"...exactly what to do."
Young motherhood, contemporary devotion, and the actual question in each
I have an anonymous conspirator for this one. I’ll try to recreate the bit of dialogue that prompted this:
“I see a lot of similarities between the advice people receive about their spiritual lives and the advice given to young mothers. There are so many things, they are told, that they must do to do it right. When the question is actually, ‘What is God inviting you to?’ But… I’m not a young mother, so, I can’t really speak to that.”
Well, I am, and I’m going to try.
Putting my thoughts together here brought up more for me on the personal front than I thought it would. (Not your fault, conspirator, I’m the one who decided to use “breastfeeding” as my primary example of a thing that young mothers are told they must do to do it right, so, really, I want the world to burn.)
Here, have a caveat! You get a caveat, you get a caveat, check under your seat, there’s another caveat under there!!
Nursing is a beautiful gift that a mother can give, not only to her baby, but to herself. I’m not trying to downplay the significant health and relational benefits for both involved. Also, other parenting practices associated with the word “attachment”—like baby wearing and co-sleeping (the correct term seems to be morphing into “bed sharing,” that is what I’m talking about)—are worth exploring.
Okay, let’s—
You know what? Conspirator, here in this PDF is an abridgement of the following thoughts because I have made a mockery of my self-imposed 1,000 word (roughly 5 minutes of reading) limit.
Here’s something that does pretty much the same thing in half the time:
And now we resume with the unabridged version:
I needed some perspective that was outside of my own worldview to help me contextualize my early experiences with breastfeeding. This was supplied in part by Meaghan O’Connell’s reflections on her pregnancy and the first year of her baby’s life in her book, And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready. I was drawn to the book (which I’m tempted to call a “mom-oir” [please, send the help I obviously need]) because of the subtitle. That’s what happened to me, too.
When I read it, I was 27 and had three children. O’Connell writes about panic-googling “Pregnant at only 29”1 after she took a positive test, and, later on, describes the choice to have any more than two children as “greedy.” O’Connell is decidedly secular (and the book is laced with profanity); I could be described as “weirdly religious” (though I was once referred to as a “normal Catholic,” a compliment I took all the way to the bank).
Here’s how she begins the chapter “A Certain Kind of Mammal:” “When I was pregnant, every time someone asked me if I planned to breastfeed, I stammered and avoided eye contact. Of course, what do you think I am, some kind of monster?”2
If you think that’s totally overblown, I’m glad. You’re staying away from the worst parts of this conversation. Lots of young mothers, though, are looking for something concrete, so those parts of the conversation have a certain appeal. O’Connell quotes from her “dog-eared copy” of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding and reflects on it:
“His nursing relationship with you becomes the foundation of the way he will think of himself and others… one mother pointed out that it’s as if bottles fill his stomach, but breastfeeding fills his soul...”
I wish I could say I was offended by or at least suspicious of this messaging at the time, but I was in fact the perfect sucker. Breast is best. It was so cut-and-dried, it even rhymed. “It’s hard work but worth it.” I so wanted to believe that if I “just” exclusively breastfed my baby on demand for a year of his life, I could stave off all the other damage I might do… It was such a relief to be told exactly what to do.
I remembered a similar feeling of relief regarding the same parenting practice. Before my son was born, the message was seared into my brain: nursed or cursed.3 Overdramatic? SO overdramatic. But, like O’Connell, I wanted a healthy baby, a happy baby, an intelligent baby… a baby who might have less to forgive me for someday. It was such a relief to be told exactly what to do.
I never read The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, but I pored over several resources that had similar messages about the importance of breastfeeding, including the Popcaks’ Catholic parenting book, Parenting with Grace.4 Dr. Gregory and Lisa Popcak have numerous books and radio shows centering on family life and faith; they’ve offered encouragement to families all over the world. AND, from this website, “They were honored to be the Vatican’s choice to present the opening keynote on the Liturgy of Domestic Church Life at the 2022 World Meeting of Families in Rome.” Also, they have a child who’s a decade older than your oldest, if you’re in that “young motherhood” category.
Are you acquainted with who brings what to the table?
I have a blog and less than a decade of parenting experience.
My approach to parenting books has shifted in that scant decade. Now, if I use parenting books at all, I use them in the same way I use cookbooks. Both types include step-by-step processes that are lauded without relational context (because it’s a book, not a mentor), and neither type really focuses on similar ways that a process could be done. It’s not, “There are a whole bunch of techniques you could use to make risotto,” it’s “GOD’S MOTHER MADE RISOTTO THIS WAY.”
