To My Son: Do NOT Respect Your Elders. (Lest you become a Nazi.)

That's right. SUCK IT, curmudgeons.

Seriously. Have you interacted with adults lately? Because I have. And a great many of them do not exhibit any characteristics I think deserve respect.

I'm not just talking about the adults who are murderers, sexual deviants, politicians, and other ostensibly untrustworthy folks.

I'm talking about normal adults. Egocentric, environmentally abusive, and materialistic. Maybe not most of them. I sure hope not MOST of them. But a lot of them. A LOT. Probably most.

I commute with them, they're our clients at work, I see them in the grocery store.

I have absolutely no reason to respect them, except in the sense that they are fellow humans, which is certainly worth something. But, children are also humans.

And children happen to be innocent, curious, and genuine humans. THOSE are qualities I respect.

If I ask myself what possible reason there is to respect grumpy, jerk hole adults over sweet, energetic children, I can think of only one. Because adults are in control, and they say so.

Eff that. Hard. It is so transparently wrong and self-serving that it makes my heart pound and my Irish skin turn red.

Because I don't see much morality here on adult street. Now, I don't think our species is a lost cause or anything. I mean, I saw the Buzzfeed that will restore your faith in humanity. And this one, too.

But, if we need our faith restored, that's a pretty good indication that something shook our faith in the first place. Something like valuing money, power, and things WAY too much. And something like valuing the earth and fellow humans not NEARLY enough.

I'm not teaching my kid to respect adults with values like those.

Because that's how you get Nazis.

Sounds crazy? If only.

Hitler didn't inject his subordinates with genocide juice. He capitalized on an allegiance to obedience. And obedience is little more than respect for authority. And if we tell our kids to respect all adults BECAUSE ADULTS, that doesn't help them distinguish authority that should be obeyed from authority that should not.

And if they don't learn to make that distinction, they might end up like Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi in charge of expediting death, the average guy who had a normal family life and was declared sane by six psychologists at trial. Or like Rudolf Hoss, commandant of Auschwitz, who had a similar upbringing. They and a lot of Germans were students of obedience-centric indoctrination, at home, in school, at church.

Yes. Nazis were regular people who valued obedience more than anything else. And then sh*t got crazy. And so did they.

Scary, yes? Stanley Milgram thought so, too. And so he tried to prove that Americans were different from Germans. And he found that we weren't so much.

And before you lunatics accuse me of defending Nazis, I'm not. I'm not responsible for judging them or anyone else, but I'm a big fan of accountability. And that's precisely why this is so important to me.

I'm not saying that every obedient kid will fail to recognize evil and to slam on the brakes. But, I am saying that there is an inherent danger in emphasizing obedience. And, I am saying that obedience is a shortcut, easier and more concrete than cultivating morality in your child. And, I am saying that you should invest the time and trust in cultivating morality instead.

Look, no one saw Hitler coming. So, just in case.

Finley, I know you have a good heart. You will know right and wrong. That is enough.

You do not always need to be obedient. Just considerate. And loving. That is enough.

You do not need to give your elders more respect than any other life. Like a plant. That is enough.

Merry Holidays: 3 Things I Must Say on November 6th.

I can't take another year's worth of yammering about whether it's Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays. It hurts my brain so much. This is your classic ain't-nobody-got-time-for-that scene, as tired as I am of that whole cray-craze.

Let's get real. Holiday season is hardcore. You should either be risking your life on the hunt for inhumane deals at 4am or stocking up on mason jars and busting the sh*t out of homemade gifts. You should either be assembling your faux tree and lighting your pine-scented candle or wrestling a real one up as your dog licks the sap off your bod. You should be pinning one thousand cookie recipes, eighty-six ideas for table settings even though you're not hosting, and at least twelve disappointing lists claiming to offer ideas for man-stocking stuffers.

Bottom line, there's a sh*t ton to do, and OH, it's THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR. So effing stop with all those IT'S NOT HOLIDAYS IT'S CHRISTMAS AND I WANT AN OOMPA LOOMPA NOW DADDY memes. Cuz I'm about to lose my sh*t. In fact, here it goes. In the form of a list. Obviously.

1. You serious, Christian?

What the f*ckity f*ck would Jesus really say in response to your b*tching about what to call the celebration of love surrounding his birthday?

Granted, He probably wouldn't say "f*ckity f*ck", and I'm not absurd enough to offer a precise guess. But if there's one thing I got out of ten years of Catechism other than ten years worth of cookies and juice, it's that He wants us to love even hoes like our bros. That's just how it goes.

If you're restricting your seasonal love to fellow Christians only, you're doing it wrong.

2. You're kind of an idiot if you wish someone a happy birthday on YOUR birthday.

Try to follow the analogy. Because you really shouldn't wish people happy birthday on your birthday INSTEAD OF on their birthdays. That is selfish and lame.

Know what else is selfish and lame?

Yes. Thinking that the only people celebrating something during what happens to be the Christmas season are Christians.

Is it really that gosh darn unthinkable that other holidays exist and that people celebrate them and that other people want to wish them pleasant celebrations?

3. Say whatever the efferoo you wanna say, and leave that shizz at that.

Regardless of the above number two, you aren't the government or the stores or the who or whatever else that has decided to embrace all holidays over the one and only Christmas. So if you want to keep on focusing on your holiday of choice, if the fact that you're in the majority motivates you to focus on the majority and ignore the rest, just do your thang and shut the bejesus uuuup.

The most eye-burning, ear-bleeding loathsome conduct ever? When people who are in the majority cry discrimination for no reason. I'm not saying it can't happen, but that's tricky water. And probably the worst thing you can do for your boat is to start lamenting over what bullsh*t it is that other people are celebrating holidays around the same time as your holiday.

I say all this with love. I mean, I'm not particularly thick-skinned, and I'm a Christmas-obSESSed Christian. And I just couldn't give less f*cks how anyone else phrases their holiday greetings. So I think if you really try, you can get the eff over it. Just try.

I know, I pretend to write a parenting blog. So, let me tie this into parenting: I don't want my kid to be a self-centered, closed-minded jerk hole. The end.

Dear lady sitting across from me on the train who just rolled her eyesat a kid who was being loud,

I rarely sit in these seats that face other seats. I find the accidental eye contact disrupting. Is it accidental when I zone out as I stare at a stranger, trying to figure out whatever I think I can figure out about a person by staring at her face? Moving on.

Well, I had no choice today. I always leave work early enough to get an emergency exit three-seater. Because being able to escape a disaster through the window is as important as having a personal space buffer between me and my seatmate.

But today, Obama got in my way at Faneuil Hall. I had to walk up into Government Center and back down to Congress. I then tried to cross a street to continue making my way to North Station and got screamed at and possibly almost shot by a jacked up cop, not knowing that the motorcade was about to come through. My B, officer.

Anyway, I'm guessing you don't care about that. Because I got the sense that you aren't big on empathy.

When you sat down across from me, my first thought was that you were pretty. Not gorgeous, so don't let it get to your merely pretty head.

But then a little kid made a rather vocal lap up and down the aisle of the train car with his mom, who was visibly desperate to find a seat so he'd calm down. And then, you, in the words of Kevin McCallister, woof. Not so pretty anymore.

Approaching 48 seconds of this child's noise, you looked at the pair and rolled your eyes. You rolled your eyes aggressively. Which is kind of hilarious, because if you can picture an adult aggressively rolling her eyes, you know it makes her look an awful lot like a petulant child. Irony is my favorite.

I know I sound critical. But they say that the flaws we're most critical about in others are ones we see in ourselves.

I don't know who they are, but they're at least kind of right. Because I used to do the same thing you just did. All the time. Back when I was pretty.

Back when I had a tan. And highlights. And time to put on makeup. And money for makeup. If nothing else because I didn't bother to get the expensive organic sh*t before.

Before I became a mom.

But back to you. As soon as your eyes completed the roll, mine shot directly to your bare ring finger.

