It was a no-brainer for me: All the books said I should breastfeed my baby because it was best for her—that she would be stronger, faster, smarter, better for it. And so I rushed out and bought myself a fancy Medella breast pump and stocked up on breast milk storage bags and got all giddy when I started filling out my nursing bras. (Um, yeah—I was the president of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee and so the prospect of having boobies was a huge plus on my “Reasons Why I Should Breastfeed” list.) And I proudly told anyone who would listen that I planned to feed my child the natural way—the way my mother’s generation and all the generations before hers did, too. The way God intended.

Um, yeah. The nurses at the hospital where I gave birth to my beautiful Mari had other intentions. I mean, in theory, breastfeeding made all the sense in the world for me and my baby. But in the real world, a.k.a. a hospital in the middle of Harlem, where the environment made doctors and staff more prone to assume that a young black woman pushing out a baby was single, poor, uneducated, and alone, breastfeeding just didn’t fit into the equation.

And so the nurse put my Mari in my arms and disappeared, leaving me for 12 hours with nothing more than my baby and a “goodie” bag full of coupons for baby lotion and soap, useless pamphlets, and two bottles of baby formula. I was absolutely terrified, overwhelmed, exhausted and clueless; I simply didn’t know how to feed my newborn child. No manner of picture/conversation/book chapter prepared me for The Show—the actual breastfeeding of my baby. Was I supposed to be sitting any particular way? Pop in my boob any kind of way? Squeeze it to help get the milk into her mouth? Where was the milk anyway?!

I mean, I was convinced the baby would starve to death. And that she would die with a piece of my nipple in her mouth (those little gums were killer, especially when I unwittingly pulled my breast out of her mouth).

When a nurse finally made her way back into my room, she seemed surprised to find me breastfeeding. (She was also surprised that I had a husband, insurance, a good job, and that Mari was my first child—more on this ignorance in another post.) Still, she made quick work of showing me how to get the baby to latch on, how to get her to stop sucking, and, most importantly, she gave me a number to La Leche League so that I could ask an expert questions on how to feed my baby the right way.

Getting the breastfeeding right wasn’t easy or natural; for the first two weeks, the skin on my nipple was literally shredded and my breasts were raw—it was like a toothless little man was sucking on an open, achy wound. I’d smooth Lasinoh on my skin between feedings and sit shirtless with ice packs on my nipples, and literally cry out when Mari latched on.

But I didn’t give up.

Through the pain.

Through the doubts.

Through the pumping in the bathroom at work.

Through the ridicule from my more old school friends and family members who wondered loudly and unabashedly when I’d stop letting my baby “suck on my ninny.”

I breastfed my baby for 10 months, and pumped and fed her my milk for two more months after that, even after she stopped taking my breast. I was proud of myself for hanging in there. And proud of my daughter, too, for being patient with me. I know that it would have been just as easy for her to reject my breast. But she didn’t. And for this, I’m grateful.

There are plenty of moms who aren’t as fortunate—who don’t have the benefit of expensive breast pumps and copious amounts of time to recuperate from the painful beginning stages of breastfeeding or halfway understanding bosses who give them time to pump or even a pamphlet’s worth of information telling them how it’s done or extolling its benefits. These are things that some of us breastfeeding moms simply take for granted.

Of course, there are plenty of moms who forgo breastfeeding to formula feed—and this is their right. No judgment here. To each her own.

But I thank goodness that there are plenty of resources available for moms who do want to successfully breastfeed—much
more than was available when I had Mari more than 10 years ago.

And for this, we should all be grateful.

For more information on breastfeeding—from how to do it successfully to how to dress to what breast pumps to buy—check out the March of Dimes website, which is rich with great information on this and many other helpful “bringing home baby” tips.

This blog post was donated by MyBrownBaby to the March of Dimes as part of its March of Dimes Moms initiative.

To celebrate Mother’s Day and say “thank you” for being one of their mom ambassadors, The March of Dimes sent me a beautiful necklace from Red Envelope—one with a pendant rendered from a single, unending loop of sterling silver. The Red Envelope description says it’s meant to be a unique interpretation of mother and child caught in an eternal embrace.

I wanted to brag on the gift—show it off and wear it well and tell you that it reminded me of the “push gifts” my husband gave me when I birthed his two daughters almost 10 and 7 years ago respectively (I reminisced about my beautiful sterling silver necklaces last week when my blog friend Future Mama wrote a post on her terrific site, Baby Makin(g) Machine, about the push gift she’s angling for when she becomes a mom).

But when I clicked over to the Red Envelope page to see details about my gift, I saw a simple message telling me that 10% of the proceeds for every sale of the Mother’s Love Necklace will go to the March of Dimes, an incredible organization that has worked tirelessly to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature, birth, and infant mortality through research, education, advocacy, and community service. And suddenly, my keeping the gift for myself didn’t seem as important as letting my readers know about the importance of doing what we can to help The March of Dimes continue its important mission of helping mothers and babies in need.

Particularly moving was the symbolism of the pendant—“the mother and child caught in an eternal embrace.” It made me think of my fellow March of Dimes Mom Ambassador Heather Spohr of The Spohrs Are Multiplying, who recently lost her beautiful one-year-old daughter, Maddie. She’s been blogging about life without her child, and, true to what the words “eternal embrace” laid on my heart, I found a post Heather wrote last week about how much she misses hugging her child:

My arms tingle, and I remember that I’ve had this sensation before. When I was on bed rest, my legs would ache and tingle. I mentioned it to my Obstetrician, and she said, “those are your legs muscles atrophying. It is an unfortunate side-effect of bed rest.” My arm muscles are tingling because I am not picking up Maddie. I am not lifting her up, holding her weight, feeling her cheek against my chest.

