10 NEW Technologies That Are Changing The Way We Parent, Part I

The world is changing and so are our parenting needs. So we decided to compile a list five new technologies that we just can't live without. Check out Part II next week for the top 5 that we wish would just go away.


1. SensuaLiter tm.









The new Medula SensuaLiter plug-in breast pump takes advantage of the most basic fact of human biology: when lactating women are turned on, they spray milk everywhere. A combination electric pump and vibrator, SensuaLiter relieves stress, brings on the lactation let-down reflex, and breaks boundaries. This product makes sense now that companies have caught up with the times and are offering women paid pump breaks and private, lockable rooms in which to do it. "This has really helped me to continue breastfeeding," said Jenny Laroche, mother of three. "And I don't know how I got through my workday without it."



2. Pooping Turdle.

Green Spot, our very own Pooping Turdle!












This little green fellow puts a smile on any young pooper's face. Let's face it, pooping can be boring. Pooping Turdle sings a song, makes soft grunting noises, and even makes silly jokes ("Don't throw me in there!"). Invented by a mom in Eugene, Oregon, PT is small, lightweight, and easily disguised as a regular toy (just don't leave him on the kitchen table when MIL's come to visit). Make potty-training fun with Pooping Turdle. Because like their website says, It's the small things that make pooping fun.



3. babyfacebook (bfb).















 Everybody knows Mark Zuckerberg is a total douche. What we didn't know was that, just like Justin Beiber, he's fathered a string of illegitimate progeny. While Bieber calls these kids his "friends", Zuckerberg makes it official. This spring he founded babyfacebook (bfb), the invite-only social networking site for newborns. "Because facebook is only available to people over thirteen years of age," says Omar Cohen, manager of facebook corp. public relations, "We developed this network for pre- and pre-er tweens." But unlike 'old person' fb, you can't just sign up -- you have to die and be reincarnated (hello, Steve Jobs). Every child born in a public hospital is given the option of opening a customizable bfb account. "This really takes care of the problem of unwanted contact -- only small children are allowed to access this site," says Cohen. So that means that pedophiles (and skanky pictures) aren't a worry, at least for the first twelve years. Now that expecting parents are getting on the bandwagon we'll never be subject to another "Look at the stick I peed on!" status update again.



4. Manse Mondegreen: Queer as (Old) Folk.












OK so this isn't exactly a new technology, but it's something technology's never done before. We're talking about Manse Mondegreen, the sexy, brooding golden age drama that premiers on NBC this fall. Watch Phyllis, the former stripper-turned-Christian, Douglas her long-time lover (and his severe but hilarious wife), and lovable Henry, who would do anything to get into her pants (or even his own). Manse Mondegreen is a seniors' residence where people lose their minds, their fortunes, their inhibitions -- and eventually their lives. What could be better? It wasn't too long ago that 'My So-Called Life' was canceled because network execs just couldn't get behind a show that was only successful with teenagers. A few Twilight years later, and we've all seen how important these franchises can become. Now the head honchos at NBC are casting their glances up (and up!) the age brackets for their next big thing.



5. Safe Deodorizers.

Odor Out, one of the new baby-scented deoderizers


















"You can always tell when you go to someone's house if they've just had a baby," says Josh, a bachelor in his late 20s. "Because it smells really funny, and everyone's wearing bathrobes." Well, there's not much we can do about the bathrobes, but the smell is something everyone could do without. In the past, the only thing to even come close to combatting 'Eau de slight tinge of poop with a whiff of rancid milk and unwashed hair' was the selection of carcinogen-containing deodorizers found on the pharmacy shelf. They made your house smell like pinesol, lavender, and/or detergent. The new breeds (like Odor Out, Baby Breathed On Me, and Snugnose) are not only safer and more effective, they also come in family-friendly scents. There's 'clean new baby' (really just fresh milk), 'clean new mama' (a musky, vanilla-like scent) and 'clean new papa' (gin).


