Growing Boy

Quick post because I have to get back to trying to make this last chapter not awful. But while I'm thinking about it, a few points of news:

• Nicholas grew again! So maybe the grumpiness last weekend was caused by that. I know, when are we going to learn that "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" means growth spurt? It actually crossed my mind, but he had just had one a few weeks ago so I dismissed it. But, sure enough, today he didn't need pants cuffed up at all that just two weeks ago were cuffed up almost 2 inches. Yeah, serious growth spurt. I doubt it was a full 2 inches, but at least 1. And apparently it was mostly in his legs because he discovered tonight that his legs are finally long enough to get his toes in his mouth. Great.
• Nicholas is going to be in daycare fulltime for the month of April. Well, except for this Friday and Monday, when the center is closed for Easter. But after that. We are up past our eyeballs in work, he loves it there, and I can honestly completely forget about him while he is there because I am so confident that he is fine. And since they don't currently have anyone taking his spot on W and F, they were willing to let us have those days just temporarily. Perfect.

There was something else in my head a few minutes ago, but it seems to have left, so back to trying to write a compelling opening anecdote I go.

Wordless Wednesday: Piano Man

Double dose today!

From 2010 March

From 2010 March

Baby's First Seder

We celebrated the first night of Passover last night with a seder with some extended family. Let's see if I can figure out the relationships. There was one of Joe's dad's first cousins (so Nicholas' first cousin twice removed), the son of another of his dad's first cousins, that son's family (so his daughters are Nicholas' third cousins), as well as that last family's other side of the family. Yeah, let's just stick with "cousins."

We enjoyed ourselves and it was good to take a break from the grind of what seems to have become a 24/7 workday of late. And Nicholas loved having big cousins to walk him around, pay attention to him, sing songs, and feed him pieces of fruit. Since he doesn't have any first cousins, this isn't a role he is used to.

From 2010 March

Oh, and his favorite part of the seder? Clapping along to Dayeinu, of course!

From 2010 March

There are a few more pictures from yesterday evening, as well as Nicholas' first finger painting on display at "school" here.

A Preview of the Toddler Years

Nicholas has been pretty cranky and not quite himself for much of the past few days. We're not sure if the tooth we've been suspecting is getting ready to come out for weeks is finally bothering him, if he's reacting to the fact that he's hardly seen me in weeks, if he is starting to transition to toddler moods, or if something else is up. Whatever the cause, he has been prone to outbursts of tears. This is new for us.

But we've had some really good playtime today in between outbursts. His two new favorite games are playing ball and knocking down towers.

"Playing ball" consists of sitting and grabbing the plastic ball when you roll it to him, chewing on it for a minute, and then hitting at it making it spin. Alternately, he hits it and then crawls after it, hitting it again, and so on. He also has a variation that resembles soccer, where he kicks it as we walk around.

Knocking down towers is pretty self explanatory, but what is fun is that if he sees you building a tower on the other side of the room, his face lights up and he heads towards you at lightning speed.
Here he is heading towards a tower Joe built:

From 2010 March

And here he is once he got to his goal:

From 2010 March

The Meta-Baby

It's probably a bad sign when you see your son doing something fun, and your first thought is, "Let me get the camera!  That would make a great 'Wordless Wednesday' post!"

It's even worse to realize that it was my thought and not Sarah's.  Alas.

Stay tuned until Wednesday ...

Ten Month Update

Only 61 days left until Nicholas's first birthday!  Oh. My. God.

Anyway, today we mark ten months since his birth, which seems impossible.  Frankly, it seems impossible that a month has passed since the end of February.  For some reason (probably that we actually kept to our routine and were not interrupted by business trips and massive snowstorms) the last four weeks have gone ridiculously fast.  And Nicholas seems to be developing incredibly rapidly and plateauing, depending on which day it is.  So let's review what's new the last few weeks, even if it repeats items we've already mentioned.

