You Never Write, You Never Call

Dear Readers, there have been THINGS going on.

(I have three small children.  There are always THINGS, frankly.)

I weaned Sweetpea two months ago; I have been either pregnant or nursing for seven of the last eight years. My health was most charitably described as not fantastic.  I am now giving my health a year to recover from All That Stuff.  (Also, a nice course of steroids and three kinds of antihistamines... yeah.)

I rage-quit the local LLL group after one round too many of "Food before one is just for fun!"  Oddly, the WHO believes it is for not having fucking malnutrition. Apparently science is only for when convenient.

My lovely flower bed is almost too full of plants to plant anything else.

(I have started another, deer-resistant, one.  There are worse problems to have.)

My part-time job has had Issues.  I can't really talk about those issues. Let's just say, someone quit but is still hanging around, someone needs to be hired temporarily, the local accreditor threw their usual fit over 18 Credit Hours Of Thing (my actual PhD in science from fucking Snooty U may be insufficient qualification to keep first-year students from setting themselves on fire, and teach them titration, my hand to God).  A somewhat unfortunate conversation left me with the impression that my work is not valued.  This set off a round of my Screw You Reflex, which was already present due to Person Who Quit (I have applied for 6 jobs in the last 3 months).

Also, I've been engaged in fine round of reflection on "Is this what I really want to be doing with my life?"

I am an adjunct.  I'm well-paid to do this, but there is no room for any kind of advancement, more pay, or even more work.  How long do I want to do this?  I don't know.  Somewhere between one more year and five more years, but probably not more than that.  Also, they still haven't told me if I'll even be teaching... in August.  You know, in two months.

So!  What am I going to do with my life?  I have been working on it.

Here are the things I value: time to pursue hobbies like gardening; money; social interaction with reasonable humans; work that I feel has purpose; work that is interesting; work that has social value to me;

Right now, I have very little time not devoted to child-wrangling, and so only the social-interaction gets filled. That is necessary, but not sufficient.  What would be sufficient?  At least two.  Time and social value would do, but that won't happen until the children are all in school.  Otherwise, one needs to be money.

ADJUNCTING:  Pluses: convenient, local, money per hour is good.  Minuses: cap means my max earnings there ever will be ~30,000/year (for 15-20 hr/week of work for 9 months a year); will likely never do anything but intro chem; lack of professional respect*; nowhere to go; may limit future career prospects; unpleasant uncertainty until the last minute, apparently forever.  Uncertain factors: New boss who isn't really the boss yet; nobody knows what is happening including new boss.**  VERDICT: Form exit strategy for within next 4 years.***

SKIPPING TOWN: Pluses: literally anywhere else has more employment prospects.  Minuses: we are near my parents, who are fantastic and make my life 50% easier; we live in literally the most beautiful part of the state; we have a nice house and a really good life; the local public schools are pretty good; a huge set of benefits including college tuition; Dr. S has a fantastic job with fantastic people, which he really likes and which is basically optimized in a lot of ways that are difficult to achieve.  In essence, all parameters except 'acceptable employment for me' are met.  Surely I can find something acceptable in the next four years?

WAITING IT OUT: Jobs do, periodically, come open at the colleges.  (One for which I applied is now open AGAIN because the lady they hired instead of me... up and quit!).

MOAR EDUCATION: Pluses: there is an online course at Nearby Respected State University in computer stuff; this would probably make me more competitive for all the IT stuff.  Would actually give me interesting useful skills.  Minuses: Would still need to find something I could do remotely, or would have to commute 2+ hrs/day; or could wait it out for an IT job at local college (iffy!).  Money for course (not excessive).

REALLY MOAR EDUCATION: I could go get a bachelor's in computer science and redo from start.  While this seems ridiculous, if my knowledge/experience/credentials are doing me no good now, they are a sunk cost and it's time to move on.  Pluses: I could be a programmer for real! More possibilities for remote work. Minuses: Time, initial investment, other programmers.

POSSIBLE JOB AT COLLEGE IN NEXT CITY OVER: I applied for an adjunct job there and the chair emailed me about a job opening up next year.  I mean... really?  There is no way.  But let's pretend. Would I even want to do this?  I DON'T KNOW.

