Tag: Family

From Baby to Toddler: First Birthday and First Anniversary of Birthing

MILESTONES VS ANNIVERSARIES

Milestones are typically cumulative: one leads to the next and to the next, either in number (as with birthdays) or in skill level (as with motor development). Anniversaries, on the other hand, are a remembering of a singular event. Milestones feel like an accomplishment, a moving forward. Anniversaries feel like pausing and looking back, to see how far we’ve come.

The first birthday of my child was a strange mix of both. Their first birthday: a huge milestone, and hopefully the first of many birthdays to come. The one-year anniversary of their birth: this time last year I was in labour for four days, having an experience unlike any other in my life.

The birthday celebration feels very external – it’s about the baby, how much they’ve changed and grown in one year (so much!) and celebrating with family. The anniversary of birthing feels very internal and personal. It’s an experience I went through with my husband that we have only shared with a couple people.

So how are you supposed to celebrate these two highly interconnected experiences that are so wildly different?

FIRST BIRTHDAY: IS IT REALLY THAT IMPORTANT?

For most birthdays, it’s all about the person who’s birthday it is. But for a child’s first birthday, they don’t really understand what’s happening, don’t have any expectations of what a birthday is, and won’t be disappointed if it is skipped altogether. So why bother with all the fuss?

For the parents of course! Getting through the first year of your child’s life is a huge accomplishment. Whether it felt easy or hard, take this excuse to celebrate!

We initially didn’t really care about having a party. Everyone was busy, I was navigating the end of parental leave and returning to work, and our kid was just starting daycare and was exhausted. But we knew we would feel disappointed if we didn’t. So we made it work. We had a small family gathering outdoors and our baby got to try cake for the first time. It was nothing extravagent but it was definitely important.

Our baby is now officially a toddler (but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop calling them my baby).

REMEMBERING THE BIRTHING PROCESS

In the days leading up to my baby’s first birthday, I was tracking what was happening the year before. A year ago at this time I was just starting labour. A year ago at this time we were talking to the midwife for the second day in a row. A year ago at this time things were getting pretty intense and I was already exhausted. A year ago at this time we were heading to the hospital. A year ago at this time we were holding our baby for the first time.

I had a long slow labour. This remembering, therefore, spans the three days prior to my baby’s birthday as well as the birthday itself. At the same time as wanting to remember these experiences, life was continuing on. I was at work one of those days. We were doing two hour daycare visits on two of those days. My husband was working for three of those days and we didn’t have much time to reminisce together. So sometimes, something important had happened the year prior, but the moment had already passed by the time I had the awareness to remember.

It felt like I was doing the experience and myself a disservice by missing these key moments. But really, no one around me knew or cared. It was just for myself and therefore I can decide how and when I remember them. Not remembering them at that exact moment a year later doesn’t mean they didn’t happen, that I’ve forgotten about them, or that I’m ignoring the impact they had. It just means that it was one experience, a moment in time, and I am continuing to live my life beyond that moment.

I definitely want to find a way to commemorate this experience more concretely next year. I want to include my husband, and potentially even my child, in my remembering process. I want to build a tradition.

BUILDING TRADITIONS

Traditions are important. They are used to mark milestones (such as having a birthday celebration) and anniversaries (such as going on a date or exchanging gifts on your wedding anniversary). Because of this, a tradition can tie these two wildly different connected experiences toogether.

For me, a tradition around my birthing experience would involve some recognition of the intensity and endurance involved in that experience. It would be a remembering and celebrating of what my body was and is capable of and the role my husband played in supporting me through that process. This year, I did this mostly on my own, internally, with a bit of sharing with my husband.

A tradition around my child’s birthday would be pretty typical – the cake and candles, the presents, and the family gathering. I also want to include a reflection on the past year – some of my child’s, and our family’s, important experiences, challenges, and achievements. This year, we had a family party with cake (no candles because fire and one-year-olds is a dangerous combination), and my husband and I did a quiet re-reading of our monthly baby journal entries and a look back through our pictures and videos.

One way we could combine these experiences in the future is with a candle. I would light the candle on the anniversary of when my labour started, each of the next few evenings we would share some memories of the labour experience and the past year of our child’s life, and on their birthday we would light the candles on their birthday cake (or cupcake if the actual party is on a different day) using the same candle. My labour candle lights my child’s birthday candles. It has the symbolism and recognition I’m looking for.

Maybe next year I’ll write another post describing what we actually end up doing. Until then, let me know what your experience of your child’s first birthday was. How do you comemorate your labour and birthing experience?

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From Baby to Toddler: The End of Parental Leave and Start of Daycare

In Canada, where I live, we have a year long parental leave. It was amazing to get to spend the majority of my time with my baby for their entire first year of life. This is the time we lay the groundwork for the bond we will have from then on.

Life took on a completely different pattern when I was on parental leave. It had a narrow focus that required me to develop a wide range of new skills. It felt like my ‘normal’ life was put on pause for a year while I did this new ‘caring for my baby’ thing. It was like stepping sideways onto a completely different track of my life. The weird part was not knowing how these two tracks would merge at the end of the year.

PARENTAL LEAVE IN A PANDEMIC

Parental leave can feel isolating – you are away from all your work related friends, spending most of your time at home caring the your new baby. The friends you used to hang out with may or may not be interested in hanging out with you and your baby. You may find those friends are no longer the type of support you need. Or you no longer seem to have much in common now that your focus has shifted. At times being on leave with a new baby did feel isolating. But, being an introvert, I think it didn’t bother me as much as it would some people.

My parental leave overlapped entirely with the global COVID-19 pandemic. This meant that everyone, not just me, was feeling isolated. As a result, I felt less alone in the experience. There was lots of media attention given to the emotional effects of isolation and the development of internet based communication systems. Many social groups were adapted to online platforms. This gave me access to support networks that I would not have had otherwise. Many of these were local groups in the US that I could now access over zoom.

So, overall, despite the general isolation of being at home with a baby, reinforced by the pandemic, I ended up feeling less isolated than I would have otherwise. But the contact I had was with a completely different set of people than those in my previous life. So when my leave finished and I went back to work, very few people had seen or heard from me in a year. And everyone wanted to know how my baby and I were doing.