• His language skills have improved exponentially.  This month he very strongly began to associate words with meanings.  He now understands "yay!" (that means we all clap our hands); "peek-a-boo!" (which prompts him to try to play peek-a-boo); "bottle;" "bath;" and a few others.  It has helped enormously, because we are more able to communicate with him, but it also means that we need to be more careful about what we say.  For example, "Should we give him a bath tomorrow?" he hears as "wah wah wah wah BATH wah wah?"
• Relatedly, he has begun to communicate with us, if without words.  When he wants to nurse, he walks Sarah to the spot on the couch where she sits to nurse him.  When he wants a bottle, he walks us over to the kitchen counter where we keep the bottles.  And he walks us over to the bathtub three or four times a day just to check whether there's water in it for him.
• At the same time, he's adding syllables to his vocabulary by the day.  His favorite for most of the last two weeks has been "up," though he now also mimics when I say "aaah."  Every once in a while we hear something else, the occasional "dah" or "ummmm."  There were even a few days where he walked around saying "hanya," and any former Glee Club members who read the blog will understand just how much that warmed my heart.
• He's getting really good at holding himself up and walking, though still always with support.  He can stand on his own for a few seconds at a time.  Actually, we suspect he could probably do it for far longer, but he tends to have what we call Wile E. Coyote moments when no one's holding him: he's fine until he realizes that he's totally free, and lunges for something, which causes him to fall.
• He feeds himself!  (When he wants to.)  He's getting pretty good at the pincer, picking things up with thumb and forefinger, which means we can now give him Cheerios to play with and/or eat while preparing his other foods.  It also means that we can give him lots of real food, including sweet potatoes, bananas, peaches, the occasional piece of chicken, and more.  Sometimes he just refuses to pick up food (I can't blame him since it's hard to pick up something as slimy as a peach).  But he will take things off of his fork, or, more fun, mine.
• He loves daycare.  He's gotten over his separation anxiety, and now enjoys being left with the staff.  Now, he is always excited to see us in the afternoon when we arrive to pick him up, but it seems to have clicked for him that when we leave, we'll be back.  Also he has fun there and gets to eat lots of food every day.

Those are the big things I can think of right now, which is basically my way of saying that Sarah will reserve the right to append her thoughts over the weekend when she has a little more time.

Safety Tip of the Day

Apparently small amounts of black beans being re-heated for small children can cause sparks in microwaves.

Lesson learned in a brisk seven seconds, and without any actual flames.

Wordless Wednesday: Self-Sufficiency

From 2010 March

Daycare Report

From 2010 March

I learned something from Nicholas' daycare teacher today that I just had to share because I'm so proud of him. Apparently Nicholas has developed quite the reputation at daycare . . . for his smile. He is known to have a great smile and to be easy to get to smile. Apparently so much so that teachers from other rooms come into his room specifically to see if he is there when they need a good smile to cheer them up. How cool is that?

And so, in case you need cheering up as well, here is that darling little boy with the great smile:

From 2010 March

Zoo

From 2010 March

We decided to take advantage of the beautiful day to check out the Maryland Zoo today. It is definitely not my favorite zoo, mostly because of some odd (that may be too kind, but I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt) layout decisions (a parking lot that isn't actually paved, narrow wooden walkways between exhibits that don't have room for people, let alone strollers, to stop and look at anything without blocking the entire walkway . . .). BUT, it also has some features that I haven't seen at any other zoos. Namely, giraffes and elephants super close. I thought the giraffe was going to come lick Nicholas' face!

Nicholas was somewhat interested in the animals, but much more interested in holding onto every post, pole, and fence he could find. And he was not happy about the bright sun and lack of shade. I went out this morning to get him sunglasses, but he wouldn't leave them on, and the bright sun made his eyes water.

In sum, we'll plan our next trip either earlier in the day or on a cloudy day. The animals will be more active then anyway, which will make them easier for Nicholas to spot.

On another note, Nicholas has added two new tricks/games to his list. (And he sometimes acts like it is a list--he'll go through them one by one to test our responses.) Here is a picture of him doing one of these:

From 2010 March

It is basically singing a note which we are then supposed to replicate. He doesn't seem to have any idea about making different tones, however, and it always comes out sounding pretty similar.

The second new trick/game is much more fun. He has connected that the words "hi" and "wave" go with waving your arm, so will wave when we say either of those.

So, basically, he has progressed to the level of dog tricks. He waves if we say wave or hi, claps if we say clap or yay, and pulls his hands over his head if we say peekaboo. But, importantly, he also initiates each of these games, and we must respond with the appropriate word to his actions. So I guess you could say that we are also at the level of dog tricks. And, actually, I think he has trained us more than the other way around.

Spring!!!!!!!

