Grandmothers and breastfeeding

I have fallen behind in my Super Granny posting because I have been wearing my other hat, as the author of THE COMPLETE BOOK OF BREASTFEEDING, which I am now revising for its fourth edition. The first edition, for which I consulted with New York pediatrician Marvin S. Eiger,M.D., was published in 1972, the third edition came out in 1999, and I'm thrilled that the book has become a classic in the field and has sold about two million copies (!). I'm now revising again, in consultation with a wonderful young Connecticut pediatrician, Laura M. Marks, M.D.

I'm finding the revision process still interesting, since I'm dealing with some new topics that I hadn't written about before or that I'm expanding in this edition. One is the role of the grandmother. When I was nursing my first baby, 51 years ago in 1957! and didn't know anyone else who was doing this, my mother was my staunchest supporter even though she had not had much luck nursing her own children. But sometimes women who have not nursed themselves don't understand what it's like for a breastfeeding mom. I recently read about one grandmother whose feelings were deeply hurt because she had apparently broken the bank to equip a nursery in her home with crib, baby bathtub, the works, and was hurt when her daughters-in-law gave her “excuses” for not letting their 2-month-old and 5-month-old breastfed babies spend the night at Grandma’s.

Some of the comments to a Q & A that appeared in the local newspaper that this grandma wrote into were so hostile to this grandmother, accusing her of meddling, controlling, you-name-it. But I saw a woman who wanted to be involved with her grandchildren and felt shut out -- and just didn't understand what life is like for a nursing mom and baby. A similar letter from another grandmother (another mother-in-law) appeared on the Huffington Post just last week, May 22, and received a wonderful reply from psychologist Mona Ackerman. You can access this at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mona-ackerman/all-about-breastfeeding_b_103041.html. It's a really understanding response that empathizes with the grandmother's feelings -- and still emphasizes the fact that every mother is entitled to discover the joys of parenting on her own. Or as I am putting it in the draft of my new edition: "Bite your tongue when you disagree with such parenting issues as bed-sharing, feeding on demand, and the like. You had your turn bringing up babies; now your job is to support, not to question."

Healthy Grannies

Yes, many of us are on the job -- and weathering the storm! A new study of 13,000 grandparents between the ages of 50 and 80 found that 29 percent of the grandmothers and 22 percent of grandfathers provided at least 50 hours of care per year for grandkids who don't live with them. And they're faring well. Apparently grandchildren agree with us. This study debunked earlier findings that had showed that the health of grandmothers who cared for their grandchildren was a casualty of the arrangement.

Only a small percentage of grandparents (fewer than 3 percent) give primary care, that is, they're taking care of children whose parents are not in the home. And for these grands, health often has declined when they were just starting to take care of grandkids. This could be because usually when grandparents take over the parenting role, it's unexpected and often for a stressful reason. So the adjustment takes a toll -- but even these arrangements don't bring lasting negative results for health. Once grandmothers continue skipped-generation care, they get healthier again. So overall, the news is good.

And for the majority of us, whose care for our grandkids consists of babysitting -- aside from those viruses that the kids bring home starting in preschool, we stay healthy. Must be all those smiles from the little guys and even the bigger ones!

The study, by Waite, LaPierre, and Luo, appeared in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Science.

Not THAT Super Granny

So I thought that since my publisher and I finally agreed on the title for my book to be published early in 2009 (SUPER GRANNY: COOL PROJECTS, ACTIVITIES, AND OTHER GREAT STUFF TO DO WITH YOUR GRANDKIDS), I should rename the URL for my blog to Super Granny. Couldn't figure out how to do that. Okay, I thought, I'll create a new blog by that name. Couldn't do that either because SuperGranny.blogspot.com is already taken. And then came my adventures in cyberspace.

SuperGranny.blogspot.com had one post and one comment, both in a language totally unfamiliar to me. Nothing was posted after August 2005.

Super-granny.blogspot.com and SuperGrannysays.blogspot.com both led me to a site advertising a "home business opportunity." Both sites are now inactive.

(N)SuperGranny.com led me to the site of a granny in Sweden who has a "cattery," from which she sells Himalayan cats.

TheSuperGranny.com is a site that sells an energy drink.

And then there are loads of Super Granny video games, which sound like lots of fun.

And so I conclude my latest trekking in cyberspace by deciding to keep omasally.blogspot.com, and hope my friends will continue to find me here.

And speaking of cyberspace, those of us with tech-savvy children and grandchildren are truly lucky. My grandson found me what might be a good notebook computer on eBay, my granddaughter showed me how to set up a PowerPoint presentation, and my daughter the web designer (www.dorriolds.com) fixed the photo on this page so that my face is back to its normal proportions instead of being widened as if I were looking in a funhouse mirror!

Granny's Cinnamon Buns

Granny's cinnamon buns

When I took Nina for lunch at the American Girl Cafe in New York, she especially enjoyed the cinnamon buns they served with the meal. So I promised her that the next time she visited me we would make our own. Which we did, following my mother’s (Nina’s great-grandmother’s) recipe, which my daughter, Dorri Olds (Nina's aunt), wrote up for the delightful book AT GRANDMOTHER'S TABLE: WOMEN WRITE ABOUT FOOD, LIFE, AND THE ENDURING BOND BETWEEN GRANDMOTHERS AND GRANDDAUGHTERS. Edited by Ellen Perry Berkeley, the book is published by Fairview Press and is now out in paperback.