REINTEGRATING WITH THE WORLD

The end of parental leave is like pushing our way out of our family cocoon (reinforced by the pandemic-induced isolation) and re-entering the world, now as a family of three. Or, to continue with the same metaphor as above, it feels like trying to merge two tracks that are wildly different. It feels vulnerable and shaky.

Some of this shakiness is logistical – we can no longer simply get ready for work and leave, come home and make dinner, hang out and go to bed. One of us has to get our kid ready for their day and feed them, drop our kid off at daycare, pick them up, and then do all the things in the evening we’ve been doing the past year. In this way, the tracks don’t so much merge as we shift back and forth between them throughout the day – the family/childcare track and the work track. These compenents are easy to predict and plan in advance, even if they feel a bit overwhelming at the start.

The parts that are more shaky are how our family is perceived and how to be as authentic as possible without spending more energy than we have. How to manage the impact of attending daycare (more on this below). How to stay focused on our non-baby related tasks when we’ve been so used to focusing the majority of our attention and time on our baby. These are the more nebulous emotional things that we will have to navigate or learn as we go.

Reintegrating with the world is also socially overwhelming. I went from having limited social contact, especially with the pandemic, to seeing all my work colleagues again. I was answering the same questions over and over. Inevitably, one of those questions was ‘remind me again, did you have a boy or a girl?’ I know it’s just small talk and people wanting to connect but it throws all the societal assumptions about gender that I’ve been happily avoiding this past year in my face.

I have to re-learn how to let the dysphoria enducing comments and situations roll of my back and leave the irritation from these situations at work as much as possible. Having a fun, cute baby to come home to definitely helps.

STARTING DAYCARE

After spending almost every day together, having my baby spend five of seven days at daycare feels like there will be monumental distance between us. I feel like I will miss important steps in their development. Or miss enough of the little incremental developments so that when they show a new skill or level of understanding, it will come as a surprise. It will feel sudden. I will feel like they are growing too fast for me to keep up.

Maybe this is true. But maybe, if I spend dedicated play time with them during the times we do spend together (early mornings, evenings, and weekends), it will be enough time to see these small shifts. It’s not like they’ll be at daycare 24/7 afterall.

So far, our daycare experience has gone well. We found a daycare we were comfortable with that had a spot available when we needed it. We did a couple two hour visits to get my child familiar with the environment and staff while still having me as a safety net. On the second visit I left for an hour which did not phase my child in the least.

In the first full days of daycare, we dropped them off as late in the morning as we could and picked them up as early as our work schedules would allow. Even with these shortened days, our baby was exhausted. They have been napping on the way to daycare and after coming home in addition to the midday nap they get at daycare. As long as we give them these times to sleep, they seem to be doing ok.

My baby is definitely aware of spending less time with us. They need a lot more time being held, especially in the morning and after naps. They dislike spending as much time as they used to in the stroller or carseat where they can’t see or interact with us (though this could also be related to their increasing independence). Since I also need more cuddle time with my baby, so far I am ok with this.

BALANCING RISK AND REWARD

When we first decided daycare was the best option, we weighed the pros and cons of each option available to us. But just because we settled on full time daycare doesn’t mean we don’t have to continue to be aware of the risks and rewards. Knowing the risks will help us mitigate them or adjust for them. Knowing the rewards will help us get the most benefit from it. So here are a few of the risks and rewards we are noticing:

Risks associated with daycare

  • COVID exposure risk – no masks, lots of adults and kids in a small space (we wear masks any time we go in)
  • Considerably less bonding time
  • Less control over our child’s schedule to give them what they need (mostly in terms of sleep)
  • Financial risk due to high cost

Rewards associated with daycare

  • Exposure to more germs leads to a stronger immune system
  • Socialization
  • More guided activities and resources
  • More personal freedom for work/school

How do our experiences reintegrating with the world and starting daycare compare to yours? I imagine if you are in a country that only has six weeks of paid parental leave and you had to return to work at that time your experiences would be wildly different. Please share in the comments below!

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From Baby to Toddler: Developmental Thresholds and Complex Emotions

DEVELOPMENTAL THRESHOLDS

Babies are constantly changing. Even before birth, their development during pregnancy is rapid and constant. And yet, we perceive this development as occurring in stages. Some of these stages seem arbitrary – like the trimesters of pregnancy – and some seem practical – like the motor milestones. The change from one stage to the next requires adaptation and often comes with excitement, pride, mourning, and anxiety.

Often, these thresholds feel sudden because we mark them with a discrete event – conception, birth, first time our baby sleeps through the night, first time they eat solid foods, first tooth, first step, first word. But really, these are indicators of progress that is slow and constant.

This focus on a discrete event is where we get into trouble. The more sudden a change from one stage to the next feels, the more trouble we have adapting and the more our emotions around this change can feel overwhelming.

Motor development especially can seem to happen in sudden leaps. If that is our focus, we can fall into the pattern of waiting for the next leap to happen, trying to help our baby get there faster, and even becoming anxious if the space between leaps is taking ‘too long’. But if we pay attention to other areas of development, we see them progressing more quickly during that space between gross motor leaps – fine motor control, perceptual abilities, social interaction, language ability, sleeping skills, and eating skills.

So when we take a holistic global view, development doesn’t happen in chunks with discrete moments marking one section to the next but gradually and globally. We can define our child’s ‘stages’ in whatever way is most meaningful to us. And the thresholds between stages are more like the changing of seasons than the flip of a switch.

COMPLEX AND CONFLICTING EMOTIONS

Often, thresholds or transitions from one stage to the next cause lots of complex and conflicting emotions. We are excited to see our baby learn new things and delight in their excitement and wonder (such as learning how to turn pages in a book). We are proud of how far they’ve come and how our bond with them is manifesting. But we also mourn the loss of the things we enjoyed about the previous stage that we will never get back (such as being able to cuddle and read a book without them grabbing it, chewing it, or tearing it). And we can feel anxious about adapting to, managing, or guiding them through the next stage of development (such as how to stop them from damaging books while still encouraging their interest in them and promoting literacy).

Sometimes, the mourning especially feels big and overwhelming to the point that you wonder if there’s something wrong with you (such as yearning for the days when your baby was soft and tiny and squishy and stayed where you put them). In these moments, I have tried to identify what it was about the previous stage that I feel I am losing and look for how that same experience or form of connection is showing up in my baby’s new way of being or interacting (such as encouraging my baby to come to me when they need me or getting down on the floor to play with them on their level).