We are all very happy about the arrival of spring. It has been a long, cold, snowy winter. But all that is behind us now (knock on wood) and we have been enjoying sunny 70-degree days this week. We've been too busy to get out much to enjoy it, but today I came home at 5 and we squeezed in an hour of outdoor time before dinner.

Nicholas was very excited about going for a walk in his stroller!

From 2010 March

And once he got bored of rolling around, we stopped at the playground a couple blocks away. He enjoyed the swings . . . for brief periods. After a minute or two he would start to get anxious and want out, but for the first couple minutes he thought it was fun. And he kept going back to them.

From 2010 March

But really, in typical Nicholas fashion, he was much more interested in walking around exploring and checking out what all the big kids (and the one very big dog) were doing.

From 2010 March

There are more pictures in The Gallery, but here is my favorite, which I took yesterday evening outside our apartment.

From 2010 March

Spring is here!!! Yay!!!! (And in his sleep Nicholas is now clapping and doesn't know why.)

Tourney Time

Last year at this time, according to the blog, Peanut greatly enjoyed watching the NCAA tournament with Mommy and Daddy.  In addition, because of Peanut I will always associate the tournament with putting together baby gear, such as Peanut's rocking chair:

From Peanut's Blog

It was fun, and at the time, I resolved that the next year (i.e., this year) I would take a day off from working on either Thursday or Friday, hang out with the baby, and watch basketball with him.  (I knew at the time it would be a him, you only suspected it, but I would have wanted to do the same thing if Peanut had been a daughter.)  In other words, I've been looking forward to the opportunity for a while.

Anyway, I'm super-excited because today is our day.  I'm in charge of Fridays based on our daycare schedule, and so I have quite the schedule planned.  First, a morning trip to a nearby historic site I've been meaning to get to, the Hampton plantation in Towson.  Mostly it's a place to walk around on a beautiful morning.  Then naptime, of course, for Nicholas.

And then the fun begins!  Lunch will be served as a treat in the living room, so that Nicholas and I can enjoy (in HD!) the early game.  Here in Baltimore we get local team Morgan State as it goes up against West Virginia.  It may not turn out to be the most interesting game (we'll see), but who cares?  It's basketball!  It's father-son bonding time!

The Bantam Menace

I read a piece yesterday afternoon (itself covering a CNN article) about the battle over whether children should be allowed to fly.

Now I'm going to ask you to go back and read that first sentence again.

Thank you.  Yes, there are battles, fought by frenzied parents and besieged corporate travelers over whether Johnny is crying too much in aisle 19.  At one extreme are those who want everyone to believe that children making noise should be considered joyful, an expression of life at its fullest.  Kicking the seat?  Normal energy use.  Running up and down the aisles?  No problem.  Don't like it?  Too bad.  "Just wait 'til you have kids, buddy."  At the other end are those who yearn for the days of "children should be seen but not heard."  They want children consigned to the back of the plane (seriously) with a curtain to block sound ... and that's if they deign to allow children on the plane in the first place.  Parents who bring children on vacation, or to visit Grandma, or for any other purpose, are vain and narcissistic, and hate both their children and everyone around them.

And I'm probably underselling the rhetoric in the comments section.


One of the things I least looked forward to about having a child was trying to travel with a child, especially flying, since I figured it wouldn't be easy.  The stuff you need multiplies astronomically once you have a kid (much more so than going from single to married ... though I'm still not sure why you'd need that much mousse for an overnight trip).  Stroller, car seat, diapers, DIAPERS—you have to bring enough diapers to last as long as your trip plus enough for the baby to poop out his pants twice a day, just in case!—food, clothes, toys.  And that's even before you've left the house.

Oy.

We took Nicholas on his first plane trip back in January (to San Diego), and he behaved wonderfully.  The trip also confirmed that traveling with a child is a nightmare.  I listed all the stuff already, so I'll stipulate that.  But it is a ton of work to travel with a baby (and he at least was willing to sit still!).  If you think about how little you like being crammed into an airplane seat for hours, think about Nicholas, who at 6 months old had to find a way to take his naps scrunched up in his mother's arms, a little too warm to be comfortable, and not used to sleeping sitting up.  Because he responds to music, we ended up spending 40 minutes singing him songs to keep him calm.  We used toys to keep him occupied.  It sort of worked, and he had no outbursts.

