Did you get laid? That's the only reason you'd see it, right?
I should say, liked the film, but, oi, the score and in particular those goddamned typewriter noises. I GET IT already!
So anyway, did I succeed in ruining your life? How did it go out on the steps?
Well, I think I'm a libertarian now, but other than that, fine.
Wait, I'm missing some inside jokes here. Did Labs contract libertarianism by making out with someone hight appropriate?
Some people will make any sacrifice for their political cause. They'll do anything, no matter how immoral or personally distasteful. I hadn't been aware that there were libertarians like that, though. I thought they were pretty much cash up front types.
Do I look up "Nagelian" at Wiki or Stanford?
Sam Powers & I were just the other day talking about how personal relationships can mess up your appreciation of world-historical events and movements. I filled her in on what she had been missing.
I googled "Nagelian" and got Angelina Jolie.
11:Thanks. Hey, anybody else noticed that when you have been reading a pdf with big fonts for a while (Nagel - Problem of Global Justice) and come back to your usual browser settings the letters look really really small? Huh? Could we talk about this, maybe after altruism and Dunkirk?
Or maybe the ignorant asinine absurdist as the most annoying type of troll?
14 was intended to respond to 12, but I'm sure there's some way it can be creatively interpreted as a response to 13.
Don't want to wake up with no one beside me
Don't want to take up with nobody new
Don't want nobody coming by without calling first
Don't want nothing to do with you
I'm putting tinfoil up on the windows
Lying down in the dark to dream
I don't want to see their faces
I don't want to hear them scream
(Hey, it was the 2nd song from my random shuffle, I swear to God. I think it is a sign)
Eddie Izzard is so so funny, i'm glad to find his clips
Teofilo, thank you for your comments, so very helpful, i appreciate
Bob, why do you need to listen to such a depressing song, watch Eddie Izzard instead
The topic of depressing songs has inspired me to listen to Smog's "Your New Friend", which is actually more self-pitying than depressing.
strange that one would like to induce artificially depression
hope it helps then
though it's not seasonal
** *
Do not think, do not complain, do not argue,
Do not sleep.
Don't want to the sun, to the moon, to the sea,
To the ship.
Don't feel how it is hot in these rooms,
How it is green in the garden.
For the longest time desired gift
Is not waited.
And a summer morning, the bell of the running train
is not rejoiced.
I live not seeing day,
forgetting day and date.
On seemingly half-cut rope
I am a little dancer.
I am someone's shadow and worship
Two dark moons.
http://www.tsvetayeva.com/poems/niedumaju.php
your corrections will be appreciated, thanks
Argh, just as I was about to leave, read. I'll look at it when I get back.
actually it is
i'm the shadow of someone's shadow
sure, sure, no pressure
anytime convenient for you, i'll wait :)
i'm the shadow of someone's shadow
L'ombre de ton ombre
L'ombre de ta main
L'ombre de ton chien
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
and?
free translations gives me
The shadow of your shadow
THE shadow of your hand
THE shadow of your dog
does not leave me
not me leaves
does not leave me
not me leaves
i'm so ignorant, it must be a famous excerpt which i do not recognise :(
though why dog? if there is a dog, it's not depressing, in my opinion
got it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFWs5kWP
oops, again
Ne me quitte pas
beautiful, thanks!
23:strange that one would like to induce artificially depression
read, the song just popped up randomly from an album & a huge playlist. I have many more joyous songs and have listened to those tonight. I simply thought those lyrics seemed somehow although barely meaningful for the topic of the thread.
As to the usefulness of induced depression or despair, or the meanings of tragedy & the blues in art, whatever. I am thinking on it. (The valve has a recent post on an idiosyncratic interpretation of Aristotle's catharsis, FWIW)
A lot of people besides myself are attracted to tragic art. My impression is that the work(s) discussed in this post are at least in part tragic or sad. So transfer your compassion to Fontana Labs, and ask him why he read such a sad book & watched a sad movie, knowing going in it was sad.
People who listen to non-depressing songs cannot be trusted.
ok, ok
my compassion to Fontana Labs, i haven't read and watched atonement so i did not know how sad those were
good that you are in joyous mood then, really Eddie Izzard is great
to seek catharsis, ah? i can't cry though knowing it's self-induced
the last time i cried seeing art i think was when i saw accidentally in the newspaper a photo of a soldier's tomb who died in Iraq
there was a birthday balloon tied to the grave stone
so heartbreaking
If the book/movie discussed in the post does contain a theme of atonement or redemption, well, whether the story of John Newton is a happy or horrible story depends in large part on the perspective(s) you choose.
