I was doing some more thinking yesterday about the various roles parents play with their kids, in particularly the whole baby feeding thing.
Back in the good ol’ days, mom’s breastfed their babies and stayed home washing dishes and dusting the bookcase during the day. Dad kissed mom in the morning and headed out to the office to earn a good honest wage. Kids eventually grew up to respect their dads but really it was their mom that they really bonded with. At least that is what I learned of the good ol’ days from Leave It To Beaver. (Sidebar, ever wonder what the website www.leaveittobeaver.com would look like – don’t worry it is totally safe for work and totally not what www.leaveittobeaver.com should be).
One of the reasons that kids bond so strongly to their mothers is all of that breastfeeding. Babies totally dig that nice cuddling, bountiful supply of milk, and the smell of mom. That’s right, babies have crazy senses of smell. Don’t believe me, just check out this other oddly retro designed webpage that discusses just this topic.
Anywho. Let’s say you are a modern era daddy stuck away from home (or trapped in the basement like me) from 8-12 hours a day. Right when you get home, the baby starts crashing for the night. You start feeling depressed because your baby seems to want to hang with mom during your scarce few minutes home while the baby is awake.
What can you do?
Now, this part is going to be a little controversial so work with me for a second. Let’s say for the sake of argument that you and your wife have decided to bottle feed. It could be formula (controversial) or expressed milk (extremely time consuming since it involves the time to get the milk out of mom and then the time to put the milk in the baby – with formula and breastfeeding this process takes about half as long). For the sake of the rest of this post, let’s say that you are okay with some form of bottle feeding.
In that case, you can pick up the bottle and feed the baby.
The baby will be warm and cuddly with an increasingly full belly and the enjoying the smell of…dad.
And if I know anything about the difference of the genders, it is that if the baby is able to remember the smell of the mom, there is no way that baby is going to forget the smell of the dad.
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My husband was gone for about three months, and when he returned the baby remembered who he was! Not kidding… maybe it was smell, maybe it was the video chats. I don’t know.
Anyway, another option that you do not list– expressed breastmilk in advance. My son just turned one, and yes, it has taken a lot of effort on my part, but he has only recieved breastmilk. I pump… at first just occassionally so I could go out or my husband could feed him so I could sleep, but when I returned to work, it was 3 x during the work day (two breaks plus lunch). Now that he is one, I pump just twice a day and am working on weaning from the pump. We still nurse when together.
After all of that bonding time, there are a lot of days when my husband is around, that the baby would rather snuggle with daddy… even though daddy is gone for months at a time for his job!
I should have noted that by “only recieved breastmilk,” I mean that he has not had formula. He eats “regular” food as well now, but as far as liquid food it is breastmilk.