But I look at the list of suggestions in the CNN article and chuckle, at least at some of them.  Most of the suggestions are common-sense.  Be prepared, with toys and activities, food, and so on.  Okay, no problem there.  But walking up and down the aisles is only an option (a) when they're not bringing the drink cart through the cabin, and (b) when the "fasten seat belt" sign is turned off, which, as you know, is sometimes never, even on what appears to a layman to be a quiet flight.  And I understand that there's a difference between an infant crying on take-off and a 6-year-old who needs to run up and down the aisles pretending he's SpongeBob SquarePants or whatever.  And parents need to make an effort, of course.  Actually, one of the suggestions is to make an effort because that frequently soothes frustrated fellow passengers as much as the child.

But the psychologist who said on the record that "The other people on the plane do not have to be subjected to your child crying. It is absolutely not something that they should be expected to endure. They can't leave," well, she can kiss my behind.  Sometimes parents need to travel.  Sometimes parents want to travel.  Sometimes they want to bring their kids.  Sometimes they have no choice.  But kids cry.  And make noise.  and find air travel as inconvenient and annoying as the rest of us, but aren't mature enough to curse at flight attendants and gate agents like grown-ups can.  Should we deal with them when they lose control?  Absolutely.  Should we ban children from flying, or force them to a segregated section in the very back of the plane?  How about instead we ban business travelers who take up extra space with their laptops, who continue their cell phone conversation until the very last moment before the plane accelerates into take-off?  Wouldn't that make flying a better experience?

Yeah, exactly.  So let's all relax people, and remember that we live with a social contract, and not in some sort of reality version of Lord of the Flies.

I'm done now.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

In honor of St. Patrick's Day we had corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes. And Nicholas had . . . potatoes.

From 2010 March

At first he wasn't so certain what this was we were feeding him, but after a few bites, he warmed up to the idea and started stuffing his face.

From 2010 March

He loves french fries, so we figured he'd like the potatoes, which he did after he got used to them falling apart in his hands. (You can also see in this picture some of the other features of Nicholas' current diet--Cheerios and puppy. He has gotten very skilled at picking up individual Cheerios and putting them in his mouth. In fact, I think he would be content to have a diet consisting entirely of Cheerios if we would let him. And the puppy is because we think he might be teething again. At least we sort of hope so because that would explain a lot.)

Happy St. Patrick's Day! (And, happy birthday Grandpa Dan! And happy feast day Uncle Patrick.)

From 2010 March

Wordless Wednesday: Big-Boy Pajamas

From 2010 March

Breastfeeding Thoughts: Can Dad Get Change for His Two Cents?

I posted in the comments to Sarah's post last week on the decision whether to breastfeed or formula feed, but I have some thoughts I wanted to share from the father's perspective.

First, I will stipulate that this was one of the hardest decisions about Nicholas (well, at the time, Peanut) for me to offer my thoughts.  It's a strange position to be in.  To advocate breastfeeding, which seems like a logical choice for the baby's sake, is to ask your wife and the mother-to-be to take on completely the most time- and labor-intensive task of the first few months of the baby's life.  Fortunately, we worked hard to talk things through (I know, that's shocking about us) and make a reasoned and informed decision, which Sarah enumerated pretty well.

I suppose that as a father, the most persistent emotion I felt about feedings was helplessness.  There were several points when Nicholas and Sarah struggled to make things work, and I could only encourage Sarah to breathe and relax, and remind her that we could switch to formula if she truly felt things weren't working.  But I couldn't actually make the decision for her.  And there's not much you can do for a baby only a few days old to get him to feed properly.

More significantly, I felt helpless because I was missing out on bonding opportunities, or at least thought I was.  In the "movie version" of having a baby, what people look forward to is feeding time.  You get to bond with the baby, and he's awake, etc. etc.  But with breastfeeding, only mommy gets to feed the baby (at least for the first month).  So I couldn't even help out a little bit.  I couldn't take a nighttime feeding to help Sarah sleep (though I did do diapers, and lots of time trying to get him back to sleep).  I couldn't take a daytime feeding for fun.  I couldn't take a feeding for Sarah to go out for an hour (as she mentioned).  It was an entire portion of Nicholas's life—and that first month it's a pretty signification proportion—that was entirely cut off for me.  So that wasn't fun, and I enjoyed being able to give him a bottle (of breast milk) once he got to about four weeks old.

