By Kim Blakely, mama to Mojo and Moxie

Hey, I don’t want to get into the pros and cons or go on a “breast is best� campaign, and I’m certainly not going to judge you if you, for whatever reason, choose to go the formula route, but I am definitely, without a doubt, a breastfeeding advocate.

So, what about nursing in public?

I’m all for it, as long as it’s not me doing the public nursing.

It’s just something I’ve never gotten completely comfortable with.

Oh, I’ve done it more than a few times, and I’m sure I’ll do it again before Moxie is ready to give up the boob. But as much as I support the right to do it, I almost always find myself looking around for a private spot when I’m out and about at feeding time.

My tentative approach to nursing with a potential audience has nothing to do with my conviction to breastfeed.

I knew I wanted to nurse Mojo – or at least I was pretty sure I wanted to – well before he arrived. (As I sat in those breastfeeding classes before he was born I had some squeamish moments as I considered the prospect.)

He took to it like a champ, nursing on his own just minutes after my c-section. I remember watching this tiny, brand new baby opening his mouth wide and latching on – it was the most natural thing in the world and yet to me, it was magical. Any doubt I had about whether I could or should breastfeed faded into thin air in a millisecond. Any doubt I had about motherhood – that phase of it, anyway – melted away in that moment, too.

He nursed a LOT, and I was fine with that – especially once my poor cracked, sore nipples got used to their new role, because it gave me plenty of time to admire him, to gaze into his eyes and hold his hands and just cuddle. There were times that I remember nursing him in those early weeks for what felt like 24 hours straight, although I’m sure there were 10-15 minute breaks built in there somewhere.

There were a few challenges when I went back to work at the end of my maternity leave, but they really only strengthened my resolve and I think the way I handled them might have benefited nursing moms who came after me.

I’ve breastfed Moxie from the beginning, too, and at almost nine months there is no end in sight (I hope). She’s not quite as enthusiastic an eater as her brother was, though she can certainly hold her own.

I’m mostly at home with my kids now, but over the years, I’ve had to express breast milk while away on work assignments, usually sitting with my pump tucked under my shirt in the front seat of my car, right in the middle of a busy parking lot. No one was the wiser.

I’m proud of my body’s ability to provide everything my babies need in the first six months of life, and almost everything they need for the first year. I’m amazed by the way it all works – the way we exchange antibodies and help keep each other healthy through nursing, the way my body just knows what nutrients they need and when and offer it up, the way it knows that, for whatever reason, a boy baby needs milk with more calories than a girl baby …

I guess modesty is part of the reason I’m more likely to retreat to a back bedroom at a friend or relative’s house, a dressing room in a store, or the illusion of privacy in my car when it’s time to nurse.

But maybe it’s just that I don’t want to risk having anyone taint the experience for me. I guess I feel like, for me, not everything that’s natural is meant to be shared with the world. I think it’s mostly that I’m being selfish, keeping it all to myself and enjoying the special time with my babies, away from prying eyes and ignoramuses who might make me feel even the slightest bit like I need to debate the issue.

Does that mean I’m hiding? I don’t see it that way.

I’m ready and willing to fight for the right, if need be.  I’m as likely, though, to stand up for your rights as I am for my own on this issue.

Kim Blakely is mom to baby girl “Moxie” and 5-year-old “Mojo”. She’s also a freelance writer who works from home. To read previous All Akimbo posts, click here!

By Kim Blakely, mama to two

Watching my superhero-crazed Mojo crashing his action figures into tables, cars and each other makes me cringe.

Fighting is just not my thing.

He asks me to play sometimes, and I tell him so.

“I just don’t like the fighting,� I say.

And I try to change the tone, making whatever character he has thrust at me say, “I don’t like to fight. I want to talk to you. Can we go have a snack? I just want a cookie.�

Sometimes he falls for it, and when he does, our game can go on for a good while.

Sometimes he doesn’t, and I make some excuse about going to do some work or starting a load of laundry or using the bathroom and I escape.

It particularly bothers me when one of the female superheroes gets involved, which admittedly is not often because, for whatever reason, Mojo doesn’t like them. He only has a couple, and they came in sets with the more macho figures, which he does like, and when I ask him why he doesn’t like them he says it’s their hair or their shirt or some other random physical feature.

