Bottle confusion.

Now that Jim is almost two months old (seriously! two months! when the hell did that happen?), it occurred to me that I haven't been away from him for more than about forty-five minutes at a time, and, while I love the little bastard* dearly, it would be nice to go out and buy some clothes that fit or have some brief parental alone time. The trouble, of course, is that I am the source of All Things Good (read: milk), and since Jim rather likes eating regularly, I'm kind of tethered to him unless we find an alternative way to get some milk down his throat occasionally.

This, of course, means bottles, and bottles, my friends, are freaking confusing. Apparently breastfed babies sometimes have difficulties taking a bottle because plastic nipples aren't even remotely like actual boobage. To make matters even more interesting, apparently all babies have different preferences, so I've spent the last few days staring at Amazon reviews for Breastflow, Dr. Brown, Avent, Playtex, Pigeon, Nuk, Bornfree, etc., until I nearly passed out from fatigue and bafflement.


I did a Google image search for 'variety of bottles' and this is what I found. This is probably not what we will be feeding Jim.

I finally decided on one to start with (Playtex drop-ins, because they seem to be highly recommended and they offer a sample pack with a variety of nipples to try), but now I'm faced with another issue. I find myself feeling inexplicably jealous at the thought of anyone else feeding Jim. I suppose it's not that odd - I mean, really, if he's not suffering from some sort of milk-Stockholm-Syndrome, how can I be sure he'll still like me better than all things? I'll have to resort to cultivating some kind of irresistible charm rather than continuing with the good ol'-fashioned "Hey look, I got tits!" method. (works on babies AND menfolk!)

This feeling is not helped much by the fear (backed up by every breastfeeding book and website around) that once he's had the bottle, he'll prefer the relative ease of an artificial nipple and be too lazy to work for it at the breast. I'm hoping that we can mitigate that risk (and my insecurities) by only giving him a bottle once or twice a week and keeping him strictly at the breast otherwise.


Stalking his milk-y prey.

Of course, all of this is probably moot anyway, since he'll most likely take after his father and eagerly take food (and boobs) at any moment and in any way he can possibly get them.

*Does bastardry depend on marital status at conception or birth? If birth, substitute in 'monster,' 'tyke,' 'creature,' etc. We must be accurate, you know.