POSSIBLE OTHER JOBS:  Would need to convince various parties to employ me long-distance.  Current job contacts work in defense (I am an honest-to-God pacifist) and education software (about which I know little).  Would prob need at least the Moar Ed option.

I have no more time to reflect right now, but, More Thoughts Later.


* I am 'not competetive' for a 'real' faculty job because I didn't go do research at an R1 for 5 years after getting my honest-to-God research PhD.  Which, fine, whatever, I wasn't willing to pay that price.  But still: Academia, DIAF.

** We did have a friendly conversation the other day in which I said "If this continues to be one course per semester there will come a time when it is no longer worth it to me." (Implied: That time will be really soon.)

*** At which point Sweetpea will be in school and Dr. S will have gone up for tenure, which gives us both more latitude and time to deal with everything and, for many reasons, would make it easier for him to find another job if we have to burn it all down and move.

Fever, Vomiting, Fever, Coughing, Fever....

...hand, foot, and mouth.

Do you know what's tomorrow?  The last class.  No really, this time IS the last one.

If I'm still doing this job next semester (odds look decent) I need a longer list of college-aged emergency babysitters.*

* If you know where I teach, you know why My Former Students are right out.  But Dr. S can usually round up some nice sorority girls for me. 

How to Wean a Toddler

Have a blocked milk duct.  Cry.  Give the baby a bottle every day.  Baby eventually eats less and less from bottle. Taper off due to laziness.  Offer bottle again. Baby refuses and throws bottle across the room

Have a milk blister.  Cry. Get baby, now one year old, a straw cup.  Put milk in it.  Baby refuses and throws cup across the room.  Repeat with soy milk, goat milk, and all of these with sugar, honey, or malt syrup (just a little).  Baby refuses and throws cup across room. Everybody cries.

Have a milk blister that won't go away.  Put a bandaid with antibiotic on it every day.  Cry some more.  Offer the baby a straw cup with water.  Baby drinks quite a lot of water, but nurses just as much.

Continue to have the @#$%ing milk blister.  Decide to cut baby's nursing down slowly, starting with only nursing four times a day (wakeup, nap, after lunch, bedtime.). Do this for three days.

Baby catches a vile cold and has a fever of 102 F for three and a half days and refuses to eat food.  Nurse the baby allllll daaaaayyyy because she is sick and sad.

Just as she gets better, catch the vile cold yourself and feel extremely ill and headachy.  Lose all will to live/wean, plus all tolerance of screaming.  Nurse the baby seven times a day.

Cry.

So Maaaaaaaagical

Once, I was at LLL and we were talking about how we felt about nursing.  Predictably, there was one Amber Necklace Nut who affirmed that it mde her feel so wonderful!  Euphoric, even!  So powerfully life-giving BLAH BLAH BLAH.

"I feel trapped," I said.  "I can't leave the baby for more than 20 minutes*, there's someone pawing at me all the hours of the day, and it drives me crazy."

(I was reminded of this as the baby whacked me with all her might, and then grabbed my tank top strap and snapped it repeatedly, while nursing.)

"Ooookay.... but most people really find it rewarding!" the leader said (doubtless trying to reassure all the new moms. Plus, probably deluded.)

Readers, I feel about breastfeeding like I feel about science.  We do it because we find some aspects of it rewarding, but many parts are really annoying. These can both be true at the same time.

What's your least favorite part of baby-feeding (or, if you have no baby to feed, other people's annoying children)?


*this was when she was too small for people food and hadn't yet figured out bottles. 

Does Vaccine Hesitancy Matter?

A friend asked me this week if it really matters if other people delay vaccinating their children.  As long as their child has received at least one dose of each vaccine, they asked, isn't their own child protected?

Absolutely not!  For one, most vaccines require multiple doses for full effect; for another, even the best vaccine is not completely effective.  The current pertussis vaccine, developed because of worrisome but not dangerous reactions to the cellular vaccine, is only about 85% effective.