He continued in the slave trade for a time after his conversion; however, he saw to it that the slaves under his care were treated humanely.
Yeah, I'm gonna go with "horrible".
It's the song my web browser sings to me if I have multiple tabs open.
"As she saw the dress make its perfect, clinging fit around her cousin and witnessed her mother's heartless smile, Briony knew her only reasonable choice then would be to run away, to live under hedges, eat berries and speak to no one, and be found by a bearded woodsman one winter's dawn, curled up at the base of agiant oak, beautiful and dead, and barefoot, or perhaps wearing the ballet pumps with the pink ribbon straps ...
Self-pity needed her full attention, and only in solitude could she breathe life into the lacerating details"
Now I'm gonna be reading the thing with the narrative voice in foreground.
I just got home from watching The Orphanage. The movie was a very convincing argument for modernist architecture.
I am hungover to fuck and really regretting that I had to drive my wife to work [I could have done with another 2 hours in bed, some industrial strength pain killers and some food].
That's "hungover as fuck," ttaM. And you're supposed to take ibuprofen before bed, with water. Where did you grow up, now?
Not ibuprofen! Say no to unexpectedly stroking out! Take aspirin!
re: 46
I did take some pain killers before bed with water. I hadn't even drunk that much, so I expected to feel fine. Aging sucks. There was a time when half a dozen beers would have left me bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning.
48: Yeah, and you can't get only 4 or 5 hours of sleep any more either.
Not ibuprofen? Stroking out? Huh?
Oh aye, and, for me, 'to' [or, more accurately, 'tae' in my idiolect] would be the standard preposition in any sentence of the form, 'adjective [blah] fuck'.
re: 50
I'm not so bad with sleep deprivation. I do, much of the time, still get rid of hangovers quite quickly but I can no longer accurately predict when I'll get one. Except in the Murphy's Law sense that I can probably predict I'll get one when I least want one.
Are you all still there, drunk and hungover and insomniac?
Just wanted to check the time stamp. It's 3:28 here. I've become the fucking human pacifier.
If they're not, I joined. Drunk and listening to my roommate tell a girl he brought home, "Really, you have fabulous teeth, absolutely wonderful teeth."
Meh. Barely. I should head off soon. I am thinking in the vaguest way about trying to, er, date. This is a euphemism. It's annoying.
Possibly. Mostly haven't been feeling well. But yeah, the thought of actively going out and looking is annoying.
I wrote in another thread this evening about five-year-old hair, and thought of you, Penny -- the old hair is long hair.
I read that, and wondered what you meant by five- year-old-hair.
I'm very happy to have mine gone. I like the way the remainder sticks up all over the place. But it has to be the right time.
I think it's about time to wean this baby, at least during the night, and I have no clue how I'm going to do that.
Can't help you about the weaning. Others here would be able to say something.
Yeah, 5 year old hair. A friend of mine cut off a foot of his hair and buried it, a crossing of lines of sorts. A kind of clarity. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea just to get rid of a bunch of stuff around this house, for a start.
And with that, I should try to sleep. Good luck with the babe!
Thanks, I need it. Good luck with the changes and letting things go.
Destroyer, is he still on about her teeth?
They've settled into low-volume gossip, now. There was an entertaining interlude in which she proved her worth by proclaiming the superiority of late 90s Sportscenter.
The gossip, it turns out, is about his threesomes and shower sex—with Facebook to view the parties involved. It seems that the Sportscenter fanhood wasn't enough, and now she needs to compliment the size of his previous fling's breasts.
The what?
This is dialogue from no date I've ever had, but it sounds like it might be going well.
Did Teo ever get back with how his date went? Was that even tonight?
64 was to 62, but actually never mind, it's still good. Are these very thin walls, or are you actually hanging out with them?
But what are the date's views on breastfeeding?
This is destroyer's chance to proclaim he'd never do a two guy threesome "because he's a feminist".
gswift!
Yeah, on the grave shift as usual.
They are in my common room, apparently waiting for me to close the door and go to bed. I'd help him, but he did try to pee on my other roommate's computer.
As I recall, part of the glory of breastfeeding (besides how nourished I felt afterwards) is that it was an excuse for me to not get up in the middle of the night.
I have to go to bed, even though it is pointless because the little guy will sense it and wake up. But I'd better go. Goodnight all, goodmorning ttaM.
70 wait, What?
