Breastfeeding Dad #2

The single best part of breastfeeding is when mommy comes home. There is nothing else in parenting that equals the joy of a baby realizing that mom is home and it's meal time. Mom is happy, the baby is happy, and I get to slowly fade into the background. From the time mommy enters the door until she leaves again the next morning, the largest most complicated part of my job simply doesn't exist. There is no thawing of milk. No bottles to warm. No bottles to wash. No tying to mentally figure out how long ago the baby ate so how much milk should you heat up. No baby deciding that a rubber nipple just isn't the same as a real nipple, and even though they're hungry enough to cry, they're certainly not hungry enough for a bottle. But try back in 15 minutes.
Then there's bed time. Sweet bed time. We could argue about who is going to get up with the baby, but really, who among us has boobs? Can I see the raised hand of those with boobs? You, over there, the one who worked all day and is so tired she can't find the light switch, yes you. You have boobs and I do not. You feed the baby and I will go back to sleep. In fact this is a wonderful time to demonstrate the fact that I can go back to sleep within seconds of being woken up by a crying baby. I have become a god of the quick sleep.
I don't think I ever once felt guilty about my wife having to wake up to feed the baby. I probably should have, but I didn't. My world consisted of trying to interpret the subtle signs of hunger and then attempting to prepare a bottle before they became a full blow screaming fit. That 7-10 minutes is an eternity, or can be, and getting it wrong more than once in a day can be downright exhausting. Watching my wife just snag a hungry baby and plug it in though, I always felt like she just didn't understand. Her boobs are right there! She could even hold the baby with one arm and hold a book with the other. She could multitask! So jealous. I had to have one hand on the baby and one hand on the bottle, and then just sit. I did enjoy sitting with my babies, I really did, but there were days when I sort of had to get something done and I'd have a baby who just wanted to sit and draw it out for 20 minutes and I was trapped. Trapped! Or the phone would ring and even if I got to it in time I still had one hand on the baby and one hand on the bottle and the phone was....... falling on the floor. Gah! So I never felt guilty at night. She did all the work and I got all of the sleep and the world was good.