As for the breastfeeding advocacy groups that Sarah mentioned, I will add just a few things, one of them an anecdote that explains part of our position.  Two things bugged me about the breastfeeding advocacy we heard, mostly through the class we took at the hospital as part of the baby prep package.  First was the demonizing of formula.  For me this was galling because I knew that I was formula-fed as a baby, and so were my brothers, and we all turned out fine.  [ed.: Yes, he's willing to admit that every once in a while.]  Not to mention that probably half of the parents-to-be in the room also grew up on formula.  The second part that bothered me was that no one ever bothered to explain how to breastfeed a baby.  The 2-hour session was mostly propaganda about how wonderful breastfeeding is ... how beneficial for the baby, how wonderful for the mother, how awesome for bonding, and did we mention that if you give your kid formula it'll end up with gills?

Now, about that anecdote.  This was where the rubber met the road, and the propaganda failed us until a little pragmatism arrived.  I can't seem to find anything we wrote on the blog about this incident at the time, but it's possible.  Anyway.  In the hospital, Nicholas spent his first night trying to nurse for five- and six-hour shifts.  Each time, the nurses would announce that he was "cluster feeding," and we should roll with it.  Can't mess with the baby's breastfeeding schedule, because baby knows best what he needs.  Which was a nice sentiment, but Sarah couldn't sleep at all, Nicholas wasn't sleeping because he was nursing so much he never got full enough to rest, and I couldn't do anything.  Sarah's milk would come in within about three or four days, but it hadn't yet, so Nicholas simply couldn't get enough food by nursing forever.  On our last morning in the hospital, the final shift nurse we had came up with a brilliant practical solution: give him some formula.  I'll wait for you to stop gasping.  Now, she figured out a way to do it without giving him a bottle, by using a little feeding tube that they use for preemies.  He nursed as usual, he got nutrition, he FELL ASLEEP!  Within a day, he was getting plenty of milk from Sarah, and everything was fine.  But the dogma of breastfeeding almost kept us from even getting out of the starting gate.  Instead of trying to deal with an actual problem, the nurses simply repeated what they "knew" to be true: baby knows best, just breastfeed and everything will be fine.  But not so much.

So those are my thoughts, for what it's worth.

Title Tuesday: Mar. 16

Here at the Peanut Chronicle, as we mark the anniversary of the birth of James Madison today, we're all starting to lose our minds just a little bit.  Except for Nicholas, who yesterday learned how to say "aah."  But I realized that we haven't posted a thing in several days, so I will point out that there are some new photos in the Peanut Gallery (no matter the level of crazy in our house, Sarah still wields the camera several times a day).  And I've picked one as a Title Tuesday, if you'd like, but mostly because it's a fun shot.  Enjoy!

From 2010 March

Language and New Games

Well, these "games" aren't quite new, but the way Nicholas is playing them this week certainly is. He made a language leap of some sort this week and is suddenly responding to a bunch of words with the corresponding actions . He will walk us to the place we mention, assuming it is somewhere he is agreeable to the idea of at that moment and that we keep saying the word as we walk so he doesn't get distracted by toys we pass. That one is useful. But the really fun ones are the new "games," which I will term the "yay game" and the "peekaboo game." I know, I'm great at names, aren't I?

Anyway, the "yay game" consists of him clapping and us saying, you guessed it, "yay!" When he claps he looks at us expectantly for our part. In fact, this game started in the car on the way back from NY last weekend, when he was calling to us and so we looked in the mirror and saw him sitting there clapping. Not knowing what he wanted, we clapped as well and said "yay," because that is what you say when you clap, and his smile clearly told us that was what he wanted. Over the course of the next hour this happened repeatedly. And if we stopped paying attention to him and so didn't notice he had started clapping again, he'd call to us so we could do our part. Either party can initiate the game. If he claps, he expects us to say "yay" and if we say "yay" when he isn't clapping, he will clap. Seriously, whatever he is doing, he stops to clap if you say "yay." It is hilarious.

The "peekaboo game" is pretty similar. And, in fact, it is only tangentially related to actually playing peekaboo, a game which he apparently understands both better and worse than we realized. He has enjoyed pulling things off our heads or his own head for months, so playing peekaboo, but has never initiated it by covering his own head. Well then the other night he started holding a toy up above his head and then quickly bringing it down. I don't know how to describe what he was doing clearly or his expression, but it was clear he was playing peekaboo. So we said "peekaboo" and he said, "yep, you got it right" with his expression. Then the next night at dinner he started doing it again, except this time without anything in his hands. Here is the video I took when I realized this was going to go on for awhile:

From 2010 March

And so now whenever you say peekaboo he puts his hands above his head and brings them down. And sometimes when you are randomly doing something else he will start doing that and expects you to play along. I'm proud of him for now initiating the game. But he apparently doesn't get the hiding part of peekaboo.

