Breastfeeding Dad #1

There are a lot of things that people get ready when a baby is coming. The clothes and the room and the crib and the blankets and all of the other paraphernalia that seems to go along with having a baby in the modern world. Finding a pediatrician and deciding if mom is going to stay home or if dad is going to stay home or if grandma will be watching the baby or if it's going to go to day care. One of the biggest decisions to be made has to be about breastfeeding. Are you going to breastfeed? If so, how long are you planning to do it? Are you going to need to pump? Do you have a pump? Where will you pump? Will you feel like a cow in a milk parlor when you are hooked up to the pump?
Even though I'm a dad, I'm coming at all of these questions from a woman's perspective for a good reason. In the end, it's the mother that has to deal with the lions share of the issues surrounding breastfeeding whether she stays home or goes back to work. I've read all of the information about breastfeeding being better for the baby and I believe every word of it, but I challenge you to look around at your peers and try to identify which ones were breastfed. Breastfeeding is important, but it's not so important that it's going to change the course of your child's life. At least I don't think so. Whether you do or not is still a choice, and that's a good thing.
We were breastfeeders. Usually I wouldn't refer to breastfeeding a we thing because really, "we" breastfed is about as accurate as "we" had a baby. If you make the choice to be a stay at home dad and your wife makes the choice to breasfeed, you both have really made the choice to enter into a team event. This is about as "we" as parenting gets. In some ways there is nothing more idiotic than one person producing the milk and another one feeding it. Probably the best thing about breasfeeding (other than the health benefits) is having food everywhere you take your boobs, and women take those things everywhere. I've checked. You don't have anything to get ready, you don't have anything to clean up, your body always makes what's needed. It's a perfect system. Conversely, if you use formula, you just make sure you have the food you need. You make it, your baby eats, you clean up. A few more steps, a little planning, but not too difficult. If you're a stay at home dad and your wife pumps though, you've just made things about five thousand times more difficult than either of those options. First your wife has to pump, which I hear sucks for the most part. Finding a place, finding a time, finding somewhere to put the milk during the day that doesn't freak out their co-workers. It's a lot more work that just plugging the baby in, and it's not like you can just get busy and skip it. There's no meeting more pressing that the pressing from inflating boobs that really need to be pumped. So I hear anyway.
So now you've got this milk and it's a pretty precious commodity. It's not like you can just get more if you run out and your body is trying to make about exactly what the baby needs. You get extra ounce by precious ounce. Getting enough gathered in one place so that you can go back to work for a whole day is no easy task. Once it's there, then dad takes over. This nectar of the boobs is equally precious to him. You just can't screw up and lose a batch. Milk is food, it is comfort, it is everything. Don't screw up!
This is getting pretty long. Next week I'll write more about the day to day challenges a dad faces when dealing exclusively with breast milk. I'll also talk about how awesome it is to realize that you don't have boobs every two hours every single night for the first six months. Oh, and this series of posts isn't going to have any pictures with it because, well, it's just not.