NB: A few of you have emailed me asking where you can get these products. I'm sorry to say (especially about the vibrator/breast pump), but I made them all up. "Yes," said my sister, "but how was I to know? Capitalism be crazy."

When the cat's away, the mouse will work.

Husband: "So babe, what are you going to do on your day off?"
Wife: "Oh, I dunno... I thought I'd catch up on some emails, do some mending. Maybe I'll even clean the house a bit. I've been dying to wash the spit-up off that wall in the bedroom!"

Book Review - Let the Baby Drive by Lu Hanessian (MMMM)

Title: Let the Baby Drive: Navigating the Road of New Motherhood

Author:
Lu Hanessian

Publisher:
St. Martin's Press (May 1, 2004)

Intended Audience:
New parents. Mamas.

One sentence
that summarizes the author's take on babies/parenting: "Mommy's here. Mommy's always here."

What I loved
: It made me feel like I wasn't alone. The stories of her son's development -- the devil's in the details and kids say the darnedest things.

What made me want to cry into my burpee cloth
: It's hard to say -- individually, each chapter is funny, poignant, memorable. But together they tend towards melodrama and repetition. Kind of like motherhood itself.

How many M's?
: MMMM (4 out of 5)



Let The Baby Drive
is a poetic, sometimes rambling account of new motherhood and the ways it stretches, mushes, and ossifies you like a can of play-doh left at the Lost and Found. At times silly, at times salty, Lu Hanessian's book is part compelling memoir, part not-so-compelling musings about parenting in the modern age. Hanessian is smart and perky, the host of Make Room For Baby, a show I probably would never watch. It's just too... perfect-parenty.

We don't have a crib for our baby. Or a changing table. Or a set of matching play-pen (sorry, 'play-yard') sheets to go with the curtains. We're just not those parents. And we don't have a TV, anyway.


But I digress. Let The Baby Drive mixes poignant stories of Hanessian's personal failings as a mother (the time she unwittingly told her 3 year-old she wouldn't be his mommy anymore once he was grown up) with moments of raw emotional vulnerability: "From here on in our hearts are bound to break again and again...", adding a dash of laugh-out-loud hilarity -- like the time her toddler had a terrible nightmare about "ba-ca-ba" (...broccoli) -- for good measure.

It's a readable book. I consumed it over a weekend. But therein lies it's downfall: in such concentrated doses the simple narrative style turns from quirky and conversational to pseudo-philosophical and downright annoying. How else could you describe the appearance of no less than thirty-eight questions in 18 pages? And through the flogging of a particularly tired set of metaphors? Like the following?

I sense that Nicholas is feeling divided as well. He is shifting gears, trying, I assume, to decipher the new geometry. Triangle to square. Does he now feel like a round peg?


Irritations aside, I found her descriptions of early motherhood (when her first son was less than a year old) the most appealing. Her words ring true as she describes the voices in her [my] head, which are the ideas from the outside world, other parents, our own parents; and the deeper, calmer voice from within, the one so easy to drown out in the baby's early months.

This is the voice that tells you he's hungry when everyone else says that's impossible. The voice that tells you to pick him up when no one else seems to have noticed that he's crossed that faint line between laughter and hysteria. But for Hanessian, these voices duel most ferociously in the arena of sleep:

He wakes one morning at 2:30 a.m., flapping his arms before takeoff. At 2:31 a.m., we have a sort of baby-parent summit meeting.

“Nicholas, when it’s dark out, people sleep, and they don’t wake up until it’s light out.”

He puckers his lips and blows me a kiss. He can’t understand the problem. he has just logged eight dreamy hours, and wants to announce it to every piece of living-room furniture. At 2:32 a.m., I explain to him that I am in need of rest in order to have the energy to take care of him. This fool’s logic is met with a strange hissing that sounds like he has let the air out of a party balloon.

