Entry 138: It's Bananas

Something has been driving me crazy lately.  It's this onesie.

It's striped and says "Bananas over Mommy".  That's it. What?  I don't get it.  Why that particular phrase?  Shouldn't there be a monkey on it eating bananas, or a bunch of bananas, or something "cute" that's somehow banana related?  If it says "Mama's Boy" or "I [heart] Mommy" or something like that then I wouldn't think anything of it, but to use the word "bananas" and then not have a picture of any bananas or anything banana related -- like I said, I just don't get it.

We had an appointment with the pediatrician a few days ago.  Lil S' had to get an immunization shot, and it went pretty well, he cried a little when the needle went in but it was very brief.  The appointment was much harder on S and I than it was on him; we had to wait for over an hour!  And that's just the waiting-room wait, it was more like an hour and a half if you factor in the sitting-in-the-examination-room-staring-at-medical-pamphlets wait.  The thing is, I understand doctors are very busy, and the duration of appointments can vary, and it makes much more sense for patients to wait than for the doctor to have a bunch of idle time, but an hour is pushing it (and by the way, the actual doctor didn't even help us, it was a nurse practitioner).  Moreover, an hour-long wait can't possibly sneak up on the staff; they have to know in advance they're backlogged, so why not call us a half hour before our appointment and tell us to come in 45 minutes later?  S isn't back at work yet, and I was working from home and could've pretty easily fit my schedule around the appointment, coming in 45 minutes later wouldn't have been a big deal, if we had known.  It wouldn't even have to be a phone call -- a text or email would've been fine.  The system should be automated and recognize backlogs and just send a notice automatically.  How nice would that be?  I wonder why computerized appointment systems don't do this already?  Is it a case of "that's just not how it's done", or are people less annoyed by waiting than by getting a push-back notice?  I don't know, but this is something that needs to be implemented ASAP, if you ask me.

 
Waiting did give me a chance to check out all the other parents and babies.  The doctor we go to is in the heart of DC, so it's an eclectic mix.  You see people who look well off, but you also see people who look, well, not so well off -- inner-city* women, multiple kids, no signs of dads -- people who look like what Mitt Romney thinks half of America looks like.  There was one very large woman there with one kid in a stroller and one by her side, ignoring both of them, yapping loudly on her cell phone.  The kid in the stroller kept standing up, and it was one of those strollers that's raised up a few feet, so another woman, presumably worried he might fall, told the big woman to watch her kid.  The big woman's fix?  Shake the stroller vigorously (while still talking on the phone), so that the kid loses his balance and has to sit down.  That's just good parenting.  The ironic part is that the kid wasn't in danger of falling out (the walls of the carriage were too high for him to go overboard unless propelled by an outside force) until she started shaking the stroller.  Then when they called this big woman back to the exam room, she just left the stroller in the waiting room right where it was, blocking several chairs (and it was getting crowded).  No attempt to fold it up or move it to the corner or anything.  It was an impressive display of disregard for everybody else in her general vicinity.

After we left, I mentioned to S how many of the unaccompanied women in the waiting room didn't have on wedding bands (about ten or so).  She suggested that they just weren't wearing them.  Maybe, but I'm dubious.  My guess is the vast majority of them were single moms.  I might be wrong, but I doubt it.  And that's kind of sad.

Changing the subject, I mentioned Mitt Romney above, and, frankly, he needs all the mentions he can get.  It's not looking good for him.  He's a 17% underdog to Obama according to Nate Silver, and if you go just by current polls, he's even worse off.  Silver's model takes into consideration "convention bounce" (which is still in effect a bit for the Dems, apparently), and economic indicators.  But the bounce not have been a bounce, it might have been real headway for Obama, and a sluggish economy, it seems to me, is only going matter if people blame Obama for the weak economy and/or they think Romney has a better alternative, neither of which seems like the case to me.  Things could change obviously, but Democrats and Anti-Republicans (I'd never call myself the former, I'm very much the latter) have to like the current outlook.    