The really interesting thing is that we weren't trying to teach him these things or anything. He just did an action and we responded with the word we thought he was trying to indicate and knew we had gotten it right when his face lit up. Okay, and since then we've done it some just for fun to see if it works or for our own amusement. But since his eyes glisten with pride and accomplishment when he knows he has done the "right" movement for the word we said, I think we all win.

One Hundred Minutes of Solitude

I strained a muscle in my back earlier this week, and so I've been spending a lot of the week working from home, which saves me from having to sit in an uncomfortable chair, lug a laptop a mile to and from the library, and so on.  Also, college basketball. (Shhhh! Don't tell Sarah!)

Two of those days (Monday and today), Nicholas still went to daycare.  We paid for it, and frankly, trying to deal with a 9-month-old who wants you to help him walk when your back hurts is not very fun, or helpful for Nicholas.  And so, oddly, I have found myself in the position of being alone in the apartment for the entire work day.

It's a strange feeling, because for the last nine months plus, I've almost never been in the house alone.  I had my interview travel last month, but I was alone in a hotel room on a business trip, and that's a little different.  In the house, I'm accustomed to spending my time either watching Nicholas, and so not working, or trying to be very very quiet because he's sleeping.  But I can wander around the apartment and pour myself a glass of water, or microwave some lunch, and not have to worry about waking him up prematurely.

How odd.

And yet nice.  It's a small taste of the freedom that we enjoyed pre-Nicholas, and will likely not enjoy again in any significant way until Nicholas, Cashew, Macadamia, and possibly Brazil Nut have all graduated high school and gone off to college (in other words, where my parents will be this coming August).  I have come to understand a little bit why my parents sometimes just wanted us to go away, or that one was eager to stay home while the other took us to something.

I mean, we've got it easy so far, don't get me wrong.  I'm mostly noting that it's kind of an odd feeling to be in the house without the baby monitor on.

Wordless Wednesday: Big Toothy Grin

From 2010 March

Weekend O' Grandparents

Nicholas had a very busy weekend, in which he saw all 4 of his grandparents!

We went up to NY for a quick trip (as in a 33 hour turnaround kind of quick) to see Uncle Patrick's last high school play and check out Grandma Claire's new digs. Here is Nicholas with his grandparents:

From 2010 March

The musical was a lot of fun and Patrick did a great job. Nicholas didn't get to see it because it was after his bedtime, but Grandma Alice stayed at home with him so both Joe and I could go. Nicholas did, however, get to go with us to Grandma Claire's. He had a lot of fun, especially when Grandma Claire played "Whine, Whine Little Baby" with him:

From 2010 March

And fed him whipped cream (with a side of yogurt parfait):

From 2010 March

Then on Sunday my parents came up for lunch and took Nicholas out for a walk and to the park (yay for warm, sunny weather!) so we could clean the apartment. There are no pictures of their outing, but we hear he enjoyed riding around in the stroller but was less than thrilled with the baby swing at the park. But now our house is clean and we even began the process of de-babyfying. While Nicholas may not be a "big boy" yet, he is definitely no longer a little baby and the gear he has grown out of or no longer needs was taking over our apartment. But it is now safely stowed away in the basement and we can safely walk to the front door without tripping. Success!

Breastfeeding . . . My Thoughts

I've been mentally writing pieces of this post for a couple weeks as friends contemplating the issue sought out my thoughts and experiences. And as I talked to them I realized I should write some of this out. So, for what it is worth, here are my thoughts. First, a couple disclaimers. I am in no way a medical expert, nor do my experiences necessarily represent the norm or what you would experience if you choose to breastfeed. Secondly, my own thoughts on the issue have been all over the map on the course of this journey, and I'm sure will continue to change. But, for what it is worth, here it goes.

First, I will lay out the relative advantages of each choice, from what I've read and my own experience, and then I will wade into the whole debate.