72 When it was time to quit feeding at night, was it fairly smooth, or were there hours of screaming and you yelling "get in there and feed him"? Just anticipating.
Ooh! They moved into my other roommate's bedroom and tried to have sex while he was sleeping. He freaked out, and she told him to get rid of his "'tude."
Destroyer, you are completely cheering me up.
There are two bedrooms and a common, or living, room. With two roommates in each bedroom. I'm awake in my bedroom and his roommate is sleeping in theirs, so neither couch sex nor bed sex were on the table. Then they tried the latter and started a fight.
Adding a baby to this mix could only help. I'll bring him over. I'd advise you to not waste gswift's line. You could shout it, if you had to.
I'm glad. Now it's all over, and I need to sleep. Goodnight.
So destroyer, you forced them to go to the other room by staying up typing on Unfogged, and you did this out of revenge for - see this is where I'm confused, something about peeing, on a computer.
When it was time to quit feeding at night, was it fairly smooth, or were there hours of screaming and you yelling "get in there and feed him"?
Our babies were pretty easy. They'd sleep most of the night if I let them sleep next to me in our bed.
What's the roomate care if they do it while he's in the room? He should just film them.
You know it really sucks when one is compelled to tell an extremely attractive girl one of one's long puns, tells the flâneurisy one as being the most recent, witnesses an extremely positive response to it, has a decently lengthy conversation following this, and then learns that she has a boyfriend.
There are two bedrooms and a common, or living, room. With two roommates in each bedroom.
God I don't miss that arrangement. After two years I was ready to move into the mountains like a hermit.
This is where I'm having the trouble - all was well at night whenI slept next to him, but gradually he's started to lay claim to my nipples For The Whole Night, and that's no good. Because they'll fall off, and because I can't get any sleep if he nurses continuously. It's like we're having an arguement over whose nipples these are, and that's not an arguement I want to get into.
Does arguement have an e? Well it does now.
Goodnight for now.
"Argument" has an e, yes. It does not have two.
Also, let me state for the record that Jandek was fucking awesome, and he sure does give you your money's worth: he was still playing after two full hours. (I left before the concert ended because two hours is a lot of anyone, let alone Jandek.)
I don't know who was in the band but the whole thing was fantastic (except when the drummer attempted, bootlessly, to bow his cymbals; he didn't seem to be able to get any sound out of them consistently by that means).
79: He tried to pee on a laptop while drunk. And when he was corrected, he went for another laptop. Not revenge, per se; more of a lack of concern for his desires.
82: He is a Christian Scientist. His case in the argument was amusingly tinted with "You're a slut."
Feel for you Penny!
There's a line of thought that thinks you can wean whilst keeping them co-sleeping, but tbh I always found it easier once they'd moved out of my bed. Although there was a point with #3 at about your son's age when I would put him to bed in his sisters' room, and wake up every morning with him in my bed, with no recollection of anything that had happened during the night, and began to wonder whether I'd ever be awake enough to wean him.
Some people swear by the No-Cry Sleep Solution, but I've never read it (came along too late for me!).
Penny -- how old is the little guy? If you're just concerned about nighttime weaning at this point, I found a decent meal of solid food close to bedtime helped reduce nighttime wakings. If you are thinking weaning for good, I'm not sure I can help, as I think Rory more or less made that decision on her own -- though it may have helped that we were supplementing a bit with formula at that point (11 months, give or take) and the wells were running dry.
Between the two conversations in this thread lies all of unfogged.
28: Since this thread doesn't involve translating from Russian, I can actually be of help.
read, the phrase "ne me quitte pas" in this context is the second person singular imperative: "Do not leave me, do not leave me, do not leave me." It's possible that the ambiguity is intentional, I guess.
gradually he's started to lay claim to my nipples For The Whole Night, and that's no good
You definitely want to nip that in the bud, Penny. Di's advice in 90 is sound, but might not be adequate to the challenge if the problem is the kid using your breasts for soothing rather than for sating hunger. Fleur dealt with this, but I can't remember how. If you post a safe e-mail I will ask her to e-mail you her counsel. FWIW she also did the weaning while co-sleeping with both children.
Penny, you ought to do this carefully. I read in a book that if weaning is done wrongly, the child will be scarred for life. The book didn't give much advice about how weaning should be done, it was mostly just about the horrible results of improper weaning.
It was a little paperback with a red and white cover -- if you ask I'm sure that the bookstore will know which one I mean.
Somewhere in the vastness of the interwebs, Destroyer's roommate is posting on his blog about how his asinine roommates conspired to cockblock him, to a sympathetic chorus of comments.