Changing the subject again, you might not have heard, but the Seahawks won a game on a questionable call Monday night.  Despite the fact that bad calls are made in every football game that's ever been played, and it's only Week 3 of the season, this particular bad call led to a tidal wave of indignation the likes of which the NFL, nay, the American sports world at large, has never before seen.  People are literally ranking it among the worst calls in sports history, and they are branding Golden Tate (or as I like to call him, "Golden Tate, the Man with the Golden Taint") a cheater because he aggressively tried to make a play on the ball.  It's absurdity.  It's much more a product of football fans being tired of the replacement refs (who are gone now, thankfully) and of living in the Twitter / Facebook / blog era where every schmo (like me) can voice his or her opinion.

[The controversial Golden Tate catch, but no slo-mo, so you can't tell what happened at all.]

I watched the play many times.  My honest opinion: it was a bad call, but not anywhere near as bad as it's being portrayed.  The rule is, if both players have possession of the ball it goes to the offensive player (Tate), but if one guy has possession first it goes to that guy.  It definitely looks like the Packers guy (Jennings) gets possession first, but you can't establish possession, until you're on the ground.  Now it looks like Tate does get some possession before they land, like it's 80% Jennings and 20% Tate.  So what's the ruling there?  I'd probably say interception, but it's not a completely outrageous judgement to say catch.  Anyway, every team as benefited from / been hosed by bad calls before, the real refs are coming back, the Seahawks won, let's move on.

[Not a non-controversial, but bone-crushing play by Golden Tate from two weeks ago.]

Alright, that's all for this entry.  I think I have to spend some quality time with my wife staring blankly at a TV screen.  It's her choice of show (my compromise for getting the TV all day Sunday for football), which probably means Say Yes to The Dress.  Whenever she suggests it I always come back with, "I say no to that show."  Witty, huh?

Until next time...

*By the way, I'm not using "inner-city" here as code for "black".  If that's what I meant, I would've just said it.  I get very annoyed by the PC Police Police.  People who try to call others out for being overly PC, when they aren't.  Like if you said, "kids in urban schools score worse on standardized tests than their suburban counterparts," a member of PC Police Police might chime in snarkily, "oh right, 'urban' and 'suburban', c'mon, what you really mean is 'black' and 'white', just say it."  But that's not what you meant, the distinction you made is perfectly apt.  Sometimes PC nomenclature is better not because it's PC, but because it's accurate.      








                  

Entry 137: Babies and Taxes

I'm kinda sorta getting used to this whole lack of sleep thing.  I've been getting about six hours a night.  I'm on night-shift with the little man, so officially I take him from 9:00pm - 1:00am, but it's often 1:30am - 2:00am, especially on the weekends.  I'm lucky that I have a job with a very flexible daily schedule -- as long as I put in 8-ish hours a day sometime between, say, 7:00am and 7:00pm, I'm good.  Plus I work from home two days a week.  A lot of people can complain about their job situations right now, but not me.   

The housing situation is also good.  I'm finding our basement is a godsend.  When you're down there you can't hear what's going on upstairs, so I'll take the little man down there at night so that S can sleep (she can't sleep through baby crying even if it's a small peep and I'm on it immediately, it's that Mamma Bear instinct), and I'll go down there during the day so that I can work distraction-free.  The nights before I have to go into the office I'll sleep down there as well, so pretty much I'm always down there now.

The baby is doing alright, he's been really cranky the past few days, though.  He was so good up until then; when he cried it meant either "change me", "feed me", or "rock me" (like a Hurricane).  Now he has a new cry that's impervious to all these remedies.  We think it's a gas-pain cry, because when he farts (sharts, really, it ain't just gas coming out), he seems to calm down, but who knows?  I'm finding there's a lot of armchair doctoring as a parent -- "put him on his back, and pull his knees up", "massage his tummy", "give him a half teaspoon of gripe water", "warm up his milk a little before you give it to him", "my friend whose wife knows a pediatrician says we should try to keep him upright and awake for 20 minutes after each feeding" --  you try all this stuff and none of works, or it does, but you don't know if it was actually that thing or if he just stopped crying because at some point he has to stop.

