I will give you fair warning, right now, I am about to go on a rant!
If you have never had problems breast feeding, fantastic for you. If you breast fed your babies till they were 1, 2, 3, 4 years old, great! I am tremendously happy for you, BUT I would appreciate if you tried to understand the flip side of the coin.
You see, most women want to breast feed, and if you don’t, I’m not judging. Here’s the thing, it’s embarrassing when you are unable to feed your child. It’s humiliating to have to try so hard when others just do it naturally. It feels like failure when you can’t do something that people expect you will do with ease.
You don’t think it crosses our mind that, if it weren’t for formula, our babies would die? Do you think that feels good?
My milk never came in with my first baby. She was formula fed from 3 weeks old.
You know who this is?
This is my healthy, well-adjusted, smart, active, 7 year old—who was bottle fed.
With my second child, I did breast feed. I breast fed her until she was 5 months old. That was when she was no longer interested and preferred having a bottle, that’s when my milk started to dry up, that’s when I started doing some freelance work and wasn’t home with her all the time.
Thankfully, that year, “They” decided you only needed to breast feed till 4 months. Phew, I past “Their” expectations. This year, “They” may change that and say you only need to breast feed till 3 weeks, then I could feel really good about myself, or maybe “They” will say we should breast feed till our babies go to college. Either way, it doesn’t change what I have done.
You can tell me your statistics all you like, you can give me your opinion, and you can choose to do what you you think is best. What I don’t want you to do is judge what I have chosen to do. What I don’t want is to feel inferior because you insist on pushing your beliefs on me.
Parenting is a difficult job, one that I do with great pride and pleasure. Stop sucking the pleasure out of it!!
I grew up with red hair and freckles—before red hair and freckles were all the rage. I got teased.
I got called carrot top, ginger, freckle face and even Red Headed Woodpecker (you know who you are). That one came with a song, it went like this: Red Headed Woodpecker pecka pecka peck. Sing it to whatever tune you like, he wasn’t exactly a musical talent, just a pain-in-the-butt boy.
Having red hair and freckles wasn’t enough though, my parents had to saddle me with some irish name no-one had ever heard of—Maureen. It rhymes with boring, kind of and pouring, both things people would say with it to tease me: Maureen Boring and Maureen Pouring. Kids are so uncreative when it comes to teasing.
Maureen also offered up great fodder for my brother, who was older (and a little more clever than the kids in my class). He would say things like “Oh, I think it’s pronounced Moron” or “Hey Morphine.” He was a delight.
Anyway, I grew up. Red hair became trendy, people asked me what product I used to get such a great colour. I stared at them blankly because I was a surly teenager.
That didn’t mean I never got teased again, hardly. I got teased about my boobs, I got teased about pimples, I got teased about what I wore. Pretty much a typical teenage life. Kids are mean; we survive.
So, when does the teasing end?
It doesn’t.
Here’s the thing though, it’s part of life, and it can be fun. My husband and I tease one another all the time. My delightful brother is as delightful as ever and we love to tease one another. We tease our kids ALL. THE. TIME. and our kids get a kick out of teasing us.
To show you how quickly kids can learn to tease, let me tell you this. I was playing with my two-year old the other day when she started grabbing my hair and pretending to eat it. I said “Why are you eating Mommy’s hair?” and she said “Not hair, mommy...CARROTS!”
I thought it was a fluke, but she did it the next day, and Tom said “What are you doing?” and she said “eating Mommy’s carrots!”
So, I’m back to being Carrot Top...
I have written before about how quickly Eleanor is growing up, all the changes she is about to go through, and the talks we have had. She just turned 12; she is a tween.
Tween...in between, not a teenager yet, but not a child. She has started talking on the phone more, she has started using Facebook, and she helps out around the house more.
I have to admit, I like that she is getting more mature in some respects. She is very helpful with the younger kids, she is more than happy to run to the grocery store for me if I forget something, and she is interested in learning to cook dinners so she can help me even more.
There are times though where we feel she regresses. She has days where her behavior seems more juvenile than the 2-year-old. Her table manners go out the window, talking with her mouth full and acting spazzy. The other day, it took her 40 minutes to eat a bowl of oatmeal. She tries to duck her chores and “forgets” to do things like hang up her clothes or put away her belongings.
Tom has developed a term for this. On these days, she is no longer a tween... she’s a “Twoddler.” (No, not the Twitter toy for babies, a tween that acts like a toddler.)
She doesn’t like the term, but that’s kinda the point.
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