Just as Sane as I Am

Or the one about breastfeeding.  Before she has a baby, a pregnant woman is asked repeatedly, “Are you going to breast-feed?” Not “Are you planning to try?” Not “Let me refrain from asking a pretty darn personal question about your boobs.” Just plain “Are you going to breast-feed?” Because I am so kind and sweet and from New Jersey, my response was always, “I’m going to try it. We’ll see what happens. It’s not a decision you can make right away.” I made lots of friends with that one, as you can imagine. You hear all this weirdness about nursing. It’s said to be by many one of the most stressful things they ever attempt to do. My assumption was it would be at least mildly painful and take a lot of effort to get a baby to do it properly, and that’s where the stress came from. But I wanted to give it a try. I don’t know, it just felt like something I should do. Maybe because it’s another natural process. It’s literally something our bodies are designed to do. There’s ...

 Or, the sleep entry.  We came home on a Friday. My mom insisted on coming to help us, which was useful. Hilariously, a Baby Journal I’m filling in asked for what memorable moments happened on the way home from the hospital. Um, nothing - we literally live five minutes away.   We settled onto the couch quickly. We have two cats, and a lot of people have wanted to know how they’ve handled Lily. One of our cats is a little more independent than the other, so he just went about his business as usual. Our other cat lives to sit on our laps and cuddle with us. She was quick to climb onto my lap and sat right next to Lily, back to back with her. This is something she has continued, particularly while I’m feeding Lily and have her on the Boppy nursing pillow. In the hospital, Lily slept amazingly well. She slept a lot during the day and was extremely quiet. We definitely thought we had a perfect baby situation on our hands. But the Friday night we came home, we sl...