But on the rare occasion they do get involved, they fight with the men. And they lose. (They’re not his favorites – his favorites win. That makes sense.)

It’s not that I want to stifle his ‘boyness.’ And it’s not that he’s overly violent.

It’s that just about any show of violence in men makes me uncomfortable.

I am a girl and I was hit by a man – I was a victim of domestic violence, a battered wife – and I don’t want him to think it’s OK for boys to hit girls.

It’s my hang-up and I don’t want to make it his, but it does hang there and I guess I want him to learn from it.

I don’t think he will grow up to be an abuser – he hardly seems the type, and he has never seen or been a victim of abuse in his whole little life. (All this happened before I met Mojo’s father, my husband – before Mojo was even thought of.)

But, I remind myself, I am raising a man, and I want him to be a responsible man. He might encounter it someday and I think it would make me proud if he said or did something to stop it, if he could.

Or maybe I just want him to understand it, to know that women who are abused aren’t weak or bad. That it doesn’t only happen in a certain demographic. That it might change women but that it doesn’t have to define them.

Few people knew what was happening to me, and I eventually said and did something to stop it myself. I left and I lived to tell about it. But I wish someone – anyone – had said or done something earlier to remind me that it was not OK, that I wasn’t imagining it or being overly dramatic about it or bringing it on myself.

I don’t talk about that part of my life often, but it has made me who I am.

I have shared my experience a few times with people I thought needed to hear it.

Mojo, for now, does not need to hear it.

After all, he’s only 5, and he’s just playing superheroes. It’s not the same thing – not the same thing at all.

And yet, I cringe …

By Kim Blakely, mama to two

Mojo just turned 5.

I don’t know why, but I’ve been as nervous at Mojo’s birthday parties as I might have been at my own.

Of course I’ve gotten to the venue a few minutes early to get everything ready. And once everything was ready my nerves jangled with every tick of the clock.

It was a combination of stage fright and insecurity, you know?

What if no one showed up? What if the moms didn’t like me so they don’t bring their kids? What if the kids didn’t like Mojo and didn’t want to come? Would Mojo be disappointed? Would I? And what if they did come, but they thought the party was lame?

It’s ridiculous, I know.  I mean, it’s a party, for gosh sakes. For 5-year-olds.

I had sent out invitations with a phone number and email address for RSVPs, but so few people find/make time to do that (Is that just my experience? Do people RSVP to all of your events? There goes my insecurity again … Aaargh.).

So I worried about whether anyone would come and then people I didn’t know were coming arrived and I was happy to see them, even though I might have wished they had found the time to say they would be there … and then I realized that some of them had brought two or three of the guest child’s siblings and I started to add up the number of guests we would have in all and multiplying that by the cost per child that the venue charges for birthday parties and wondering if we would have enough pizza and enough cake and party favors and  … ahem.

I was pleased, though, to suddenly realize about 10 minutes into the party that I was relaxed, and I enjoyed chatting it up with the other moms and watching the 5-year-old shenanigans.

And the most important thing was that Mojo had a great time. The girls chased the boys, the boys chased the girls. There was lots of laughter and plenty of pizza and cake and the presents made Mojo roar with joy.

But after all that, I still can’t believe I have a 5-year-old. How did that happen?

Happy birthday, Mojo. I love you.

To read more All Akimbo moments, CLICK HERE! 

By Kim Blakely, mama happy to be on diaper duty

When I tell my friends I’ve decided to cloth diaper Moxie, the reaction I get is always something like, “Why?!� or “Ewww.�

Some of them just look at me, mouths agape, because they just don’t know what to say.

I tell them it’s not that hard, it saves bookoodles of money and it goes a long way toward helping the environment.

What I don’t tell them is that I’m almost obsessed. I browse cloth diaper websites every day, and when I finally can’t stop myself from ordering something, I anxiously await the sound of the mail truck each day until they arrive and I can prep them and put them on my sweet baby.

Yep. It’s that bad.

