By NANCY CAMBRIA
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Published: Thursday, October 16, 2008
Updated: Friday, October 17, 2008 7:32 AM CDT

GLENDALE, Mo. (AP) — It’s just past noon on a Thursday, and the mom’s corner at Kangaroo Kids is wall to wall with babies doing lunch, but there’s not a bottle in sight.

Nursing moms are serving up the nutritious goods just about everywhere: on gently worn couches, in rocking chairs, sitting Indian-style on patchwork quilts spread evenly on the floor.

Breezy conversations range from C-sections to breast pumps and date nights. “You just have to trust your mommy gut,” says Sierra Cortazzo, co-owner of the children’s and mom’s resale store as she answers questions during the store’s weekly breast-feeding support group.

Breast-feeding, although natural, doesn’t always come naturally to a new mom and sometimes takes practice at the start, says Cortazzo. It’s a mixture of positioning, stamina, a bit of immodesty and — when all goes well — mother-child bliss.

“When we look at our babies,” Cortazzo says, “our hormones flow.”

From behind a clothing rack of maternity clothes enters a guy with a buzz cut and a tattoo, carrying a plate. He steps his way through diaper bags, pumpkin seats and purses and did we mention breasts?

“Who had the black bean quesadilla and the smoothie?” he asks. “That’s me,” says a mom, handing off her baby to grab the plate.

It’s just another day for Eric Nemens, 37, who has been navigating this hormonal terrain since he and his wife, Sierra, bought the store three years ago.

“I’m submerged in estrogen up to here,” he says of his days fielding customers and calls about nursing bras, breast pumps and baby slings. “Everybody knows me. I’m the guy here.”

Now Nemens hopes to go to a place where even fewer men have gone before. In September he completed an intensive week of coursework to become a certified lactation counselor through the Center for Breastfeeding.

The only male in a class of 25 at Anderson Hospital in Maryville, Nemens sat in the back row, armed with a water bottle, notebook and a pen, studiously reviewing video clips of latches between newborns and their moms.

Like everybody else, he was wondering how he was going to remember everything for the big test.

“There’s just so much information to learn,” he said with a sigh.

He definitely turned heads the first day of class, said Mary Ann Hill, a lactation consultant with St. Mary’s Health Center who also was taking the class.

“I thought, whoo, men just don’t go to this type of stuff,” she said.

Nemens, a former manager of Schlafly Bottleworks in Maplewood, isn’t the only male to enter a world that has been mostly “persona non guy-a,” but he’s in a tiny minority. There’s no official count of men who have been formally trained to help nursing moms. But, of the 13,000 lactation consultants in North and South America and Israel certified by the International Board of Lactation Consultants, just 45 are men — half of 1 percent.

Physicians and researchers praise the health benefits of breast-feeding. The U.S. Surgeon General and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend moms breast-feed for a full year after a baby’s birth to boost a child’s short- and long-term immunity system. Researchers have linked breast-fed babies to higher IQs, while their mothers benefit from reduced risks for certain types of cancer.

Nemens is the first to admit that moving out from behind the store’s lunch counter and into the epicenter of a breast-feeding circle may not happen at least not overnight.

“We’ll just take it slow,” he says.

That was also the polite attitude of most of the moms in the breast-feeding group.

“Um, I think it’s interesting,” said Jessica Haralampiev as she held baby Soren, 8 weeks.

Though many of the regulars know and love Eric — “he brings my lunch every week,” said Wendy Kares — they think he’s going to have a difficult time doing this kind of work outside of a hospital setting.

But then there’s Cara Elsas, whose second child, Rosalie, was born with complications and was unable to nurse right away. Elsas was having painful problems with the fit of the hospital’s breast pump.

“I kind of started to freak because I knew I was going to be pumping a lot,” she said.

From the hospital, she called Kangaroo Kids. Eric, not Sierra, answered the phone. Within hours, Eric arrived at the hospital with a new pump and useful advice.

“He was so great because I didn’t feel uncomfortable about it,” Elsas said. “And you know, we’re talking about nipple size here, right.”

Nemens says there’s one group he thinks will welcome him.

“One of the things I want to do is be an advocate for the dads. And get the dads on board,” he said.

When a wife or partner is having difficulty nursing, most husbands want to help but don’t know what to do next, Nemens said. Dads also sometimes feel like a third wheel.

“We men really have to be creative on being involved in breast-feeding,” he said.

Hill, of St. Mary’s Health Center, said she can’t think of a more valuable service, because Missouri isn’t doing so well when it comes to getting moms to nurse their infants and toddlers. Attendance at breast-feeding classes is down, and partners rarely attend, she said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranks Missouri 43rd in the nation in its percentage of moms breast-feeding six months after birth and 38th after 12 months.

“One of the most important aspects of success in this is the partner,” Hill said. “If (Eric) can help the dads, then, boy, that’s just a gift.”

Nemens won’t know whether he passed his test to become fully certified until later this fall. In the meantime, he’s manning the phones, working the counter and keeping an eye out for that occasional brave guy who wanders into the store.

“I have heard him talk to husbands,” said Kares as her 14-month-old son, Ben, plays nearby. “He is a total guy’s guy.”

 

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