Of course, your marital status told me nothing definitive. It's probably equally possible that you're a mom. Maybe not equally. I don't know the statistics.

But I was looking for the only clue I might find. Because I hope you're not a mom.

Us moms do sometimes get frustrated when our kids go ape bonkers. I might not know for sure why, but I like to think it's because we love them so much that we internalize their frustration. Not because the sound just annoys us. But then, we are still human. (Awesome humans. But still human.) And okay, it might be annoying sometimes.

But, that's with our own kids. I'd like to think (or maybe just hope or wish) that moms have it in them to sympathize with other moms when they witness a kid being... well, a kid.

The general public really likes to hate on kids. They're called entitled, spoiled, out of control. All because they're not behaving like adults.

All you uptight biddies are convinced THIS GENERATION is so awful. Guess what? Y'all been thinkin' that for a century's worth of generations. Seriously. Just go read that. All of it. And then shut the eff up about kids just being kids. With a little trust and a lot of good modeling, they'll grow up to be good humans.

Being controlled every minute of the day? That sure as sh*t will not improve the situation. Humans like freedom. It's why we stole this land and waged war on our government in the name of democracy. You can't stop that sh*t.

Now, I'm actually not writing this to be critical. Like I said, I've been there. Irritated by the noise of youth. So, I'm writing to share one thing that motherhood has opened my eyes to.

I'm looking for a better word for selflessness, but I've got nothing. So, SELFLESSNESS.

I used to walk around incredulous at all the interferences in my routine, as though they were intended to annoy me.

The persons walking slowly and getting in MY way on the sidewalk. The person who chose to take the empty seat next to ME. The mom who couldn't stop her kid from giving ME a headache.

But now I know.

The less you focus on yourself, the happier you get. Try it.

XO,
Rachel

PS YOU WEREN'T EVEN IN THE QUIET CAR. COACH BEHIND THE ENGINE, B*TCH.

6 Reasons I Want to Save My Kid from School.

I hate braggers and humblebraggers as much as you do.

So, I'm starting with a disclaimer that I don't think I'm exceptionally smart. I got lucky with some amount of natural intelligence somewhere. But if I were anywhere close to exceptionally smart, I would have either dominated in school without breaking a sweat, which I did not do, or I would have followed my curiosities outside of school, also which I did not do.

I realize that some people are smart enough to do well in school, learn, and not let it kill their curiosity. Maybe my kid will be smarter than me, but I was not smart enough to learn in a traditional school environment.

That said, I really was the sh*t in first grade. Not only was I in the BLUE reading group, I was smart enough to realize that we were color coded by intelligence, and the smartest kids were in the blue group. I enjoyed feeling smart, so I did my best on our stapled packets of purple-inked worksheets fresh off the old school roller copier. But sometimes "my best" involved rushing through the last page, because I could only enjoy morning recess if I had already finished all my worksheets for the day. I just couldn't wait to get my boogery hands on the box of scrap paper and free draw until lunch.

When fifth grade rolled around, it was puzzle cubes and Oregon Trail. In math, we got to pick an educational game from the back table if we finished our problems early. And there were only a few of those little plastic bags filled with interlocking pieces of gloriously tricky three-dimensional foam, so I had to act fast. And while the Oregon Trail probably related more to social studies, there was only room for computers in the science classroom. And actually, dysentery and cholera? Oregon Trail really kind of was a science game. Either way, I gave Mrs. Kulis my full attention every day only so that I could crush our daily assignment and move onto the important decisions of whether to forge the river and how many buffalo to shoot.

But around sixth grade, things started to change. We had to learn more stuff and harder stuff, so we couldn't just get our lesson and be left to work at it at our own pace with the promise of more entertaining endeavors awaiting those who finished early.

That's when we find out that, as promised, I'm not all that smart. It would have been smart to learn the only way that was available, and to pursue things I found interesting in my spare time. But I was so stupidly resolved against this kind of learning that I spent all my time finding ways not to do it.

If there's one thing any of us know about education, it's our own experience. And my experience was that control and boredom killed any desire I had to learn. And it was really, really dead by high school. Although I still found ways to get good grades, I was determined not to learn under the boring conditions. So:

1. I played Frogger every day in AP Calculus.

And got a ONE on the AP test at the end of the year. It wasn't like golf. That was the worst possible score. If you leave every answer blank, maybe you could get a zero, but I think your name alone earned you a one. I managed to do well on some other AP tests, but there was no fooling Calculus.

My best friend and I were seated at opposite sides of a table in an isolated corner of the library for the exam. We could have cheated, if either of us knew anything at all, but instead I think we quietly made dinosaur noises at each other to pass the time.

But, before Calculus came Pre-Calculus. Of course. And even though I also had access to primitive digital games on my TI-83 during Pre-Calculus and Honors Physics, they were two of only three classes in high school in which I actually did more work ON assignments than on AVOIDING assignments. (The other was Civics, and I got my BA in Politics, so, you know, go figure.)

And those two classes were the only classes in which I was taught by teachers who were also school volunteers in this program called FIRST. If you don't feel like clicking the link, I'll just add that it's an extracurricular activity in which students at participating high schools build robots and compete with each other.

FIRST was entirely elective and non-compulsory. So, naturally, it was the only venue where I was really eager about learning. So much so, that I was even willing to learn from those two teachers in school. Accordingly, trying to force kids to learn stuff they don't want to learn and will not remember will never make sense to me.

2. I cheated on an Honors English final.

I survived this class on a combination of Spark Notes, a crafty way of working tangents on open ending questions, and begging my friends to tell me everything they remembered about a book on our way into the room to take a test.

So, obviously, at the end of the year, I didn't know sh*t. Ordinarily some strategic last minute cramming would work fine, but this was junior year, which meant I already had Senioritis. Even one full night of studying seemed like too much genuine effort. Fortunately, our teacher played one of those moves where they give you like 10 potential questions for the open-ended section, tell you that six of them will appear, and that you'll get to choose three to answer, or something like that. But, Mrs. Gavin even broke it down into categories, so I was really able to narrow down the number of questions that I had to "study". Pre-writing answers on school paper seemed a lot like studying. And it was really easy to pull them out and append them to my test before handing it in.

I knew it wasn't fair. But, there was plenty of not fair going on. Like, a few days before that transgression, I got wind that the other Civics teacher let his class make posters containing answers to display in the room during their final exam. Since Civics was one of the three classes I actually worked at, and since this enabled our eventual valedictorian to squeak ahead of my GPA by .02 or something, I didn't care too much about fair.

3. I plagiarized a Spanish paper in English, ran it through an online translator, and handed it in.

And was SHOCKED when my teacher figured it out.

No, I wasn't. But, I really felt it was necessary to do something so egregious. I mean, yes, there was that cheating thing I just wrote about. But what I did there was about as close as I ever got to really doing what was asked of me. I just stopped short of the step where you memorize the material in order to regurgitate it the next day. And honestly, short-term memorization was my jam. If I bothered to stay up for two more hours that night, I would have gotten the same grade without breaking the rules.

But now a word of advice. If you get an assignment in Honors Spanish 5 to research some guy of Spanish significance and then write a few paragraphs about him in Spanish, just invest the three hours it takes to do this. Sure, it's much quicker to copy and paste some crap straight from the internet into Babblefish, then copy and paste that result directly into Word, type your name, and click print. But, your teacher will figure it out. And, making this statement is pretty darn risky. Not every teacher is as forgiving as Mrs. Fallon was.

Now, without psychoanalyzing my moral development, let's just say there was a time when I would've considered this scandalous beyond belief. And nothing changed in my home life over this time, so there aren't too many variables at work here. I can think of only one: more time spent in school.

4. I played about half the notes in "Instrumental Music" (code for band).

Probably a bit more than half. Unless we were marching, in which case, probably a bit less.

In elementary school, I loved nothing more than weekly music class. But it quickly became the same few songs and games over and over. The thrill of musical chairs just doesn't deepen your understanding of what music is.