It all started when I was asked to review a GroBaby diaper for another website. I cringed, my thoughts running along the same line as my friends’ when they hear that I’m using cloth.

I was just sure that cloth would leak, that it would be stinky … and yuck, the mess. But I’m a good sport so I agreed to do the review and then I set out to learn what I could about cloth diapering in as short a time as possible.

Evidence that there are lots of people out there like me: online cloth diapering stores, review Web sites, chat rooms, etc. abound. I found lots of information about what I needed to do to get the diaper ready for use, and about how to clean it after it was -  ahem - used.

As I stumbled around on the internet, I felt like I was privy to a new world. FuzziBunz, BumGenius, Kissaluvs, Goodmamas, Rumparoos … aren’t those adorable names? And they are available in all kinds of colors and patterns. I was mildly intrigued.

I liked the GroBaby – and I was shocked to find that I had none of the leaks or blow-outs I’d lived through with disposable diapers. It was so cottony-soft against Moxie’s skin,  and she just looked so darned cute in it.

I read about health dangers related to disposables (dyes and dioxin and sodium polyacrylate, oh my), and that it takes several hundred years for a disposable diaper to decompose in a landfill, and all that pulled at my heartstrings. But what really got me was the potential effect on my purse-strings. The budget around here is tight, people. Really tight.

I thought I would just order a few more diapers and see how it went … and when those arrived, I thought I would order just a few more. And then, as Black Friday approached, sales went up all over those online stores and I was getting email updates from most of them. I shopped and shopped and shopped, and now I have enough diapers to last at least two days before washing. (And most of the diapers I have will fit her until she’s potty-trained. Amazing, right? I’m sorry to say that little factoid probably won’t stop me from buying more before then, but I also learned there is a big resale market for cloth diapers, so I’m not feeling too guilty about my habit. Yet.)

I don’t have just one kind of diaper in my stash – and each kind works a little bit differently. I have prefolds and covers (no pins necessary!), pockets that can be stuffed with extra microfiber or hemp inserts for more absorption overnight, all-in-ones, all-in-twos (like the extra GroBaby’s I ordered after trying the first one – they use covers with snap-in cotton soakers so you can use one cover a few times before washing), and I even have biodegradable disposable inserts for a couple of kinds of cloth diapers for when we go out and don’t want to lug extra stuff. I have diapers and covers in pink, yellow, purple, blue, green, orange (mandarin, to be precise) … there’s a shade to match almost any outfit.

I’ve tried explaining all this to my husband, but his eyes widen with fear at the thought of being left alone with Moxie during cloth diaper change time. I simplify things for him by just having a couple of diapers ready to put on, and I instruct him to just put the wet/dirty ones on top of the diaper pail for me to deal with when I get home. (I’ve yet to figure out if he’s genuinely afraid or just trying to weasel out of doing the dirty work, though he has mentioned maybe it would be better if he just used a disposable when his turn to change a diaper came along.)

Right now, Moxie is still almost exclusively breastfed, so the dirty diapers aren’t so bad. When she starts eating more solids, I might feel differently about diaper changes. But! There are flushable liners available, should I decide I just can’t deal with things otherwise.

Here’s the kicker. You’ll really think I’m crazy when you read this: I actually look forward to diaper laundry day. I know!!

I dump them into the washing machine straight from the diaper pail – I don’t have to touch anything icky – and run one cold rinse cycle and one hot wash cycle, throw them in the dryer and when they come out, they’re all fresh and fluffy and ready to go again. They’re easy to fold/stuff and they look so nice all stacked up. It’s kind of therapeutic.  A new start.

I think overall, I’ve spent about $350 on diapers and a laundry bag/diaper pail (which is actually just a 13-gallon trash can) and an appropriate laundry detergent (that was more complicated than I expected). Most of the diapers should last for two or three years. Compare that to the $18-22 I was spending every week and a half or two weeks on disposables, and it seems like a decent trade-off.

As much as I appreciate your letting me ramble about my strange obsession, I can’t let you go without seeing what’s got me into such a frenzy. Look at this:

Cute, no? And this diaper is soooo soft, inside and out.

Gotta go change a dipe now! Later!