[For pure rocking out purposes, does it get any better than The Scorpions?  Yes, it does, but they're pretty good.  This is what I sing to Lil' S while I'm rocking him.  Pretty sweet video.]

OK, enough about baby stuff.  Let's turn toward everybody's favorite topic this time of the year, presidential politics.  Nate Silver currently has Obama as 77% favorite, which seems about right to me.  Too many people don't like Mitt Romney, for good reason.  The dude's a jackass.  His 47% comments turned off a lot of people, but the thing is, he's been giving that same basic message since Day 1 of his presidential campaign.  He's wrong of course, it's simply not the case that nearly half the country is mooching off the other half (nor are all the moochers for Obama, if that were the case he'd win the South by a landslide), but as far as I can tell, that's always been the Republican message.  It's been funny and weird to see Republicans have to backtrack for saying things they actually believe.  (Something similar happened with Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" comments.  My reaction after he apologized was, for what?  If that's what you think then there's nothing to be sorry for.  You're a complete fucking idiot, but you don't have to apologize.)   Although with Etch-a-Sketch Mitt, you never know what he believes.  I believe he's very driven to be "successful"  (i.e., rich and powerful), everything else is pretty much fungible.  With respect to whether or not Mitt's most recent "gaffe" will ultimately hurt him, I don't know.  He was behind before and he's still behind.  I'll echo Silver's sentiment on the matter.

I have my own instincts about Mr. Romney’s remarks, which are roughly as follows: even if his outlook is a bit less negative than it seemed a week ago, he is nevertheless the underdog in the race, and not in a position where he can afford to alienate any voters who might allow him to climb to 50 percent of the vote. His coalition may already be drawn too narrowly, and this won’t help him with that.

But I’d place rather little value on my instincts, and rather more on the polls. We should know more about the state of the campaign a week from now than we do today.

My favorite part about this statement is the last paragraph.  You know how I'm always bitching about people not reasoning objectively and not basing their opinions on fact-based analyses?  Nate Silver gets it. (And by the way, things have down-ticked for Romney since this was written a few days ago.)

[Another song I've had stuck in my head a bunch these days.]

The whole 47% kerfuffle got me thinking about taxes, and I think we screwed ourselves as a country a long time ago by framing income taxes as if they come out of one's paycheck.  This puts people in the mindset that it's their money and the government is taking it.  A better way to look at it, in my opinion, is that it's the government's money, the price of doing business in America (yes, I believe you should pay for this privilege), and you're just holding it until April 15.  The way I think it goes (or how it should go) is all monetary transactions are subject to a tax, proportional to the amount of the transaction.  Who "pays" it is in some sense irrelevant.  You can say either party pays it or both do, but somebody (by default the payee) is responsible for transferring it to the government.  They aren't "paying" it, because it was never really theirs in the first place.  Now, you can still argue over what the tax rate should be (even 0 is a legitimate option, but it's one that would probably cause the country to crumble), but that's the basic idea.

Things get really complicated when you start introducing tax brackets and write-offs and credits and capital gains taxes, which is why if I were in charge, I'd just eliminate all that stuff.  All the loopholes would be gone, even the popular ones, like home-owner and child deductions.  All transactions (including those from employer to employee, i.e., income) are taxed at x%, end of story.  If x = 20 and you're making $10,000,000 / year, then $2,000,000 must be collected; if you're making $10,000, then $2,000 must be collected, that's it.  Maybe I would have a provision that if you're making less then some preset amount then your employer has to cover some of your taxes, or maybe I would tax the super rich's transactions a tiny bit more to subsidize those of the super poor ("Tyranny!", the rich would cry), but nothing too extreme.