94: Are you sure you're remembering that correctly, Emerson? This cover isn't red and white at all.
a very effective method of weaning is to cover you nipples with pretty bitter medicine so that the baby could taste it, just once or twice and just enough to get the taste, after that babies refuse to take it into the mouth usually
thank you, Knecht Ruprecht, that was just a free translations website's translation without any alteration, pretty poetic, ah?
after that i read wiki's article on the song and now am fully acquainted with its history and meaning :)
"Atonement" SUCKED, people! Two and a half hours of swelling string music while beautiful Brit actors strike heroic yet sensitive poses in increasingly ridiculous and absurd situations! If you're not dissolved in helpless giggles by the last hour then you have no sense of humor at all.
Below, some quotes from the Peter Travers rave review of the movie. I ask you, how bad does a movie have to be to inspire this kind of prose? And yet, these words give you only the smallest hint of the sweeping crapitude of this cinematic epic!
Atonement sweeps you up on waves of humor, heartbreak and ravishing romance.... This potently erotic spellbinder ...speaks of what's timeless about passion, art and redemption.At first he can't find words to express his longing for Cecilia Tallis....Then, on a summer afternoon, Cecilia jumps in a fountain to retrieve a family heirloom Robbie has tossed away. Her fury at him is boundless. He can only see her lithe body, quivering and exposed to a point past nakedness under her soaking, transparent dress.
...Robbie heatedly types a note he never plans to send, a note with the Anglo-Saxon bluntness of his need to ravage this unattainable goddess.... That's when her emerging sexuality morphs into toxic revenge....this hothouse of carnal tension. ...they can't help giving vent to uncontrolled desire....
Atonement shifts into the battlefield...only intensifies the poignance of their broken lives. Life has hardened them to pain, but not to each other.... They are heaven-sent acting partners, radiating a heroic spirit that insists on the primacy of love....as she comforts a dying French soldier with words out of her still-fervid imagination.
....words, words with the force of ideas behind them....Held in fierce close-up, she demonstrates what great acting is. And her words, reflecting on life's tendency to wound and art's propensity to heal, cut to the quick...
I'm on the run but I appreciate these comments! I'll get back when I can, probably tonight. Thank you. Sorry about the pun wasted Ben.
101:Trusting the Unfoggedetariat, I abandon Atonement and return to Theories of Financial Disturbance
18 ff.:
"Happy songs don't make sad people happy. Sad songs make sad people happy."
--Rickie Lee Jones
Happy songs usually make me either sad or angry. People call Richard Thompson "dark", but he cheers me up. Basically he's survived the same world I have.
Thanks read, I've had this running through my head in the middle of the night:
Tis since the Earth-quake now eleuen yeares, and she was wean'd I neuer shall forget it, of all the daies of the yeare, vpon that day: for I had then laid Worme-wood to my Dug sitting in the Sunne vnder the Douehouse wall, my Lord and you were then at Mantua, nay I doe beare a braine. But as I said, when it did tast the Worme-wood on the nipple of my Dugge, and felt it bitter, pretty foole, to see it teachie, and fall out with the Dugge...
I'd always sympathized with toddler Juliet, but my allegiance has shifted.
Unfortunately, recently I've also had:
I haue giuen Sucke, and know
How tender 'tis to loue the Babe that milkes me,
I would, while it was smyling in my Face,
Haue pluckt my Nipple from his Bonelesse Gummes,
And dasht the Braines out, had I so sworne
As you haue done to this.
Please don't judge me, I love my little one. I'm just really tired.
Although there was a point with #3 at about your son's age when I would put him to bed in his sisters' room, and wake up every morning with him in my bed, with no recollection of anything that had happened during the night, and began to wonder whether I'd ever be awake enough to wean him.
Asilon, this is exactly what I'm experiencing, only I wake up in his bed, (he's in a small bed on the floor separated from us by a child gate) sometimes with no recollection of getting into it. I need a plan I can stick to even when I'm half asleep and he's crying.
My son first started playing games when he was about six months old. He woke up and was occupying himself quite contentedly until I made a tiny sound that let him know that I was there. Then he started crying piteously.
Original sin! They're savages! Be strict with them!
Well, if it's any hope, he was completely weaned before he was 2. I don't remember how we got through those sleepwalking weeks, but it didn't last long.
The easiest way I managed nightweaning any of them was to enlist C to go to them in the night - they gave up and settled down really quickly for him, whereas if I turned up, they wanted milk. But I warned him beforehand that he had to be COMPLETELY good-natured about it, and never show the slightest sign of resentment.
