Hey, have you noticed the lack of substantive posting around here lately? Moxie asked me to be the guest expert on breastfeeding for her advice blog, and I have been totally obsessed with one of those posts. If there were a correlation between time spent on a post and its eventual quality, when you opened that page you would find beams of light streaming down from heaven and quires of angels singing triumphantly. Alas, not so. But it's up here, and its predecessor is here, if you're interested. And if you haven't been reading Moxie's advice, take a look. Lots of good stuff, especially on sleep.
I have this sense of responsibility whenever I sit down to write about breastfeeding: how can I be clear about the value of human milk without alienating women who didn't breastfeed? Last summer I got a really troubling email from a sexual abuse survivor offended by the flippant beginning of this post, and it made me so sad. It was kind of a crazy email, and when I started to tell Elwood about it he said, "Delete the email, Jamie." "No, Elwood," I answered with self-mocking earnestness, "I'm going to Save The World. Through breastfeeding." He rolled his eyes and said, "Keep breastfeeding. Delete the email."
I should really listen to my husband more often.
Remember last fall when I was going to speak to that college class about birth? I never told you how it went, in part because I was a little uneasy about it. On the plus side, I think everything I said was evidence-based and they seemed genuinely interested. They laughed a lot (in the right places) and they asked me questions until the bell rang. In the minus column, I was worried that I had been strident in spots. And Pete fussed for a bit until he fell asleep in the sling, which was distracting. Last week the professor called and asked me to speak again this semester, so apparently I was an entertaining kind of strident.
It just takes practice, being emphatic without being shrill. I have been talking about breastfeeding for long enough that I'm pretty comfortable doing it. This was the first time I had spoken to a large group about birth, and maybe I should tell my inner perfectionist to settle down.
Okay, enough hand-wringing. How about a funny story to end on? While the big boys were at a homeschoolers' class recently I took the little ones to the bank. Joe wanted a lollipop and I was using that "grant the wish in fantasy" strategy to distract him. "What flavor would you pick if you could have a lollipop?" I asked him. The teller interpreted this as "Please give my child a lollipop," and handed him the basket. He picked one with an "artificial chocolate" label. "Look!" he said to everyone we saw. "I have a lollipop! It is artificial chocolate!" Every ten minutes he asked me, "Is it after lunch? Can I eat my artificial chocolate lollipop yet?"
Fast forward two hours: he came to me and said, "Where can I hide?" I said, "Hm, how about the office closet?" "No," he said, "it's too dark in there." "Under your bed?" He said, "But you can see me under my bed." "I don't think I would see you under your bed," I told him.
A few minutes later he came back downstairs. "It's too dark under my bed. I need a place to hide where it's light, but where you can't see me when I eat my lollipop."
I came in here to write three more sentences while Pete sat eating Os with his older brother. "Mom!" came the call, two sentences later. And this is what greeted me in the dining room. Oops. That is, in case you can't see, the contents of the box of Os scattered across the carpet, courtesy of the baby who decided to sit on his high chair tray. Back to work with me. Note to self: the 6yo isn't ready to supervise yet.
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