Decisions, decisions, decisions

A serious post this morning. When you have babies, you have so many serious choices to make and you really do not know if anything you are doing is the right thing or wrong thing. And then you add in product recalls, choices around which formula to give your baby, or whether you should or should not, and crappy toys made with lead paint, pets in the house…shit.

I was reading the newest edition of Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, for a good three minutes, this morning. He writes about having a cat in the house and even in the “tall cage bed” that his son, Mr Bumby slept in. Hemingway says; “There were people who said that it was dangerous to leave a cat with a baby. The most ignorant and prejudiced said that a cat would suck a baby’s breath and kill him. Others said that a cat would lie on a baby and the cat’s weight would smother him.”

Well our cats are still scared of the twins so they make a wide berth around them. In fact the only other male in the house, my nemesis, Bubba Helios Longfellow has given up on sleeping on the bed and now accepts, with yowls of protest that wake the neighbours three doors down of course, sleeping on a cat blanket that sits over the heat vent. However, even though the cats make wide circles around the kids, Story is intrigued by these marvelous felines and tries to sneak up on the sleeping cats. Fortunately her lack of stealth provides the cats with ample warning.

But back to the serious shit. How do you know what is the right thing to do? Some people say they should be able to sleep through the night and if they don’t, let them cry until they realize that there is not help coming. Sounds frighteningly savage to me. However, getting up at midnight, three, four thirty and then six and then going to work outside the house is becoming savage in its own way.

People get at you for “falling victim to the breast feeding Nazis” or others get at you for feeding formula. One friend actually told me that he made his own formula for his kids. Once he realized what formula is he did recant that story. And then that leads to the baby food. Mushed up veggies and stuff. Make your own they say. Who has a regular diet of so many different things that they can mush up for kids? Most days we are lucky to have a loaf of bread and cheese in the house to eat. So we get those little Heinz organic foods that the twins love. Butternut squash at lunch, carrots for a snack, green beans for the farts, and mixed veggies for dinner. Thank you Mr Heinz! They even have those cute little jars with organic baby food that are becoming spice jars for when we do have our feet underneath us again and we can cook. Why not?

I suppose the bottom line is that you only do what you think is best. I also ask myself, what would Dr Benjamin Spock have said. Dr Spock, the baby doctor, not the Star Trek dude. Although the Star Trek dude might have some baby wisdom as well. It just gets to a point where you do not tell people what you are doing. Smile and laugh, and say, its all good. Because it really is.