to your destination. All of this I could do long before I was old enough to drive.
Yet on vacations my mom & stepdad never listened to me. Every year they would have their maps and their AAA trip ticks and still get confused somewhere and end up arguing about which way to go. I gave up trying to talk sense into them and just tried to stay out of it.
Nor did they take my suggestion of booking a hotel room at a decent logical midpoint of our journey on two day drives. Instead, my stepdad insisted he did not want to be obligated to stop at some "arbitrary" point but wanted to see how far we could get the first day and then find lodging. It reminds me now a little of my 8 yr old holding her need to use the bathroom until she's desperate and then assuming there will always be a restroom available.
The flaw in this logic seems obvious, yet it took my stepdad seemingly by surprise one year when we were driving back from Florida. When he finally agreed we had driven far enough the first day, it was rather late and we were in Va. We stopped at hotel after hotel but they were all without vacancies. We kept driving north as we searched... and it got later and later... and eventually we were in WV...still no vacancies. Finally my stepdad gave up and decided to just push through til we got home... Thus he ended up driving the whole journey all at once and we arrived home at around 5:00AM. It was absurd and completely avoidable.
The summer after I graduated from high school I got my driver's license and shortly thereafter entered college in the mid 90s, attending a small school in the central Pennsylvania Amish country. It was the era of cheap gas and when my mom bought a new car she gave me her old 1989 Acura Integra and I used to take it on countless road trips. My college sweetheart and I would spontaneously decide to drive to Maryland or New Jersey or just some obscure little town in Pennsylvania. All we ever took with us were snacks and our PA Atlas and Gazetteer. And we always found our way around. People were amazed at our exhaustive knowledge of PA geography--we could pretty much tell you where just about any random town in PA was located.
When we married a few weeks after college graduation, we decided to drive to Sedona, Arizona for our honeymoon, a 2,000 mile trek. We explored all over AZ for a week, and on the way home, we purposely took a different route home so that we could see more of the country along the way. We never got lost.
When we separated and I took a job in Florida, I thought nothing of driving back to PA alone to visit family. I also took random road trips alone when I lived in FL. I loved going to St. Augustine (which was a really straightforward journey), but I also drove to Tampa, Lakeland, Orlando, and all over Brevard County where I lived.
Over the years, I continued collecting state atlases and using them to find state parks and campgrounds for cheap road trips. Eventually, I did start using google maps, too, but usually just to plan my tentative route, always leaving re-routing options open in my mind for spontaneous changes of plan or to avoid congestion. The latest technological innovation of smart phones has allowed me to avoid traffic before I even get stuck in it, since google has real-time traffic, and I can re-route before we get snarled in it. That said I hate GPS and never plan to own one. I don't like to be told where to go and just follow like a mindless robot, thank you. I have driven alone to Chicago, Myrtle Beach, New York, Baltimore, Allentown, and countless other places. I've also walked alone while pregnant all over Manhattan. I can handle it and I trust my sense of direction.
So when my new husband's parents worriedly kept calling us when we were on our way to DC for my brother-in-law's wedding, to be sure to give us detailed directions, I thought they were just being overprotective of their youngest (my husband). Thankfully he just went along with it, "yeah, yep," etc. but we were writing nothing down. The route there was ridiculously straightforward. I was not sure how anyone could possibly get lost on such a journey. As we got closer to the metro area, though, the red spots started popping up on google traffic, as I had anticipated they might. I'd already selected a plan b, and a plan c and d to re-route around traffic. We had to go with plan c, due to plan b becoming red the closer we got. But it was very simple to do, and even though it took us through a residential area with speed bumps and stop signs, we got there much faster than we would have if we'd have blindly stuck with plan a or whatever major highway directions my well-intentioned mother-in-law was giving us.
Then I came to learn that it's more than just overprotection motivating my in-laws. When my husband showed me the typed up directions to their condo in the Outer Banks, I was just like, "wow, really??" They had sent them to be sure we had every step laid out and everyone's phone number in case of emergency. He went on to explain that they had a whole vacation binder of info at their house.
I was awe-struck. Part of me admired their planning ahead (unlike the family vacations I experienced growing up). But mostly I felt it was very ocd of them. I thought about the almost ritualistic vacation traditions they followed, as described to me by my husband, and began feeling anxious about our upcoming trip with them. This will be my first vacation with the in-laws and they seemed to have every last detail planned out in cookie cutter fashion.
