Hinds Family Update:
We had our fourth baby, a boy, on October 1 at 2:52 a.m. October 1 is the memorial of St. Thérèse and the baby’s godmother’s birthday. It was meant to be, even though it was just over one week before his due date.
I chose these reposts (this week and the next three) more than a month ago, and, I’ll confess, I did not mean for this first one to hit so close to home. I kind of meant for it to be reflective, “Oh, remember when everything about feeding and nursing was so hard? Thank goodness I’m past that now…”
We got off to a rough start. Feeding a new baby is always a challenge. But I forgot how much of a challenge it is until Monday morning when I found myself yelling at my husband at 5:12 a.m., “He’s not latching! He’s not latching! We’ve been trying for hours, and he’s NOT DOING IT.”
Things have gotten better since then.
But we need your prayers. Mostly that we would live in gratitude for this new little life and for the many ways that we can feed him.
Originally Posted 2/27/2021: Milk
I didn’t nurse my first two children. I nursed the third one for just over a year.
That progression of events isn’t that weird – any parent of several children will tell you that each baby is different.
But, in the months before my first child was born, I bought, read, and shelved several resources that placed an enormous emphasis on attachment parenting staples like breastfeeding, co-sleeping, baby wearing. No pacifiers, no baby swings, no bottles, no nipple-shields. All for the sake of mother-baby-bonding, best possible nutrition, best start for the baby… and the best foundation for baby’s later spiritual life. Something along the lines of: “Breastfeeding is the perfect foundation for spiritual development. The baby’s brain is trained to receive the love of his mother and the love of God.”
Ok, so maybe those resources didn’t hit it that hard… except they did.
It is important to mention that the real people I knew and was interacting with - you know, my friends and relatives - did not come across like this in the “baby feeding” conversations I was having with them.
But I gave a lot of weight to those resources.
I do remember coming across an article online that argued the difference in later-in-life academic achievement of breastfed babies vs. formula fed babies was misattributed to breastfeeding. The underlying cause of the difference had more to do with parental involvement. I read this article when I was about 8 months pregnant, when my breastfeeding plans were intact.
Two weeks after my son was born, I had to stop nursing him because of a medical crisis.
I found myself really hoping something of that one article was true.
None of my friends pushed about the formula feeding – no one ever saw me mixing a bottle of formula and said, “Why aren’t you nursing?” I was included and celebrated and, in all the important ways, a member of the mom group –
But I let myself feel like I wasn’t really one of them because I wasn’t breastfeeding.
Everywhere I looked, I saw reminders of this failure and the ways it was costing my son. Every single tin of formula I’ve ever opened had this notice on it: “Breastfeeding is best for babies.”
When my son was about eight months old, I sat in the green chair that we kept next to our bookshelf in the alley-house we were renting. I was giving him a bottle and he was dozing off, and my eyes fell on the spine of one of those parenting resources. One of the ones that talked about breastfeeding as the perfect way to give up your body for your baby. And the thing that was broken inside of me just crumpled again.
I whispered to him,
“I can’t give you my body that way. But I can give you my arms. And I can prop my arms with my legs when you get heavy.” And I promise, that whatever else I can’t give you, I will give you my hands to hold you and to hug you and I will give you all of my heart and my mind and my strength in prayer for you.
Another important thing that I needed to give up for my son was my pride – the insistence that I should be able to do it all the right way, all on my own, right from the start.
Nursing is a beautiful way for a mother to give up her body for her child. But sometimes nursing does not work out.
But God’s grace does.
My “every other mom can breastfeed” fixation was just a severe case of confirmation bias. I was totally blind to the diaper bags brought to mass with bottles tucked in the pockets. Totally deaf to the friends talking about feeding routines that included a real mix of everything, for varying amounts of time. After my second child was born, I stumbled upon the story of Saint Zélie Martin. Her youngest child was Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Virgin and Doctor of the Church. Zélie struggled to feed little Thérèse, and, after three months, the baby was sent to live with a wet nurse.1
Just a bit of new info for the repost… 2
Zélie’s experience of motherhood was fraught with difficulty and danger – the illness and death rates for infants in late 19th century France were remarkably high, and responsible and capable wet nurses were hard to find because they were in such high demand. Zélie was able to breastfeed some of her older children (the Martins had nine), but she often had to rely on a wet nurse or other methods (including bottles) for feeding her babies. Right before Thérèse was sent to live with the wet nurse, she almost starved to death. While her baby was dying, Zélie walked alone for hours into the countryside to track down the only wet nurse she trusted. If Zélie’s actions there don’t qualify as “giving up her body for her child,” I don’t think anything can.
Back to repost.
And even though Therese wasn’t breastfed by her mother, she grew into a spiritual titan. I’m not even sure how to sum up her approach to the concept of the love of God. “Boundlessly enthusiastic” doesn’t even begin to cover it. As she wrote in her autobiography, Story of a Soul,
“I understood that LOVE COMPRISED ALL VOCATIONS, THAT LOVE WAS EVERYTHING, THAT IT EMBRACED ALL TIMES AND PLACES…. IN A WORD, THAT IT WAS ETERNAL!
Then, in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: O Jesus, my Love…. my vocation, at last I have found it …. MY VOCATION IS LOVE!”3
Zélie didn’t nurse Thérèse for a year, but she spent the entire year on her knees praying for that baby. Because Saint Zélie knew something important about motherhood — sustaining children takes more than breastmilk. Or formula. Or the four gallons we buy weekly from the store.
Story of A Soul, Third Ed., translated by John Clarke, O.C.D., page 6.
A Call to a Deeper Love: The Family Correspondence of the Parents of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus. Blesseds Zélie and Louis Martin. Translated by Ann Connors Hess. Edited by Dr. Frances Renda. p. 110-111
Story of A Soul, Third Ed., translated by John Clarke, O.C.D., page 194.
This post reads like a prayer and with the power of a prayer. I love you and we can't wait to meet him! Thank you for sharing this truth-- that babies are nourished by food but also by so much more and in so many different ways. I know he is being nourished by you and God.
Wow! The timing of your post couldn't have mean more timely! I was just praying that God would help me to surrender everything to Him, even my children who are truly His, and then your post popped up on my phone! I tend to worry so much about them and whether or not I'm failing in my motherly responsibilities. After going to Confession yesterday, the priest gently reminded me that God knows our limitations and that we need to surrender to Him and to trust Him to take care of everything for us because we can't! Thank you! Thanks be to God that His Holy Spirit is so active and at work through His children on behalf of each other! Thank you for being open to letting Him work through you by sharing yourself and your stories with others! You have a gift for writing! Congratulations on your baby boy!!! I'm so happy for you, and he is so very blessed to have you as his mother!!! God bless you all!!