One thing I like about this plan is that it easily takes down the "Adam Carolla Argument".  On his podcast, Adam frequently implies that rich people are doing the rest of us a favor by paying so much in total taxes even if they pay a lower rate than everybody else (like Mitt Romney paying $2 million in 2011, just 14% of his income).  But under the plan I described above a lower rate would never be beneficial to society even on very high incomes, because presumably, the money being transferred to somebody would be transferred to somebody (or somebodies) else if the first somebody didn't exist.

For example, let's say the tax rate is 20% and Adam Carolla gets $100 from a sponsor, so the government takes $20.  If Carolla stops doing his podcast that sponsor probably isn't going to stop advertizing, they're going to give, say, Mark Maron $50 ($10 tax), Penn Jillette $30 ($6 tax), and Greg Fitzsimmons $20 ($4 tax).  Each individual gets less because they don't have as many listeners as Carolla did, but the total spent (and taxed) is the same, so Carolla's high taxes don't actually add anything to the overall pie (and in fact a lower rate would be a net loss to society), and he shouldn't be complaining that he's paying so much (unless he's complaining about the rate which is legitimate), because it necessarily means he's making so much.  It's like Nelson Muntz once said to Lisa Simpson when she was crowing about putting together the yearbook, "If you didn't do it some other loser would have, so quit milking it."  

[If you didn't pay all those taxes some other millionaire would have, so quit milking it.]

Now, I'm not an expert on tax policy, and I've taken exactly two formal economics courses*, I'm sure somebody who knows something would tell this is how taxes are already supposed to work, or they could tell my why this is all wrong, and why it would never work in practice, but until then I'm sticking by it.

And that's all for this week.  Until next time...

*I took Honors Micro and Macro as an undergrad.  I think I missed five total points on exams over both semesters.  The first exam I took in Micro, I scored 99%, and the professor showed it to the class as an example of how to answer questions correctly and parsimoniously (I remember he used that exact word).  Once I went to see the prof during his office hours and this girl I knew, and had a crush on, was coincidentally working as his student assistant.  Later I saw her at a party, and she told me that after I left, he went on and on about how well I was doing in his class.  She seemed genuinely impressed.  So I kissed her, and then later that night we made love under the bleachers of the football field.  OK, everything happened but that last sentence.  Really, I cracked a few jokes, she laughed, and then I tried to muster up the courage to ask her out, but couldn't.  We left the party separately, and I basically never talked to her again.  That pretty much sums up my game as a 20-year old.

Entry 136: Cool Picture

Below is my new favorite picture. S took it.

So not much to blog about today.  Still a new dad, that's noteworthy, I suppose.  Most of the new parent anxiety in me has been alleviated, although truth be told I never had much to begin with.  I was never stressed about things.  I never had a stark realization, "Oh man, I'm responsible for a life now!", or anything like that.  The only thing that made me nervous is when I put him down to sleep at night before I went to bed I'd have this irrational fear that he was going to suddenly stop breathing.  Well, it's not completely irrational, that does happen (but it's pretty rare).  The main thing is, there isn't any big difference between putting him down for a nap during the day, while I work on something else, and putting him down at night while I sleep, but only the latter would make me nervous.  That part of it is pretty irrational.  But it doesn't really make me nervous anymore.  Anyway, so far so good with the first month.

That's all I have in me this week.  Until next time...

Entry 135: Errand Boy

If you are reading this, it means I finally had a chance to sit down and crank out a few thoughts this morning.  I had a busy morning, busy week, being a new dad and such.  I've basically been Errand Boy since Lil' S came into the picture, but so be it.  Somebody has to do it.

