Oct 14, 2010

I'm Just Not a Tribal Woman


Sometimes I put pressure on myself as a mom. I want to be like little stay at home Mother Nature Hippie+50s housewife+ Modern Mommy staying up on the latest and greatest baby trends in the west.


 
Basically it starts with the fact that these women inspire me.  When I say ‘these women” I mean tribal women. When I am having a hard day, I picture Sacagawea with Lewis and Clark forging down a river with her baby in tow, or the mothers in the covered wagons making their way across the plains in the winter to Oregon, or the African woman living in a hut working hard to find food for her children with a baby strapped to her.


I think I should do things the way they do it or the way I think they would. Obviously this is mostly crazy talk. In a lot of ways I do think we should go back to our roots and learn from the way nature intends for us to do things. But I am not really willing to forgo baby lotions, nursing covers, and breast pumps…I mean these Mother Nature women don’t have and probably don't need high chairs and excersaucers and bouncers and baby swings and boppys and bumbos and breast friends and Phil and Ted’s strollers and baby leashes, and pacifiers, and Hylands teething tablets. But as much as I rationally see things are not 100% necessary, I feel that I must have them and keep them.



I’ll tell you what though, in some ways we do have some challenges in the west that tribal women do not.......no tribal woman has to drive in a car with her baby strapped to a plastic contraption while they scream to be fed and you could be thrown in jail for feeding them in route. I’m not saying I should be able to take the baby out of the car seat to nurse her (although I am working on a little side project invention that involves a long straw….). I just think that we here in the WEST have some different obstacles that unfortunately make doing everything au natural impossible.

7 comments:

  1. OMG, I've totally had to nurse in a moving car lots of times (not while driving); it involves some contorting on my part and it's def not comfortable. Can't tell you how many times I've wished for detachable boobs!

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  2. What a lovely photo of three lovely ladies!

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  3. P.S. If I had detachable boobs I would reattach much larger ones! lol

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  4. haha totally burst out laughing at the reference to the invention involving a long straw!!! love it!

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  5. I know this post is belated, but my favorite tribal woman is Ayla from the book "Clan of the Cave Bear" by Jean Auel written in 1984 (one year before you were born!) Some day when you're not so busy with the children you should read it (if you haven't already). Ayla is my hero.

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  6. Ok, detachable boobs...you need to patent that right now. Or I will. It's true that sometimes people do have to feed their babies while the car is in motion. I cannot confirm or deny that this has happened in our family. ;) C.A. do you want to help me with the front money for this invention? And Jeanne I will have to check out the "Clan of the Cave Bear." Do you have it still?

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  7. Haha, you can patent the DBs. Actually, I got the idea from a cartoon in _Adventures in Tandem Nursing_, and I think the illustration had them pop out with springs (like googly eyes)... in case you need an idea of the mechanics for this product you'll be patenting. =)

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