Otherwise, lots of walking around the house carrying them, wearing really inaccessible clothing to bed, cuddling and patting and singing or whatever, offering a drink. I think by the time they're that age you can generally tell whether they're truly upset, or whether they're just pissed off.
I have been on the internet too long - can't wind up a sympathetic parenting post without adding the mantra: this too shall pass.
how old is your baby, Penny?
after 1 yr sure you'd better to wean him, there is no much nutrition in the breast milk after that ircc,
some people continue to breastfeed like up to 2 yrs old
and that they say not good for the baby's health either, he could get kidney stones something, again ircc, it was something related to breast milk and urine pH i forgot what was the connection
my sister's baby don't cry at night because she allows her to sleep with her, the baby would touch her in her sleep as if checking whether she is still there and continue to sleep without waking up
but this practice also needs weaning after sometime when the baby will become able to sleep without anyone beside her
Thank Di! He's 17 months old, and very sturdy. I try to give him some avocado and oil to make sure he's not hungry in the night. I think I've trained him into a pattern of needing the breast to fall back asleep when he has normal bouts of waking; I've really done it all wrong that way.
Sometimes when he wakes in the night he's very upset even before he's awake, and when he's awake he's disoriented, like a night terror or sleepwalking. Nursing is great for getting him back to sleep, and I hate the thought of leaving him to cry it out when that happens.
Knecht, I'd love to hear what Fleur did; I'll set up a gmail acct tonight. Thanks. I'd love to be able to still co sleep sometimes and nurse during the day, but maybe that's unrealistic.
John Emerson - I can't tell if you're serious, or making a joke about how paranoid Mums are about scarring their kids and having to read everything. I appreciate it either way though. I don't want to put him through something traumatic and I really don't want to start something and then abandon it after confusing him.
Sorry for all the posts. Appreciate all advice.
Also, the book sucked.
Ben, you are a bad person.
Penny, I think I weaned PK at night with the sleeping-next-to-him-but-not-nursing method. Try wearing something where he can't access the nipple? One nursing as he goes to sleep, then no more? Is there a Mr. Penny who can cuddle him at night without the obvious temptation of mommy nipple? Maybe a binky? Will he tend to nod off if you rock him or hold him on your chest with his head on your shoulder so he gets the "warm mommy" thing without the actual nipple?
I suppose you could also just put him in his floor bed locked in the bathroom, if it comes to that. Oh no wait, the crying would echo. Perhaps a nice closet.
I am NOT serious. It was a Freudian cliche in my youth. Knecht understood me.
Anyway, fwiw, my experience is that once you are really Fed Up and Not Going to Do This Anymore, it actually happens fairly easily. Or maybe it's just that at that stage one's heart is hardened sufficiently.
Of course, in a nursing context, as with vacuum cleaners, sucking is the very thing you want. Just as you want the really tacky duct tape.
I hate the thought of leaving him to cry it out
Cuddle, don't give him the boob.
Erm, read, did you say some time that you had some medical training? Because your thoughts on breastfeeding are screwy to say the least.
113, 115 are absolutely right. Just decide on what you're going to do, don't make the first step TOO drastic, and stick to it. Hopefully he'll surprise you and respond really quickly.
Did Teo ever get back with how his date went? Was that even tonight?
(colloquial) insane, demented, or unreasonable
i'm sad to read this hostile response
i'm not sure to what do you refer, the weaning method or kidney stones, though both has some basis on references which if i wished i could reproduce
just i think that weaning methods being too traumatic and scarring child for life sentiments are false and exagerrated
Not hostile, just don't like seeing misinformation given. Yes, I think the weaning method is unreasonable - oldfashioned and unpleasant. The kidney stones I would love to see references for, as I've never heard of it before. (In 12 years of baby-related reading, talking, knowing umpteen breast-feeding mothers, midwives, breast-feeding counsellors etc.)
some people continue to breastfeed like up to 2 yrs old
Yes, it's recommended by the WHO.
oh, i found two more mistakes, good
'and waited'
'are'
119
sorry if i said something you did not like
i've checked the breastfeeding guidelines and indeed they say breastfeed as long as you wish
until even 3 yrs old and even longer without any health consequences for the mother and the child,
well, i'm not a pediatrician, it was good to update
my knowledge, though i'm sure i read an article on urolithiasis and breastfeeding somewhere, can't find it online though
may be it was even not in english
but still, to breastfeed up to 3 yrs and longer i find like very inconvenient and tiring for the mother and ill habit forming for the child and even gross,
in m y opinion only, sorry
well, my sister will follow my advices and without any health consequences, that's for sure
and you of course free to follow your WHO guidelines, it's a matter of preferences
People call Richard Thompson "dark"
I wouldn't say RT is dark at all.