Still clinging to a fading interest, I signed up to play the flute in fifth grade, which was the one and only chance you got to sign up to play an instrument in school. Violin and piano were not options. I'm not really trying to pretend I have some undiscovered talent for strings. But, I didn't enjoy practicing the flute, so I didn't do it, and I got left in the dust sometime around Mary Had a Little Lamb. I kept playing (or not playing) through high school, which was kind of worthwhile in a limited sense. But, it left me with a fundamental hatred for restrictions on when and what kids can learn based on the availability of a teacher. I think people would be surprised at what happens if you give a kid some resources and tools, and support their curiosity with trust and time. I can't say that I would have learned to play the violin or piano on my own much better than I ever learned to play the flute from Mr. Williams. But I can say that I would have learned something probably more worthwhile.

5. I succumbed to starvation and hypothermia in Chemistry.

Third period was inevitably tough. Right smack in between when I ate breakfast and lunch period. We weren't allowed to eat in classrooms or hallways, so if you couldn't stomach a big enough breakfast to last your 4+ hours, you were screwed. I was screwed.

Then there was the fact that they intentionally kept the science labs freezing cold, for some inhumane reason. If only I had realized before it was too late, I would have stuck with afternoon science classes, which gave the sun some time to warm up that side of the building.

There was probably no class I learned less in than Chemistry. Sure, I didn't usually want to pay attention. But even when I did want to, like the day before a test, I couldn't. Physical discomfort is really effing distracting.

We all know why they don't let you eat in classrooms. I know it sounds radical, but I think removing barriers to learning should be a school's most basic focus.

6. I sold out my friend for candy.

All this, and I never realized why I was so averse to doing schoolwork. I never reflected on it, never thought twice about it. If I had, I probably wouldn't have started filling out college applications for my friend Chris, who didn't want to go to college. Either way, I didn't get very far. When I begged him for his social security number, he just looked at me and said, College isn't for everyone.

College might not have been for Chris, but art was. And I'd bet he'd have been able to make a career with that talent if his high school guidance counselor had supported him taking a road he was comfortable with rather than undermining any confidence he had by bribing a little jerk named Rachel with candy to fill out college applications for him. I'm sorry, Chris.
I love candy.It's just that I had no idea that school was backwards. I thought I was backwards. I thought school was the only way to learn.

I started this by saying I don't think I'm particularly smart, but I also don't think I'm particularly dumb. And still, I thought school was the only way to learn.

The idea of pursuing interests and indulging my natural curiosity outside of school was literally inconceivable to me. I know this because I did not conceive of it. Even though it was an extension of school, my participation in FIRST should have been a clue, for sure. But seriously, I was up to my eyeballs working on avoiding doing schoolwork, which was probably harder than doing the schoolwork would have been.

Conventional school dominated 12 years of my life, and although I think I've recovered from it well, I don't want my kid to have to recover from 12 years. That's way too much of a waste of time. So I want Fin to go to a school based on the Sudbury Valley Model. Don't pretend you don't wish you went there.

6+ Months of Attachment Parenting

I was holding our one month old baby, when my sister-in-law "jokingly" announced over FaceTime that I was "spoiling" him.

I probably come across as more sensitive than I am for using quotes around jokingly. But, even the thickest-skinned mothers would find "jokes" like that lame. It's just never funny to criticize a new mom. And can we all agree that if it's not funny, it doesn't count as a joke?

Either way, my sister-in-law is certainly not the only person with a fear of "spoiling" children. Some people are convinced that practices like co-sleeping and baby-wearing will cause a baby to become too dependent on a certain level of attention, involvement, or care. But, it doesn't seem like attention, involvement, and care are bad things. So, they call it "spoiling". Because "spoiling" sounds like something you should avoid doing.

But, my questions are who are "they", and why do they care so much about how I care for my child?

Is it because "they" don't want self-centered a-holes to take over the world? Because I can get on board with that. I don't like a-holes either. So much so, in fact, that I actually do plan to avoid "spoiling" my child. But, when I say "spoiling", I'm talking about material sh*t.

I have this Facebook friend from high school. Days after announcing that she and her husband were expecting a girl, she posted a bunch of pictures of one thousand brand new outfits that she bought for her. They were all adorable, for the record. But, more recently, she posted a picture of her three-ish month old in their bed, and felt the need to add the disclaimer that NO! She doesn't sleep with us!!

If anyone cares, I actually like this girl. But, this seems remarkably backwards to me.

I think that giving a toddler too many THINGS is what spoils kids and turns them into jack wagon adults. I do not think that responding to a baby's needs turns them into the idiots who doddle in their little gang of five, taking up the whole sidewalk during rush hour, deaf to the phrase excuse me, and forcing me to step into oncoming traffic to make my train on time.

I think modeling is everything. If you want to teach your kid the importance of other people's needs, I think it makes a lot of sense to start your relationship by putting your child's needs first. I get why you're supposed to put your oxygen mask on first in the event of a plane crash, so if your postpartum experience feels like a plane crash, maybe you have no choice but to put your needs first. I get that. My mom was on anxiety medication for awhile when I was little. I get it.

But, if your postpartum life isn't a plane crash, my advice is: don't make it one. Because all this anxiety about "spoiling" babies can do that.

Part of me honestly believes that it's the baby product industry trying to scare moms away from allowing our babies to be dependent on us, because if they're not dependent on us, they're dependent on their swings, their mobiles, their security blankets. And all that sh*t just does not work as well. It makes your life harder.

When your baby cries unless you hold it, and you want to hold it, the last thing on your mind should be "spoiling" anxiety. Folding the clothes in a mad rush because you're not sure how long your baby will stay asleep after you put him down and deciding whether today is a day you shower may not seem easy. Because having an infant isn't easy. But trusting your instincts is a heck of a lot easier than trying to force a pissed off baby to be happy in a swing, although from what I hear, swings are fairly magical.

I know the fact that a baby needs a sh*tload of physical contact seems kind of nutty. Until you think about the fact that it had been living INSIDE of you for the entire nine months of its existence prior. And that it is, literally, in every way, completely dependent on you.

We readily accept that a baby's eyesight won't develop fully until six months, and we'll do sh*t like buy colorful books and toys to promote its eyesight. But, for some reason it's a challenge to believe that a baby is still developing brain chemicals that regulate emotions, and that physical contact literally creates those chemicals.

Whatever. Our kids can just live in a world populated by emotionally unstable jerk holes with good vision.

Because some people insist there's a difference between an infant's needs and an infant's wants. And they claim that babies cry not only when they need something, but also when they simply want something. Yikes. I will never believe that infants have mere preferences. These creatures can't even form a real thought. These things they "want" are dictated by instincts. Instinct: Science's word for BEST FOR SURVIVAL. Sounds a lot like a need.

I don't really think you'll permanently eff up your kid if you fail to meet a need to be held here or there. But, I do really think that crying is the only way babies communicate. Call it a need, call it a want, call it bacon. Whatever it is my baby wants to communicate, I want to encourage that communication. And the way to do that is by responding.

Dear parent complaining that your tweenager won't communicate with you, I think I know why.

I really don't want to judge how other people raise their kids. Because I downright loathe people who do that. I mean, if you love your kid, ten points for you. Ten million, even. But there are lots and lots of people who INSIST that prompt and constant responses, co-sleeping, and baby-wearing WILL cause spoiled, clingy, high maintenance behavior.

EFF THAT. I'm officially sick of this sh*t, and now that I have a pretty darn independent six month old, I can say it. In capital letters.

The real reason I'm so over it is because of my husband, who, at least partially, believed what all those f*ckers were saying about "spoiling" your baby.

I say partially, because we went through phases. Most recently, right before Finley could sit stably or move around well on his tummy, he did NOT want to be put down in his pack n play. We're talking bonkers. And not just Finley, my husband, too. Because that meant I had "spoiled" the baby. From now on, he would always have to be held.

