Foodbaby

Before Cora was born, we were bombarded with advice on everything from diapering to what kind of stroller to buy. It was mostly helpful. Except when it was high and mighty like “we just couldn’t imagine putting 10 diapers a day into a landfill.”

Ahem.

Of course now it’s 20 times worse because in the 8 hours a day I spend breastfeeding, I read baby books. And they all say different things.

I knew this. As a pediatrician I had had parents ask me about this, struggling to navigate the seas of opinions.

“We don’t know what to do about her nails. Our midwife said we should bite them off, the nurse said to peel them, and the book says to use nailclippers. Which is right?”

It’s hard when you find a book you like (partly because it agrees with what you’re already doing on say, sleep) and then it comes right back and says something else that you’re doing is just totally wrong. In the hormone maelstrom I’m living in, these kinds of things drive me to tears.

Just yesterday I dug into Penelope Leach’s book “Your Baby And Child.” Leach is a British pediatrician, a bit old-fashioned in her advice but so practical and scientific that I can’t help but love her. My friends call it the car manual for kids.

The book is exquisitely detailed with step-by-step pictures of bathing and feeding. And I totally agree with nearly everything she says.

Then yesterday I read the chapter on breastfeeding. And it turns out she is in the nipple confusion camp. I don’t believe in nipple confusion. I mean, at the extreme—sure. But we give Cora like one bottle a day and she still latches like a champ. As I said before, she breastfeeds EIGHT HOURS a day. One bottle a day is like pissing in the ocean.

We use a pacifier too, with wild abandon. She is not fooled. It helps if she’s upset about something else (being moved to the carseat, for example) but if she’s really hungry she’ll spit the damn thing out.

The problem is, I read these things and I feel guilt. Huge amounts of guilt.

They don’t warn you about that in the baby books.