Hi read! Thanks for checking it out. I only know a few mothers who have breastfed 'til 3 years, and they felt good about it - but they were not nursing around the clock, or the way you would if you were experiencing a food shortage. It was pretty much once in the evening, by the end of it.
I'm happy to keep going, but I just don't like this new dynamic that's come up in the last few days: "I don't want you to leave the bed while Im sleeping in it". That won't work for me, because that's when I get a lot of things done, sleeping in my own bed being one.
I weaned PK at night at about 15 months, then I think except for one bedtime feeding a few months later. But I did breastfeed him until he was about 2 1/2. It was not inconvenient, tiring, or gross.
That sounds about perfect. Although he's still pre-verbal, breastfeeding time is when he lets me know how his day is going, and I get to stop everything and pay full attention. We share jokes and crack each other up. He invites his stuffed animals to join in (the phone once got invited, which was weird). It's a good connecting time.
i don't know
may be i'll change my mind when i'll have my own child, for mothers it is sure feels very different
i did not want to insult
that's just my personal opinion
i do not understand why people need to say something which will hurt other people feelings and that aggressively
even if it's a joke or if you really think that
still you can always choose some other word
sorry of course for moralising
may be i need to get more insensitive around here
Breastfeeding until 2 or 3 seems odd to me. Food is plentiful, give those tits a rest.
While "screwy" isn't a compliment, the connotation is far milder than insane, demented, or unreasonable. More like "wacky" or "goofy" or "kinda weird".
I mean, it's not as though the only reason to bfeed is because solid food is expensive. Especially at the rate breastfeeding moms eat.
Is "screwy" more hurtful to other people's feelings than "gross"?
read, for what it's worth, you may have been reading asilon a bit more aggressively than meant, not certain.
Everything I've seen about the subject, and that's not much, suggests there isn't medical consensus. There is certainly a lot of disagreement about what's best, so I suspect it's a subject anyone would do well to step carefully around labeling things as correct or incorrect. That's already way more than I, a non-parent and the wrong sex to boot, should say about it!
FWIW, it's tiresome to have to justify one's child-rearing practices by referring to Medical Authority. Whose business is it how long anyone else breastfeeds?
if 133 was to 131, i was going to say something about that, but figured I'd already said enough (but medical `authority' had already been brought into the thread)
131: It's also a subject, like a lot of parenting topics, where there is no middle ground between either your child does X and goes to Harvard or fails to do X and DIES HORRIBLY.
I am told that I was weaned around nine months and immediately contracted a series of chronic ear infections that lasted until I was, oh, six. HORRIBLY. I have no advice for Penny, just a lot of sympathy.
Also, medical authority changes its mind every five years.
137: but authoritatively so!
all joking aside, it's a real issue with training.
I think more to the point, any benefits are fairly small, and are balanced by benefits to mommy of doing things that don't drive her batshit, and benefits to baby of not having a neurotic mother.
139: This is true in situations where there isn't medical consensus, and where the mother is already aware of her options.
141: Even in situations where there is medical consensus, it is often still true. And making women "aware of their options" is best done by, you know, being kind and supportive rather than rabbiting on about Damaging the Baby!!!
Even sometimes when there is medical consensus. There is, for example, medical consensus that breastfeeding is best. But if mommy is suffering from post-partum depression, or had pregnancy gallstones and needs to have her gallbladder out (or heck, maybe just needs to return to work), recognizing that sometimes medical consensus can go stuff it is a lot healthier for mom and baby than mom beating herself up over not being a perfect mom.
Or if she just doesn't want to breastfeed.
Oh totally. It's such a demanding job looking after a baby, to do it without having some choice in the work set up (this bit is important to me, this bit isn't) if you weren't depressed already, that would put you there.
And making women "aware of their options" is best done by, you know, being kind and supportive rather than rabbiting on about Damaging the Baby!!!
Yes, good things are better than bad things, by definition.
I'm just saying, it's a bit much how anytime women say "give us a break with all this so-called helpful advice" someone has to get all condescending about how Some Women Aren't Aware of Their Options, You Know.