It didn't mean that his brain was active and he needed more stimulation than a toy dangling over his face. No. It couldn't possibly mean that. It meant that he would want to be carried around until he was in high school.

Ryan and I argued about this kind of thing at least four times in Finley's six months. I would lose my sh*t every time, because I already emailed him 9,128 articles explaining that my constant contact with the baby was fulfilling a physiological need that would ultimately make him more independent.

Ryan would eventually get scared of me and stop arguing. And the next day, I would email him 832 more links. He'd pretend to read them, admit that he was wrong, and then a month or so later, we'd start over.

The very last thing I said in an argument was, Just wait until we get him a walker. Please shut up about this until then. I'm still trying to figure out why the eff we didn't order the walker sooner. Or whether I should have been more patient until he could walk on his own. Baby product industry conspiracy victim right here.

But it did solve my problem with my anxious husband. Just as I predicted, homeboy wants to be in his walker all the time. Until he gets tired, and then he wants to fall asleep in my arms or next to me.

Would he fall asleep if I left him on his own? I really don't know. And, I really, really don't care.

That's the awesome thing about ignoring all the horsesh*t anxiety. I will always help him to sleep, as long as he needs it. Pinterest told me that there are only like 940 Saturdays between your baby's birth and when s/he leaves for college. So, I will prioritize and enjoy every snuggle I can get.

5 Things You Will "Never Have Time For Again" with a Baby

When you're pregnant, once you get beyond the seven-too-many-doughnuts look, you will come across a subgroup of parents who have either developed psychic abilities, discovered time-travel, or are trying to feed you horsesh*t. They will tell you exactly how every part of your life from this point on is going to happen. From the epidural you're definitely going to need, to how much your teenagers are going to hate you.

Although I don't know how 15-year-old Finley will feel about me, I didn't get an epidural, so I'm reasonably sure it's the horsesh*t thing.

Really. The fact that no two lives are the same is completely lost on these propagandists. So, when they tell you that you're doomed to live a sleepless existence surrounded by filth alongside the spouse from whom you feel completely distant? Kick that f*cker in the shin.

Yes, your life will probably get busier once you have another human to care for. And what that means in practice VARIES. I don't know, you might end up sleepless and filthy and detached from your spouse. But I wouldn't go into parenthood with that expectation if I didn't have to. And no one has to.

Not only will your experience be different from others', it will be different every day, week, and month. I found it got easier fast. And honestly, I don't remember there ever being a point when we didn't have time for the following:

1. Cleaning the House.

Our baby is a happy guy, but he gets bored alone in his pack n play after anywhere between five and 20 minutes. I'll let him fuss a little, but I will not let him cry, so we no longer crush chores in one two-hour tag-team house cleaning event every Saturday morning. But, we never have dishes pile up, and we don't even have a dishwasher. I even get to clean the dogs' bowls every week. And I scrub our drying racks every week. We never have more than a basket worth of laundry waiting to be done. If you think I'm bragging...

The truth is that if we let Finley try to crawl around on the floor on a Wednesday, he'd be choking on dog hair, because he's still learning how to do it, and learning involves occasional face plants onto the carpet. We do vacuum and brush our dogs, but they are two of the hairiest beasts ever. So we figure once or twice a week is good enough, because otherwise it's like brushing your teeth while eating doughnuts, which kind of sounds delightful, but is mostly just silly.

But, the other truth is that I could probably vacuum after Fin's asleep instead of eating ice cream and scrolling through Pinterest. Parenthood. It's all about choices.

2. Personal Grooming.

I'll admit that I haven't had my hair cut in maybe a year, I put only mineral powder on my face on the train, and I wear yoga pants to my office job in downtown Boston more often than is acceptable, which would be technically never. But, that was equally true even before we conceived our boy. I do shower every day now, though, so, that's something.

BUT, I could easily get up a half hour earlier to try to look pretty. I could even go to sleep a half hour earlier at night to make up for it. But, my husband once made the mistake of telling me I look pretty without makeup. I haven't worn mascara since.

3. Marriage.

I don't know, we hang out every night after Fin goes to sleep. Usually we just stare at him and talk about how awesome he is, but that's serious quality bonding time if you ask me.

And we do every ordinary weekend errand as a family. Probably doesn't count as quality time, but I swear that stuff can be fun if you just decide to enjoy it. (This is why we never EVER go to Walmart, even though it would loosen up our budget.)

4. Exercise.

I'd be lying if I said I've used my jogging stroller even once. I don't know who I was kidding when I almost signed up for a Spartan Beast just over six months after my due date.

But, it is not that I don't have time for it. It would be embarrassingly easy for me to get out of bed an hour earlier than I do. I just don't want to. This is not a TOO BUSY issue, this is a TOO LAZY issue. A TOO COMFY issue. For now, I'll just pretending that walking a lot during the day counts.

5. Making Dinner.

I guess this is kind of a lie, because it's actually my very cool husband who makes dinner while I get Finley to sleep. And usually he doesn't even complain. My point is simply that it only takes one person to tend to the baby. If you have a spouse or any other help, that means one person is always free to tend to the household.

This might be a little unfair because my husband works for himself and I work for a non-profit, so we don't have the longest hours. But, we also don't have the biggest paychecks, if that makes you feel better.

And, speaking of big paychecks, I have a friend who has THREE housekeepers. (I really don't know how big her and her husband's paychecks are, but, if I had to guess...) Their baby is a couple months older than ours and started food a month before, and when she told me that there isn't time to do homemade baby food, I believed her. But, we don't even have one housekeeper and are finding homemade baby food to be no sweat.

Everyone's life is different.

3 Things I Won't Let My Child Have

I don't want to be one of those moms who micromanages her kids. Like, at all. But I have to be realistic about a few things. There are some things that I might have to negotiate Finley away from. Things that implicate his health, things that scare me, and things I just can't handle.

Yes. I said negotiate. I know that the loud parenting 'experts' tell you not to do this. But they're wrong. The better experts will tell you that negotiating with your kid will make him a better problem solver and a better self-advocate. Call me crazy but, SOUNDS GOOD.

Nonetheless. Here's hoping Fin never wants these things:

1. Uncrustables.

I didn't really think these existed anymore. But they do. It boggles my mind. But they do. I saw them in Target the other day. I mean, when I typed 'Uncrustables' on my phone, it autocorrected to 'on crud tables'. Exactly.

My husband makes bomb PB + J's. The other day, as I dripped farm fresh blueberry preserves on my baby's leg while destroying such a masterpiece, the thought occurred to me that some children are apparently fed Uncrustables. What the eff.

And don't even tell me your kid likes them. Your kid just doesn't know any better. Like, once, one of my dogs didn't know any better and she literally ate my sh*t out of the toilet as it was flushing. Disgusting, right? Exactly.

I just have to hope that the only humans keeping Uncrustables on the market are drunk, stoned college kids who won't even remember eating them.

On the off chance that Johnny's mom one day feeds my kid one laced with some addictive substance, and he actually does ask me for one, I am prepared to draw this line. I don't care what the FDA says. This sh*t just isn't right.

2. A miniature horse.

And this has nothing to do with fear of spoiling my son. If the million dollar idea we haven't thought of yet pans out, Fin can have a horse if he wants. BUT ONLY A REAL HORSE.

This? This is about how much these theoretically cute creatures really creep me out. I don't know why, exactly, but I'm hoping folks can relate. There's one at a farm we go to for weekly groceries, and whenever it's around, I won't even go say hi to the goats I love. My husband noticed the other week, and when I told him, he actually agreed that they creep him out, too. And, usually, when something creeps me out (e.g. those miniature corncobs in veggie fried rice), he insists I'm being irrational.