Let's take measles FOR EXAMPLE. Modeling - based on lots and lots of data- shows that for one, about 95% of the population needs to be vaccinated to prevent outbreaks.  Here is a particularly good REAL WORLD EXAMPLE of what happens, in a densely populated area, when this isn't the case.  You can read the whole paper for yourself, but the summary is: not twelve years ago, the Solomon Islands had a big measles outbreak.  There were only 50,000 people living on the islands and at least 800 of them caught measles.  The outbreak lasted six months.  Six months.  They finally went and re-vaccinated 35,000 people regardless of whether they'd previously been immunized.

Take that in for a minute.  They re-vaccinated 70% of the population.

"From 1989 until 2003, the RMI did not report a single case of measles, and World Health Organization (WHO) cluster surveys showed single-dose vaccine coverage of 93% and 80% among 2-year-old children in 1998 and 2001, respectively, although second-dose coverage lagged behind at 40% in both years." 

"The outbreak ended only after vaccination of ~35,000 persons among a population of 51,000." 

"[T]he reported coverage of 1-dose measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine was 80%–93%..... [Of the measles cases] (23% involved infants who were below the age of routine vaccination), 100 hospitalizations (34% involved infants), and 3 deaths. Of outbreak cases, 41% were reported to have been previously vaccinated." 

That's right! This large outbreak happened even to people who had been vaccinated. The percent of the population dropped below the protecting-everyone threshold- in part because many children did not receive their vaccines on time, especially the second dose!

Why stick to the recommended schedule?  Because in general, there have been lots and lots of studies demonstrating to test the schedule and determine what sequence gives the best immunity - while protecting children as much as possible.  In other words, vaccines are given as soon as it's been shown they'll be both safe and effective in children of that age.

Whenever someone, because they read a dumb book or heard someone on the radio or for any other not-medically-indicated reason, delays their child's vaccines, they are increasing the chances of an outbreak.  Infants are disproportionately vulnerable in outbreaks - but also even children old enough to be vaccinated are at higher risk.  They're putting your kids at risk, but they are also putting their own kids at risk.  Please, tell them.

Have you ever convinced someone to vaccinate their child in a more timely fashion? Or informed them of FACTS about vaccines?  Told them a personal story ('my cousin got pertussis and gave it to my grandma')?

(Retrospective irony alert: "In contrast, (less than) 120 measles cases have occurred annually in the United States since 1998 [2, 3]. The success of the US measles program is based on (greater than) 90% preschool vaccination coverage for 1 dose of measles vaccine and the near-universal requirement of a second dose for school entry [4–6].

Placeholder for:

•  A very long summary of how I came to give my baby (some, as it happens, as opposed to all) formula; with FEEELINGS
• My students' latest train wreck, which makes me wonder if I am the worst teacher ever (probably not, two got 93% even though the mean was a 56)
• Lots of feelings about my health, or lack thereof, and the hopes that the nice ENT will help the headache I've had for.... 18 months
• Where Does the Time Go and Why Is My House So Messy, A Multi-part Lament

Also, in response to ongoing comment woes, I have switched all the comments to moderation, which should fix at least the LJ login problem (I tested it) and possibly also WordPress.  Let me know.  I mean, once I fish the comments out of the mod queue.

Good, Not Good, Both, Surreal

Living in a very (VERY) small town means it takes me five minutes to get to work.

It also means that ten minutes before I am standing before a room of college  students using my Listen Up I'm In Charge Here Loud Voice, I have a nursing baby in my arms. Right before I run out the door.  (They have all, by the way, been properly trained to call me Dr. Scientist this year.)

In a few months, it'll be easier.  If I'm still doing this next year, it'll be fine  (and maybe she'll even be weaned).  Right now it is strange and transitionless and jarring.

FMB: Assorted Life Stuff

• We all survived the wedding.  And I totally got bingo.  Also, I seem to have run right out of patience with how poorly my mother deals with feelings.  Helpful hint: lashing out is not productive. 
• Related: the Deeply Offensive Thing that Sister 2 said when she left the country was "There's nobody we really care about here." (It's only been 10 years, why do you ask?). Sister 3 appears to be going for Deeply Stupid Things, including "I had mom tell you because I didn't want to damage our relationship and I'm not good at feelings.". Well, 1) totally opposite effect and 2) at 25, it's time to LEARN.  Difficult conversations don't exactly come easily to anyone.  
• Sweetpea has suddenly learned to crawl, pull up, stand, pull things off tables, and get into cabinets.  Trouble!
• I am teaching one section of Pseudo Military Lab.  I have feelings about the chair.  But the baby is done nursing, so they'll have to wait for later.