As with all endings of one stage and beginnings of the next, the closer you look at them and pay attention to the details of the experience, the more they seem to overlap. The ‘moment’ when one thing ends and another begins starts to look more like a process. This zooming in helps me smooth out the emotional experience as well.

It means I am not mourning everything at once but in small pieces as the changes occur. I can then more easily stay focused on the exciting new aspects of my baby’s development and our life together. I can be proud of the small victories as well as the big ones.

I can also see the smaller pieces of the change as they occur and adapt in real time instead of feeling like something has suddenly shifted that I wasn’t ready for. In this way, I avoid a lot of the anxiety that comes from a sudden loss of feeling competent, a loss of control, and the feeling of my baby growing up too fast for me to keep up. There will definitely be times when things do shift suddenly – an illness or injury for example. And maybe I will have to learn a completely different way of dealing with those. But for the more predictable shifts that happen as my baby grows into a toddler, I have found this ‘focus on the details’ approach to work well.

WHEN DOES MY BABY BECOME A TODDLER?

The standardized moment when a baby becomes a toddler is their first birthday. This is an example of an arbitrary and sudden way to mark this threshold. For us, this time corresponds with the end of my parental leave and the start of daycare. Their first birthday is also the first anniversary of their birth and all the emotional memories that come with that. We are also in the process of weaning bottle feeding and our baby is rapidly working their way to taking their first steps.

These related yet varied developmental and life changes all feel like part of the process of my baby becoming a toddler. So while their first birthday may be the definitive moment that the label flips over, the emotional processing of this developmental change incorporates so much more.

PROCESSING THE THRESHOLD FROM BABY TO TODDLER

The threshold between baby and toddler isn’t the first time in parenting that I’ve experienced complex and conflicting emotions, and it definitely won’t be the last, but it feels particularly big.

Some of the changes around this threshold involve the ending of something that has been a constant for us since their birth a year ago or very close thereafter (bottle feeding, parental leave and full time caregiving). These aspects have been core elements that defined our existence up until now. Progressing past them to move on to the next phase feels like we’re giving up parts of what defines us as a family. Or what has defined our experience as a family up until now.

The end of parental leave is like pushing our way out of our family cocoon (reinforced by the pandemic-induced isolation) and re-entering the world, now as a family of three. It feels vulnerable and shaky. It feels like there will be monumental distance between us after spending almost every day together.

Their first birthday is an opportunity to reflect on all our memories and experiences, growth and change from this first year. It will also bring back a lot of emotional memories from our experiences of labour, birth, and immediate postpartum.

The end of bottle feeding feels like the end of early morning cuddles and a clear step from the baby-drinking-from-a-baby-bottle phase into the toddler-drinking-from-their-own-cup phase.

There is so much development in so many different areas around this time but the one that gets the most attention is walking. A baby’s first steps are often much celebrated and, emotionally, mark the shift into toddlerhood. The name ‘toddler’ even comes from the unsteady, wide based gait quintessential to new, young ambulators. But this ‘milestone’ especially feels like a long slow process as I’ve watched my baby go from sitting to pulling up to stand, crawling, cruising, kneeling, bear-crawling, standing, balancing, reaching, and soon, taking steps, then walking. And even then, it will be a while before they give up crawling altogether.

So overall, there is a shift towards my child becoming more independent, spending more time away from me, and a re-defining of our experience as a family from one that exists in isolation to one that exists integrated with the wider world. Clearly, my baby is not the only one making a shift to a new stage. We all will be shifting together.

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How to Find a Queer and Trans Inclusive Daycare

Parenting is hard at the best of times. When you have to trust your child’s care and guidance to a group of strangers at a daycare, you want to know that all the hard work you’ve put in will be supported, not contradicted.

As a queer and trans family, we believe in raising our child in a gender creative and expansive way. We believe in respecting and affirming their bodily autonomy and teaching and modeling consent. We believe that under no circumstances do body parts define a person’s gender and until a baby is old enough to vocalize their preferred gender, pronouns should be considered temporary. Gendered language should be used sparingly (using child instead of girl or boy) or expansively (using child, girl, and boy equally to refer to the child).

As a queer and trans family, we don’t feel constrained by traditional gender roles. We don’t necessarily use traditional, binary parental terms or binary pronouns. We don’t necessarily celebrate traditional binary parental days. Our families may include sperm donors and donor siblings, surrogate and bio parents, children of our close queer friends whom our kiddo thinks of as ‘cousins’, and many other varieties.

Having to interact with institutions that care for our child opens the door to discrimination, isolation, and othering. Finding an inclusive daycare, school, pediatrician, etc is a lot of work. Often, these don’t even exist or we choose to travel much further than we hoped in order to access them. When we do find one, we often still have to do significant work to explain our identities and family structure and recommend ways they can be even more inclusive.

This is because there is a difference between accepting, aware, inclusive, and affirming. For me, accepting is the bare minimum. This is the absence of overt discrimination. Awareness comes when they understand the unique needs and identities of the queer and trans families they may encounter but haven’t necessarily taken steps to make space or include these in their policies and programs. Once they create and act on these policies and programs and complete some LGBT diversity and inclusion training, I would consider them inclusive. If they actively include diverse gender identities and family structures in their representations, encourage the kids to engage in all kinds of play regardless of sex or gender, vocalize their pronouns and ask families and kids about their own (as age appropriate), and apply all kinds of adjectives to kids regardless of sex or gender, then I would consider them affirming. This, I have yet to find.

We are currently in the middle of searching for a daycare for our little one. I don’t yet have the experience of working with a daycare to understand and respect our family’s identities and our child’s gender presentation and personal boundaries. I’m sure I will share more on that when it comes. For now, here are a few ways I have used to search for a queer and trans inclusive daycare.

COMMUNITY RECOMMENDATIONS

This is the best option. Having a recommendation from another family with similar identities/structure to yours who already attends a daycare and has had a good experience not only gives you a first hand recommendation but also another family to back you up should you need to bring up issues around inclusivity.

However, this is also the hardest to find for most of us. I received one recommendation from a queer (but not trans) family for a daycare they attend and like and one recommendation from a queer and trans family for a daycare they attend and have had no problems with (but isn’t actively inclusive).