I want my baby. Oh Maddie! I need you!

No mother should have to ponder life without the embrace of her child—to have to face Mother’s Day without her baby there to touch her cheek and climb into her arms and say, simply, “I love you, Mommy.”

But there are many more Heather Spohrs.

The March of Dimes is doing its best to help stem this tide. It is my sincere hope that MyBrownBaby’s readers will help, too, by supporting The March of Dimes. You can do this by donating directly to the organization, or by purchasing a Mother’s Love Necklace for yourself or for a Mother’s Day present for someone you love. ProFlowers, the corporate owner of Red Envelope, is also donating $10 of every order of Mother’s Day flowers to the March of Dimes, in support of programs in communities throughout the United States.

To inspire you to give, I’m giving away my Mother’s Love Necklace to one lucky reader. All you have to do is leave a comment telling me what you love most about your child’s embrace AND click over to the March of Dimes website and tell me something you learned about the organization. Your offering MUST include both comments to qualify.

Please leave your comments by 11:59 p.m., Tuesday, May 5th, 2009. I will choose a winner via Random.org and announce the winner Wednesday, May 6th, 2009.

Good luck.

By ELITA KALMA

When my son was born, I was told he needed formula because he had low blood sugar and jaundice, and for five hours, he was stuffed with the artificial milk, despite my pleas that he be brought to me so that I could nurse him. I was the one with the good stuff—colostrum, that early sugar milk brimming with antibodies. But I was scared for the welfare of my son, and too exhausted to fight the power. And by the time my baby finally was brought to me, my nurse, a sistah, was, let’s say, less than encouraging. She took one look at my breasts and declared, “You have terrible nipples—you’ll never be able to nurse!” Then she roughly shoved my boob into my baby’s mouth.

That was the beginning of my breastfeeding journey.

On my way out the hospital door, a nurse practically forced a diaper bag full of formula on me, insisting that my son would need it if he got hungry—as if my always available, always sterile, always-full-of-just-enough milk breasts just wouldn’t do. My discharge papers revealed that my son had been supplemented with formula every time he left my sight!

Lucky for us, this early introduction of artificial nipples and formula didn’t ruin our breastfeeding relationship; my son has been breastfeeding for 16 months now, with no signs of letting up. But there are plenty of moms and babies who aren’t as fortunate. Although our breastfeeding initiation rate is currently at an all-time high (about 60% of black moms are nursing when they leave the hospital), only a paltry 30% are still nursing at six months and only about 12% at one year. Our society has set moms up for failure, often starting from day one. If the nurses aren’t shoving a bottle full of formula down your baby’s throat, we’re often forced to run a gauntlet of well-meaning friends and family who don’t know much about nursing and offer bad—and often discouraging—advice.

And don’t get me started on nursing in public! It’s as if people expect a breastfeeding mother to never leave the house! Women are so scared of other people’s reactions that they hide in bathrooms or their cars or give the baby a bottle to avoid breastfeeding in a public place. You have the legal right to breastfeed your baby in public but sometimes you wouldn’t know it! I have nursed my son everywhere: Target, restaurants, my in-laws’ home, the mall. I will whip out a boob to feed my child whenever and wherever necessary. Some people won’t like it and you may get looks or worse. I was asked to cover up in a hotel lobby by a teacher chaperoning a high school field trip. I pretty much had to tell her where to go and how to get there!

I say all of this not to discourage you from nursing, but to encourage you to work through the obstacles because it is so worth it. Breast milk is a living, changing organism designed expressly for your baby. The bond you create with your child when you nurse him is unmatched. There are a million reasons to breastfeed, and for black babies especially, breast milk saves lives. Did you know that 8,000 black babies die before their first birthday in this country—triple the rate of white babies. Did you know that diseases and ailments that plague the black community, like breast cancer, ovarian cancer, diabetes, and obesity, are prevented or lessened if you breastfeed and were breastfed?

I know that it is more difficult for black women to breastfeed. Often we don’t have the jobs with the flexibility needed to continue breastfeeding. Our partners aren’t supportive. Our families think of breastfeeding as something weird that only white women do. Our bodies have been so hypersexualized in music and the media that we think our breasts can only serve one purpose. It’s a disgrace that if you want to breastfeed it takes a mix of good luck and tenacity. If we, as a nation, a world, a community, want women to breastfeed, want our babies to be healthier, then we have to truly start supporting them. That means fewer unnecessary medical interventions during childbirth, longer and paid parental leave, on-site daycare, laws requiring employers to give women breaks for pumping/nursing, and normalization and acceptance of breastfeeding in public.
Then, and only then, will we see women doing what the American Academy of Pediatrics and World Health Organization recommend: exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, and nursing until age 1 and beyond.

So if you are pregnant, take the time to learn as much as you can about breastfeeding. Read Kathi Barber’s The Black Woman’s Guide to Breastfeeding. Create a birth plan before you go to the hospital, spelling out your wishes for both labor AND breastfeeding. Talk to your friends who have nursed and ask for advice. Call the African-American Breastfeeding Alliance or your hospital’s lactation “warm line” at the first sign of difficulty. Bookmark http://www.KellyMom.com.

And of course, you can always contact me. I think I’ve become a bit of a pro! Breastfeeding is seriously one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done in my entire life. Snuggling my son close while he stares at me with those big brown eyes?

There is nothing better.

About our MyBrownBaby contributor: Elita Kalma is a librarian and the mother to 16-month-old Miles, who is still nursing. She blogs about breastfeeding at The Blacktating Blog and can be found on Twitter @blacktating.

If you would like to be a MyBrownBaby contributor, email your essays/ideas to Denene at denenemillner at gmail dot com.