FMB: On Friendship (4)

An unfortunate encounter with a new-faculty-spouse-in-town reminded me that  I have a reflexive revulsion for persons too stupid or irresponsible to vaccinate their damn children, and years of listening to idiots have pushed me towards the belief that there is only one right choice!  Delayed is better than not at all but the reasoning is idiotic.  Not only do I not want my children - particularly the baby - around unvaccinated children, but I see the issue as a litmus test for social responsibility, passing acquaintance with the scientific method, and general intelligence.

This person failed.

Lazy, or: On Working

I am full of thoughts but never have any time to type on a real computer and  between the tiny touch screen keyboard and the inconsistently rogue autocorrect.... it's all an exercise in frustration, is what I'm saying.

However.  Onward!

There is a job opening at Mountain U for someone doing science career stuff.  They want someone with an advanced degree, lots of professional contacts, and job experience outside academia.

They also want someone full time.

I know full well that predicting how I WILL feel in a few to many years is essentially impossible.  Will I want a full time job in two years?  I don't know.  Right now I would say no.  I want a part time job for forever.  I am lazy, I don't want to work full time, I don't have to work full time, and I'd rather have no job than work full time (however, I haaaaate not having a job and what  I really want is part time).

I am teaching one lab at Pseudo Military U next semester.  In an incomprehensible move, the chair posted the job for this fall in January, when Sweetpea was three weeks old.  Clearly he was trying to hire the no-PhD dude who replaced me (state hiring laws would make it difficult to hire the less qualified candidate).  So.... what the hell was that?  But then he asks me if I'd be interested in teaching a lecture some time. As in a whole class.  Again, what the hell was that?  In an ideal world I'd be perfectly happy to adjunct a few labs a semester for forever (see: lazy).  But... there's no guarantees, because adjuncting plus a What The Hell chair equals confusion.

While (standard disclaimer!) I love my kids, I still don't want to be around them all the time.  Nobody wants to be around the same people all the time.  Sometimes people just want to go to the bathroom alone and have, like, three hours in a row to NOT mediate any he annoyed me/ he hit me/ now we're both waking up the baby.

But I'm still too lazy to take a full time job.  (By which I mean, I personally find it extremely difficult, tiring, and stressful to juggle two full time jobs, three children, and the inevitable illness and sleeplessness that come along with the children, and we can get by without the income.)

Family Trips

Have you ever noticed that the more children you have, the more travel becomes like unto packing up a circus, tent and all?  I think we might actually haul a crib mattress, a pack and play, two fans, and a tent to my uncle's house.  I haven't been there since 2002 and I have absolutely zero memory of where I slept.

It always seems like a good idea until you have to start stuffing the minivan!

(Still promises to be more fun than the Greatly Tense Wedding of 2015.  Did I tell you that due to my scheduling failure, it's on the first day of school?  Mother of the year! But also, whatever, it's first grade.)

Allergies

Our otherwise very good family doctor said to give "limited" amounts of nuts to the baby before age one.  Well, I'd already given her peanuts, eggs,  and cow dairy, to no ill effects.  Also sesame, assorted fruits and  veggies, wheat, and corn.  Probably soy too though I wasn't really trying.

Yesterday I have her a tiny amount of ground cashews.

Ten minutes later her eyes swelled up so much she couldn't see out of one of them.

Since she was breathing fine, I ran home and gave her a half-dose of benadryl (check with your doctor, naturally, but the dosage I was given was 1.25 mg/kg)*.  She threw up twice (before the benadryl, fortunately)  She got a terrible itchy rash from head to toe.  Her eyes eventually de-puffed, but she still had  some classic 'allergic shiners'.  This is actually quite worrying- contact dermatitis is one thing but signs of a systemic reaction are much more serious.  However, as she continued to breathe fine, I didn't take her anywhere to be observed at painful length, remonstrated with at tedious length, and given benadryl for the baby.  Oh, and a $350 bill to boot.