In high school, my best friend and I worked in the HR department at a big corporation that was headquartered in our hometown. We were really fast at everything they gave us to do, but I think they knew that neither of us would work there if the other one didn't, so they kept us both on payroll and simply told us: Don't let anyone in another department hear you say 'I have nothing left to do'. Well, one day we got tired of playing volleyball with a Hershey Kiss in the mail room and went to the "filed resumes" drawer. You know, the functional equivalent of a never-emptied trash can. (So, when you don't get the job, but the company is kind enough to "keep your resume on file", there's nothing kind about it. It's particularly unkind when they give immature high schoolers access to it.) This one guy, Roger (for sure his real name; I will never forget it) must have gone to a seminar or bought some guy's product that insisted that your cover letter "stand out!" Well, Roger not only wrote about how he raises miniature horses as a hobby, but also included a picture of himself and his most prized little creeper, Tiffany (no, I will never forget her name either). We cried laughing at this poor fool. For years.

I just can't bear to watch Finley grow up to be a Roger.

3. Rodents. Maybe cats.

Because I kind of hate them. But this isn't entirely about hate.

When I was little, I actually liked pet rodents. I guess I had a little bit of a Lenny syndrome going on, because I always wanted to hold animals. I just loved them so much.

The feeling was rarely mutual. My grandmother's cats would FLEE when I walked in the door every Sunday. Sure as sh*t, I'd chase them. Often, I cornered Si-Ling under the dining room table, but he got more ninja-like every week. (Yes, he was Siamese.) Atticus Finch was smarter (of course), and escaped to the basement, which I was afraid of. Then there was Baby, the fat diabetic one, who I vaguely remember thinking might bite me, which might just have been what I told myself rather than admitting that I really didn't even want to pick him up.

So, I really wanted something that I didn't have to chase around the house to pick up. I guess I didn't think about the fact that rodents who didn't want to be held would just bite me.

But, in any event, caged animals were not an option in our house. My mom said that seeing animals in cages made her sad. My mom was usually willing to let us attempt to persuade her; sometimes we were successful, sometimes we weren't. And this is how I know that negotiating with kids doesn't make them jack holes, and how I'm pretty sure it makes them smarter. At no more than five years old, I made the point that they have plenty of space in their cages, because their bodies are smaller, so the ratio works out. Probably didn't use the word ratio, but it was still pretty smart. But, no. It still made her sad to see them in cages. So nothing else I could say would change the fact that a gerbil would make my mom sad. And I never even thought about asking to go to the zoo. YUP. This sh*t works, folks.

Anyway, one day my mom started talking about getting a dog. At the time, my sister and I wanted a cat. (That makes me laugh. Scoff, actually.) There must have been some story in the news about a child being abducted from home in the middle of the night in a quiet town somewhere or something, because my mom insisted we needed canine protection in what was a pretty safe town, a solid 20+ minutes from any area that could be described as urban.

So, we picked out Panda, a border collie mutt, from the local shelter, who happened to be the world's least cuddly dog. She was a great dog but homegirl just would not snuggle. She wouldn't even come onto the furniture, no matter how much lunch meat and cheese I dangled in front of her nose. Drove me crazy, but from the moment I saw her, I never wanted a cat again.

Hopefully big dog love will be all Fin needs, because now I feel bad for caged animals too, and I'm still mad at cats.

5 Ways to Capitalize on Your Husband's Forgetfulness

I'm taking a quick break from pretending I know stuff about being a mom to demonstrate that I really know stuff about being a wife.

You see, as a general rule, men are forgetful. It can be annoying. More than annoying, really. Basically, the only way to avoid the desire to punch your husband in the face every time he forgets something, is to capitalize on that sh*t.

I suppose if your wife is forgetful, one could use the following ideas on one's wife. But, if you are a man with a forgetful wife, chances are you're actually just a man who forgot that his wife has a great memory.

Now, the degree to which you can practice the following is directly tied to just how forgetful your husband is. I do all of these things nearly every day.

Also, you really have to sell it every time, or else he will start to get suspicious. Unless he's oblivious in addition to forgetful.

If you do it right, you can enjoy the following life improvements almost immediately:

1. Never again watch a movie you don't want to see.

Just tell him you've already seen it. This works particularly well for us, because we don't have cable and our antenna only gets one channel, so we watch the hell out of Netflix.

The key to success with this one is mixing it up. Here are some responses that have worked for me:

Simply and definitively, We've seen that already.

I think we've seen that one... What was it about? (Pause to let him read just a few words.) Emphatically, Oh yea. Yup.

That sounds familiar, who's in it? (Pause to let him name an actor.) I'm pretty sure we've seen that one. (This works best when there's a well-known actor in it.)

Oh we watched that one awhile ago, it was alright, but not good enough to watch again.

Oh that one was stupid, I think you were asleep.

You have to know your husband to know how often you can get away with this. I do it all the time because Ryan very frequently really does suggest titles we've seen already. Since it's often legitimate, sometimes his memory sparks, and he realizes it. So, he'd really never think to question me. I mean, he's even come home from the grocery store all excited to watch a movie that we've already gotten from Red Box. Seriously. The Campaign with Zack Galifinakis and Will Ferrell? How do you forget you saw that?

2. Never hear another long-winded story from his past.

Does your husband do this, too? Tells you stories from his glory days, usually at least seven times? Or is it just because mine is 12 years older than me and feels like he needs to justify his age with tales of excitement from long, long ago? The thing is that a lot of them are interesting the first time. A 720-POUND TUNA?? But, everyone knows that the third time you tell a story, you inescapably make it boring. I know you caught a 720-pound tuna, Ryan. I caught a fish once, too.

At a certain point in your marriage, you have officially heard all the interesting stories. And then there are the ones that might be new, but aren't even close to interesting. So, you'd rather just not hear any stories, to be honest. It's okay, your husband can't hear what you're thinking. This is a safe place. So let's get to work.

Managing this requires some finesse. You have to lay the groundwork when he starts telling a story you've actually already heard. You have to develop a consistent reaction every time he begins a familiar tale, I had the best mac and cheese ever in Aspen... I'd finish my runs for the day and go to this restaurant at the bottom-- (I've heard about Aspen's mac and cheese like nine times, which sounds like an exaggeration, but if anything, is an understatement.)

I have this look, it's like a frozen half-eye-roll. He got the message quickly, and started asking, Oh, have I told you this already? So, then I'd say yes, and recite back a few details. Eventually, I started making the same expression when I really wasn't quite sure whether I had heard the story he was about to tell or one that was close enough that I just didn't want to listen, at which point I simply dropped the detail recitation.

But, it's important to still let him tell a few stories here and there. I try to let this happen whenever I have something that I've been meaning to think about and figure out, because I find that my "thinking" facial expression looks a lot like my "interested" facial expression, as long as I make sure to keep eye contact. If you let the eye contact go, it's all over. He will know you're not listening.

In any event, I'm sure one day Ryan will start to catch on and start to tell me a fake story, so I try to pay particular attention to any glimmer in his eye that might indicate he's trying to trick me. I don't know how crafty your husband is, but you should probably look out for that, too.

3. Never get blamed for dropping the ball.

Forget to tell your husband that you guys have to drive two hours tomorrow to go have lunch with your grandmother? No you didn't! He simply forgot that you already told him.

I'm sure you've already tried this. I mean, it's so obvious. But, if it didn't work, either your husband's memory isn't bad enough, and I don't feel bad for you, or, possibly, you just need to try a little harder.

First, make sure you also "forget" to tell him good news on occasion. It's triple pay check month? I told you three times already! You were supposed to decide how you want to celebrate! Get it?

Second, act like he already gave you grief for it. Well if I didn't tell you last Wednesday, why did you huff about it? You get it.

4. Get what you want for dinner. (Kind of.)

This one really only works if what you want is burritos, and your husband is almost always subconsciously craving burritos.

What should we do for dinner?

I thought you said you felt like burritos.

Oh yeah! Let's get burritos.

That may never be useful to you, but I pull that one out at least once or twice a month.

5. Trick him into agreeing with you on almost any subject.

This one is fairly amazing, but I would caution that it shouldn't be used as frequently as some of the above tactics.

