Breastfeeding, still...

Well folks, the rumors are true, momma is still breastfeeding!  Can you believe it?  My child is over a year old and I am still nursing her.  Wild!  Sometimes I feel like an oddball because I didn’t cut it off immediately at age one.  I know I’m not, but sometimes it feels that way.  There can be a stigma around nursing a toddler.  “So your kid can just walk up and request milk from you?!?”  With all this pressure to nurse and then to not nurse, the message is confusing and seemingly rigid. Each family and each child has different needs and we need to support their varying needs without judgement.  I’m writing today to encourage nursing as long as you’d like and providing my reasons for nursing beyond age one.    

Here are my 7 reasons for continuing to nurse beyond the one year mark.

1. I didn’t have any problems with my milk supply.  My milk continued to produce and be fruitful for my daughter so it was easy to continue nursing. This is an important point, because sometimes weaning is not a choice, but it just happens when our body tells us. 
2. My daughter and I prefer, enjoy, and cherish nursing.  It’s our special time together.  It helps us to feel tender, connected and loving toward each other.  This is especially useful as she becomes a more demanding, emotional toddler.  Nursing relaxes both of us.
3. It’s nutritious. It’s made uniquely for her and it provides her with necessary vitamins and minerals. I remind myself of this point often, specifically on the days when she will only eat bread!
4. It provides immunity.  Children’s immune systems work at 60% of adult level at age one and their system doesn’t function at 100% until they are 6 years old.  (Dettwyler 1994). Breastmilk contains antibodies that help ward off and fight illnesses.  The immunities in breast milk have been shown to increase in concentration as the baby gets older and nurses less, so older babies still receive lots of immune factors (Goldman et al, 1983).  Anything to reduce the severity of those colds!
5. It helps prevent allergies. It is well documented that the later that cow's milk and other common allergens are introduced into the diet of a baby, the less likelihood there is of allergic reactions (Savilahti, 1987).
6. Cow’s milk isn’t better.  In fact cow’s milk is made for…surprise…cows!  It’s milk to help them grow FAT fast.  It contains lactose which is often not tolerated well by humans. (About 75% of the world’s population is genetically unable to properly digest milk and other dairy products.) What about Calcium?  Interesting fact - Countries with the lowest rates of dairy and calcium consumption (like those in Africa and Asia) have the lowest rates of osteoporosis.  In fact, the animal protein it contains may help cause bone loss!
7. Breastfed infants have added protection against bowel diseases such as Crohn's disease.  This is a HUGE factor for me!  I want to give my daughter every opportunity to avoid Crohn’s that I possibly can. 

So if you are a mother like me who decided to nurse beyond the year mark – more power to you!  I think it is important to know and understand your own “list” of reasons why you nurse.  If you get flak about nursing your toddler you can be prepared to answer questions about why it matters to you and to your child.  The gift you are giving is immense and lifelong! I have loved and continue to enjoy nursing my daughter. :)

 

WITI 2015 - Chrissy's musings on women in the workplace

I recently had the privilege to join nearly 1,000 other women at the Women in Technology International Summit, nicknamed WITI (witty).  It is a meeting of the minds to help promote: Collaboration Instead Of Competition, Empowerment, Honoring Past Generations and Commitment to Future Generations of Women, Listening for Value, Taking Responsibility, Risk Taking, Using Technology, Diversity, and Acknowledgement & Recognition.

The event was hosted in the San Jose, CA, in the heart of Silicon Valley.  We spent three days listening to many inspiring speakers, attending coaching circles, and getting to know each other over meals. Before getting there I had two hesitations.  One, did I fit in with a bunch of "techies"?  And two, do we have to "network"?

First, I was leery of the conference and what sort of take aways I could get from it since I’m not exactly a woman in tech.  I am actually a woman in finance working for a tech company.  So in some ways I felt like a fraud when they would start to break out coding lingo, or make social media jokes that I clearly didn’t get.  Yet, I still felt like a part of the community.  We were all women who were there to find ways to support each other no matter what career path we are on.

My second hesitation was the word NETWORKING.  Ugh, I hate that word so much.  It makes me cringe every time I hear it.  There are so many expectations and images all wrapped up in that one word.  I despise even more the forced networking space.  I like to network on my own time and when it’s not so organized.  The organized networking makes me feel like we are caged animals being watched as we score our prey.  And obviously this networking thing has a certain look and feel…awkward!  You go introduce yourself to strangers and try to make small talk about your job and see if there is a way you can use them to climb up the ladder.  Yuck!  I would rather meet people and talk to them as if I was trying to get to know them and become their friend.  I want to know about them, what excites them, and what they do in their free time.  That’s interesting to me.  All that to say, that my networking looks different and I dread those networking time slots more than you can imagine.