My favorite cookbook is Mad Hungry by Lucinda Scala Quinn. According to Lucinda, I need to: “Develop a personal relationship with your butcher! Prepare pasture raised meat ONLY. Roast at 200 degrees for eight hours, rotating the pan every two, basting the meat with an ox hair brush!”
Yeah… there’s going to be an instant pot and a grocery delivery involved here.
According to the Popcaks’ book, every month, I should “Have a date with your mate. If your children are developmentally ready for a short separation (over three), hire a sitter and go out on a date. If your children are younger, hire a sitter to supervise your kids with a video while you and your mate enjoy some quiet time in another part of the house” (348).5
Yeah… this would mean that we should have been waiting for nine years to leave the house for a date and probably have something like nine left to go… we’re going to go with “trusted person sitting” and “bottle if needed.”
But when I was third-trimester pregnant with my first, I was looking for “musts,” because I wanted to do this right. Here’s what the Popcaks wrote about nursing under the subheading “Nursing: The Theology of the Body and Catholic Thought” (159).
… it would not be unreasonable to suggest that through nursing, God is giving the mother the means to hard-wire her baby to have the kind of deeply intimate, long-lasting, sacramental relationship He wants His children to have in later life… Nursing is one of the first lessons in love for the child.
The Popcaks address the question, “So are you saying that I am/ was a bad parent if I don’t/didn’t parent this way?” (177, their wording and bolding), with:
No. Of course not. The reality is that a caring, attentive, loving parent, who uses traditional Western parenting practices is still doing a better job than a parent who does “attachment parenting” grudgingly and resentfully. But if you are a caring, attentive, and loving parent to begin with, then why stop yourself from giving your child all your heart longs to give? Co-sleeping, nursing, and baby-wearing (when a mother or father carries the baby close to the body in a sling) enables parents to fully experience the self-donative nature of their bodies and model love and responsibility to their children from the earliest ages. Such practices allow you to experience parenting – from the earliest stages – as a spiritual exercise in which you configure yourself to Christ, even to the point of sharing your precious body with your child.
I wanted to show my baby the kind of love they were describing. Here’s the question that was on my mind nine years ago, a question that says more about my own mental state than the substance of the Popcaks’ book or anything else I was reading: You don’t want to do this halfway, do you?
No. Of course not. Determined to administer this lesson in love as well as I could, I prepared to nurse exclusively. No pacifiers, no bottles, no crib (my mother got us one, anyway). I would give the baby everything he needed. Right?
At some point, every mother is going to realize that she simply can’t do everything that she once considered a “must.” That’s what I’m trying to say here. I’m not trying to beg the exception to underscore some kind of “BEWARE ATTACHMENT PARENTING” message. What happened next was an exception of the extremely rare variety, and there were so many other factors involved besides my attempts to nurse and co-sleep.
The baby was born. After three weeks of round-the-clock nursing and co-sleeping at night, during which the baby slept sometimes and I might not have slept at all, I woke my husband up in the middle of the night with an announcement: “I just found the most beautiful baby in the other room!”
I had forgotten about my son, which is one of the ways that postpartum psychosis can present. It took weeks of heavy medication and through-the-night sleep for me to “come back down.” By that time, the breastfeeding journey was over; I’d never again give him the thing he needed from me the most.
Looking back on the whole thing now, the thing he needed most was the connection with the family members who saved us during the crisis, and I did give that to him. I could not see this at the time, and I was devastated. But even I couldn’t deny that the baby himself was a Mary Poppins baby: practically perfect in every way. He was chubby and cheerful. He was bottle-fed by his dad, his grandparents, his aunts, and me. He took his first step the day before he was nine months old. He started talking in sentences at—I’m not exaggerating—twelve months: “I broke it;” “I want that banana;” “Mama take it,” “It okay, Dada.”6
My breastfeeding reality didn’t match the ideal I’d formed before my baby was born—the same thing happened to O’Connell. She was able to breastfeed for a year, like she set out to do, but without experiencing the transcendence she felt like the resources had promised. She ends her chapter on breastfeeding with the following:
“In any case, I did my duty, which was sometimes lovely but more often not. Breastfeeding was not the most incredible experience of my life, and my baby is still mortal. He still gets sick. I went to great lengths to do it, for reasons I can no longer relate to. Or none other than this: I so desperately wanted to do the right thing, and I had no idea what that was yet.”