She characterizes the conflict as 'Camp Pick Me Up' vs. 'Camp Cry It Out'. And although her descriptions of her son's sleeping patterns (or lack thereof) made me laugh, I was saddened to read about her shame and fear surrounding her son's night wakings. She describes it as, "A very touchy subject for parents...up there with whether to spank, whether mothers should work full-time outside the house. It's as divisive a topic as gun control, abortion or nuclear disarmament."

Say what?

Maybe I'm lucky -- OK, I'm really lucky -- but the fact of a toddler waking up at night is no big deal in my circle. Sweet Baby James sleeps with us, so his night wakings are mercifully short and goal oriented (whine -- roll -- suck -- sleep, repeat); my co-blogger, Sarah, is also an 'Attachment Parent', and Dr. Sears has a whole section in his AP book about why high-needs kids like Hanessian's need less sleep. I'm pretty sure the rest of my friends wouldn't dream of judging me (they will once they have babies, but they don't have babies, yet) and one of my favourite childhood memories is of the time my dad took me to the park to go on the swings -- at 4 am.

So I feel comfortable about my position on sleep, and it wears a little thin when Hanessian and her friends literally lose sleep over theirs. Perhaps it's the things we personally feel least confident about that seem most contentious to us. We seek out judgment because we're not convinced ourselves, and then we feel defensive when another's opinion doesn't match our own...

And yet we need it. We might not always like it, but we need other mothers' help and opinions. Hanessian writes,

I realize how necessary it is to find support. Being a happily married woman, I never expected to feel so alone as a new mother. This, I can see, has little to do with my husband. Somehow, sharing your struggles, confessions, and irrational fears with other mothers can be a kind of a lifeline. There is nothing quite like a little old-fashioned validation from another mother who can listen without judgment, shining a light in otherwise shadowed corners.
And I agree with her -- even with my preternatural nocturnal confidence, I'm the first to tell you that I personally need more mama-friends; and the Sunday Brunch section of this blog is some attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to advice from the maternal set.

To that point, Hanessian is a great parent. She demonstrates a real concern for her kids' needs, and not just from her own perspective. She really tries to get into their heads, to see the world from their point of view. I loved her story about going into her son's preschool class and simply observing the way he was slowly being turned into a social pariah. What's more, she got him out of there and she makes no bones about the school's failings.

I wonder, however, about the appropriateness of categorizing Let the Baby Drive as an Attachment Parenting work. Hanessian's big in the API (Attachment Parenting International) network, acting as a (volunteer? paid?) host for their conferences, and the like. I love API and I support anyone who wants to learn more about Attachment Parenting. I just don't see much of the traditional Attachment in her Parenting book.

What's so AP about forcing the stroller issue when your baby clearly hates it? And what's with the crib? And if she's a dyed in the wool babywearer, why isn't it (aside from a description of a back-ache) a larger factor in her story? It is, after all, one of the most visibly obvious signs of an Attachment Parent -- and it doesn't go unnoticed in public and amongst family and friends. Perhaps Hanessian came to the philosophy of Attachment Parenting after she'd written most of Let The Baby Drive. Or maybe she's just found a good selling point.

In any case, I recommend this book to any new parent who wants someone to make fun of them, without someone actually making fun of them; to people who want to loosen up a little and laugh at themselves while they play with their children. You should pick up this book if you're a new, questioning mother who's looking for a female friend who's ready to spill the beans, even if it's down the front of her shirt.

And then you should give me a call.




On Family Budgeting

Svea: "Mmm, this is nice wine."
Zu: "Yeah, it was pretty cheap, too. Eight dollars."
Svea: "Tastes expensive. Like, at least twelve dollars."

On babywearing

"Excuse me, sir! there is a tiny man in your jacket!"


Check out Too Hot For Stroller, our babywearing blog.

Babies: Can't live with 'em...