Cookies-that's how it was! Like following a recipe. When I cook, I rarely follow a recipe strictly. I like to be able to tweak things or go in a different direction than I first thought I would. I like that kind of freedom and spontaneity. So it is with travel plans-I like a little flexibility.
Don't get me wrong, I do like having a general plan (like booking a hotel room), but the details are better left to circumstance, in my opinion. Like when I took my girls to FL and let them choose which places to go to and when-we saw things I never knew existed when I lived there. Or the last minute re-routing we took on our way to my brother-in-law's wedding. Had we stuck with the "recipe" I can guarantee my husband would have been late for the rehearsal. Besides, hadn't my in-laws ever seen the National Lampoons Vacation movies? Hadn't they learned anything from Clark Griswold about the pitfalls of too much planning? The lesson I took away from these movies was that the more intricate your plan, the more bound it was to fail.
And what in life really follows our plans that precisely anyway? Isn't it better to stay open to the possibility of re-routing or taking the scenic way or detouring or doing something else a little different? There's almost always more than one way to get somewhere. The coolest highway I found in FL is a little two-lane road through the sparsely-populated wilderness between the Atlantic coast and the Kissimmee area. It has a speed limit of 55 mph and there are never any cars on it. Plus, it's FREE. You can totally avoid the tolls and enjoy the quiet serenity of this region and get there almost just as fast as you could have on the major highways. But if you go to google maps, and ask for directions, you won't see this pop up as an option. Like Robert Frost, I prefer this less-traveled-by road.
So thank you to my in-laws for their good intentions in providing us fool-proof directions, but I like playing the fool sometimes--throwing caution to the wind, leaving doors open, and trusting my instincts and sense of direction. We'll see you at the beach, but I can't say yet how we'll be getting there :)
Friday, July 13, 2012
Last Name Confusion
What follows is a clarification of the various last names of me and my children through the years. This has clearly been a source of some confusion for friends and loved ones, so I hope this sheds light on the matter, and also for anyone else interested, perhaps this post will serve to show some of the thought processes that go into decisions regarding last names.
I learned from a fairly young age to be defensive of my last name. This is because I was asked on more than one occasion before high school to change my last name. The first occasion was some time after my parents divorced, when my mom asked how I'd feel about changing my last name to her maiden name. The situation at the time was that my mother had primary custody of my sister and me, but we visited my father on weekends... Our visitations at that point were somewhat sporadic but I looked forward to them. We'd often stay the night and we were finding that these times were cherished and important in maintaining our relationship with our father. I felt very put in the middle by my mom's question. I did not feel I had enough time with my dad as it was, and I felt that if I abandoned his last name, it would distance us even farther. But on the other hand, I knew the divorce had been painful for my mother and that she'd really like to rid herself of this constant reminder of my father in her life. I also liked my mom's maiden name--it is a unique Irish name that stands apart from the rather common and bland last name of my father. If I'd have been given my mom's maiden name as part of my name at birth I would have embraced it. But I couldn't choose it over my father's last name years later. It just didn't feel right, because by now, my name had become a part of who I was.
Later when my mom remarried, my new stepfather asked about "adopting" me and having me take his last name. This was never an option in my mind. I already resented what I perceived as my stepfather trying to replace my father and my stepfather and I did not see eye to eye, nor did I celebrate my mother and stepfather's union. In fact, in my tween rebellion, I was at first refusing to even be a part of the wedding until my aunt sat down and explained how it would only hurt my mom. I eventually accepted that, while I did not understand her reasons, this was the man she'd chosen, so I would support her in this decision. However, it would be many years until my stepfather and I were civil to each other. Indeed, it wasn't really until adulthood that I would say we could predictably get along decently, and most of that had to do with his inability to control me any longer rather than a true reconciliation. Needless to say, taking his name was not something I would ever have considered seriously, but it did reinforce my name as my identity. This was the one piece of me that could not be taken by anyone, even though in my home life I otherwise felt like a prisoner to circumstances beyond my control.