So I kept those daycares in mind and moved on to other options:

WEBSITES

I did a quick search for daycares within commutable range of our house and came up with about 13 options. I thought this was a pretty good number. I then looked at all their websites. Of the 13, only one mentioned gender in the types of diversity they were supportive of. A couple others mentioned being supportive of/welcoming all types of families, family structures, and cultures.

This was not super encouraging. Clearly, I would have to ask specific questions to see if any of the others were inclusive even though they didn’t mention anything on their websites.

CONTACT WITH QUESTIONS

So I sent out emails to my top eight choices in our area based on their policies and programs listed on their websites. The more emails I sent, the more brave I got and the more specific and direct my questions became. Because really, what is a daycare going to do to me if they’re transphobic and I’m asking about inclusivity? The worst that could happen is I get a negative response which would give me a very clear answer about whether to send my child there or not.

Here are some questions that I asked:

  • Do you have any policies regarding interactions with trans and queer families and children?
  • Has your staff done any LGBT specific diversity and inclusion training?
  • What is your knowledge of and perspective on gender development in children?
  • What is your approach to children’s toys, clothing, pronouns, and other language?
  • Do you have any LGBT inclusive children’s books?
  • Do you have any LGBT identifying staff?
  • Have you had/do you currently have any other LGBTQ families attending your daycare?

The majority of responses ignored all of my specific questions and used a blanket statement such as ‘we are supportive of all cultures and families’. What this says to me is ‘I don’t understand why these questions are necessary and have no idea how I would answer them in a way that would satisfy you so I will reassure you as best I can and hope that’s good enough’. This falls into the category of ‘accepting’ but not even ‘aware’.

The couple that responded with more specific answers to my questions had decent answers and freely admitted when my question was not something they had ever considered before. One even went so far as to say they would put that at the top of their list for training opportunities for their staff, resources to add to their library, and further learning for themselves. While I would consider that falling in the ‘aware’ to ‘inclusive’ categories, they show potential for being ‘affirming’ in the future and open to corrections and suggestions.

The ones that had good responses and the ones that were recommended by other LGBT people became the list of places we wanted to tour.

TOURING SITES

This is the stage we are currently in. Here is a list of things we are paying attention to when we go on site tours.

What to look for

  • Books with LGBT characters, families, and gender creative representations and stories
  • Gender neutral toys and play spaces (red flags for anything divided into boys/girls or pink/blue)
  • Pronouns included on staff ID badges/name tags or kids’ cubby areas

Interactions with staff

  • Do they respectfully ask about your family structure, identities, and pronouns?
  • Do they introduce themselves with their pronouns?
  • Do they gender your child before asking what pronouns you are using for your child?
  • How do they react if you correct their use of language for your child or family?
  • If you observe them interacting with other children, do they interact in a way you are comfortable with?

HOW TO BE A QUEER AND TRANS INCLUSIVE DAYCARE

If you are someone who works in childcare, here are some suggestions for ways you can be queer and trans affirming in your business structure and programming. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

  • Mandatory 2SLGBTQ inclusion and diversity training for current staff
    • Include this in new staff training or repeat after a period of staff turnover
  • Familiarity and competence using a variety of pronouns
  • Knowledge of how gender develops in children
  • Actively counteract your biases around gendered clothing, toys, behaviours, and types of play
  • Use a variety of adjectives and forms of encouragement for all children
  • Books that depict families of all structures, children and parents of various gender experiences and presentations, and a variety of pronouns.
  • Ask for and offer your pronouns when interacting with kids and adults

If you are a queer or trans parent and looking for childcare, I hope this helps give you ideas or makes you feel less alone in the struggle. If you have other questions you would ask, other things you would look for during tours, or other recommendations to childcare businesses, please leave them in a comment or send me an email! I’d love to hear your experiences with your hunt for inclusive and affirming childcare.

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Who’s Feeding the Baby and Other Influences on Parental Roles

Our parental roles have shifted a few times throughout our baby’s first ten months. In the first two weeks, I was exclusively feeding the baby from my body. As this was not a role that my husband could fulfill, he made considerable effort to take on as many of the other baby care and general household tasks as he could. That included diaper changes, baby baths, making meals, shopping, and getting the baby to sleep.

After two weeks, we had to switch to bottle feeding which meant that we now had equal ability to feed the baby. I still had the extra load of pumping multiple times a day so my husband would typically feed the baby while I was pumping. We would then share the rest of the baby care and household tasks more evenly.

Then my husband went back to work and I became the primary caregiver during the majority of the day. My husband always made (and continues to make) an effort to do as much of the morning and evening baby care as he can, allowing me to have some personal time, extra sleep, or complete household tasks.

To me, this sharing of baby care is normal and expected. In talking to friends who also have new babies, this isn’t the case for every family. I’m not sure why but I have noticed some patterns.

WHO’S FEEDING THE BABY?

The primary factor seems to be who is feeding the baby or whether the feeding duties can be shared.

The baby is exclusively fed by one parent

Historically, the birth parent was the sole nursing/feeding parent and also the primary caregiver for the rest of the baby’s needs. This view seems to still influence some people to lump all the baby care together and place it in the domain of the feeding parent. As it turns out, only the feeding is exclusive to the feeding parent. All the rest of the baby care can be done (and in my opinion should be done) by either/both parents.

In some families, like mine, we view each baby care activity separately – feeding, sleeping/bedtime, changing, bathing, playing, medical appointments, etc. In this scenario, if the feeding can only be done by one parent and is often a highly demanding and time consuming task, at least one if not more of the other tasks could be taken over by the other parent/another caregiver.

The baby can by fed by either parent/any caregiver

This seems to make it more likely that baby care duties will be shared. If the feeding duties can be shared, it makes it more obvious that the rest of the baby care can also be shared. The majority of the care may still fall to one person due to work or other responsibilities but even if this is the case, there is more room for negotiation.

The baby is partly fed exclusively by one parent and can partly be fed by either parent

Whether the exclusive feeding responsibilities are from nursing, body feeding, or pumping, in this scenario one parent takes some of the feeding duties and the rest can be shared with the other parent/caregivers.

Because some of the feeding can be shared, it follows that the other baby care can be shared, as with the previous scenario. I feel like this would make it more obvious to the non-lactating parent how much of the work falls exclusively to the lactating parent. Ideally, this would lead to the non-lactating parent helping out with shareable duties as much as possible.