All you do is back off completely and pretend that you agree with him. Then later, say, I know we think (insert whatever you pretended to agree on), but, like you said before, (insert something that supports your point), and the more I think about it, maybe (insert whatever you thought in the first place).

Nope, he never said that thing you said he said. But he doesn't know that. He forgot.

And, now that it came from "him" and not you, he won't argue with it.

I know we said we should get racks on the Jeep before getting a new camera, but like you said before, Fin's growing fast and we'll want good pictures of every stage, and the more I think about it, maybe we really should get the camera first.

Yes, now, on the Casper family list of upcoming major purchases, a Canon EOS Rebel T4i does come before the Jeep rack system Ryan wants.

The important skill here is in knowing for how long you need to pretend to agree with him. Sometimes, you have to wait days. Yes, you have to pretend he's right when you know he's wrong, for days. Hopefully your disagreement isn't over a time-sensitive topic, because sometimes that's an unworkable situation. But, when I'm in a pinch, if I'm feeling lucky, and Ryan's been particularly forgetful, and I know that he truly knows less than nothing on the issue, I'll go for the retroactive, Well, I think it's like what you said last week...

I say that this works on almost any subject, because this is destined to fail with whatever subject(s) your husband is really an expert on. Ryan, for example, has a few deep skill sets: surfing, fishing, mostly all ocean-related things really, emergency medicine, carpentry, cars. Now, I'm no marriage counselor (as you can probably tell), but it's very important to acknowledge when your partner knows more than you do.

There you have it. I hope this saves some other husbands from face punches as it has saved mine. XO.

3 Signs You're Over-Attachment-Parenting

Psych. I don't there's such a thing.

I do not like to put my five month-old down. Like, at all.

I am well aware that a lot of people think holding a baby too much can "spoil" him or her. Listen, you can put your kid down as much as you want. But whatever you do, don't accuse a mom of "spoiling" her baby unless you have substantial evidence that it causes harm.

And by evidence, I mean more than the panicked vague assertion I heard from my husband one day when he misinterpreted Finley's gas for clingy-ness.

You hold him too much, he's getting too used to it.

Really? So even though all the research says it makes them more independent in the long run--

I don't care what research says. Everyone says they'll get too attached.

Everyone does? So now that we're listening to "everyone" instead of research, can you name one specific person?

I don't need to. It's EVERYONE.

So out of EVERYONE, you cannot tell me one specific person's name, who held his or her child too much, and which child, upon learning to walk, still wanted to be held all the time?

I'm wrong and stupid and you are smart and always right. (This is what I chose to hear, because whatever he actually said was not a person's name.)

Here's the thing. I work, and I have a commute. I'm gone 11 hours a day. And my baby is on a good sleeping schedule. This means that I have, almost without fail, precisely two hours of awake time with my awesome kid on weekdays. All the weekdays. And on weekends, I have to clean, to my dismay, which means I have to put him down for a good chunk of both days. And this is how it's been since I went back to work when he was two months old. Mathematically, it makes sense not to put him down when I can hold him.

And here's the other thing. He's a wild man. I know what the odds are that he'll want to be held once he's mobile. Again, math is on my side. And you can't argue with math. Everyone knows that.

You know you're in the club if:

1. Your baby has ice cream on his leg.

My in-laws were in town from south Florida one recent weekend. As I ate a ginormous burger with my boy sleeping in my lap, head on my left arm, they looked at me as if I were eating the poop out of his diaper. All three of them were telling me to put him down. I'm not sure what they didn't understand. Two of my favorite things in the world right now are eating and holding my kid. When I get to do them at the same time, it's like being stampeded by puppies. And, I'm good at it. I actually managed to eat that half-pound of grass-fed goodness without anything falling on Fin-- not even a drop of cheese or avocado, which might be the only thing more amazing than the fact that it took me about five minutes to destroy. But, ice cream, which I prefer a little melt-y, is a different story. I've had to lick ice cream off him a few times. Maybe I just need more practice. Any excuse to eat more ice cream.

2. He's quiet when you put him down. Or he's not.

As often as I hold Fin, I know for a fact that he can play happily by himself. I also know that sometimes he doesn't want to, and he gets pissed off when he gets put in his pack n' play.

You might be tempted to panic, like my husband does, on those rare days that your baby has something going on and wants to be held. If that happens, just wait a day, maybe even a week, before you accuse your spouse of spoiling the baby. We had a really rough week or two just before he was a month old, when Fin was really gassy and really didn't want to be put down. Fortunately, my husband didn't dare say anything to me during that week. (He was still afraid of new mom hormones back then. Life was so much simpler.)

No matter how often he wants to be held as a baby, he won't be a baby forever. If you think a little boy is never going to leave mommy's side just because she held him whenever he wanted to be held as a baby, I think you're psychotic. That simple.

3. The back of his head is wicked round.

Most babies spend a lot of time on their backs, so if you carry your baby a lot, you might notice that he or she starts to look a little different. That is to say, more awesome.

My husband is 41 and has been surfing for decades, which is reason enough for him to idolize Kelly Slater, the 40 year-old surfer who holds like 11 or 12 world championships, and the record for both youngest and oldest world champion. And he is beautiful. One other thing about Kelly Slater is that he rocks a shaved head, so when Ryan realized his hair was starting to get a little thin in one area, he told me he wanted to shave his head "like Kelly Slater". The problem is, Ryan's head is not as beautifully round as Kelly Slater's, and would therefore look creepy and ugly. I didn't know how to put that gently, but apparently my blank stare sufficed. Ryan still has hair.

Attachment Parenting: Your beautifully round-skulled child will thank you one day.

4 Lies About Breastfeeding

Know why I don't criticize moms who don't breastfeed? It's f*cking hard. Sometimes impossible.

I've heard a bunch of lies about breastfeeding. Lies become material for criticizing formula feeders, lies make it difficult to distinguish the hard from impossible, and lies are just annoying.

So I'd like to debunk the following (I've always wanted to debunk something):

1. "Your body will produce the right amount." (My mom)

No. And I have no idea why she told me this, because she supplemented fairly early because she was afraid she wasn't making enough. (And despite not being EBF, I have always been very, very healthy. On the rare occasion that I stayed home from school (and now work), it was almost always because I was faking it.)

I've had a lot of friends give up once they first tried to pump and were only getting a couple ounces at a time. That's exactly what I was getting when I first started. I gave myself a month to get a backup supply for when I went back to work, which resulted in somewhere around 30 ounces, if that. But, that was buffer enough as long as I pumped the equivalent of what Finley ate while we were apart. But I didn't. At first.

I Googled the hell out of ways to increase milk supply and found some good stuff. Like this and this and this.

The best of that good stuff: snacking. The downside, though, is that you're snacking on oatmeal and carrot juice. And fenugreek supplements. (Spell check doesn't even know what fenugreek is. No, I don't mean "greenback".) And worse, no candy canes! I know. It's July. I'm not sure whether I'm turning into Buddy the Elf or if it's just forbidden fruit syndrome, but as soon as I read that peppermint decreases milk supply, all I've wanted is a stupid candy cane. And then there's the unthinkable horror that I'll still be breastfeeding and stocking when it actually is Christmastime. I wonder how many Christmas cookies I'll have to eat to compensate for not having candy canes. I digress.

And, it's even harder than giving up peppermint. For a long stretch, I had to be rocking the dairy cow setup for about four hours of the work day to yield four bottles, and sometimes I'd still come up short. As long as Finley only downed three a day, we were cool. But then he started going for four, so we did a little role reversal and I started waking him up in the night for more feedings to give production a kick and fill him up. It took a couple months to get out of the woods, and if I drop the ball on any part of my routine, it's instant regression.

Even if you're willing to work your tail off to keep your kid on nothing but boob milk, it could be out of your hands. Not every mom has an office door and a job where it's usually okay to be in isolation for more than half the workday. And for those moms, hard might really be impossible. That's a big reason I get annoyed at moms judging other moms.