So when my college sweetheart proposed to me, I automatically assumed I would keep my name. We had discussions about it and, though I think he was disappointed, he respected my decision. Of course we also discussed how we would handle naming of any children we were to have together. This was a little bit harder to decide upon. But I felt strongly that I wanted my name passed down in some way. My father had only one brother who had only one son, and that branch of the family was all but estranged from the rest of us. There was really no one to carry on my father's name. And besides that, I felt that if I was going to carry a baby for 9 months and go through the hard work of birthing that baby, I at least ought to be able to give it my name in some way. Still, I didn't want my name chosen over my husband's, as I felt we would be equal partners in parenting, and we were certainly equal partners biologically speaking, in the child's DNA. So it was difficult to come up with a fair way to handle the naming of our children. When we were expecting our first child, we finally decided on a hyphenated last name, for lack of better options. We chose my name to be the first in the hyphenated name, simply because it sounded better that way than with his name first.
We went round and round about what that child would do when that child had children, but that just made our heads spin. I came up with a theoretical system whereby last names could be passed down "fairly" even among those with hyphenated names: the oldest would pass down the part of the name that came from the older parent, then the second-born would pass down the younger parent's name, and it would continue to alternate that way, according to birth order. We resolved to explain to our child some day how this theoretical system could work, but make clear that how she ultimately handled naming her children would be completely up to her.
Thus my daughters have the last name: Myname-Hisname. That is their last name. The hyphen joins them together as one name. ie. you can't have one without the other--it would be just as incorrect to call them Firstname Myname as it would be to call them Firstname Hisname. Still, I quickly learned that this world is still ill-equipped for this concept. People get confused all the time. Computerized systems don't always allow a hyphen as a possible character. Schools, doctors, relatives, etc. sometimes call them only by Myname or by Hisname. Personally, I don't find this hyphenated concept to be that confusing. We use hyphenated words all the time in the English language, just as I have a few sentences ago. "ill-equipped" is neither "ill" nor "equipped." Those individual words have very different meanings from what "ill-equipped" means. But we generally have no problem recognizing that "ill-equipped" is one hyphenated unique word. My daughters' last names are no different.
Ok, well so far this isn't too confusing. As of the early part of this century, we had a family: the father went by Hisname, I went by Myname, and the kids went by Myname-Hisname. Frankly at that point, what was more confusing was probably that my then-husband also used his middle name as how he wanted people to address him, rather than his first name. Of course this was all going to get more muddled, as this family was destined not to stay intact.
My husband and I divorced and agreed on shared custody of the children. I selfishly would have preferred primary custody, but knowing how much I missed my father growing up, I didn't want to put my girls through that. I knew my girls had a good father, and if he wanted to be involved in their lives, I thought it was important for their sake, to continue our approach of being equal partners in parenting. The divorce was the easy part--no need to change any names. But a few years later we each remarried with the weddings taking place within a year of each other. First my ex's new spouse took his last name. This was a no-brainer for her as she was eager to ditch her ex-husband's last name. Then came my wedding. By this time, you'd think I would make the same decisions as I had in the past, but I didn't think it was fair to assume the same choices should apply to my current partner that applied to a previous partner. This was a new partner and a new marriage and I was not even the same person I'd been when I got married the first time. Thus I thought it made sense to at least re-examine the last name question.
Professionally, I had already been published under my maiden name as an author on a scientific journal article. That lent for a strong argument for keeping my maiden name. On the other hand, my soon-to-be father-in-law had only sisters (no brothers), and my fiance had one brother who was in a serious relationship but not yet married and so my in-laws did not have anyone yet to carry on their name (similar to my situation before my first marriage). We knew we were expecting a child when we got engaged, and I had already had the opportunity to pass my name down with my first two children, so this made a strong argument for taking my husband's name. Then again, would it be confusing to my girls' school, friends, etc. if their mother's last name did not appear at all in their hyphenated last name?