CONDITIONING, COMMUNITY, AND GENDER ROLES

While the question of who is feeding the baby seems to be a strong factor, there are still the influences of conditioning, community, and gender roles.

Conditioning

How someone was raised and how much they feel a need to follow what feels like a traditional model of baby care can have a strong influence on whether the above feeding scenarios have any impact on their involvement. If someone grew up in a strongly feminist household with an expectation that everyone pitches in with cooking, cleaning, and general household chores, I feel like they would be more likely to prefer/expect to share baby care duties regardless of the feeding arrangement. If someone was raised in a strongly patriarchal, traditional household, they may have the opposite expectation. How rigid this conditioning was and how strongly they still adhere to it as an adult will determine if they are influenced by a shared feeding situation to share the rest of the baby care.

Community

Another influence is how their peers are raising their own kids. This will not only model what baby care is like but also be a guiding force to follow a similar path as they ask for guidance or compare situations.

Another aspect of community is what expectations their community members have expressed when it comes to parental involvement with the baby. There can be guilt and shame placed on someone who chooses to share feeding and baby care duties when they are expected by their community to be the parent exclusively responsible for feeding and caring for the baby. It seems like this negative judgement is less likely to be placed on a non-feeding parent who is choosing to have little involvement in baby care even when their community expects them to be more involved. However, community can be a strong influence, sometimes stronger than a partner’s voice. If a valued member of a community voices a concern, disappointment, or expectation that the non-feeding partner be more involved, it can have a supportive impact.

Gender Roles

How much someone feels the need to adhere to society’s gender roles or carve out a set of gender-based expectations for themself related to baby care would also impact how they share the work. For some people, regardless of gender, the sudden addition of parenting duties could feel threatening to their sense of who they are, how they present, and where they fit in society as related to gender. They may adapt and figure out how to integrate this new aspect of their life into their self concept. Or they may rebel and hold even tighter to the aspects of their familial role and lifestyle that previously contributed to their sense of their gender.

For others, the new role of being a parent and caring for a baby can serve as a replacement for a lost role while on parental leave. It can be a strong gender affirming role or be a substitute for the satisfaction and pride they get from their career or other endeavors that are put on hold. Sometimes it can be challenging if the new parenting role feels satisfying in terms of purpose but at odds with their gender role. This can occur for any parent/primary caregiver.

The person experiencing this sort of internal tension may not even know that gender plays a part in why they feel reluctant to engage in baby care or reluctant to allow their partner to assist with the baby care. If this is your experience or you suspect it may be your partner’s experience, I think it’s worth a conversation.

I hope some of this resonated with you and helped you understand yourself or your partner a bit better. Evidently, I advocate for sharing parental responsibilities as much as possible. This doesn’t necessarily mean 50/50. If one parent is off on parental leave while the other is working full time, it may be more like 80/20. But I don’t believe it should be 100/0. Even if you are a sole parent, I believe you need community support to help raise a child.

Let me know what your baby care situation is and what impact the feeding role, conditioning, community, or gender roles has had on you.

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My First Parental Celebration Days as a New Parent

I recently celebrated my first Nonbinary Parent’s Day and Mother’s Day as a parent so I thought I’d share what those days felt like for me as a nonbinary person.

Some background:

  • I am more comfortable being called a parent than a mother or a mom
  • I identify with parts of ‘mom culture’ but the parts I don’t identify with feel really wrong to me, mostly for gender related reasons
  • My parental term of choice is ‘Mur’ which is a sounded out version of M and R for Meaghan Ray (my name)
  • The majority of people in my life do not yet know about my chosen parental term or my discomfort with the label of mom or mother

NONBINARY PARENT’S DAY

Nonbinary Parent’s Day fell on April 18 this year. I didn’t even know about it until my husband mentioned it a few days early. We didn’t plan anything special, just went about our normal activities. But the day still felt special. I was more in tune with my connection with my baby, more grateful, thankful, and had an sense of inner peace and oneness.

Only a couple people other than my husband knew to wish me happy Nonbinary Parent’s Day the way you would for Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. This wasn’t surprising since I hadn’t even heard about the day until he told me and hadn’t broadcasted it to the world. I did see lots of celebratory photos and posts on social media from other nonbinary parents which gave me a much greater sense of community and connection.

So while celebrating this day felt great personally, it has very little recognition in the wider world as of yet. I’m hoping this will increase in future years. Starting next year, I will be more proactive at letting my friends and family know that this is my preferred parental celebration day.

MOTHER’S DAY

I had no idea how I would feel about celebrating Mother’s Day, or at least being wished a happy Mother’s Day by others. Turns out it was a complicated experience.

I was looking forward to getting to celebrate my first Mother’s Day as a parent alongside celebrating it for my own mom. I was looking forward to the sense of understanding, shared experience, community, and recognition. Turns out that when the title of ‘Mother’ doesn’t sit right, being wished a happy Mother’s Day doesn’t feel great either.

I did some translating self talk every time someone wished me a happy Mother’s Day. Something like – they’re recognizing my new parental role, expressing their understanding of the work that goes into being in the primary parental role that I’m currently in, and I appreciate that. This translation helped a bit but it also took effort.

Every time I was wished a happy Mother’s Day, while I knew it came from a good place, I also knew that it meant that they had overlooked how my gender interacts with my role as a parent. Feeling seen in my new role as a parent and simultaneously invisible in my gender makes for a confusing and isolating experience on a day when I was hoping to feel seen and connected.

A few friends were careful to wish me a happy Parent’s Day or happy Gestational Parent’s Day on Mother’s Day which definitely felt better. These wishes were more personalized and recognized my gender in addition to my parental role but didn’t lead to a feeling of being connected to any community with similar experiences. I let these friends know about Nonbinary Parent’s Day and was wished a happy belated Nonbinary Parent’s Day instead.

For me, celebrating Nonbinary Parent’s Day feels like the right fit. It’ll take a while for my friends and extended family, and especially the wider world, to recognize this annual day but at least we can make a tradition of it in our family of three.

Next year on Mother’s Day, I will try to use a gentle response such as: Thank you, but I celebrate Nonbinary Parent’s Day instead which is the third Sunday in April.