Pros of breastfeeding:

• Breastmilk provides the baby with antibodies that will help it fight off germs. While it can't prevent your baby from catching the measles (I don't think), it does help the baby get over colds more quickly or get them less severely, which makes you all happier. This also means colds are less likely to lead to ear infections. Big plus.
• Breastmilk is easier on babies' digestive system. This means breastfed babies usually have less trouble with gas and spit-up.
• It is more cost-effective because you don't have to buy formula.
• No bottles to clean (which are a surprising pain in the butt).
• Breastmilk spit-up doesn't stain anywhere nearly as badly as formula spit-up. (In fact, we didn't have a single post-wash spit up stain before Nicholas started eating solid foods.)
• Not to mention that formula just smells bad. Seriously, ick.

Pros of formula:

• Anyone can feed baby. This means you can trade off getting up in the middle of the night (yay, sleep!), Mommy isn't held captive to one spot on the couch for hours each day, and other people get to enjoy feeding baby.
• You can feed baby in public without getting funny looks or having to worry about the baby deciding he does not like his head covered while he eats and yanking the blanket off, exposing you to everyone around. (Okay, so this last one may just be my particular, stubborn baby.)
• You can be away from your baby for more than 4 hours at a time, without having to figure out the logistics of pumping wherever you are.
• It is easy to know and track how much baby is eating. Conventional wisdom is that this doesn't matter and you should just trust your baby's cues and your body's production. However, for those of us who feel a compulsive need to know and understand what is going on and/or aren't good at distinguishing between baby's different kinds of cries, not having any clue how much baby is eating can be maddening.

These lists are nowhere near as long as some you can find elsewhere, but they are based on my experience. And so things that are on other lists that I have not found true (or important) in my experience, I left off. Because, basically, it is my blog and so I get to do that. So there.

For those of you who have not recently been immersed in the pregnancy/baby literature or social network, a little background. The decision on whether to use formula or breastfeed is laden with layers upon layers of pressure and guilt. When our generation was growing up formula was generally considered the way to go, as good and possibly better than breastmilk. At some point in the past 20 years a movement in favor of breastfeeding was born and gained vociferous followers. As an expectant and new mother, you are basically told from all sides that breastfeeding is what is best for your baby and choosing not to is cruel and selfish. Sometimes it isn't that strong, but other times it is even stronger. This position is advocated most strongly by what I have termed "breastfeeding Nazis" although I have seen them termed "nipple Nazis" in other places.

So, where do I stand? Somewhere in the middle.

I do think there is pretty clear evidence that breastmilk is better than formula for babies, but I think the extent of this difference is exaggerated. Babies who exclusively eat formula are fine and grow up to be fine and healthy as adults. (The only exception to this is in places that don't have access to clean water, in which case the debate is entirely different and breastfeeding takes on a definite advantage.) Let's be honest--either way, this will be the healthiest and most nutritionally balanced diet your child will eat in his or her entire life.

But--and here's where I'm really going to make some people mad and earn myself my "bad mommy" points for the week--your baby's health depends on a lot more than the food it is consuming and your own sanity and well-being are an important factor to take into consideration. Yes, I just dared suggest that a mother should take her own needs into account. Horrors. But, seriously, stop and think about it for a minute. Is it good for your baby for you to be stressed, frustrated, and resentful? Not that breastfeeding necessarily leads to those feelings, but if you are finding that to be a descriptor of you and you think adding a bottle of formula will decrease your stress level, then why not? I get much less frustrated with Nicholas now that I can spend an entire day away from him. I come home feeling accomplished because I got work done, like a full person because I had adult conversation, and physically and psychologically stronger because I was able to go for a run. Go ahead and call me selfish, but I really believe that taking care of myself is an important part of taking care of him. It took me many months to come to this conclusion, but I now don't know what took me so long.

Okay, so how to make a decision for yourself? Well, I think the place to start is to take a look at your lifestyle. Do you plan to stay at home or work part-time for the first year? If so, then go for it. If you are going to be the one doing most of the feedings anyway because you will be the primary caregiver and don't plan to be away from your baby for more than 4 hours at a time, breastfeeding is more convenient, in addition to the health benefits.

Basically, from my experience, the more hours you will need/want to be away from your baby on a regular basis, the more difficult breastfeeding becomes and therefore the more useful formula becomes. It is definitely possible to work full-time and breastfeed, but it isn't nearly as easy as the books make it sound. If you have a private office, with a door, that you can close for 15-20 minutes at a time every 4 hours without anyone knocking, you have a place you can wash the equipment up, somewhere you can lay it out to dry without other people seeing it and feeling awkward, and a fridge to put the milk in, then sure. But most jobs don't offer those conditions and while it is technically possible to pump in the public bathroom and store milk in an insulated lunch bag, the logistics of that get very quickly overwhelming and exhausting.