It was hard to know what to do. But finally I came back to my original reasoning for having kept my name in the first place--my identity. I asked myself to reflect on my name and my identity, and what I concluded was that I didn't really have one singular identity anymore, but more of a multi-faceted identity. Over the years I had gradually taken on many different roles and identified with different aspects of what made me me. I wore different hats at different times. Sometimes I wore the "mom" hat. Sometimes I wore the "astrophysicist" hat. Sometimes I wore the "soon-to-be-wife" hat, or the "pregnant woman" hat, or the "daughter" hat, or the "aunt" hat, and I'd worn other hats over the years in the past, too: the "nursing mom" hat, the "teacher" hat, the "student" hat... I concluded that I wanted the kind of flexibility in my name to put on different hats as I assumed different roles. I wanted to be able to go by my maiden name, or my husband's name (ie. a married name), or a combination of the two. So what I ended up doing was tacking on my husband's name to my name, with a space in between. ie. I became Firstname Myname Hisname2 (note that the "2" is used in this example to distinguish this as my second husband's name).
The space in between is important and different from a hyphen. It means there are two names, not one name joined by hyphenation. This means that either name or both are equally valid, sort of like you might use a string of adjectives to describe something. If you called me "that smart, friendly lady," it would be equally right to say that I was "smart" or that I was "friendly." Maybe in some context the "smart" would be more important, say if you were discussing my student achievement, and in another context the "friendly" might be more important, like if you were talking about my qualities as your friend.
So using both names with a space in between gave me the freedom I was looking for. Professionally I could just go by Firstname Myname as I always had. Taking on the wifely role, I could be Mrs. Hisname2. To avoid confusion with my daughters' affairs I could go by Myname Hisname2, which would make it obvious that we share some name derivative, but also introduce the idea that Mr. Hisname2 was their stepfather.
When our son was born, I felt that I'd still like a piece of my last name passed on in some way. But I didn't feel as strongly that it needed to be a part of his last name, since I already had two children with my name as part of their last name, whereas my husband had none. So we chose instead to give our son two middle names, one of which was my maiden name. This way, if he choses to, he can still pass it on in some way (perhaps as part of his children's middle name), and yet it keeps things simple enough, too, because the three of us can still be "The Hisname2's" to my son's future school, friends, etc., and my in-laws know their name will be passed on. Of course, it turned out that my brother-in-law got married the very next year after my husband and I did, and I have a sneaking suspicion that my son will not be the only one to pass down the name :). But at least we got things started...
Ultimately, there's no easy solution to the last name dilemma. Some women never had a relationship with their fathers or had a poor relationship with their fathers and see no need to carry on the name they were given at birth. Sometimes you see couples that come up with a new last name for them both to assume, and sometimes there are husbands who take their wives' last names. I support all these choices and others. I think the important thing is to do what feels right to your family, even if that's simply doing the traditional thing of the wife taking the husband's last name and passing it onto their children. In fact I believe there's absolutely nothing wrong with a woman taking her husband's last name, but I do think there's something wrong if she feels she had to do so despite her wishes or if the husband just expects it as his right regardless of his wife's feelings on the matter. No one should bully anyone into last name decisions, and when decisions have been given thought and made carefully and freely, they should be respected. I don't expect everyone to choose the same way I have, nor do I expect everyone to never be confused, but I hope that, at the very least, everyone can understand the reasons that went behind my decisions with regard to my last name and my children's last names. Indeed that is my wish for all families' naming decisions--that others empathize with their reasoning, even if they would choose differently, since these choices are rarely simple. And my wish for all women is that they enter decisions on their last name and their children's last names freely and with an open mind.
I learned from a fairly young age to be defensive of my last name. This is because I was asked on more than one occasion before high school to change my last name. The first occasion was some time after my parents divorced, when my mom asked how I'd feel about changing my last name to her maiden name. The situation at the time was that my mother had primary custody of my sister and me, but we visited my father on weekends... Our visitations at that point were somewhat sporadic but I looked forward to them. We'd often stay the night and we were finding that these times were cherished and important in maintaining our relationship with our father. I felt very put in the middle by my mom's question. I did not feel I had enough time with my dad as it was, and I felt that if I abandoned his last name, it would distance us even farther. But on the other hand, I knew the divorce had been painful for my mother and that she'd really like to rid herself of this constant reminder of my father in her life. I also liked my mom's maiden name--it is a unique Irish name that stands apart from the rather common and bland last name of my father. If I'd have been given my mom's maiden name as part of my name at birth I would have embraced it. But I couldn't choose it over my father's last name years later. It just didn't feel right, because by now, my name had become a part of who I was.
