Got milk?
Breast-feeding is interesting...
Why? Because it makes some pretty good points about life, and the human nature.
Here are a couple of facts about breast-feeding:
a) It's GOOD! (for the baby, the mother, even the father...)
b) It's TOUGH! (At least at first...)
c) There ARE alternatives!
Mix these three ingredients, and you've got the basic mould that pretty much all dilemmas in life are made of:
OK, it's good, but HOW good? Aren't the alternatives OK too? Is it really worth all the agony, or should one opt for the easy way out? How much should one persist? How does one know they're not a special case, and the usual rules don't apply to them?
And to spice things up, there's the typical entourage of "wise-guys" (or wise-girls, in this case, like mothers-in-law, sisters, aunts, friends etc.), who are quick to jump to all sorts of silly advices and conclusions, like that the mother's milk is not appropriate for the baby, or it's not enough, or the baby's mouth is the wrong shape, or that all alternatives suck, or that the alternatives are much better, or that breast-feeding will cause you all sorts of other problems...
So a young mother will one night find herself in total agony and dispair, her baby crying like hell, and only inches from giving it all up, buying a box of powder and stuffing the baby with it 'till it shuts up and goes to sleep.
What she decides to do is pretty much an instance of the story of her life...
==================> NEW ADDITION TO THIS POST:
In re-reading the above, I realised that I painted an exageratedly grim picture of the breastfeeding experience. It's really not THAT bad. And if you come to that really hard point that I describe above, if you have a little patience and hold on a little longer, chances are that it will be downhill all the way from there, and very soon it will be simply a delightful experience.
So don't be put off, it's not that bad. See also comments below...
<================= END OF NEW ADDITION
Why? Because it makes some pretty good points about life, and the human nature.
Here are a couple of facts about breast-feeding:
a) It's GOOD! (for the baby, the mother, even the father...)
b) It's TOUGH! (At least at first...)
c) There ARE alternatives!
Mix these three ingredients, and you've got the basic mould that pretty much all dilemmas in life are made of:
OK, it's good, but HOW good? Aren't the alternatives OK too? Is it really worth all the agony, or should one opt for the easy way out? How much should one persist? How does one know they're not a special case, and the usual rules don't apply to them?
And to spice things up, there's the typical entourage of "wise-guys" (or wise-girls, in this case, like mothers-in-law, sisters, aunts, friends etc.), who are quick to jump to all sorts of silly advices and conclusions, like that the mother's milk is not appropriate for the baby, or it's not enough, or the baby's mouth is the wrong shape, or that all alternatives suck, or that the alternatives are much better, or that breast-feeding will cause you all sorts of other problems...
So a young mother will one night find herself in total agony and dispair, her baby crying like hell, and only inches from giving it all up, buying a box of powder and stuffing the baby with it 'till it shuts up and goes to sleep.
What she decides to do is pretty much an instance of the story of her life...
==================> NEW ADDITION TO THIS POST:
In re-reading the above, I realised that I painted an exageratedly grim picture of the breastfeeding experience. It's really not THAT bad. And if you come to that really hard point that I describe above, if you have a little patience and hold on a little longer, chances are that it will be downhill all the way from there, and very soon it will be simply a delightful experience.
So don't be put off, it's not that bad. See also comments below...
<================= END OF NEW ADDITION
posted by Anonymous at
8:09 PM
2 Comments:
sounds horrific but I guess that everyone finds finally a way to deal with it(so many generations blabla...)
although I know that this sounds silly when a baby cries in the middle of the night:
you can stay cool or not but dont forget the funny side of it
:)
Eve, you are quite right.
I actually over-dramatized the situation in my previous post. The truth is that, once you get to that hard moment, if you decide to hold on a little longer, it will be downhill all the way from then on, and it will get easier and easier until it's just a great pleasure.
I just wanted to use this example to make two (not so original) points:
A) That sometimes choosing to persevere along the "hard path" can pay off much more than quickly bailing out and taking the easy way.
B) That there invariably be influences around you messing with your judgement in an unproductive way, so you have to be twice as determined.
Again, as I said, I exagerated, things are not that bad!
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