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Reflections on Top Surgery, Part 2: Surgery

Gender affirming chest masculinization “top surgery” is one of the major defining moments for trans men. But getting from your existing chest to the one you want to have can be overwhelming from both the information overload and emotional point of view. Having had surgery 3 years ago, I wanted to share my thoughts on surgery in case it may help someone else in the same position. I’ve created a 3 part series on surgery : Pre-surgery, surgery itself, and post- surgery.

This will be mainly from my personal experience as a mostly binary trans man, but could easily be applied to non-binary/GNC people.

If you haven’t read Part 1: Pre-surgery, start there. To recap: I had a phone consultation with a privately funded top surgeon in Ontario, who gave me a surgery date 6 weeks later. I booked my time off from work as well as flights for me and my spouse, Meaghan Ray.

Last Minute Researching

While I had been looking at post-op trans guys for a while, and reading their stories of heading into surgery, suddenly it was going to be me in that position! I refocused my searches on what other people had found useful after surgery.

While there weren’t a lot of medical sites with information regarding top surgery for trans people, there was loads of information for people recovering from breast cancer surgery. Some of it was not quite relevant (what to do while waiting for breast reconstruction), but a lot of the advice on recovering from a long incision across your chest was useful.

The things I found most useful were button down pyjamas and shirts, as well as a neck pillow. Other items that seemed like they would be helpful but then I didn’t use were dry shampoo, body/baby wipes, and stool softeners (though I REALLY wish I had).

Arriving In Toronto

Since we were staying with family, we arrived a few days before surgery for a visit. Similar to when I was travelling for archery competitions, arriving and settling into a new location a little early allowed me to start mentally progressing towards acceptance and excitement.

I did some journaling at the time to help get rid of all the bees buzzing around in my head. I knew that I was super excited for the surgery, but there was now also the return of the anxiety of wondering if I had made the right choice. Everything I did was the last time before having a flat chest, and it felt important to remember those things, mundane as a lot of them were. “This is the last time I’ll be flying with a round chest” “This is the last time going to a cafe with a round chest”. So journaling helped with clearing my head a bit and helping me feel less chaotic.

Pre-op Appointment

The day before surgery I attended the clinic to see where it was, meet the surgeon face to face, and ask any last questions. The staff were great with pronouns, and the clinic seemed modern and clean. However, my appointment time was more than 2 hours behind schedule, and no one bothered to let me know. The only good thing about that is my anxiety completely burned itself out, and was only left with mild annoyance.

Meeting the surgeon was good, he was very respectful but clearly he had his method of doing the surgery and didn’t seem to be interested in what my desires were (similar to the surgeon back home). Despite those nagging worries, I was happy with the pictures I had seen of his results, and I was far too excited for a flat chest to let that slow me down. We drove the 90 minutes back home and settled in for a long evening of no sleep.

Day Of Surgery

Due to my sleep apnea they moved by appointment up to first thing in the morning. Once we arrived I changed into a gown and had the two clinic surgeons as well as a visiting surgeon draw the anatomical lines that would make sure everything ended up straight and proportional. It was a little awkward but clinical (“this is the last time a stranger will see my female chest”).

Everything happened fast after that. They got an IV started and I was off to the surgery suite, and next thing I knew I was waking up crying inconsolably with a pressure on my chest. I don’t know why I was crying, just that I couldn’t stop.

The surgeon came by briefly, but otherwise I felt very alone and disoriented. I was discharged fairly soon afterwards, but with fumbles from the staff leaving me unattended to have a panic attack in the bathroom, and while discharging me out a back door with minimum instructions. This left the experience feeling less than excellent.

Eventually we got back into the car and Meaghan Ray drove us home. According to them, I was frighteningly pale and very nauseous the whole way home but I don’t remember much of that. I do remember the neck pillow came in handy to keep the seatbelt off my new incisions.

First Couple Post-op Days

I was firmly ensconced in the bedroom for several days. The pain was manageable with medications, though I was fairly drowsy so I slept lots and watched lots of movies in bed.

My main complaint was the post-op compression binder used to keep the bandages tight to the incisions. My surgery included liposuction along my armpits and sides to prevent the dog ears that the Edmonton surgeon had mentioned. While that would allow for a more masculine appearance, those areas were not as numb as the incisions and were very tender against the binder. Meaghan Ray helped to modify the binder so that it would be more comfortable. I was told I would need to wear it for 4 weeks! Guess I would need to continue to deal with a binder even though I no longer had breasts. Argh.

Post-op Reveal

The day before flying home, I had a post-op appointment at the clinic where they would remove all the bandages and tapes. There are many videos on YouTube of transmen seeing their new chest for the first time where they elatedly collapse in happy tears and emotion.

My appointment was not like that. I mostly felt relieved to be free of the bandages, continued tiredness from recovery and pain medication, and a touch of feeling surreal. Luckily Meaghan Ray was there to capture the moment and feel excited for me, even if I couldn’t stir up those feelings very well.

Again we fell through the cracks while waiting to be fully discharged. We waited a respectable amount of time, and another 15 minutes on top of that. We finally had to sneak out into the hall where someone finally went “oh, I didn’t know you guys were still here!”

Everyone else who had surgery with this surgeon had nothing but good things to say about their experiences with this clinic, so it appears my experience was an anomaly. I believe most of their private pay clients stay at the hotel adjacent to the clinic so perhaps they were thrown off by me staying 90 minutes away?

I was (and still am) very happy with my results, though the experience itself was far from ideal.

Up Next

Now I got to take my new flat chest back home! I couldn’t wait to finally experience that gender euphoria around my friends, family and colleagues, when they would stop misgendering me since I now had a flat chest! Right?

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Postpartum Update: 5 Months

We’ve all seen the representations of postpartum people in media who are frustrated with not being able to lose ‘those last five pounds’ when they’re five weeks postpartum. Let me tell you now, this is not reality. At least not for me.

My body did a whole lot more during pregnancy and birth than just put on a few pounds. Therefore, my body finding it’s way to a new, stable normal is not all about losing weight. Maybe I’ll get back to my pre-pregnancy weight, maybe I won’t. But more importantly, what is my body capable of doing and how does it feel?

PHYSICAL ENDURANCE AND MOBILITY

If you followed along with my pregnancy journey, you’ll know that I had severe pelvic and back pain that meant I was using a walker for mobility by week 14. Immediately postpartum I was able to start taking my regular medication and the pain improved quickly. But the impact of six months of limited mobility doesn’t go away over night.