Today I escorted my in-laws to Bank of America because they needed to get something notarized.  They don't have an account there, but S and I do.  We almost never use it, and I personally loathe BoA.  It was S's account before we met, and we only kept it because it's connected to some other accounts we have and making a grand switch at once will be too disruptive, so we're weaning ourselves off.  Going to a BoA branch in DC is never fun, it's always crowded; if you go on the weekend, it's worse, tenfold.  What should have taken about 5 minutes took well over an hour, but we got it done.

[Apparently there is a whole website devoted to the suckitude of BoA.]

The notary didn't like it that I was the account holder and they were the ones using the service, but he helped us anyway.  Of course, he gave us the "Just so you know, it's supposed to be for account holders only," and then he came back to it again, "Next time, remember, we're not supposed to notarize things for third parties."  Right, next time.  I'll keep that in mind next time my in-laws are buying property, need something notarized ASAP, and happen to be in town visiting my newborn child.

I know the guy was in some sense being nice, but I don't get the second lap of the condescending, I'm-doing-you-a-favor quasi-admonishment.  It's like the time I lost my luggage tag on a flight, which of course was also the one time the airline lost my luggage, so I had to deal with the woman at the counter, and when she found out I lost my tag, she was like, "Well how am I supposed to find you in the system?"  I asked if she could search my name, and she proceeded to give me a five minute lecture about how irresponsible I am (I didn't retort that it was her airline that lost my luggage, which is far worse than losing a tag, because I was in finish-with-this-b-ASAP-and-get-on-with-my-life mode), and then she clacked my name into the computer, and had my info in seconds.  Why she felt the need to reprimand me, I don't really get, but it's the same impulse as the BoA notary.

So BoA was one errand I've run recently.  Here are a few others.

Best Buy and Target to buy a TV, a DVD player, and entertainment system furnishings.  We broke down.  We got cable TV (DIRECTV, technically, but same shit).  I hate cable.  It's a ripoff.  For one thing, you never know exactly what you're paying for.  I defy anybody to look at their bill each month and explain all the charges on it. (DIRECTV is actually better about this than others, and I still had to call to get an explanation.  Also they pulled the three-months-of-free-HBO-which-will-be-$45-a-month-after-trial-period-unless-you-explicitly-cancel-even-though-you-didn't-ask-for-it stunt.)  For another thing, you pay for 195 channels and thousands of programs you don't want, just to get the three channels and five programs you do want.  We were getting by fine with our computer TV pu pu platter of Netflix, Hulu, a borrow Xfinity account, and "free" TV sites, but we made the switch to DIRECTV for one reason: NFL Sunday Ticket.  There is no way I can spend all day at a bar once a week now that Lil' S is here, so if I'm going to watch NFL games, this is my only real option.  And I need NFL.  I'm addicted.  So I did what addicts do.  I compromised my principles and spent a bunch of money to get my fix.  It is going to be pretty sweet tomorrow though -- the Seahawks on a 40" HDTV with surround-sound, Bose-quality audio, right in the comfort of my own home.  I'm going to have a baby in one hand and a cold one in the other.

 [Season starts tomorrow.  They were Bill Simmons' surprise pick to win the NFC.  It's unfortunate they are getting buzz.  I thought they were quietly going to have a solid season.  Now, this means they're going to lose to the Cardinals tomorrow.]

Babies R Us to buy a bunch of miscellaneous things we didn't have a chance to get.  This places SUCKS!  Nobody is around to help you.  You're just wandering around this cavernous building hoping to come across the things you need.  One thing I got was a new diaper bag, an actual diaper bag.  S just bought a normal Burrberry bag as a diaper bag.  Super practical as always.  

[S's diaper bag.]

Doctor to take S to her checkup appointment.  Apparently, we shared the waiting room with a reality TV star.  Some older woman was there and S recognized here from a TV show.  If I have this right, she's the mother of the woman who's married to the man who won the first season of The Apprentice.  I guess all three (mother, daughter, husband) are on a show now.  I'm proud to say I had no idea who this woman was (I'm completely against the deification of celebrities in our culture, especially when they're celebrities who shouldn't even be celebrities because they don't have any talent and aren't particularly interesting), but S recognized her, as did the women in the doctor's office (they're self-proclaimed big fans).  The best part about this trip is that the doctor cleared S to drive, so hopefully this will be the last time I have to accompany her.