And me? I had another baby and bottle fed her, too. Then, while I was pregnant with my third, I decided that I wanted to try nursing again. We assembled the avengers (every professional taking care of me or the baby and also our in-town relatives) and came up with Plans A, B, C, and D. And… Plan A worked. I nursed babies three, four, and five, and I hope to nurse the sixth. I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to do it. And I’m also so, so grateful that I weaned the toddler back in March, right after I found out I was pregnant again.
The “musts” touted to young mothers start blurring together at some point:
“—organic” “—naturally—” “—by 18 months—” “—on a schedule—” “—get on the waitlist—” “—right type of lid—” “—avoid the word ‘no,’ because—” “—BPA free, check the label—” “—gently, naming his feelings—” “—taking ownership—” “—spending at least twenty minutes—” “—enough time in nature—” “—Well, in most daycares—” “—foreign language in the home? Did you know that if they’re younger than five—” “—certainly one musical instrument—” “—screen-free—” “—every day—” “—never—” “—always—” “—at the very least—” ….
You don’t want to do this halfway, do you?”
Now, to (finally) connect to my conspirator’s point about the spiritual life. A similar thing happens to anyone who wants to grow spiritually. Like young mothers, the aspiring devoted find themselves at the center of a maelstrom of advice, which is doubtless well-intentioned. After the initial relief of being told “exactly what to do,” the preponderance of advice becomes burdensome in the context of very real difficulties and limitations.
“—start with the office of readings—” “—with the children—” “—Biblical school—” “—daily mass—” “—by the altar—” “—brown scapular, of course, but also the blue—” “—at dawn—" “—your own apostolate—” “—have you read—” “—did you know that—” “—have you heard—” “—for ten minutes—” “—in Latin—” “—the litany of Saint—” “—find a spiritual director, but only after—” “—join the ministry—” “—on the rotation—" “—every day—” “—never—” “—always—” “—at the very least—” ….
You don’t want to do this halfway, do you?
Fueled by the desire to “do it the right way,” the newly devoted (or re-devoted) are susceptible to mistaking activity for relationship. I will never forget the first conversation I had with my spiritual director. Across the coffee shop table, she asked me what my prayer life looked like. I went on to name about a dozen different things I was doing: adoration weekly with my children, several different mother’s groups, attempts to say the rosary with my family, daily mass occasionally, nighttime Hail Mary’s, monthly circle…
“Okay…” she nodded, choosing her next words carefully, “so, when do you talk to God?”
Yikes.
It’s not like the idea of talking to God myself was novel; the importance of this had been emphasized to me at nondenominational church, at Christian camp, at Presbyterian church, in homilies at mass. I even did it! But when asked about my prayer life, that’s not what came to mind. I rattled off a list of activities instead. It was like if someone had asked me what my baby’s name was, and I told them whether or not I was breastfeeding.
Borrowing the words of my conspirator, the more interesting question in spiritual growth is not “You don’t want to do this halfway, do you?” it’s, “What is God inviting you to?”
Isn’t that a little too open to interpretation, though?
I’ll let Matta El-Maskeen (aka Matthew the Poor) take that one, quoted by Fr. Jacques Philippe near the end of Interior Freedom:
When Christians devote themselves to the spiritual combat, to assiduousness in prayer and the careful observance of other spiritual practices, they can come to feel that this activity and this assiduousness condition their relationship with God. It seems to them then that it is by reason of their perseverance and fidelity to prayers that they deserve to be loved by God and become His children. But God does not want souls to go astray down that false path, which would, in fact, separate them for good from God’s freely bestowed love, and life with Him. So He takes away the energy and assiduousness that threaten them with this loss.
The primary thing that God is inviting us into is relationship with Him. And one of the ways He does this—both in motherhood and spiritual growth—is by allowing us to have a deeper understanding of our own weaknesses. We throw our energy behind the “musts,” until we suddenly can’t access any of the zeal that was coursing through us even last week.
And still we are held, still we are loved.
God remains with us and sustains us, making up for everything we lack, as we realize—again—that our very best effort wasn’t even close to “halfway.”