I had a lot of joint stiffness and residual associated pain. I had significant muscle weakness in certain muscle groups (and still do to some extent). And I had extremely limited cardiovascular and muscular endurance.

I have been working on all of these as much as I can (giving the limited extra energy when caring for a baby). Initially I was mostly doing slow easy stretching and gentle movement and short walks. More recently I have done cardio exercise in the form of climbing the stairs while wearing the baby, using my rowing machine, and going for fast paced walks, strengthening exercise while playing with the baby on the floor or using the baby as a weight, and endurance exercise in the form of longer walks at normal pace. I even went skating for the first time today!

Each time I try another activity or try to push myself I come up against a very sudden limit in strength or endurance. I’m going along enjoying the feel of my body moving when suddenly I have no power. My muscles turn to water and my joints cease. I slow down or take a break to stretch, and try to continue. Often I can get a bit more out of my body but at much lower intensity or poorer quality. And that’s ok. That’s just where I’m at. Every bit counts.

Even if I wasn’t trying to improve my strength and endurance, just the act of moving my body and expending positive energy makes me feel less antsy, more patient, happier, and more connected with myself in a positive way.

HORMONE FLUCTUATIONS

At around two and half months postpartum I started having similar symptoms to when I was taking fertility drugs and when I was immediately postpartum. Wooziness, light headed, foggy, weepy, laughter easily becoming hysterics. Yes, apparently this is normal.

There is a hormone shift at 2.5-3.5 months postpartum and again somewhere between 6 and 9 months postpartum. My hormones were taking the next step in leveling out. Ugh. Not looking forward to going through that again but hopefully the next wave of this will be the last.

OTHER SYMPTOMS

  • All birthing trauma has healed (I had nothing severe and no C-section).
  • Despite having low milk supply initially and now decreasing lactation, my period has not yet returned (yay!).
  • I had some increase in hair loss around the time of the hormone shift but nothing extreme and it seems to have leveled out.
  • My belly is still round in a more pregnancy like shape than my typical body shape but is down to about my early second trimester size.
  • I had many many stretch marks that have somewhat faded into a soft, saggy, pouch of excess skin below my belly.

EMOTIONAL EFFECTS

As I am now trying to figure out what being a parent means and often exhausted from caring for my baby, I am definitely not in the same place emotionally as I was pre-pregnancy and never will be and that’s fine. Becoming a parent changes you and I am embracing and navigating that change.

But there are emotional effects from the experience of being pregnant and giving birth that stuck with me for a while. A few weeks postpartum, when the extreme fatigue had worn off a bit, I started having mild panic attacks when I was lying in my bed trying to go to sleep because I would be transported to the moments when I was waiting for another contraction to happen. That lasted for a few nights but, with the help of my husband talking me through it, wore off and hasn’t returned.

Looking back on being pregnant, remembering how it felt, is extremely surreal. Even when I see pictures of myself when I was pregnant. I know that it happened to me, I can remember that it happened, but I have a very hard time actually feeling what it felt like at the time. My body just felt so different than it ever had before and than it does now.

I can remember little things, like what it felt like when my baby had hiccups, what different stages of contractions felt like, and what my baby helping along my contractions felt like. But the overall experience of being pregnant? What it felt like to move around? It is very vague and very surreal. And maybe that’s ok.

So have I ‘recovered’ from being pregnant? No. I don’t even know what that means. Pregnancy doesn’t feel like something I need to recover from. I’m not trying to re-create my pre-pregnancy body. And as debilitating as my pregnancy was, it wasn’t a negative experience.

I am five months postpartum and very happy with what my body is capable of doing these days. I will continue to be curious and fascinated by all the changes just as I was during pregnancy. It is a continuation of the process that began with pregnancy. It did not end at my baby’s birth and will not have reached a conclusion for many months yet. So here’s to the journey.

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Childhood Influences on Parenting Experiences

Note: This is the first guest post on the blog! If you listened to Season 1 of Let’s Talk Gender, you’ll have heard Jake talk about his transition. Now you get the first blog post from him. Enjoy!

As trans people, we know that a person’s sex doesn’t dictate their gender and upholding societal expectations of gender would be hurtful to our child’s existence. The gender of the child is especially irrelevant in the early stages of parenting because babies are mostly blobs. As they grow we will help them explore the vast world of gender. Regardless of how our child chooses to present and identify in the future, we will love and support them.

And yet, when we were trying to get pregnant, the question of “are we hoping for a boy or a girl?” still came up. I was hoping slightly more for a boy. I thought that raising a girl and trying to build up her confidence against a misogynistic world would be harder than teaching a boy about privilege.

I was beyond thrilled when our 10 week blood test came back with no abnormal chromosomal conditions and that we would be having a boy. I felt that I could vicariously live through his “male” childhood since I didn’t get to have one myself.

This is not fair to him. It is his childhood, not mine. Even by virtue of who his parents are, his childhood will be completely different from mine. However, this reaction, and the subsequent un-learning, has lead to a lot of reflection.

HOW MY PARENTS GENDERED ME

My mother had me at 19, and whether it was a function of her age, because it was the 80’s, or because of who she is as a person, she let us do what we wanted. My sister and I played with what we wanted, where we wanted, and wore what we wanted. My mom’s easy-going approach was a big reason why it took so long for me to realize I was trans (but more on that in a different post).

My father, however, was 8 years older and grew up in a military house. He always said that he wanted to make his love apparent to us since he didn’t feel it much from his parents when he was growing up, but he was much more strict about what was expected from us, including enforcing societal views on how we should be acting as girls.

RAISING ‘BOYS’

My parents divorced and remarried and my dad had another child who is now 7 years old. My dad has mellowed with age and perhaps a marriage that is more his style, and mentions frequently that he regrets how he raised us, that he was too strict, and wishes he let us express more of who we were.

In watching my dad interact with his young son, I am amazed at how lenient he is with him. Maybe my dad has become more easy-going, as he says, or maybe he is more willing to let his son do what he wants because “boys will be boys.” My dad has mentioned that his son is “all boy” in the way he interacts – he is rough and boisterous and doesn’t like to follow instructions. He has also said he wants to take good care of his health because “it is clear to him that my son will need a strong male role model” in his life. These are not phrases I would be comfortable using in reference to my own child.