I don't know what it was today... The 416th consecutive night of broken sleep, or the constant whining coming from the baby backpack as I attempted our first ever mother-son hike in the canyon, an abortive effort that failed not during our walk through the grimy city to get there, but only once we'd reached the beautiful canyon itself? The blackish poop in the diaper which had dried all over Sweet Baby James' butt by the time we returned from this non-hike? The two-times wailing when he fell on his face, cutting his lip and drawing blood for the first (and second!) time in his life? The quick frustration with his sippy cup, this cup which had been on my to-do (to-buy) list for several days and which led only to soaked clothes, a furious baby and a dent in the new blue bookshelf? Or maybe it was the demoralizing experience of having bused over an hour across the city with a seriously tired baby last night to attend a La Leche League meeting that wasn't happening... And then busing, with a now hysterically tired baby, all the way back?

Whatever the case: at around 3pm today I had to sit down, take a deep sigh and admit something terrible to myself (and my husband, because apparently I was talking to myself). I really don't feel like being a mom today. 

Honestly.

The toughest thing I've experienced in being a new mom isn't any one thing in particular -- I can deal with endless kamikaze poopings, I can deal with sleeplessness, I can deal with sore arms when I carry him and guilt when I don't -- but it's the constancy of it. Like being pregnant, being a mom would be so much easier if you could do it just six days out of seven, or even nine out of ten.

But ya can't. It doesn't work like that.

And I'm not even sure I would want it to. After all, I could take a break if I really needed it. I could go on a quick vacation somewhere, leaving hubby or the grandparents to look after the little one. I could ignore him a little more often. I could buy a TV. I could put him in daycare. But probably as a result of my 'attachment' parenting practices and beliefs, I don't even want to (...yet). I feel good when I get a short (2 hours max) daily break from the baby. But I don't feel good leaving him for any longer than that, or even for a full day with regular check-ins.

Dr. and Martha Sears talk about this 'feeling right' when you're with your baby in their lovely book The Attachment Parenting Book : A Commonsense Guide to Understanding and Nurturing Your Baby. It shouldn't surprise any of us that babies feel 'right' when they're with their primary caretaker. But what about when mamas need (though don't always want) to be with their babies? There's a certain snideness in our culture about 'clingy' parents. You hear it from kindergarten teachers who have to "shoo" the parents away on the kids' first day of school; I've heard it from obstetric nurses who laugh at new mamas who are reluctant to give up their newborns to the nursery "just so she can get a few hours of sleep!"

I know we shouldn't have kids to fill a hole within us. Kids are not designed to make their parents happy, and anyway, they never do. They are designed to be themselves -- infuriating, discomfort-producing, entirely lovable little beings. I worry about unconsciously crossing the line from healthy attachment into the territory of (s)mothering enmeshment. Co-dependency is the last thing I want. Connection, compassion and understanding are the first (it's a three-way tie).

In fact, like a true modern woman, I want it all ways. I want deep attachment (but not enmeshment!) and I want a kickass creatively powerful life. The only problem is... How? How do I know when to 'give in' and spend the day eliciting smiles from my baby, and when it would be wiser to spend that time working on my other creative projects?

I don't know. If I'm not working on 'my own stuff' (like, ahem, this blog post), I'm not happy to be a stay at home mom; if I'm not connecting well with my baby, what the f*ck am I doing writing this self-righteous parenting blog? It's a fine balance.

Anyway.

I highly recommend admitting that you're not feeling great about being a Mama on the days that you're not. It felt so good. Like that staple of professor office doors: 'Today is not your day. Tomorrow doesn't look good either.' Today I'm not The Best Mama. Today I'm not picking your spoon up off the floor after you've thrown it there for the fifth time, on purpose. I don't care if you have to eat the rest of your apple sauce with your hands. Today I'm Distracted, Irritable, Grouchy Mama. And I can't wait 'til it's your bedtime.

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In this post:



On the Weather

Husband: Can you look it up?

Wife: Oh yeah, it's going to rain on Friday. Look at this. It says 'Click here to see what people are saying about the weather in San Francisco.' What could be more boring than talking about the weather?

Husband: Talking about the weather on the internet.