Pediatrician to make sure Lil' S is doing OK.  He's fine, healthy and happy.  I already expressed my dislike of the lactation consultant who works at the office, but I think we're done with her.  By the way, just so you don't think I'm anti-lactation consultant, S had a private visit with a consultant who makes house calls, and I thought she was really good (other than her price, between her and the pump, we will have to breastfeed because we won't be able to afford formula).  Although, to be honest, I mainly like her because she told S everything I was telling S before she came, which is basically that everything is going very well with the nursing and pumping and there is no need for any concern.

It's weird, I'm usually the one who's the follow-the-instructions-to-a-tee type, and S is more the ad-libber, but when it comes to baby rearing, we're the opposite.  I'm very laissez-faire -- let him sleep when he's sleepy, let him eat when he's hungry; and S is very schedule-oriented -- he should eat this much, as these times.  We got into a mini-argument the other night (in front of her mom, which is embarrassing) because I was going to take him while S slept, and she wanted me to wake him at a certain time to give him a bottle, and I said that I'd just give it to him when he woke up, I wasn't going to wake him up.  So then S got irritated and said that she would just stay up and do it herself, so I said she has to be comfortable with me doing things my way, so then we went back and forth, until finally I agreed to wake him up just to keep the peace.  But I didn't wake him up.  He woke up on his own an hour "behind schedule", I fed him, put him to bed, and everything worked out great... unless S reads this.

OK, that's all for now, until next time...

Entry 134: The Darndest Thing

The darndest thing happened last Friday night while S and I were watching Game of Thrones*.  She went into labor.  At first she just felt a few sharp pains, which we didn't think much of, because the baby wasn't due for another two weeks, but they started happening more frequently, so we started wondering what was going on.  We then had the following conversation about fifty times in a row.

Her: Owwwww....
Me: What?!  What is it?!
Her: Ohhh... It hurts...
Me: What hurts?!  Are you having contractions?!  Are you in labor?!
Her: I don't know.  I don't know what labor feels like.  Owwwww...  It's just a pain.
Me: What type of pain?!  A labor pain?!
Her: I DON'T KNOW!  I'VE NEVER BEEN IN LABOR BEFORE!!!!

So, we did what any couple would do.  We ignored them to see they would go away.  When they didn't, we started timing them, and then we Googled "labor pain".  Her symptoms were almost perfectly in sync with those of Braxton-Hicks contractions, so I thought this was just a bout of "pre-labor", something that -- if the Internet is to be believed -- a lot of women experience a few weeks before giving birth.  The pains persisted though, so S called her OB who sent us to the hospital.

Turns out we weren't alone in being unable to diagnose S's discomfort.  The nurse practitioners couldn't figure it out either.  Something was definitely going on, but the symptoms weren't those of a typical labor.  The pains weren't becoming more frequent, and they were seemingly less intense and originating in a different spot than expected if she was in labor (the front as oppose to the back).  It had everybody buffaloed, so they kept us there until S's OB could get there at 7 a.m.  Being that it was currently 12:30 a.m., we had some waiting to do.

S was writhing on the hospital bed, confused and in pain, but the real victim here was me.  I had to sleep on a small vinyl sofa, in a freezing cold room, in shorts and a t-shirt, with nothing but a woman's Northface fleece as cover.  Not only that, but I had to listen to somebody moaning in agony every few minutes.  Sure, I could mostly drown it out with my headphones, but still it was pretty uncomfortable.  It took me a solid 20 minutes to fall asleep.