2. "If it hurts, you're doing it wrong." (The Internet)

Just because those mobsters over at La Leche League claim to know how to get it to work without pain, doesn't mean I'm doing it wrong. If my kid is eating, and he's not hungry, I'm doing it right. Listen, Internet, you can tell me that it doesn't HAVE to hurt or something, but don't tell me I'm doing it wrong. YOU'RE doing it wrong! (I kid. I know they're loving humans over at LLL. I know.)

It hurt bad. Like, I would have traded that pain for giving birth again. Toe-curling pain. I was in a constant state of fear of that latch.

And no, I didn't bother to get a consultant. Very often during those first few weeks, I was clothed in at least three bodily fluids. I didn't need to worry about a consultant smelling me, and the problem seemed pretty obvious: There was a creature sucking on my raw nipples for, I don't know, seven hours a day? My friend had a baby two months before me, and she took breastfeeding classes, read books, saw a consultant, maybe more than one. And while basically everything about her makes me feel like a bit of a slacker, I felt pretty okay about things when she told me it hurt for a month for her, too.

Praise the Lord, it got better around a month. I don't think I'd still be breastfeeding if it hadn't.

3. "You have to start supplementing to get enough sleep." (Friends with babies)

There's another option: co-sleeping. It's so easy. Call me lazy, but I prefer the easy way. You can also call me well rested. Because I am. And you get to dangle You've never had to wake up at night to take care of the baby over your spouse's head for, like, the rest of your lives.

I'm sure that's not always the silver bullet combo it has been for me. And, if you're not into co-sleeping, night feedings are what they are, in which case this number 3 isn't so much a lie for you. Lying about a lie. That's no good.

4. "The weight comes right off when you breastfeed." (Everyone who hasn't breastfed)

Seriously. Don't count on it.

I tried to make this happen. Around week two, I wanted to eat every pretzel, dark chocolate chip, bagel, granola bar, and piece of pizza I saw. And I more or less did. A box of granola bars would last one day in our house. And after a full day of eating, I could totally take care of one of those huge bags of Pirate's Booty all by myself. And then ask my husband to get me ice cream.

I hadn't been a big eater during pregnancy, so I actually watched myself gain weight since I gave birth, which I was pretty sure was backwards. So, after a few weeks, I foolishly attempted to get control of my lumberjack appetite. And my production went down.

So, I figured, f*ck that, I need to eat. Cheese. Chocolate. Peanut butter. Almond butter. Regular butter. Eventually my appetite got slightly less lumberjacky, but pounds are still not melting off of me. The only melting going on is in the form of cheese.

4 Things I've Learned About Co-Sleeping

Disclaimer: Like everything I write, this is about my personal experience. I might try to sound as though you should find it worthwhile; I might even include links to legitimate science. But no, I don't think my way is for everyone. I have come to that conclusion based on the fact that not everyone wants to do it my way.

1. It doesn't mean your infant will die.

I know this because Finley is still alive. I was really banking on this, since, like a lot of moms, I would do anything to keep my baby alive.

I read things like this and this and this, and decided I could do it safely.

If you can't do it safely, it would probably be a bad idea for you.

2. It doesn't mean your infant will refuse to sleep alone.

Well, I haven't tried putting my boy down on his own for the night since the first night we got home and I was really tired and didn't yet have the co-sleeping logistics worked out.

But, I can tell you that you can put him down for a nap, and nap he will. Unless he has a burp, in which case he will go bonkers.

3. It does mean you'll get to sleep.

Finley had a fussy week-and-a-half around the end of his first month, and there were a few nights in that time that I could relate to the plight of the "every mom". Other than that, I would have to lie. Which I have done. It's really awkward to tell a frazzled fellow new mom that you get all the sleep you want and are never tired. That's not the best way to make friends. You get a reaction similar to what you'd get if you slapped a puppy in front of her.

Worse, try telling that to someone who has a vendetta against co-sleeping. Then it's like slapping a puppy and a kitten.

So, Finley goes to sleep around 7pm, wakes up to eat a couple times maybe, and is up for the day around 6am. I don't usually remember the feedings because it goes like this: Open Eyes; Flop; Suckle-Gulp (times a few); Un-Flop; Sleep.

If I have to pee, I change him too, but that doesn't happen every night. I assume that's okay because he doesn't get pissed off if I don't change him and we haven't experienced diaper rash yet.

4. It does mean people will judge you.

Um, because they're jealous. (See number 3.) No, I'm kidding. They might not be jealous, they might really think it's a poor decision.

The most common reaction I get to admitting that we co-sleep is a semi-contorted facial expression, which is my signal to go find someone else to talk to, because I would much rather them think I am wrong than try to convince them I am not. (I was one of the cool kids in college. You know, on the debate team. So, in those four years, I did enough arguing and persuading to cover the rest of my life.)

But since this is my blog and I get to say what I want and ignore comments, I'll be straightforward about what I think. Ultimately, co-slept kids are more independent and just better in a whole bunch of other ways. I really like how Mark frames the discussion.

As to logistics, I don't care how long it takes for Fin to wean away and sleep on his own. I don't care if he does it when he's a year, or when he's ten years.

However, I can't say with any degree of certainty whether my husband is okay with that last thing I wrote. I know, you're supposed to be on the same page or at least communicate about those things.

Well, the reason I don't know is only because he doesn't know. If you bring up the story about John, who sleeps on his couch while his two daughters (ages 5 and 8) sleep in his bed with his wife, Ryan will demand a transition plan for independent sleeping. But, if you tell him how Pete, the race car driver, has a ginormous half-room-sized sunken couch in his living room, where he sleeps nightly along with his wife, 13 year-old daughter, and 10 year-old son (with whom he often performs "Boats N Hoes" as a duet), he instantly becomes long-term co-sleeping's biggest advocate.

I'm not sure whether the above paragraph came across as real or not, but it is. John is a friend of a friend, and Pete is my in-laws' neighbor. And those were both Ryan's real reactions.

One of our favorite things to do as a married couple is to "table" issues. It's a great way to not have to deal with something. And, I know that sounds lazy, but you could run through a million hypotheticals and still be caught off guard by an unanticipated nuance. Or, you could just wait and see what happens, and then adjust on the fly. We're both good on the fly, so that's how we do.

3 PostPartum Spousal Battles to Avoid

It's amazing how trivial all our married life arguments seemed as soon as we had a newborn. At the time, like most married folks, we really thought we were limiting our battles to the important stuff. Like, before we got a pet gate to secure the dogs in the back of the Jeep, Tiki used to nose her way into the front seat, where there was nowhere for her 60-pound body to go but 78% on my lap and 22% in Ryan's face. Ryan did nothing to discourage her as he drove along and her happy little tail whacked me repeatedly in the face.

You can't pet her when she does this!

I know...

You have to yell at her!

It doesn't work.

You have to do it anyway, and you have to push her into the back!

You know I can't do that! She was abused! THEY LOCKED HER IN A BATHROOM.

It's DANGEROUS. You even said this is why you rear-ended that Volvo when we first started dating.

That was a minor accident! I'm a safe driver, I COULD DRIVE RACE CARS.

We're still paying higher insurance because of it!! AND YOU GOT A BURRITO FOR LUNCH WITHOUT ME ON TUESDAY!

Those were the days. Because even though I've read a lot of good stuff about communication and productive argument and all that, it never seems to work when we're a collective mix of stressed and sensitive.

Finley's a relatively easy enough baby. But he's not one of those miracle super low maintenance babies. And what that means is that while we've never had any complaints in the sleep department, I don't have much time to contribute to chores. While I think that staying on top of laundry should earn me some kind of medal, Ryan gets frustrated with how much that leaves for him to do on particularly long or hard workdays.