Wordless Wednesday: THFS and Mamactivism


Want more 'I've Changed My Baby...' pics? Check out our Mamactivism blog: www.mamactivism.wordpress.com



Want more über fashionable (and sometimes historic!) babywearing? Check out
Too Hot For Stroller: www.toohotforstroller.wordpress.com . THFS!

What to do with a Rogue Scooter? The Balance Between Feeling Bad and Setting Boundaries

For the past couple of months P has been mobile. Some might say that mobility at 9 months is a little later than other babies start. I say bull pucky- every child has their own internal clock.

It just so happens P has hated the notion of "tummy time" since the first time we attempted to encourage it. At which point he voiced how ridiculous he thought the entire thing was. As he never cared much for tummy time, crawling was out of the question for him. It took him a little longer to figure out what was right for him but he's settled on sitting up and scooting across the floor on his bum using his legs as propellers. For those of you looking for a visual, its something what I would think to be akin to a baby octopus (minus a few legs) taken out of the water and placed on the floor.

With this new sense of mobility has come frequent pillaging of various lower kitchen drawers, the lower shelf of the pantry and occasionally an empty water bottle will go missing from the recycling bin....

These pillagings have in effect lead to a sense of ownership-albeit a mis-placed sense of ownership- over spoils. As far as P is concerned its a finders keepers world and losers are weepers. This means that separating scooter from "his" can of soup, or other item "he found" causes a toddler sized tantrum ending in sadness and us feeling like schmuks. Which has left me pondering the question:

Is there such a thing as balance between implementing boundaries and feeling bad for having to steal your baby's thunder? How much "baby proofing" is too much, or too little?

Part of parenting entails implementing certain boundaries especially when it comes to things that might harm our children. At the same time, encouragement of exploration and educational experiences from ones surroundings is also ideal. Is it really that bad if the baby scoots off with a can of soup or bag of cereal? Not likely if they are supervised. Then again, we can't let them have everything they want or no one would have any eyes left. So how do we as parents strike a balance?

While pondering this question I decided to do what any parent would do, I hauled out my trusty parenting manual---HA! Those don't exist!

I actually haven't quite figured this out myself. It seems to me it differs with each child. Some babies find electrical sockets fascinating, others prefer wires. Others don't think twice about any of these things and are quite happy with their blocks - or inanimate objects...

We have gone ahead with moving wires and plugging the outlets with covers, and even decided to implement a couple cupboard door latches this time around. But instead of wrapping our house in a seal proof bubble we settled on giving P his own special kitchen drawer. In it, he has his own wooden spoons, a car or two and a paper towel roll. All things he loves at an accessible height for him. So far this method appears to be working and allows him to explore and feel part of the "big people" environment. Sure, he occasionally pilfers a can of soup or something similar from the pantry when he thinks I'm not looking and sees how far he can get with it, but these things are harmless.

I suppose the big unknown about parenting is, well, just that-unknown. Not until our kids grow into adults and begin to carry on lives they think are independent of us parents, will we know for sure if all the boundaries and things we tried to teach them were relevant.

So I guess my question is more one for the broader reading audience - what works for you? What are your strategies if you have any?


"Your boobies are nice - Granny's boobies are all ovvvver the place."
E: "It's all about money to you!"
J: "I'm being paid 2 bucks to load all these dishes in the dishwasher...Really?"

The Tuesday Photo: 37 Weeks Old

Click here to see the Boyda-Vikander baby blog. We call it The Tuesday Photo because that's how it started -- a grandmother's request for a weekly photo so she could see how the little one was growing. The rest is history.



This week, Sweet Baby James rescues a neighbourhood puppy, wears a sombrero, investigates a donut, and breaks free of the chains of infant servitude.

The Tuesday Photo: 37 Weeks



On Spit-Up

Mom: "Whoa, big one. Here, let me get a tissue. No, don't... It's not a toy."