When I started to awaken, the OB was in the room, and in a way-too-early-morning daze, I heard her say the following, "These just don't seem like labor contractions.  I think that I'm going to send you guys home.  If things get worse, you'll have to come back, but right now I just don't see what else we can do." Right then S had her most intense contraction, the doctor checked her cervix, and said, "Forget everything I said.  You're having a baby in about an hour."  And with that, a C-section was scheduled (the baby was breech, something we'd known prior), and S started being prepped for surgery.  "Goddamn," I thought, "This is it."

The C-section was pretty typical as far as I could tell.  The medical staff chatted among themselves during the procedure ("You know, snorkeling isn't very fun for me.  Once you've been scuba diving, snorkeling is such a step down."), which I found very calming, actually.  You want surgery to be no big deal to the people performing it.  S was anesthetized and shivering uncontrollably, a side-effect of the drugs.  I was on the other side of the curtain, holding S's hand trying to drink in the surreality of it all.  Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" came on radio, and it seemed like an apropos song for some reason.



Since I'm Caucasian and S's is Indian, we were especially curious to see if our kid would come out white or brown.  Neither.  He came out purple.  Since birth, he's turned more peach / pink, so he looks like a little white baby.  In fact, I don't think you'd even guess he has any Indian blood in him at all.  My hunch is that is that as he gets older he'll get more brown, and his Indian features will show more prominently, but who knows?  And who cares?  As long as he's healthy.  And he is healthy -- a little undersized, probably due to coming out early, but nothing to worry about.

We had to stay at the hospital for three nights instead of the customary one night, because of the C-section, but it wasn't bad.  I've heard horror stories about awful hospital stays, but ours wasn't like that at all.  The opposite in fact.  We were treated more like customers in a nice hotel than we were like patients (of course, we were paying for the "private room", $300 a night out-of-pocket, so we should have been treated this way).  Everybody was friendly and helpful and they took Lil' S (that's what I'm calling our baby on this blog) to the nursery at night so that we could get some much needed shut-eye.  I have no complaints about the staff at Sibley hospital in DC.

The only person I didn't like isn't at Sibley, she's the lactation consultant at our pediatrician's office.  She was very passive-aggressively pushing her no-formula agenda, even though the doctor specifically told us to supplement Lil' S's feedings with some formula to bring his weight up, since S probably wouldn't be producing a ton of milk right away.  When we explained this to her, she was very dismissive of the doctor saying that his weight was only down because of the C-section (her explanation was that in a vaginal birth, fluids are squeezed out of the baby that aren't during a C-section, so C-section babies lose this fluid post-birth which is why they don't gain weight as quickly), and that giving him formula would just "make him think he has two mommies".

Look, I get it.  Breast milk is really good for babies, and this woman's entire job revolves around extolling its virtues.  But I don't understand what she would have us do.  Defy doctor orders and deprive our son of sustenance?  I know there are many great things about breastfeeding, but let's not get carried away.  I know several kids who were fed formula almost exclusively, and you know what's wrong with them?  Nothing.  If you took 100 random kids, 50 who were breastfed, and 50 who were formula fed, and mixed them up, could anybody identify which set was which, based on their health and/or personality?  I sincerely doubt it. 

Plus, this woman didn't seem to understand the meaning of the word "supplement," she kept telling us that giving Lil' S a bottle would prevent S's milk from coming in as quickly.  But if she's breastfeeding / pumping just as much as she would be otherwise, I don't see how S's body would know we're giving Lil' S formula.  Anyway, I just didn't care for this woman's attitude.  Especially since S is now producing a good amount of milk and we've been feeding Lil' S breast milk exclusively for the past few days, just as we had planned all along.

Whew!  Who knew a lactation consultant could get me so fired up?

Alright, I think I've just about stretched my free time to the limit.  I'm surprised S hasn't called me for anything yet (she actually calls me on my phone, even though we're in the same house, since she's not supposed to raise her voice).  I'd better go see if she needs any help.

Until next time...

*I think we're out on this show, by the way.  We didn't really enjoy the second season.  I agree with this article wholeheartedly.