Yeah, but Ned you'd be amazed at how total strangers feel free to step in and put the fear in you that you may be about to harm your kid, everything from vaccinations (pro and anti) to stuff about behaviour and development - to the point that I honestly didn't know whether Emerson was pulling my leg upthread, even though it sounded like Emerson being funny it also sounded like just the sort of thing you hear all the time -Look out! There's a book about it! Can't remember the name! Your kid's in danger!
I'm mostly made of Teflon for this stuff now. You know, Teflon that harms bird's lungs.
Teflon makes you unable to write plurals.
And Ned, this isn't at you at all, but part of what gets me going about this is that I used to stand politely while carrying my really heavy baby and give people my ear about all this, but inside I'd be thinking "how about while you talk, you make us both a sandwich, or take the baby for a second, or something so that I'd actually not be getting further behind in my day by standing here looking all interested as if I haven't been researching like a fiend since I decided to try to get pregnant?"
151: It's too damn bad that isn't pithy enough for a tshirt slogan, because man, could you sell a lot of them.
But I get it, that babies are so fragile that we have this response like they're all our responsibility, and I think that response is a good one, except the way we've set up our culture the only way it plays out is lots of advice, not lots of actual help.
IF I WERE YOU MISSY I WOULD GET RID OF THOSE DIAPERS AND JUST USE COLD WET RAGS. NOT THAT I'M TELLING YOU HOW TO LIVE YOUR LIFE.
SHRIMP BOATS IS A COMIN, WE'LL PARTY TONIGHT
153: Advice, specifically, to mothers--who are actually the people who are taking on the vast, vast majority of that responsibility. Wouldn't it be nice to have, oh, advice to fathers, aunts, friends, waitstaff, customer service folks, secretaries, professionals, baristas, and casual bystanders about:
1. How to entertain kids who are bored while mama conducts business;
2. How to help harassed parents whose children are acting up in public;
3. How to talk to children;
4. What you can do to be kind to that pregnant lady;
5. How to help a lost child;
6. How to support a mom whose kid is arguing with her about wanting that toy/snack/to stay longer at the playground, and she's saying no;
7. What kinds of stuff on your desk/behind the counter will entertain a small child, for free;
etc.
Or if she just doesn't want to breastfeed.
Choosing not to isn't the end of the world, but if the only reason someone doesn't is that they don't feel like it, that person is kind of an asshat.
You don't think fathers get unsolicited advice?
I love you GRANDMA, even when I have no idea what you're talking about with the shrimp boats.
Realized that I need to make it clear I actually was/am asking for advice on this thread. That's not what I'm talking about.
Walt, I'm sure fathers get lots of it. It would bug me if I were a father.
I think everybody resents unsolicited advice.
I used to get it at my old job, and it bugged me. But with a baby, the stakes are so high, and it's so personal, and there's so much work to do, it's like someone wandering onto your job site and advising you without helping.
gswift, you are going to stir things up. I have to go to bed, but I don't think you're right. People are built differently. I had a huge animal like drive to breastfeed. It surprised me. If a woman doesn't have that drive, I'm sure her love for the baby will come out some other way. I think of all the work it would be to feed a baby round the clock with a bottle, how could I call that person an asshat?
re: 156
Not really. Some people just don't like it. And it's basically their business if they don't. Also, for a lot of people, breast-feeding is really inconvenient.*
* and I don't mean in some trite 'I can't nurse in this Prada suit' way.
159: Of course they do, but not to the same extent mothers do. Anyway, I didn't mean in the pigeonholing people on the street way; I meant more in the "endless articles" sort of way.
158: Meh. They aren't *your* boobs.
Raising kids involves any number of things that aren't fun or that I don't feel any special biological urge to do. That's just how it is.
Of course there's work and physiology and any number of reasons it can't get done. But there's not insignificant evidence that it gives kids a leg up healthwise, and if the reason you're not doing it is "I don't feel the urge" or because it's an inconvience of the trite variety, that's pretty lame.
For some of you, your replies have already been pre-empted by Emerson.
I think part of the unsolicited advice is that on some deep biological level everyone believes that whatever parental choices they would make are Holy Writ. I know that once I had children, every single ill-thought-out parenting prejudice that was rattling around my brain suddenly seemed like it was hallowed by centuries of tradition.
re:160
I presume your comment numbers are off by a number or two?
#156: bollocks. Look around you and try and work out who was breastfed and who wasn't. Then give up, because it's impossible, because you can't tell the difference, because in countries with clean water supplies, it doesn't make a practically significant difference.