Code Milk! How I was over-prepared for breastfeeding

Last Tuesday night found Sweet Baby James and I sitting on the living room floor of a very nice apartment in the foggiest part of town. The room was crawling with babies, lactating women, and their relatives. Our first ever La Leche League meeting!

The La Leche League (LLL) is amazing. It was started in 1956 by a bunch of friends who were not convinced by their doctors' opinion that breastfeeding was bad for their babies. Only 20% of American babies were being breastfed at that time, and it was considered so uncouth to discuss nursing in public that they had to call themselves 'The Milk' League in Spanish. Code milk!

LLL was renegade, radical and revolutionary in its time; now it's a soft, welcoming place for people who want to learn more about breastfeeding. They have a book, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, a magazine, a website, and groups meeting weekly in 68 countries.

In the Western world's reckless rejection of lactation in the 1930s-1970s (a squeamishness that accompanied the medicalization of birth and the rise of corporate interest in infant formula), an entire generation was raised without the nipple. While a woman could once turn to her own mama for support and knowledge about breastfeeding, that's not possible if she didn't breastfeed her babies and wasn't breastfed herself. So going to a LLL meeting is a bit like reaching back through the centuries to find a bit of knowledge that you kind of knew already.

Yes, I paid $25 for a one-year membership to a club where I listen to people tell me things I already know. It's strange but wonderful, sitting in a room full of the squeals of children and squalls of babies and feeling, "Oh yeah, I knew that" about something that, frankly, I didn't.

Like biting.

I had been being bitten by Sweet Baby James on a semi-regular basis for the past few weeks. His teeth came in all of a sudden (six teeth over the course of two weeks, both top and bottom in the front. wowza!) and it's as if he didn't quite know what to do with them. And so, as always, he did whatever he liked. Unfortunately for me, whatever he liked included something very sharp and something very sensitive. Ouch.

So I asked about this at the meeting. The leader, as she is directed to do, reflected the question back to the larger group -- had anyone else experienced this? There was one Lactation Consultant-looking woman there (yes, there's an LC look. It involves being well-groomed, doing yoga and wearing handcrafted silver jewelry -- you know who you are) who suggested I de-latch the baby as soon as my milk had stopped flowing, since biting happens when the nipple is further forward in the mouth than when he's really gulping milk down.

Someone else suggested raising the angle of the baby's head, since they most comfortably latch when they're looking upward; and another lady commiserated, saying that she is doing extended breastfeeding with her daughter and not to worry, he would soon grow out of it.

That middle suggestion -- that the angle of the latch might be causing him to bite -- was actually new to me. But as they described it, I really felt like it wasn't. I felt like it was something I had known and forgotten, or maybe could have figured out on my own. A feeling not unlike the one you get from assembling a piece of IKEA furniture without the directions, only to find them hidden under your (also IKEA) couch.

There's much ado these days about how 'not instinctive' breastfeeding is -- the LLL magazine New Beginnings is full of stories from new moms who had terrible difficulties establishing the "breastfeeding relationship" after their baby was born. Thalia says,
"I wondered what could be so hard about something so natural. Hadn't we as a species done this from the beginning? I thought it was going to be easy. Not only was I wrong, but I was woefully unprepared for how wrong I was."

Diane says,
"Looking back now, both... [my husband and I] should have read a lot more and given a lot more thought on the subject."


But this non-instinctive stuff seems *ahem* counter-intuitive to me. How could we possibly survive as a species if the womanly art of breastfeeding wasn't hard-wired? And how come, given that I'm not a 100% insufferable jerk, do I feel like I 'know' this stuff already? Anthropologist Meredith Small asks the same question in her excellent book Our Babies, Ourselves: How biology and culture shape the way we parent.

She tells the story of a captive gorilla (Small doesn't say, but I'm assuming she was raised in isolation). This lady gorilla was able to carry and birth her cute little gorilla babies, but they kept getting taken away from her because she didn't know how to nurse them. She had the idea to connect her nipple with something on the baby's head -- but she didn't know that she needed to turn it around to face her. So the keepers got a bunch of human mothers to nurse their babies in front of her. She watched. She learned. She was able to feed her next baby!