Later when my mom remarried, my new stepfather asked about "adopting" me and having me take his last name. This was never an option in my mind. I already resented what I perceived as my stepfather trying to replace my father and my stepfather and I did not see eye to eye, nor did I celebrate my mother and stepfather's union. In fact, in my tween rebellion, I was at first refusing to even be a part of the wedding until my aunt sat down and explained how it would only hurt my mom. I eventually accepted that, while I did not understand her reasons, this was the man she'd chosen, so I would support her in this decision. However, it would be many years until my stepfather and I were civil to each other. Indeed, it wasn't really until adulthood that I would say we could predictably get along decently, and most of that had to do with his inability to control me any longer rather than a true reconciliation. Needless to say, taking his name was not something I would ever have considered seriously, but it did reinforce my name as my identity. This was the one piece of me that could not be taken by anyone, even though in my home life I otherwise felt like a prisoner to circumstances beyond my control.
So when my college sweetheart proposed to me, I automatically assumed I would keep my name. We had discussions about it and, though I think he was disappointed, he respected my decision. Of course we also discussed how we would handle naming of any children we were to have together. This was a little bit harder to decide upon. But I felt strongly that I wanted my name passed down in some way. My father had only one brother who had only one son, and that branch of the family was all but estranged from the rest of us. There was really no one to carry on my father's name. And besides that, I felt that if I was going to carry a baby for 9 months and go through the hard work of birthing that baby, I at least ought to be able to give it my name in some way. Still, I didn't want my name chosen over my husband's, as I felt we would be equal partners in parenting, and we were certainly equal partners biologically speaking, in the child's DNA. So it was difficult to come up with a fair way to handle the naming of our children. When we were expecting our first child, we finally decided on a hyphenated last name, for lack of better options. We chose my name to be the first in the hyphenated name, simply because it sounded better that way than with his name first.
We went round and round about what that child would do when that child had children, but that just made our heads spin. I came up with a theoretical system whereby last names could be passed down "fairly" even among those with hyphenated names: the oldest would pass down the part of the name that came from the older parent, then the second-born would pass down the younger parent's name, and it would continue to alternate that way, according to birth order. We resolved to explain to our child some day how this theoretical system could work, but make clear that how she ultimately handled naming her children would be completely up to her.
Thus my daughters have the last name: Myname-Hisname. That is their last name. The hyphen joins them together as one name. ie. you can't have one without the other--it would be just as incorrect to call them Firstname Myname as it would be to call them Firstname Hisname. Still, I quickly learned that this world is still ill-equipped for this concept. People get confused all the time. Computerized systems don't always allow a hyphen as a possible character. Schools, doctors, relatives, etc. sometimes call them only by Myname or by Hisname. Personally, I don't find this hyphenated concept to be that confusing. We use hyphenated words all the time in the English language, just as I have a few sentences ago. "ill-equipped" is neither "ill" nor "equipped." Those individual words have very different meanings from what "ill-equipped" means. But we generally have no problem recognizing that "ill-equipped" is one hyphenated unique word. My daughters' last names are no different.
Ok, well so far this isn't too confusing. As of the early part of this century, we had a family: the father went by Hisname, I went by Myname, and the kids went by Myname-Hisname. Frankly at that point, what was more confusing was probably that my then-husband also used his middle name as how he wanted people to address him, rather than his first name. Of course this was all going to get more muddled, as this family was destined not to stay intact.
My husband and I divorced and agreed on shared custody of the children. I selfishly would have preferred primary custody, but knowing how much I missed my father growing up, I didn't want to put my girls through that. I knew my girls had a good father, and if he wanted to be involved in their lives, I thought it was important for their sake, to continue our approach of being equal partners in parenting. The divorce was the easy part--no need to change any names. But a few years later we each remarried with the weddings taking place within a year of each other. First my ex's new spouse took his last name. This was a no-brainer for her as she was eager to ditch her ex-husband's last name. Then came my wedding. By this time, you'd think I would make the same decisions as I had in the past, but I didn't think it was fair to assume the same choices should apply to my current partner that applied to a previous partner. This was a new partner and a new marriage and I was not even the same person I'd been when I got married the first time. Thus I thought it made sense to at least re-examine the last name question.