Intellectually, I know that my nearly seven month old with very mild eczema had nothing going on to tell me to run away from the tree nuts.  Waiting five more months probably wouldn't have prevented this and - based on actual good prospective research- might have made any underlying predispositions worse.

I still feel like a terrible mother.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I seem to have eaten something unfortunate myself....

*True story: a colleague and his wife once walked into the ER here HOLDING her epi-pen and requested someone help them administer it because they just wanted to make sure they did it right.  25 minutes of sitting around later, they did it themselves and walked out, because NOBODY HELPED THEM.  (Yes, none of this was a good idea.) So if I'm not having a real emergency, you can bet I stay faaaaarrrrr away. 

Five Minute Blogging : The Gift of Single Parenthood

Dr. S is at a conference... for a week.  Naturally, I went and stayed with my mama for three days. Also naturally, my children didn't get enough sleep and are crazed tiny weasels.  And I managed to pull off at the exit where a tractor trailer had juuuust overturned.... And after being home for three hours, I'd had three hours of children screaming, crying, or both.  And I have to do three more days of this, or four if my mom can't make it up here on Friday.  And I have to wash the dishes and take out the compost and pack lunches and bathe all three children and put all three children to bed (instead of just the baby) and drop Bug off at school AND pick him up (NONE of which I normally do).  And it's forecast to rain all week.

While I was at my parents' house, we were talking about wedding planning for my middle sister's second wedding (to someone also celebrating a second wedding) and all the attendant family heartburn.  (Do I have to go???? She didn't come to my wedding.  Also all my mom's craaaaazy sisters are coming.  Also my mom hates the officiant and my future BIL's relatives mainly don't speak English.)

 And it made me think that, though I was pretty young when I married (24!), Dr. S is a keeper.  He really pulls his weight with the kids and with house chores even though he works full time and I don't. I may have been young and stupid, like we all are, but I picked a damn good partner.

Dear Everyone in 2009,

I'm sorry.  I'm especially sorry if you had non-baby children while I had a baby.  Like all people with their first child, I was crazy.*  I stopped the car every time the baby cried, instead of evaluating whether 1) it was less than ten minutes to get home and 2) whether the child would fall asleep on the way.  I worried endlessly about stupid stuff** and was terrified to let my baby be unhappu, even though usually screaming was the worst that could happen.

I am now amply repaid by my local acquaintances who have recently welcomed first children.  Dear readers, they are insane.


*Though I have never been crazy enough to take a 99th percentile four year old child to the doctor because the child had ONE DAY of diarrhea. 
** Except that time he had pneumonia, when I should have been a tad more worried.

Daily Write It Out: Gardening as Therapy

With regard to my feelings of trapped misery, I have to say that gardening helps.  On good days, when Bug isn't home and Sweetpea consents to sleep Not On Boob, I ignore the mountain of cooking, housework, and other boring adult chores, and go outside with a trowel.  Friday I planted two lilacs, a rhubarb, and three thornless blackberries; put down mulch; pickaxed a few stumps out; and sprayed the poison ivy* for the Nth time.  Earlier in the week I put in three currant bushes, 100 okra seeds, and some hyacinth beans.**  For some reason, this largely irresponsible digging-in-the-dirt makes me feel a great deal better about life.  (Probably some combination of sunlight, fresh air, things-that-aren't-children to do, and exercise.)

My theory is, therapy would cost me $25 a week (copay + babysitting) whereas $25 a week can buy a LOT of plants.  And most of my plants are free!  So clearly this is a perfectly reasonable outlet.

(Also we have 0.9 acres, and when we moved in there were three scrubby barberries planted in full shade and two scrubby rhododendrons planted in full sun.  CLEARLY it needs a lot of gardening.)

* The only thing on which I use nasty herbicides.  Dr. S requires steroids when exposed to poison ivy, so... sorry, environment.  Everything else gets pickaxed out.

