The Slacker Mom

Welcome to week 20 (Can you believe we are 20 weeks into 2012?  I sure can’t!) of the Breastfeeding Blog Hop!  This is a weekly hop where we explore the fascinating (and often bizarre) topic of breastfeeding.  The hop is hosted by Happiness Redefined, The Gnome’s Mom and of course, myself!

We’ve got a few new faces the past few weeks so I just wanted to do a little housekeeping and familiarize everyone with the rules of the hop.

I really only have 1 rule- stay on topic.  The point of this hop is to have different perspectives posting on the same topic each week.  Breastfeeding has so many facets so each week we explore a different  part.  Some weeks are easy to come up with a post, some weeks it’s harder- I get it, we haven’t all dealt with the same issues.

I announce the topic each week on The Slacker Mom’s Facebook page and I try to get the topic and linky up by Tuesday on the BFBH Home Page for those of you who like an early start.

If you have to skip a week because you just have nothing to add to the conversation- that’s OK.  I just need all posts to stay on topic.  If the post is not on topic, I will be deleting it from the linky.

Which brings me to this weeks topic: Breastfeeding in the News!  I know some of you have already hit on the Time Magazine cover story so feel free to link that post up.  If there is something else regarding breastfeeding in the news, feel free to post about that as well.

Be sure to grab the linky code and add that to your post so readers can continue to “hop” from post to post.

Sooooooo…

This was kind of a head turner last week:

I’ve been letting go when it comes to feeling like I don’t live up to other peoples “mom standards” and I have to say- this cover didn’t get to me .  At all.  (I must be absorbing my husbands zen through osmosis or something.)

In general, extended breastfeeding is a foreign concept to me.  It was so far from reality that it never really crosses my mind.  We barely made it to a year (and even that was by the skin of our teeth).  On the flip side, I always said we’d wean when Judah was ready to wean, so I suppose if my supply by some miracle kept going and he kept nursing, that could have been me.

Except I’m less blond and more round.

Back to the cover.

People were up in arms about the kid’s clothes.  Um, that’s how my 3 year olds dress, I imagine if they were still nursing they would look much like this.

People didn’t like the look on the mom’s face.  She looks confident to me.

People didn’t like the blatant attempt at stirring up the mom wars.  Eh.  If you write a post about anything with more than one choice, *someone* is going to get their chonies in a bunch.

When I look at this cover there are a few things that come to mind:

#1- I’m just so freaking glad they didn’t portray the extended breastfeeding mom as some middle aged mother earth incarnate in a hippy skirt and piles of long curly hair and bangle bracelets.  We’ve seen that.

#2- This mom is hot, young, and hip.  How many young women don’t try to breastfeed because they think they will get fat?  Because they don’t want saggy boobs?  Because they don’t want it to interfere with their lifestyle?

#3- Sure, this is a staged photo- but it’s an actual mom and her son.  Not hired models put together to be the most shocking coupling they could come up with.  That did it for me.

Yes, the cover is edgy, controversial, disturbing to some…but this is also this particular breastfeeding pair’s reality.

I can’t hate the cover.  I might even go as far to say that I *like* the cover.

I love the cover. (Am I the only one?)

It’s kind of awesome.

It certainly got people talking.

As for the “Mom Enough” thing, I think we all have something we’ve done that goes above and beyond that qualifies us for the title of “Mom Enough”.  For me it would have to be enduring 30+ weeks of sickness during both pregnancies.  Not that I had a choice in the matter but you can bet that at the end I was feeling like I could out-mom every woman in the world.

So tell me- What makes you Mom Enough?

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