I did, however, get over these two hurdles of not being a tech woman and that networking thing.  I found myself among fellow women who were feeling many of the same things that I was.  The biggest struggle I felt and heard was between wanting an amazing career for myself, while wanting to put my whole heart and soul into raising my family.  The desire to find that perfect career fit, while being torn because my family is also my passion project and finding that perfect fit may mean giving up more time than I am willing to in order to make it happen.  Do I want to be thanking my nanny or husband for taking care of my family so I could work?  Or do I want to be the one taking care of my family?  But what if I am doing work that is so meaningful to the world; does that make it worth it?  What if my family is my world? 

I know only I can answer those questions, but they are constantly swirling in my head.  It’s an ongoing mental battle.  I become so bogged down with these concerns that I’m often in a state of paralysis.  I don’t know whether to move forward, or to stay where I am.  Will I be happier doing something else, even if it requires more time away from my family?  If so, will that make it worth it because I’ll have more to offer when I get home albeit less time?  Will I be setting a better example that way?  Is the example I’m setting now a bad one? 

I saw at the conference many successful women who had chosen a career instead of family.  I also saw many successful women who were also mothers.  I wonder what they had to sacrifice in order to make it all work.  For me, I fear that I would sacrifice my health and that scares me.  [Health is a whole different blog post - see the post on Crohn’s!]  But somethings got to give, right?  There are no more hours in the day than there were yesterday.  How do we become our amazing selves all while raising equally amazing kids?  I think each woman must answer this for herself.  But we do need to take our place at the table instead of shirking away from opportunities and know we deserve to be there. 

The message at the conference was to be our own advocates, speak up!  Make sure we are not fading into the background.  Take what we need, and ask that others are flexible with us so that we can do both of our jobs.  I like that message.  Women are so important to the success of our country and world.  It is proven that teams with women are more successful.  Women have 87% of the purchasing power and can offer valuable insight to businesses.  It just makes plain business sense to include more women in the workplace.  Anyone logical can see that.  But in order to make that happen, we all need to do our part.  There are cultural shifts that need to occur.  Young girls who may be called “bossy” would be called future leaders if they were boys.  Women who do go back into the workforce after having children are questioned if they should be there…”should you be working, I mean, you do have children at home!”  Is this is a question men ever receive?  I doubt it.  Our ideas about what’s right and wrong need to shift.  When girls figure out that people aren’t going to like them if they take charge and act self-assured, they quickly adjust to file into the social norms.  Meanwhile, boys who act confident and take charge are patted on the back and encouraged to keep up that behavior.  It makes them more attractive while it makes women less attractive.  That is a problem. Women often shame each other for this “over confident behavior” and in essence we are keeping each other down. We need to support each other, and raise other women up with us as we break this norm.  It will take time, but there are plenty of amazing women ahead of us who have paved the way, we just need to keep blazing the trail.

There were three of these trailblazing women from IBM who spoke at WITI.  It re-enforced why I love working for IBM so much.  The company offers a community where breaking norms is acceptable and desirable.  They support a diverse workforce and not just on paper.  IBM has created a culture where women can succeed and their voices are heard to ensure women will stay in the work force.  They have always been on the leading edge of hiring “unpopular” populations before the rest of the country and I think supporting the needs of women in the workplace is another great example of this.  They recognize that people are IBM’s strongest asset and supporting them will support the company. What IBM represents, how IBM interacts with the world, and how IBM treats their employees is truly something to be admired.  I am encouraged working for a company where I can see a future for myself as a successful woman.

At the end of my three days in Silicon Valley I feel more ambitious and uplifted.  I feel inspired to find my own answers and to take help from other women who have sat where I am right now.  I was reminded that I am not alone in the confusion and division I feel around work and family.  I am driven to find the best answer for me and my family.  I know it will help pave the way for women who come after me, and especially my Anora. 

What is Crohns?

Hey there!  I thought I would take a minute to talk about my disease - Crohn's - and my involvement with the CCFA.  I get questions all the time about what Crohn's is, when I was diagnosed and how it impacts me.  So let's start from the beginning.

I have had gut problems ever since I had the capacity to remember, and even before that (I'm told).  I have early memories being curled up in the fetal position because it was the only way I could handle the pain.  I remember being out for dinner with my family and not being able to eat because I was in too much pain.  We could never figure out why I would get such bad "stomach aches".  I would try taking Tums, or other antacids, and nothing seemed to work.  As I grew older - with the help of my mother - we were able to uncover some trigger foods that improved my quality of life.  So I began to avoid things like soda pop, popcorn, milk, ice cream, and gum.  Keeping these things out of my belly helped me manage my pain.