** In addition to our Major Budget Item Landscaping, I've been scrounging plants from everywhere.  Friends, neighbors, things growing by the side of the road, brush piles, stuff set out for trash day, things that rooted themselves.  Also my dad brings me plants periodically, including two rhubarb crowns and several dozen hot peppers and a bunch of tomatoes.  The lilacs were runner-ing into my yard and the blackberries were from the garden I work in with my friend C- they'd escaped into the veggie beds.  Bought and rooted the currant cuttings; okra seeds from Experimental Farm Network; hyacinth beans collected last year from the library's garden beds.  Dr. S insists that I have a plant problem.  I don't see why it's a problem.

Boooooored now

Dear readers, I would like to solicit book recommendations. I read voraciously and fast, to the tune of 300 books a year (I spend a lot of tie nursing) and... I'm reduced to rereading Gaudy Night for the 67th time right now.  An excellent novel, but 67 times...

Books and authors I like because I think they are good writers who produce engaging stories: Margery Allingham, Dorothy Sayers, Patrick Rothfuss, Kelly McCullough, Kevin Hearne, Ann Leckie, Marie Brennan, Neil Gaiman (though not his last novel), Robin Hobb (though not the dragon stuff), Lois McMaster Bujold (though not the Sharing Knife stuff), Robin McKinley (though REALLY not the Pegasus stuff), John Scalzi, Ian MacDonald, Ilona Andrews (mostly), Charles Stross, the Anatomist's Wife series, Emma Bull, Wen Spencer, Seanan Macguire, Ruth Downie, some Tim Powers, Benedict Jacka.... You get the idea.

Books and authors I like for entertaining fluff: Chloe Neill, Mercedes Lackey, Deanna Raybourn, Diana Gabaldon (in this category for the shark jumping nature of the last one), Kowal, Carrie Vaughn, Kim Harrison....

Things I generally find abhorrent or boring: steam punk, violence, Terry Good kind, Shananananara, dear god no more Robert Jordan/ Brandon Sanderson, Orson Scott Card (except Ender's Game which is, you have to admit, super creepy), Modesitt, Thomas Whatever Covenant, most nonfiction, 'paranormal romance', really depressing stories (the last edition of year's best sf nearly did me in), Joe Abercrombie, Laurel Hamilton,  Simon Green...

So tell me what to read next!  I reserve the right to tell you I've already read it though.  100 to 150 new books a year times twenty years adds up.

Daily Write It Out: Running on Empty

One of my huge sources of frustration with.... everything... is the current complete lack of time/opportunity to do all the things that make me feel like a functional human.  I need to get exercise.  I need an hour at the end of the day, with no children in it.  I need to get outside and garden. I need time and energy to clean up the house sometimes because my spouse is afflicted with can't-put-it-away-itis.  I need to have time and energy to give to my older children, who otherwise are super extra horrible.  I need to spend less time  nursing the baby.

With all this and the lack of sleep, I feel like the tank has run dry.  Dr. S does what he can, but he can't feed the baby (yet, though she  will drink a little from a bottle now) and the to-do list is endless.

Of course Dr. S might also benefit from doing something that's not dishes, mowing, or child-wrangling.  I'm thinking we need a weekly family outing to the local brewery or something (they don't have a restaurant license so we bring cheese sandwiches and pickles for the boys, and once, a gloriously delicious kosher  sausage with homemade sauerkraut).  And I need to work out some kind of summer schedule for the boys.  Mondays at Local Gardens!  Tuesdays at the park!  Rainy days at the... hmm, don't know. And I need to find some kind of kid swap, though this is pretty hard with three and one a baby.  And I need to go to the gym.  And before any of this Sweetpea needs to drink more than two ounces of bottle at a time....

Daily Write It Out: Nursing

It's surprisingly hard to produce readable English on a tablet.  But, you know, I need to write to retain my sanity.  So forgive us our linguistic trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

I feel most amazingly trapped.  In large part by breastfeeding, which prevents me from, say, gardening, or going to the gym, or knitting, or going to knitting, or... you get the idea.  I know that this too shall pass, but if people would stop telling me I'll miss it, I'd be grateful.

In related news, Sweetpea has consented to take a bottle three! whole! times!  In retrospect, however, right after she rolled over the first time (and was consequently in a righteous fury) was not the best time for today's bottle.  So far, so goaty. (Not a typo; this.  Due to my cow dairy allergy and her eczema I was hesitant to give her cow or soy yet.)