Professionally, I had already been published under my maiden name as an author on a scientific journal article. That lent for a strong argument for keeping my maiden name. On the other hand, my soon-to-be father-in-law had only sisters (no brothers), and my fiance had one brother who was in a serious relationship but not yet married and so my in-laws did not have anyone yet to carry on their name (similar to my situation before my first marriage). We knew we were expecting a child when we got engaged, and I had already had the opportunity to pass my name down with my first two children, so this made a strong argument for taking my husband's name. Then again, would it be confusing to my girls' school, friends, etc. if their mother's last name did not appear at all in their hyphenated last name?
It was hard to know what to do. But finally I came back to my original reasoning for having kept my name in the first place--my identity. I asked myself to reflect on my name and my identity, and what I concluded was that I didn't really have one singular identity anymore, but more of a multi-faceted identity. Over the years I had gradually taken on many different roles and identified with different aspects of what made me me. I wore different hats at different times. Sometimes I wore the "mom" hat. Sometimes I wore the "astrophysicist" hat. Sometimes I wore the "soon-to-be-wife" hat, or the "pregnant woman" hat, or the "daughter" hat, or the "aunt" hat, and I'd worn other hats over the years in the past, too: the "nursing mom" hat, the "teacher" hat, the "student" hat... I concluded that I wanted the kind of flexibility in my name to put on different hats as I assumed different roles. I wanted to be able to go by my maiden name, or my husband's name (ie. a married name), or a combination of the two. So what I ended up doing was tacking on my husband's name to my name, with a space in between. ie. I became Firstname Myname Hisname2 (note that the "2" is used in this example to distinguish this as my second husband's name).
The space in between is important and different from a hyphen. It means there are two names, not one name joined by hyphenation. This means that either name or both are equally valid, sort of like you might use a string of adjectives to describe something. If you called me "that smart, friendly lady," it would be equally right to say that I was "smart" or that I was "friendly." Maybe in some context the "smart" would be more important, say if you were discussing my student achievement, and in another context the "friendly" might be more important, like if you were talking about my qualities as your friend.
So using both names with a space in between gave me the freedom I was looking for. Professionally I could just go by Firstname Myname as I always had. Taking on the wifely role, I could be Mrs. Hisname2. To avoid confusion with my daughters' affairs I could go by Myname Hisname2, which would make it obvious that we share some name derivative, but also introduce the idea that Mr. Hisname2 was their stepfather.
When our son was born, I felt that I'd still like a piece of my last name passed on in some way. But I didn't feel as strongly that it needed to be a part of his last name, since I already had two children with my name as part of their last name, whereas my husband had none. So we chose instead to give our son two middle names, one of which was my maiden name. This way, if he choses to, he can still pass it on in some way (perhaps as part of his children's middle name), and yet it keeps things simple enough, too, because the three of us can still be "The Hisname2's" to my son's future school, friends, etc., and my in-laws know their name will be passed on. Of course, it turned out that my brother-in-law got married the very next year after my husband and I did, and I have a sneaking suspicion that my son will not be the only one to pass down the name :). But at least we got things started...
Ultimately, there's no easy solution to the last name dilemma. Some women never had a relationship with their fathers or had a poor relationship with their fathers and see no need to carry on the name they were given at birth. Sometimes you see couples that come up with a new last name for them both to assume, and sometimes there are husbands who take their wives' last names. I support all these choices and others. I think the important thing is to do what feels right to your family, even if that's simply doing the traditional thing of the wife taking the husband's last name and passing it onto their children. In fact I believe there's absolutely nothing wrong with a woman taking her husband's last name, but I do think there's something wrong if she feels she had to do so despite her wishes or if the husband just expects it as his right regardless of his wife's feelings on the matter. No one should bully anyone into last name decisions, and when decisions have been given thought and made carefully and freely, they should be respected. I don't expect everyone to choose the same way I have, nor do I expect everyone to never be confused, but I hope that, at the very least, everyone can understand the reasons that went behind my decisions with regard to my last name and my children's last names. Indeed that is my wish for all families' naming decisions--that others empathize with their reasoning, even if they would choose differently, since these choices are rarely simple. And my wish for all women is that they enter decisions on their last name and their children's last names freely and with an open mind.
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