I'd also add, on the basis of the two (?me neither) "lactation consultants" (?yes really) I have met along with their offspring, that the psychological damage done to a kid by having Mum constantly rabbiting on to complete fucking strangers at parties about how they breastfed Junior till he was 16, is an order of magnitude greater than any effects of infantile nutrition.
Dsquare was weaned with a blowtorch, it seems.
161: The thing is, not wanting to, for women who don't, isn't a matter of "I didn't feel like it." No matter how much you love your kids, having a baby sucking on you for hours a day, yelling until you come across with the nipple, depending on the kid possibly demanding that you do absolutely nothing else while feeding them (Newt wouldn't let me read or talk -- he'd refuse to nurse until I was motionless, silent, and not holding anything but him. He never figured out how to enforce a no-TV rule, though, which kept me sane), and so on, is a big weird deal. I didn't mind it (largely found it easier than the alternative), but even leaving aside people for whom it's actually painful, it's not a trivial imposition.
Given that the health benefits, while real, are pretty small (I defy anyone to pick me out of my cohort as the unusual one who got the benefits of breastmilk), judging someone who finds the imposition too much seems harsh.
I defy anyone to pick me out of my cohort as the unusual one who got the benefits of breastmilk
The comparison is complicated by survivor bias.
re: 168
In the West? Seriously?
I think part of the unsolicited advice is that on some deep biological level everyone believes that whatever parental choices they would make are Holy Writ.
My sense as a non-parent is that it's completely motivated by fear of breaking the baby. Here is this tiny infant, so full of promise and so helpless, and anything that happens to it is my fault. Oh fuck. Fortunately, everything I do for this baby is sanctioned by science! You're doing something different with your baby? You'll break it! You must break it, because if yours doesn't break and we're doing different things then mine will break!
168: Come on, pretty much every baby boomer was bottle fed. And while blaming them for modern ills is fun, there wasn't an epidemic of child death.
For anyone who wants a break from the breastfeeding conversation, I really can't recommend this highly enough.
Hell, my mother used to smoke cigarettes while feeding me powdered milk out of a bottle, and I turned out okay. Well, more or less. I guess.
It's very difficult to get reliable, unbiased information on breastmilk versus formula. It all gets mixed in with ideals and ideologies of good motherhood, including the medico-moralization of child care. I'm all for breastfeeding, but I don't like the earth mother crap that too often seems to accompany the advocacy of this infant feeding practice.
In the West? Seriously?
No, no, that was meant as a joke.
I will mildly troll this thread by relating the following personal experience. Fleur had a great deal of trouble breastfeeding our first child. In the face of suasion from meddling doctors and relatives, and with the relentless prodding of a dogmatic lactation counselor from the La Leche League, she was eventually able to make it work, and she was ultimately very happy to have done so. If it hadn't been for social pressure and guilt-tripping, I don't know if she would have been able to persevere.
I didn't win any friends with argument (in another context) that there is an socially optimal level of crude stigmatization, but this could be another data point for that thesis.
So very many, many things are worth having done, but not worth doing, like the Chartered Financial Analyst qualification.
Napoleon and Lucretia have two playgrounds that they go to - the middle class one and the one that's largely full of asylum seekers (London's like that). In the middle class playground, the kids basically do not speak to one another. In the working class playground, they immediately start playing all sorts of lovely social games.
The reason for this is that the middle class parents are all wandering around about two yards behind their offspring, ever ready to catch them if they fall. The working class parents are sitting down, smoking. It's a funny old world.
The reason for this is that the middle class parents are all wandering around about two yards behind their offspring, ever ready to catch them if they fall. The working class parents are sitting down, smoking. It's a funny old world.
I have such difficulty letting go some days. One of the things I appreciate most about my parents is that they let me make decisions and mistakes without intervention.
Now, as a parent, I struggle and often intervene too much.
Look around you and try and work out who was breastfed vaccinated and who wasn't.
Heh. Roughly corresponds to my experience, although the lower SES playground I'm thinking of is still fairly middle-class, just a notch or too less affluent and with more working class people.
(Funny immigration moment: having Sally tell me about her friend from school who spent three days walking through the desert to get from Mexico to the US, but he was lucky because his coyote ("Not the kind you know about, Mom. This is someone whose job it is to help people come to the US.") did a good job and was really nice to them. I always think of undocumented immigrants in NY as people who got off planes and overstayed tourist visas -- hearing a 'walking across the desert' story was a surprise.)
177: Herd immunity makes this an awfully poor analogy, no? There's no tipping point before which formula-fed babies are reaping the benefits of being breast-fed.
