telling stories

Single Me thought the most fanatical people were reformed ex-smokers who demanded you butt out when around them, because smoking will kill you – guaranteed! - and don’t you know how bad it makes you smell? I never realized it until I quit smoking and got on the elevator with someone who had just smoked. Let me tell you it was enough to make me want to barf! Also zealous? Those nutso religious right in the US who often hail from places with even wackier names, like Waco, and who re-elected George Bush as President. RE-ELECTED! Not just accidentally maybe kinda sorta voted for him as part of a protest vote that went terribly, horribly wrong, but RE-ELECTED, as in: Hmmm, I like Middle Eastern countries. Gimme, gimme, gimme! Whoever named Waco Waco shouldn’t really be surprised at the stock produced; it’s kind of the same thing with Moose Jaw. The pudding proof: isn’t Waco where Mrs. Federline comes from? And doesn’t Moose Jaw produce women willing to be wed into the Family Snell? I rest my case, your Honour.

And then the Babe entered out lives and impassioned advocates popped up on any number of issues, like cloth diapers vs. the kind that poison the planet and little baby pandas in China, and those who favour a drug-free birth to “get in tune with your body” vs. those who place their order for Medicare-funded drugs prior to conception. (I fall into the latter camp on both issues, for obvious reasons.) By far the most rabid were those who virtuously call themselves Lactation Consultants, which would make it seem as though they sit in a little public health room, waiting for YOU to tell THEM when there’s a problem getting the boob juice flowing, wouldn’t it? But no, they seek you out in the hospital corridors, and find you beneath the bed sheets, trying to grab 40 winks after the long, hard labour you’ve just had, and once they do, once they find you, they become Booby Pushers, simultaneously telling you to breastfeed, and YOU’RE BREASTFEEDING ALL WRONG: “There simply is no other way to feed your child; it’s the most natural, and provides your little one with EVERYTHING he needs, including immunities, without which HE MIGHT GET SICK. Thinking you might go with formula? Well, you might as well liquefy dog food and put it in the bottle you’re going to feed that precious baby with, or starve him altogether. That is, if he doesn’t die from the sickness of being sick, all because his LACK OF IMMUNITIES. No, no! Hold your areola THIS WAY!”

I was glad to be rid of ‘em, those Lactation Consultants. Anyone who has seen the Babe recently knows that it’s absurd to assume he has any issues in the sustenance department. And because I haven’t been inundated with advice on ways to rear my little Turkey Roll lately, I was caught off guard when I phoned the Ottawa Public Library to register Boh in Super Tots and the lady on the other end waxed on and on enthusiastically about what a “good turn” I was doing by registering him so early for a library program. Good turn? I haven’t heard that one since Brownies! But of course I ate it up. So long as the advice I’m getting is about stuff I’m already doing, or plan to do, then this Mom-zilla can keep her chest puffed out secure in the knowledge that she’s not completely screwing up her kid. (Not completely.)