Knowing what foods to avoid was only part of it because there were still times that I felt bloated and sluggish.  It always seemed so unfair that my belly protruded due to my sickness (as a teenager this is a big deal).  I often felt totally drained no matter how much sleep I got, and being an active young lady, this made playing the sports I loved challenging at times.

By the time I reached college, my gut problems were just life.  I didn't know anything different.  I experienced diarrhea frequently and continued to rely on watching what I ate as a source of comfort.  It was always a difficult thing to explain when people didn't understand why I couldn't eat or drink certain things. And the list of foods and drinks on the AVOID list continued to grow.  It was also embarrassing when I was gassy or bloated.  But again, it just began to be my normal so I lived that way without much notice.

After graduation I got a desk job and began a more sedentary life style with more stress. I think these were the triggers to finally lead to my Crohn's diagnosis.  It started out as a unexplainable swollen ankle.  It was swollen for a week or so and only got bigger and red spots of swelling began to spread across both my legs.  It became painful, and I could hardly walk without being in excruciating pain.

I didn't understand what it was from, so I went to the clinic to get it looked at.  They didn't know exactly what it was either.  I got a biopsy and was asked a series of questions.  She said it could be related to my GI tract.  Suddenly I had realized that I had been living with diarrhea for the past few months.  To my surprise, that was NOT normal.  I proceeded to get a series of tests - a colonoscopy and CT scan for sure.  It was quickly determined after I got the results that I had a disease.  Crohn's disease.  I can remember the look on my parents faces when they heard the news.  It was a big diagnosis, but also came as a relief to me to finally understand my body a little better.  I was immediately put on steroids to reduce the inflammation in my body.  That was my miracle drug for a while, but it comes with intense side affects.   As I tapered off the steroids I was put on Azathioprine (or Imuran).  This is a drug given to transplant patients.  It seems to work by stopping your body from attacking itself - which is what an autoimmune disease like Crohn's does. 

It was hard to accept the reality of being medicine dependent at age 23, but I knew I needed something.  Luckily my body responded well to this medication. I remain on the same drug and dosage today which after 9 years, is a really fortunate situation.  Many patients experience their disease progressively get worse meaning stronger and stronger medications, and larger doses.  The thought of reaching the top of the drug ladder sounds so scary.

Over the course of the last 9 years I have managed my Crohn's with diet, exercise, acupuncture, and stress management.  I am getting pretty good at it.  Yet, I still do have episodes.  Three years ago I had Iritis (inflammation of the iris) and needed steroid drops.  I also have days where I just need to slow down and sleep.  I still have to explain to people why I can't drink beer, eat salads, and soups, etc.

Since I moved to Seattle I have been a part of the CCFA (Crohn's & Colitis Foundation) community.  I have been able to interact with others who have similar problems and discomforts.  It really helps to keep things in perspective and remain positive.  I consistently feel lucky that my disease is not worse and that I am able to manage it pretty well with diet, exercise, medication, and acupuncture.  About 2/3 of Crohn's patients will have surgery to remove part of their intestine at some point in there life, and my hope is I never reach that time.  Hopefully, before that happens, they will find a cure for this disease.

For the past 4 years I have been volunteering for the CCFA and help organize and put on the Take Steps walk.  It is so much fun and a small way that I can give back to the community that has given me so much.  Last Sunday was the SEVENTH Take Steps walk event that I attended with my family by my side. Ben has been to every walk with me and is my constant support.    Here we are at the walk - it was a HOT, sunny day!

 

As I grow with this disease I find myself being somewhat of the spokesperson for Crohn's.  Several people in my life have been diagnosed since first found out.  I am so lucky to hear their stories and can understand their struggle.  It also allows me to share my story and the learnings I have uncovered over the last several years.   So when I was asked if I could tell my story (or at least a little bit of it) for the radio to help spread the word about this disease I quickly accepted.  I attached the recording below.  My part is towards the end.

So this is me.  The disease feels like me because I think about it everyday, multiple times a day.  It has become a part of my identity for better or worse.  I like to think for better.  It helps be consider my body each day and it helps me think about what I am putting in my mouth.  It gets me out there running on rainy days because I know I will feel better afterwords.  It helps me be a better mother because it reminds me to slow down when necessary.  It's certainly not ideal, but I know it could be so much worse.  I am so lucky to have a strong support system and understanding friends and family.

Thanks for taking the time to read about me and Crohn's. It was a LONG one.   It's because of people like you that I feel so strong and supported!