On the Calendar: Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
I have quoted this before, but a friend of mine once told me: “I’m an ordinary time kinda gal, you know?” and it makes me smile every time I think about it, because, man, celebration is wonderful but it takes a lot of energy. It’s okay to be an ordinary time kind of person, is all I’m saying.
Sunday’s Gospel is 🐂 Luke 10:25-37, the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus’ answer to a scholar’s testing question: “And who is my neighbor?” The part that stuck out to me when I was reading it was this: “But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” And then, Jesus uses even that for something good, giving us the story of the Good Samaritan. I’m not sure how he put up with things like that from us. I’m not sure how he puts up with us now. But I’m glad that he does.
Monday, July 14, is the obligatory memorial of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks—I don’t have the answer to this (and probably should if I’m going to post something about it) but she has to be one of very few people who was born in the North American continent and has an *obligatory* spot on the calendar. In so many ways, this continent—by which I mean the one I live on—is still a mission territory, in the context of an ancient, global Church.
Wednesday, July 16 is the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and this is me finishing things up by just mentioning that everyone out of the Carmelite order is such a boss (St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Therese of Lisieux, the missionary nuns from India who live at the convent near our parish and work at the hospital… yes, they are missionaries who were sent TO US. Their part of the world has had the sacraments since St. Thomas evangelized India in the first century.)
I have zero poll ideas over here at 9:21 p.m. while I’m checking this post for typos, but if you’re all the way down here, you might be interested in this podcast I was a guest on that the lovely ladies from
put together every week. This was so fun for me, I can’t really believe that they let me do it. 10/10 best online book club that exists, if you’re asking me, and no, it is not just for moms!
My books: Eucharistic Saints, A Saint A Day
Not affiliate links or Amazon links. By all means, buy the books on Amazon, I just figure you know how to get there on your own. Sometimes TAN and Thomas Nelson run deals, though!
+ Saint Sessions for YDisciple (co-written with Tanner Kalina)
We partnered with January Jane for the inspiration for the content!
there are myriad differences between NYC and suburban front range Colorado when it comes to the expected age of motherhood, turns out.
There was an expletive in here, you can decide which one and where it goes. Freespace!
You know, what I came up with originally was, “BREASTFEED OR ELSE” and then Jonny was all, “Can you make this rhyme?”
No, I don’t know why the Amazon link is so weird, that is what I could find. The used copy pictured there is the same type that’s sitting on my shelf right now.
Jonny is very upset by the use of the word “mate” in this context.
tinfoil hat theories here on the early speech (none of our other kids were like that): while I was pregnant with him, we read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy to each other out loud—very cute silly newlywed kind of “Okay, you eat dinner while I read and then we’ll switch.” I sometimes wonder if he was listening... Also, in the first year of his life, he spent quite a bit of time with my mother, who talks to the kids with this matter-of-fact narration style about things like the oven and the patio furniture and the car driving by—it’s not babyish, at all, and they get a lot of vocabulary that way. The current baby has had the least amount of time with her, and he is the latest on the “speech timeline”—19 months old now and still not talking like his big brother did at 12 months.
Of course, it’s possible that that oldest son of mine was just going to be that way no matter what we did.
Well. This is the best thing you've written, and I really like your writing!
Louder for the people in the back! (Are those people me?)
The point you make, and which your co-conspirator I think was also making, is that there is no shortcut for discernment in the most important relationships of our life. Virtue, being the mean between vices is going to look very different depending on a person's specific context. While there are definitely some arrows that point in the direction of, "probably head this way" -- prayer and feeding the baby both definitely need to be involved in some capacity -- the particulars are a lot more like winding your way through the weeds and looking for solid footing.
Yes! Yes! Yes! We are on the same wavelength. May I humbly suggest my book by Sophia Institute Press, "Baby and Beyond: Overcoming Those Post-Childbirth Woes." It was published a few years ago when I had an 8, 6, 4, and 2 year old. It is Catholic, it is combining physical, mental, and spiritual healing, and I tell you to throw all your parenting books away and stop trying to do it "right," because that is so paralyzing. I think I even write in there how I was feeling so guilty for not going to daily Mass with 4 kids under the age of 6 until I asked God if that was what He wanted for me. And he didn't want that. I had to stop performing, be in the midst of the struggle, and let him transform me from there.
Which leads me to the next book I'm deep into writing on prayer, and how its growing in a relationship with God, not performing all the right actions. So you are spot on!