Another Side to the Story

So, a few weeks ago I went off about how great breastfeeding is. Well, of course, sometimes it isn't. Like today.

Dan's cousin & his 10-year old son came up to visit from SC. After a ridiculous number of phone calls last night and today, it was decided that Dan & I would play tour guides in the city whilst Grandpa and Grandma would take care of James here at home. This meant that there needed to be bottles ready for him. There weren't, but I was pretty sure there would be enough pumped milk in the fridge, and there's back-up frozen.

So, off to the city. After several hours in Central Park and the Museum of Natural History, I had quite lovely bosoms, if you know what I mean....

Meanwhile, back at home, James was not loving the bottles. And Grandma took out some milk from the freezer just in case. She didn't use it, so now it may spoil...

Argh.

The End of an Era

One week ago today, James's mobile came down. A very sad day indeed. That morning James had grabbed the animals as they danced by. He's been doing this for a while. In fact, that is what prompted us to lower his mattress; it was in effort to keep them from his reach. Well, on this day I realized he was always reaching them now. When he grabs them, he pulls them toward him (and his mouth, undoubtedly), thus pulling the entire mobile as well. A lovely clicky noise happens as the mobile is prevented from turning. I decided that I didn't want him to break the mobile or damage the crib where it's attached (or hurt himself, of course), so I took off the mobile arm. The music player is still attached. I was holding James when I did this, and he was aghast. He watched me take it off and put it in the closet with a look of disbelief and awe.

When Daddy got home and saw it was gone, he was disappointed too (our baby is growing up!). He offered to lower the mattress again, to its lowest setting. I said, "no" because soon enough James would be able to sit up and reach the mobile anyway. While Dan did point out that this might be a good way to entice James to sit up, I maintained my stance (plus, I don't want to have to reach down lower to pick James up/ put him down).

In the last week, he's survived just fine. He still enjoys turning the music on and off (especially with his feet...funny), and seems to have moved on to other stuffed animals as his source of affection.

Three Cheers for Breastmilk (aka Mom on Soapbox)

OK, I know you know I'm a big fan of the breastmilk (you may recall the "too much information" blog post regarding pumping...). This post is not meant to offend any formula users; I realize that formula has its merits, and that many moms cannot breastfeed. Today, though, whilst running, I was thinking about how glad I am that I was able to breastfeed, and all the reasons why it's been good:

• Washing and drying bottles is VERY irritating. Especially when one is avoiding BPA leaching by not using the dishwasher.
• Dan reported that James would get very frustrated when waiting on Dan to get a bottle ready. So add preparing bottles is frustrating.
• Breastmilk is very healthy; as we were told, James's RSV may have been MUCH worse if he was formula fed.
• It is free, and let's be honest, in this economy, and with just one salary, free is darn good.
• It makes for easy portability. When I had to run errands, no worries-- the milk was there, in no danger of spoilage.

Now, all of this comes to mind because now that James is eating "solids" (and that is an appropriate use of quotation marks; babyfood is hardly solid) there is more to consider: timing, bibs, food, spoons, chair, etc. For instance, yesterday we had a very lovely baby playdate at 10:00. I threw a spoon & a new (and therefore not in need of cooling) container of pear puree in James's bag, just in case. Well, good thing I did, because we were still there at 12:30, and James was hungry.

So were his baby friends who also had lunches packed. As they're older than James, they've already moved on to yogurt, and thus had insulated cooler bags for their lunch. Man. Such planning ahead needed!

It is very exciting to see James growing up. And I'm glad that he's eating foods (today he had applesauce for the first time) and enjoying it. I'm just saying that I now truly appreciate just how easy and convenient breastfeeding is!

Oh- and one more thing about milk. I've heard an interesting argument from more than one mom: they use formula because they cannot bear to see breastmilk being "wasted" when mixed with cereal (because it gets on bib, face, etc. and/or goes uneaten). Ok, I get the fact that breastmilk is priceless, but folks, it's PRICELESS... as in FREE. I'd rather let that go to "waste" than pay big bucks for formula to go down the drain...

Again, I don't mean to offend anyone. I'm just glad things worked out like they did for me. That's all.