adventures in breastfeeding in Rhode Island

So Rhode Island is amazing.

In less than a year, maybe due to its small size or its quirkiness, Rhode Island has so far been very forth-coming in providing community for me and Eric. And this latest story demonstrates that.

I have been having a lot of trouble breastfeeding the girls. Stella does pretty well, but Monica and I really weren't able to get it right. Exasperated one night at 4am, I wrote down all the things that I was struggling with, and sent it to some friends who have experience breast-feeding. I got some wonderful responses just overnight- some from women who were probably up breast-feeding then too, and a lovely long chapter from my brother's wife that should probably be published somewhere. Maybe in my book on twins, if I write it. ;) It was incredible to get so much support and encouragement from my friends. And I should note that not all of them were geographically limited to Rhode Island, but I was astounded at how supportive and responsive my new RI friends were and are.

The most wonderful thing, though, was that Katie forwarded the message to the RI Birth Network, so word got out that this new mother of twins was still struggling. One of Rhode Island's best lactation consultants, Kathy Moren of "Healthy Babies Happy Moms", a lactation consulting company, emailed me to ask if she could come and help me out... for free. It is clear to me that this community of women- the doulas and mothering "experts" in this network- are truly passionate about what they do, and cannot tolerate a breastfeeding woman in pain! So this community sent Kathy to me, and this morning she spent two hours with me and Monica and Stella and answered each one of the questions I sent in my email. She watched me nurse them both, helped me figure out how to solve the issues, and come up with a plan to get both girls nursing. I already had two pain-free sessions with Monica today, and will be moving towards exclusively breastfeeding her too (Stella has been EBF for about 10 days now). So a combination of using a nipple shield, bottle and pumping will get Monica to have a breast-milk only diet very soon, and to be breast-fed not long after that. What a HUGE relief. I felt better than I've felt in *weeks*.

And to top it off, my marvelous mother in law stayed up with the girls until 1am this morning, so I had THREE HOURS of uninterrupted sleep, which was ... well, for those of you who are parents, you know that at this stage, getting 3 hours of un-interrupted sleep is a reward like no other.

So in the first week of being a mother, I thought a lot about how lonely I would likely feel when Eric went back to work and my parents weren't with us 24/7. I dreamt of some other time when communities were closer, when new moms were taught how to nurse by more experienced moms, when perhaps we'd all sit around together and nurse, kids of different ages running around and playing, when one family would make a big pot of food for the rest of the community to eat- when those kinds of living responsibilities and burdens would be shared. I was sad about this- bemoaning modern society and how we separate the nuclear family from larger families, blood-related or not.

But then here I am now, and I feel SO connected to the other young mothers in this city and beyond. People have been bringing us food, stopping by to chat, getting us groceries, checking in to make sure we're ok. So it turns out that community does exist, and we're lucky enough to have stumbled upon it.