So there is a strong learned aspect to breastfeeding. And perhaps this is the essence of intuition -- it's a combination of instinct and learning. It's important that we have good prenatal and prelactation classes available. But maybe, in our drive to be the master of everything in our domain, it's possible to be over-prepared, too. Might we, in our drive for self-education, run the risk of extinguishing the instinctual aspect of the nursing process?

I paid attention in the lactation section of our prenatal class at Montréal's (incredibleamazingawesome, cannotrecommenditenough) Côte de Neiges Maison de Naissance. I knew I wanted to breastfeed my baby and I knew it wasn't going to be easy. The videos showed us how we should hold (but not assault) the baby's head, how we should slightly compress our breast/nipple into the "hamburger shape" (hungry?), and how to tickle the baby's chin or cheek so that he would open up wide and I could shove that nipple in as far as it would go.

And when the baby came, I did all this. My nipples were sore, and there was a blood blister on one. I used a lot of Lanolin (a nice word for sheep grease) and cursing... I did everything they had told me to do -- but he didn't seem to be born with the open-up-wide-so-you-can-shove-your-nipple-in reflex.

I'd tickle his cheek or his chin and he'd open up a little bit, but not as much as he would at other times; or he wouldn't open up at all, preferring instead to suck heavily on his own hands, despite the fact that he was wailing with hunger only a moment before. I had a hectic, heavy letdown reflex (which is when the milk sprays out of the nipple like a sprinkler -- or Niagara Falls, as the case may be) so I'd be sitting there getting madder than a wet hen as the baby's fresh onesie got drenched, too.

And I was in pain. That blood blister developed into two. One of the tough things about starting to nurse is that you still have to continue to nurse on both breasts, even if one of them has a damaged nipple. Sometimes I would end up making it worse, since because it hurt like hell whether I was getting a good latch or not. I had no way to tell if I was on the right track!

One day, I just gave up. Not nursing, but trying. I gave up trying.

Baby was at my nipple, we were doing our usual three-round latchfight, and I just let him win. I didn't touch him or my breast. I watched. He didn't open his mouth wide like the babies in the video, but he sucked the nipple deep into his mouth, closed his eyes and gulped away. A perfect latch.

This was just my experience. But I hope that as we start to accept breastfeeding as an important aspect of childhood and maternal health, we can relax a little and give the formulaic nursing methods a break. I'm glad that I attended prenatal classes, but a class could never really prepare me for my baby knowing more than I do.


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In this post:


On Sleep

Stranger: So is he sleeping through the night yet?
Me: (manic laughter)

[awkward silence]
"What is that pile of brown stuff in the waded up napkins? Is that what I think it is?"
Husband: "Yeah we had a code brown a few minutes ago - there was nothing I could do."
"Honey? Do you know what takes poop out of white shirts? I want to wear my white shirt tomorrow..."
Walk past two wrapped presents on the table...
"Oh, are we going to a baby shower that I didn't know about?"
Husband: "No, why you ask?"
"Well the presents, there on the table - who are those for?"
Husband: "Oh those are for C's birthday, I decided to try my hand at wrapping!"
"The ones with the pregnant woman all over the front? Isn't C turning 9?"
Husband: "Pregnant woman?! I thought it was just a girl walking her dog...."
Me: So how was your day? How were the kids?
G: Oh it was greeeaaaat, I tell E, don't touch that, and she says "I just want to see." and I'm like E leave it alone, its not yours its the baby's and she's all like "but I want to see""
Me: Sounds a bit stressf---
G: But what does she do? She touches it anyways! She's all like "I don't care", why? cause she's a f#$%& honey badger that's why.


On Other Men

Wife: "Well, what do you have to say about that?"
Husband: "I'll rip their eyeballs out."

(read the whole conversation)