Because I'm a terrible mother, I also gave her a little banana today at 4.5 months.  She loved it, and I was getting tired of the piteous crying every time she smelled food.

This may be a product of my trapped depressed feeling like nobody listens to me and my mommying work has no value to me.... but I kind of want to become a lactation consultant.  It would take me at least eight years, I estimate, since this would be a seriously part time endeavor.  It's somewhat problematic that the main route now is as a LLL leader, since I'm cruelly weaning my baby (slowly) with a complete disregard for how I should be a miserable milk machine for her sake until next December.  How dare I prioritize my own needs?  Nonetheless.  This is born in part from the feeling that there should be more LCs in the world who say 'It's okay to wean your baby.  It's okay to hate nursing or even just dislike it. It's okay to NOT nurse your toddler on demand if you don't want.  Nursing does not have to be a magical bonding experience. All that HAS to happen is your baby HAS to be fed something.  Breastmilk probably has minimal real benefits.  If you want to breastfeed I will do my best to help, support, and educate you, but if you choose not to, or to add in formula, I will also help, support, and educate you.  And I will try to help you feel good and not guilty about your choices because breast is not always best.' And it is also born of the feeling that I have never met a LC - except my doctor in Cold State- who actually said those words to me.  (In fact she said something like, a chronic infection with severe pain is a medically indicated and completely reasonable reason to wean your child, and I will help you as best I can until you are ready to wean him.  So good for her.)

Irony, double helping

1.  I finally worked through my guilt and reluctance and worry over giving Sweet pea formula, mixed her up a nice warm bottle... and she spat it out and cried.  We have now tried six different kinds of bottles and three people.  I have two very damp, milk-flavored towels, and no formula in the baby.

2.  I wish to not breastfeed because of severe pain, but have excellent supply and a 15 pound four month old.  My nearby friend with a little baby wishes to breastfeed, by has a low supply.

FUCKING DEPRESSED: A Pie Chart

Following Bunny's excellent example, I present to you: Reasons I Am Depressed.  If you don't want to hear a lot of whining, go read this instead

1: No sleep.  Because of so many reasons.  Mainly that the baby wants to nurse - and nurse and nurse and nurse- until 10, and again at 12 or 1 or 2 for at least an hour, and then my herd of little elephants thunders across the bedroom ceiling at 6:30 promptly.  Of course, some days the baby gets up for the day at 5:30!  Yes, I have tried putting her to bed later; no, nothing makes any damn difference because she is a BABY.  One day I will sleep train her but she's too little still.  Damn it.

2: Because I am always nursing the baby, the boys are left to play upstairs.  The big one likes to hold the little one down and punch him, bite him, and leave bleeding scratches on him.  This causes me RAGE.  Seriously, I can't leave them for five minutes.  Bug walks in the door from school and starts hitting his brother.

3: All the accursed nursing problems in the whole world.  Ordering the which to make goat milk formula today, I think. The expense makes me grit my teeth, but then again I've spent  $350 at least so far on all the accursed nursing problems.  Readers, never let anyone tell you breastfeeding is always free.

4: Always nursing! Cannot put the baby down and go mediate!  Cannot do any adult thing!  Always nursing!

5: Larger children feel neglected and so are SUPER EXTRA AWFUL ALL THE TIME which makes me not want to put the baby down and go mediate.  Tatoe screamed at me for two hours yesterday, and whined for another two, which is impressive considering we were only in the house and awake together for four hours.  Also, they woke up the baby four times yesterday.  Then she screamed at me for hours.  Then I want to die.

6: I am tired of all this.  Four months seems like FOREVER.

7: (I feel the need to say that he gets up early with the big kids, washes them, puts them to bed, and does the dishes every single night. However...) My dear spouse feels the need to work nine hours every single day.  Even when I want to murder the children gag the big ones, get in the car, drive away, and never come back.  Also, he gets to SLEEP.  He does not ever get woken up at two-hour intervals.  And then he sometimes he has the gall to complain he's tired.  Honey, I don't fucking care.

8: See above, all wrapped into one giant package of longing and financial disadvantage.  It's GREAT!