Then there are some factors you have no idea about before your baby is born, but which make a big difference--namely, your baby's personality and your own body's production. Every experience with breastfeeding is different because of these two factors. Some babies follow the expectations, eating for 20 minutes every 4 hours or so. I, however, had the good fortune to have a child who wanted to eat for an hour to two hours at a time. And, actually, at the hospital he was going for like 5 hours at a time. Not cool! I remember feeling like I was held hostage and so resentful that Joe was able to do things even as simple as check email himself or do the dishes. Yes, I was envious of him doing the dishes. I was later told (like when Nicholas was almost 2 months old) that I was allowed to force him to stop eating after like 10 minutes on a side because after that he wasn't getting much food anyway. Granted, I wasn't told this by a doctor and who knows whether that is actually approved wisdom, but what I do know is that it made my breastfeeding experience automatically improve. With hindsight I think what was happening is that Nicholas was falling asleep while eating and continuing to suck in his sleep. So it wasn't that he was still hungry, he was just sleeping and pacifying himself to stay asleep.

I realize looking back at this post that it comes off sounding pretty negative about breastfeeding. So keep in mind that it can't be that bad because I am still doing it. Not exclusively, since we added in formula about a month ago, and now that Nicholas has suddenly stopped eating at night he is at about half breast milk and half formula. And after the first week or so I never minded the actual process of feeding him, which I had expected to be weird and painful and all that, but really wasn't. It has been a roller coaster of a journey for me. So much so that I still have no idea what I will do with future kids. In all likelihood I will try to do a combination if my body will let me, to try to get some of the benefits without being on such a short leash. But, really, the job situation will probably be a determining factor, so only time will tell.

As a side note, the whole debate leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I have no problem with advocating breastfeeding, particularly since the generation now becoming mothers grew up with formula and so has little exposure to breastfeeding and is often turned off by the idea. Advocate it, explain some of the benefits, offer support networks for women who are having difficulty or have questions, work to create a culture that is more friendly towards it and doesn't look askance at women who try to feed their babies in public. That is fine. In fact, better than fine. But why push to the other extreme, stigmatizing women (and parents in general) who use formula? As though a new mother doesn't have enough stress and guilt and worry, you need to make her life more difficult? Really? Who does that help? In general I think this strategy is not only cruel, but also ineffective. If instead of glorifying breastfeeding and minimizing any potential drawbacks (and therefore dismissing anyone who finds these difficulties to be real challenges), breastfeeding advocates offered a realistic portrayal and suggestions for ways to make it easier, I think they would actually get a lot further towards accomplishing their goal.

Wordless Wednesday: Monkeying around at the Food Court

From 2010 March

9-month stats

Nicholas went to the pediatrician this morning for his 9-month checkup. He weighed in at 20 lbs, 10 oz and they put his length at 28.5 inches. That puts him at a little over the 50th percentile in both categories. So he has rejoined the pack.

The appointment was largely uneventful. The doctor declared that we were right to be baffled by what he is supposed to be eating right now because pediatricians are baffled. Apparently the studies that have been done recently have yielded contradictory results and the medical community is at a loss. Great.

Anyway, he confirmed our suspicion that Nicholas isn't eating as much liquid food (i.e. breastmilk or formula) as a baby his age usually would, but suggested that we make up the difference with yogurt rather than an extra bottle of formula. I think I like this. Yogurt is more expensive per ounce, but we'll finish what he doesn't eat (so no waste!) and it isn't nearly as much of a pain to clean up. (Have I mentioned I hate cleaning bottles? The special ones we have for breastfeeding babies have too many parts and don't work well in the dishwasher. It was never a big issue before but now that we've added formula . . .)

I don't think there was really much else interesting from the appointment. I have a whole long post that has been writing itself in my head recently in response to some questions I've gotten, but things have been too hectic here to sit down and actually compose it. Maybe someday. But for now, Nicholas seems to be waking up and I need to finish dinner.

Title Tuesday: March 2

From 2010 February

I wasn't allowed to post this with my caption, so you get to try your own!