My dad frequently sends me texts about his son and his bodily discoveries, saying “Just wait til your son gets older”, and “boys!! oi-vey!!”. I know he sends these in an attempt to commiserate and create a bond that is strangely based on our child’s genitals, but it leaves me feeling dysphoric and unsatisfied with my childhood. Of course I don’t know what it’s like to grow up with a penis and experience all those discoveries. Of course I don’t know what it’s like to experience the freedom that’s granted to boys and not girls, and seems to be perpetuated by my dad.

But will I let this dissatisfaction make me overcompensate with my own child? Will I let the influences my parents had on me dictate how I raise my own child? Not if I can help it.

MOVING FORWARD

While I initially fell victim to the same “do I want a boy or a girl” thinking that seems to predominantly afflict cis and heteronormative parents-to-be, what’s important is how to move forward. I vow to do better by my child. I challenge my assumptions when I think of my child as a grown up. I remind myself to not restrict myself (or my child) simply based on what genitals he was born with.

While we have chosen to use he/him pronouns for our child, we don’t believe that this dictates his gender. We avoid all other gendered language (son, little man, good boy, etc). We put him in clothes that we like and that fit him, regardless of design or colour. And we will be allowing him to play with any toys, where he wants, and to wear what he wants. We will be asking open questions about gender and presentation and be honest with him about our own identities.

While I initially wanted a boy, I now truly understand that it wouldn’t matter. My baby is my baby and will grow up into whatever human being they want to be.

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When Caring for your Child Triggers Dysphoria

When we picture having a child we think of sleepy cuddles, bonding while feeding, and being an expert at diaper changes. The reality is not always so rosy. Maybe our baby has health struggles, we struggle with mental health postpartum, or, in my case, dysphoria gets in the way.

There are multitude of ways dysphoria can be triggered when caring for your child, depending on how you experience the most dysphoria and what your child care roles are. Personally, I found nursing to cause the most dysphoria, then later, pumping was causing less but was still building up over time, as well as all the sensations in my chest associated with lactation.

I noticed it was getting in the way of being able to bond with my baby the way I wanted to and stopping me from being present in order to notice the small daily changes my baby was making. I couldn’t pay attention to my baby while nursing. I had a spike in dysphoria when holding my baby against my chest. And I was dreading the time I had to spend pumping which made me irritable and easily frustrated.

So I developed a number of strategies to use depending on the situation to decrease the interference of dysphoria. Even if the trigger for your dysphoria is different, I hope these strategies will help you navigate caring for your child in a way that minimizes your dysphoria and maximizes your ability to bond.

BE HONEST

Be honest with yourself, your social supports (partner, doulas, close family or friends), and your medical supports (midwife, doctors, mental health professionals, lactation consultants). As much as we are taught that it is, it is not shameful to feel dysphoria, even when it is triggered by something like caring for your baby or child. The only way to make the situation better for everyone is to be open and honest about it.

This will also help narrow down the trigger. Often, I would be feeling irritable, fatigued, or burnt out and not recognize it as dysphoria related. Then, once my husband and I realized it was likely dysphoria, it still took a bit of conscious awareness to figure out the trigger which for me was nursing. Upon further discussion, observation, and testing, we figured out what would need to be modified to decrease or eliminate the dysphoria. There is no way I would have been able to do all this on my own.

ASK FOR HELP

Sometimes you need someone to take over the dysphoria-triggering task, even if temporarily, to give you a break and build up some reserve. But this isn’t always an option. My husband couldn’t take over lactation for me. So instead of taking over that specific task, even having them offload other tasks can give you more energy to deal with the dysphoria and still have enough left over to bond with your child.

For example, my husband does as many feedings as he can each day as they typically coincide with pumping times. This allows me to pump without the stress of wondering when the baby will wake up and scream for food or delay pumping in order to feed the baby resulting in increased chest discomfort.

FIND OTHER BONDING TIME

If dysphoria gets in the way of bonding with your baby during typical bonding tasks, prioritize bonding at other times. Carve out some play time or snuggle time when it is less likely to trigger dysphoria. Find a snuggle strategy or style of play that is more comfortable for you. I look for the times when the baby is alert and playful and drop what I’m doing to play on the floor, read a book, sing and dance, or go for a walk. This takes time away from other things but getting extra housework or personal stuff done doesn’t make up for the lack of bonding time at the end of the day.

I also found I was missing little changes and new behaviours my baby was doing because I was too busy trying to ignore or deal with the dysphoria. So, on days when I felt particularly dysphoric and disconnected, I would use my journal to write down my own personal challenges and triumphs for that day (to disconnect it from the baby) and some of the new things the baby was doing or a fun moment we shared that day. Just taking the time to think back on the day in order to write it down helped bring those moments into focus through the haze of dysphoria.

ADJUST YOUR CHILD CARE STRATEGY

Sometimes, despite all your efforts to manage it, the dysphoria is too strong or is getting progressively worse. As much as you would like to care for your baby/child in the ‘optimal’ way, that is not always what’s best for you and therefore best for your child. Sometimes we have to compromise on our preferred style of care in order to take care of ourselves and minimize dysphoria.

This could mean using disposable diapers instead of cloth to make diaper changes faster. Or switching to bottle feeding instead of nursing. Or switching to formula and stopping lactation altogether. Or having the baby in the stroller for walks instead of the carrier. Or doing ‘skin-to-skin’ time with the baby lying on your lap instead of your chest. There are always other options.

For us, this meant switching from nursing to pumping and bottle feeding after two weeks. I had the goal of feeding my baby my milk for the first six months but once my supply increased to >75% of my baby’s intake, the amount of sensation from my chest started increasing my dysphoria much faster. So we decided to decrease lactation earlier and slowly switch to formula. This may increase my baby’s gas. This may not be my preferred method of feeding my baby, or what society tells me is best. But it’s what’s best for us.

What I’ve found is that, even though it’s not my preferred method of care, the next-best option that results in less dysphoria feels significantly better and allows me to engage in the care a lot more, resulting in a much better experience for my baby as well. There is no harm in trying different things. You should never rule out options based on preconceived ideas from society. If it’s the best option for you (and still meets your baby’s basic needs), it’s the best option for your baby as well.

What baby/child care tasks trigger your dysphoria? What strategies do you use to deal with it so it doesn’t interfere with bonding with your child? Leave me a comment below or send me an email! The more strategies we share with each other the better!

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