Here's the recipe for Granny's Cinnamon Buns:

GRANNY’S CINNAMON BUNS

3 cups flour
scant ½ cup sugar
¼ tsp salt
1 envelope (1 Tblsp) dry active yeast, dissolved in 2 Tblsps warm (not hot) water with ½ tsp sugar. Yeast should bubble up in 5 mins, showing that it is active.
¼ pound + 4 Tblsp (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, softened
½ cup milk, scalded
2 eggs, beaten
½ cup mashed potatoes (fresh or instant)
3 Tblsp brown sugar and/or maple syrup
24 walnut or pecan halves
2 tsp cinnamon
½ cup raisins

1)Combine flour, ½ cup sugar & salt. Mix in yeast water and set aside.
2)Melt ¼ lb. butter in the scalded milk. Add to the flour, then add eggs & mashed potatoes.
3)Mix well, stirring, until mixture comes away from the bowl. Refrigerate overnight (or up to 3 days).
4)Butter muffin pans generously. Pour a little brown sugar or maple syrup (Granny used both) into the bottom of each muffin cup. Then put in an upside-down walnut half.
5)Roll out half the dough on a lightly floured board. Spread 2 Tblsp soft butter over the dough. Then spread 1 Tblsp sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon, & ¼ cup raisins over the dough.
6)Roll the dough up tight & slice it into one-inch thick pieces. Repeat this process for the other half of the dough.
7)Place the one-inch thick pieces in the muffin cups, set them on top of the stove (with the oven turned on the lowest temperature you can make it), and cover them with a towel. Let the dough rise until doubled, about 45 minutes.
8)Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
9)Bake buns for 25 to 30 minutes. Take the pans out of the oven & let them stand for 1 to 2 minutes before turning them out onto brown paper.
10)This recipe makes 24 delicious cinnamon buns.
11)Enjoy!

New title, same Oma Sally!

I have just changed the title of my blog, to reflect the title of my book, SUPER GRANNY: COOL PROJECTS, ACTIVITIES, AND OTHER GREAT STUFF TO DO WITH YOUR GRANDKIDS, which will be published by Sterling Publishing Company early in 2009. It will still be a communication from me about grandmothers and grandchildren, and I still eagerly welcome any and all messages from other modern grannies and grandkids.

This reminds me of a sign I saw a few years ago in a grocery store that had just computerized its operations. The sign read: PLEASE BE PATIENT. NEW COMPUTERS, SAME OLD LADIES.

Looking forward to hearing from young, old, and inbetween,

Oma Sally

grandmother names

As I have been interviewing grandmothers for my book, SUPER GRANNY, I have loved hearing all the different names that their grandchildren call them by. There’s Granny, of course, and Grandma, and Nana. And then a host of others.

I am Oma to all my grandchildren. This started because Jennifer, the mother of Stefan, my first grandchild, was married to a German man, and Oma is the German name for Grandma. There’s also Grossmutter – but that’s a bit more formal. When Stefan and his sisters visit us here in the U.S., I am just Oma. But when we visit them in Germany, I am Oma Sally, to distinguish me from Oma Mitzi, their other grandmother. When our two U.S.-based grandchildren came along, it seemed easier for all of them to call me by the same name. I don’t know how my mother remembered who she was to all her grandchildren! My children called her Granny, my brother Buddy’s children (who had lived in Italy) called her Nonna, and my brother Carl’s children called her Bubby, the Yiddish word for grandmother. They called my grandmother, who was their great-grandmother, Bubby-Bubby. She had always been Grandmom to me.

Some grandmother names reflect a child’s first learning to talk – like Bam and Gamma and GamGam. Pally reflects one grandmother’s habitual greeting, “Hey, Pal!” There’s Ammamma (Indian), Savta (Israeli), Meema (I think this means Mom in Hebrew), and Babu (Nepali). Some grandmothers go by their first names, easy for little ones to say and special to the grandchildren, not the grown children, who still say “Mom.”

I’d love to hear more grandmother names!

Say it in email

For those of us who have not studied a foreign language in lo these many years, there's a really easy one to learn: Emoticon! "Emoticons" are little pictures that your email program may come with, allowing you to express an emotion without words. Or, as my 11-year-old granddaughter, Lisa, taught me, you can make some yourself just by striking the right keys on your computer.

Here are some emoticons that Lisa sent to me:

:-) Smile
:-( Frown
;-) Wink
:-P Tongue-out (Lisa’s favorite)
:-D Laughing
:-[ Embarrassed
:-\ Undecided
=-O Surprise
:-* Kiss
>:o Yell
8-) Cool (Lisa’s other favorite)
:-! Foot-in-Mouth
O:-) Innocent
:'( Cry
:-X Lips-are-Sealed


So -- enjoy! :-)