Amy and Ethan together are like combining fire with…more fire. They chase each other round the house, laugh at the same things, and get a kick out of knocking things over. It’s amazing to see them play together because the developmental differences become irrelevant. I hope it lasts a long, long time. Ethan is so good at bringing himself down to Amy’s level, crawling around quickly so that she chases him, making silly noises and faces to make her giggle. When he leaves the room and Amy is imprisoned in her high chair or her cot, she’ll yell for him, a deep, resonant “EEH!” Ethan loves it when the two of them shut themselves in his room and play on the floor with whatever random toy he’s currently into, and now that he can work his stereo he plays various CDs for her until he finds one she’ll bop to. The other day it was Bjork, and personally I thought that was bloody awesome.
Now that it’s safe to claim that my kids are hipper than me, I can admit that I went to a Tupperware party the other night. It’s okay though; there was wine. And tasty nibbles, and becaue Tupperware parties always have a cooking demonstration of sorts, we had orange liqueur-infused chocolate truffles (moulded in an ice-cube mould). One of the women there — all were neighbours that I socialise with fairly often — is due to have her third baby in about two weeks, and was visibly uncomfortable and very round. I caught myself feeling pleased that I wouldn’t (probably) be going through that again.
There was a story on the news last night about a new lobby group whose intention is to make the WHO’s recommended marketing restrictions on infant formula into law, something I find quite agreeable. What I didn’t agree with was their various statements on how mothers are being duped into using formula instead of breastfeeding, calling into question not only the ability of women to make their own informed choices but once again dividing mothers into Mothers That Breastfeed And Nurture and Mothers Who Obviously Want Their Child To Be Obese and Stupid. It’s that stigma that is associated with mothers who use formula from a young age that really bugs me, because it makes those mothers afraid to feed their child in public in case someone tells them off, and it makes them doubt their abilities in the arena of parenting in general.
Every mother I have known personally who formula-fed her baby did so because the baby would have starved otherwise: one woman had twins and couldn’t supply enough milk to nourish them both; one who developed such severe mastitis that she was hospitalised; and one whose baby was a “lazy feeder” and whose midwife told her to let the baby starve, she’d eat eventually — the mother waited for three days on midwife’s orders and then expressed for six weeks before switching to formula. Who are these people to judge a woman who chooses — or needs — to bottle-feed her baby?
