Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Happy World Breastfeeding Week!!! Wahoo!

I was thinking about having a breastfeeding party, but not only am I the only person I know who lives near me and is breastfeeding, but I'm also already having a little dinner party thing on Friday for my return to vegitarianism ^.^

That's right! After two years of being a vegetarian, I started eating meat during my pregnancy because of some dizziness and iron issues. To be more precise, my Neurocardiogenic Syncope was acting up. Since giving birth I have been weaning myself off of meat, which wasn't really working. I'd made excuses and have more meat products that I wanted and was comfortable with. Finally, it became apparent that I needed to go cold turkey (sorry about that one).

It's going to be especially hard to be a vegetarian now though... Where it used to be just J and me, meaning that there was never much meat in the house because I did the shopping, now I'm living with roommates, two of which are very heavy meat eaters. One of them has offered to scale back their meat eating and buying habits on my behalf, but as much as I'd like to see less meat eating, I am very much in favor of people making their own choices in life. They don't have to be vegetarian, but I'm not exactly going to be cooking meat for them.

J has also offered to go vegetarian with me, and if you listened to what he says, it sounds like he will be.. but I'm not sure about that either. Just like the other roommate who offered to buy and eat less meat, I'm not sure that he's doing it for his own reasons. We'll see how that goes.

In other news, I also just sent my mom an article that I found online that describes some of my parenting decisions really well. I would post a link here, but I've only found it posted as a note on facebook. It describes some of the evolutionary reasons that babies prefer certain things. It also argues that things like vaginal birth, breastfeeding, and attachment parenting shouldn't be considered 'best', but what's 'normal'. In my mind, saying that something is 'best', even if it is, argues that there are other options that are also good. Saying that something is normal or natural takes away the idea that there are other options that can be chosen when there isn't need for them.

(If you're family, please don't pass this on. I've talked to my mom about this, and I understand why she does the things that she does. This is not meant as an attack or a critique, just airing out my thoughts on the issue) My mother has not exactly been unsupportive, but she doesn't understand my decisions and will make comments about how River always seems to be eating and that I should let other people hold her or put her down more often. She also tends to hold River through her 'asking' for food, until she's forced to cry to get it. I know that my mother means well, I just wish that she would understand the reasons that I made the decisions I made.

Anyone else have experience with well-meaning relatives?

1 comment:

  1. I didn't know you had neurocardiogenic syncope too! I'm so glad I'm not the only one.

    okay, now I'll finish reading the post. XD

    -Shaina

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