Everyone Gets an F!

A headline in today’s New York Times unhelpfully announced: “Despite Advice, Many Fail to Breast-Feed.”

Apparently less than 100% of American women exclusively nurse their babies for their first six months of life. By giving my baby a bottle of formula a day the past few weeks, I have “failed” to breast-feed my child. If you gave your child a taste of rice cereal the day before her six month birthday, you, too, failed to breast-feed.

Why not just go ahead and title the article, “Despite Having Been Given Pamphlet After Pamphlet and Shown Poster After Poster of Suspiciously Blissful-Looking Women Nursing Their Not-At-All-Distracted, Fidgety, or Biting Babies, Moms Across the Nation Curiously Remain Too Egocentric to Prioritize Their Babies Over Their Own Selfish Desires 100% of the Time”?

99 Bottles

The baby has now had 10 bottles of formula in 10 days, and I’m here to report that her poo still smells like rhubarb. Cool.

Things They Don’t Tell You About Pregnancy #101,483

When you catch a cold five months after giving birth you will discover that your body can no longer cough and hold in pee at the same time.

Developmental Milestones

At this exact moment, as I type these words, the babysitter is preparing my baby’s first bottle of formula. I’m feeling quite emotional about it because the next step in the progression is tomorrow she’ll leave for college and never come home again except when she needs money! Whaaaah!