There's no avoiding that pickle for us right now. But there are pickles we can avoid. And so these are some important battles I've learned to avoid:

1. Stop touching my breast milk!

I vented to my friend Shauna about this. Apparently Ryan isn't the only husband who likes to play a role in milk management. Her husband loves to freeze milk and prep bottles. But Bryan must not be as forgetful as Ryan is, because she has yet to send me an iMessage with 7 purple angry face emoticons at the end of it.

I come home from work each day with four full bottles that attach to my pump funnels. But, because they can be used post-milk-storage, we use mason jars for storing milk in the freezer. (On a scale of Emily Post to, say, Honey Boo Boo's mom, how inappropriate would it be to use said mason jars for our homemade Christmas gifts next year?)

Ryan tries to help me by transferring the milk and packing my pump bag. Well, I pumped into a canteen the other day. That day, he forgot to pack the bottles, which was not as catastrophic as the day he forgot to pack the little yellow pieces that facilitate suction.

But when I just said that Ryan likes "to help me", that was basically almost entirely false. He doesn't like to leave it until the morning for one of us to do for some reason that I don't care much about. I'm fine doing it in the morning, but I just don't want to do it at night. But he does. He does that instead of cleaning up the crumbs he manages to strew over every surface in the kitchen, instead of picking up the socks and clothing layers he sheds as he walks around the house, instead of returning empty seltzer cans and tea cups (he's a fancy carpenter) to the kitchen. Those things he leaves for me to do in the morning.

If I sound ungrateful, it's only because I had to walk from Downtown Crossing to the waterfront to borrow Shauna's pump while leaking through my shirt, and accidentally made eye contact with three young men from the Ukraine (or who knows where, there are a lot of accents I'm unfamiliar with), who demanded that I take their picture (four times) at the Boston Massacre Memorial, which is a circle of old bricks on the sidewalk, which, no, you could not see in the picture. At all.

Anyway, I could try to convince Ryan to take care of his sh*t, and let me take care of mine, or I could just make a checklist for myself to run through in the morning. Guess which is easier.

2. You're not the thing I like most about you!

Wha? I know. I'll explain.

One of the best things about Ryan is that there is, literally, no one I'd rather have by my side in an emergency or disaster. Well, maybe I'd want an expert in handling whatever specific emergency or disaster were to occur; but, for the general unknown, my husband is the best.

He trained as an EMT and graduated from the fire academy when he lived in south Florida, which is, if you'll recall, where people eat people's faces. He's been 20 miles out in 16 foot seas, and has even had to dive into the ocean in the middle of the night with a knife in his mouth to cut something or other from the anchor line so the boat wouldn't sink.

But, when I say that my baby's ear is slightly pinker than normal, he is in no way qualified to tell me not to worry, even if Finley had just been laying on that side of his head for 3 hours.

You see what I'm getting at. Sometimes I'm wrong. I have to remember that I don't always recognize that in a timely fashion.

3. Stop being such a little b*tch!

I think this is the dumbest of all the fights we almost have. I think most people know that nothing good can come from comparing pain. And yet, I find it so hard to resist doing.

Ryan had kidney stones a couple years ago. Four of them. His doctor told him he had zero kidney stones. Kidney stones hurt, apparently, and Ryan kept complaining about the pain. I insisted for one month straight that he get the name of his friend's urologist. I wish I could say that the reason was because I felt so bad that he was in pain. That was probably true for the first week or so. But then it was like, you aren't even trying to fix this, and now I just want you to stop b*tching. Fast forward some amount of time I don't quite recall, Ryan undergoes a couple stone-blasting procedures and has been fine since. Also, Ryan has a new doctor.

Fast forward a little further, to my third trimester. One morning, Ryan says, "There's nothing I can do to beat you if you give birth without drugs. You'll wear the tough pants in the family." This was the first and last time he's acknowledged my pain tolerance in comparison to his. Did I actually think he was going to give me a medal? I guess not. But would a piece of foil on a chain of paperclips really be too much to ask for?

But, no matter how hard I wish, there is no way that we can actually compare one another's pain tolerance levels and declare a winner.

What I can tell you is that when Ryan gets a stuffy nose, I get a status update every hour until it's gone. "I think I'm coming down with something." "I'm definitely coming down with something." "I wonder if this is a cold or allergies." "I think I have allergies." "I think I have a cold." "I wonder if I have the flu." "Don't let me breathe on you, I think I have the flu." And so on.

Me, on the other hand. They have this thing called the 5-1-1 rule to tell you at what point during labor you should go to the hospital. (Or, in our case, to the birth center.) I met the requirements at about 8am, but my midwife sent me home because it didn't hurt bad enough. Four hours later, I was pretty darn sure it hurt bad enough, and I told Ryan it was time to go back. He calmly replied, I don't know, I don't think it's bad enough yet. What I wanted to say was, I know it seems that way, but that's because I'm not a b*tch like you. What I did say was, It's bad enough. What the midwife said was, It's bad enough. Finley arrived five hours later.

So, I often want to say, Stop being such a b*tch! But, I have to remind myself that unless I want another sense of the word to describe me, I just have to let him be one.

So, those are the lessons I've learned.

1. Go with the easy option.
2. Know that you might be wrong.
3. Don't be a b*tch.

9 Things About Natural Childbirth

If you are looking for science, this post is not it. This is straight-up anecdotal, based exclusively on my one own experience. That said, I really liked reading anecdotal stuff about deliveries when I was pregnant (read: petrified of delivering).

Apparently I'm not the only one who was terrified of delivering a baby. The other day, my husband ran into the store while I stayed in the Jeep to feed the baby. He met an expecting couple, and learned that mom-to-be was already planning to have an epidural. (He makes friends just as quickly as he asks them intrusive personal questions. Sometimes I'm glad to have been awkwardly trying to breastfeed in the parking lot with un-tinted windows when he "makes friends".)

Now, word on my street was that if you don't get drugs, the pain is usually bearable, recovery is a lot easier, and that babies latch better. I figured it was worth a try. And it all proved true.

It is absolutely definitely certainly not always true. But, I didn't see all that much on my old friend the internet that encouraged me to at least try. I did, however, see quite a few mothers who opted for an epidural because they wanted the day to be nothing but puppies and rainbows, so they could really enjoy both the experience and the memory.

To each her own birth story, but I wanted to alert the masses (or the four people reading this) that you can have puppies and rainbows with a natural childbirth! The contrast between the displeasure (to, obviously, put it mildly) of labor and delivery and the elation (to, also, put it mildly) of your healthy baby plopped onto your chest is the definition of pure joy. I don't know, I mean, when your kid is born, you're probably maxed out on joy, no matter how you get there, so maybe it's all moot. But, in any event, my nine cents:

1. It is a GIFT. And if you get it, you feel like you should start changing into spandex in a phone booth.

For real, biggest high imaginable. Runners and drug addicts, step aside. Super hero high. Which might make you want to brag about the experience. But try to remember that it's a gift. Our prenatal care and labor and delivery was at a midwife-run birth center, where they don't do epidurals, etc. But, if you decide you want drugs, before or during labor, you can go across the parking lot to the hospital. (And they don't even judge you. Or, at least they say they don't.) We had a group meeting with other birth center patients called "the 36 week meeting", which is basically an orientation of the hospital, in case you end up there, whether it be your own, or Mother Nature's, decision. The birth center director had been explaining that we should write our birth plans, so that the midwives could try their best to do what we wanted. She mentioned that we probably won't be able to foresee everything, that the midwives will communicate everything they can during labor, and that any decisions they make will be in the best interest of mom and baby. Of course, that managed to piss off one particularly beast-willed mom-to-be. When she demanded that the director confirm right then and there that she would have the option to refuse any treatment they might think necessary, Linda Ann looked understandably irritated. But, she calmly replied, When people are hardcore against any real medical intervention, they've said, 'Well, what would you have done in this situation 200 years ago?' And I have to say, 'I would have watched you and/or your baby die.' Linda Ann: 1; Beast Mom: 0. It's serious business. So if you successfully deliver a baby naturally, consider yourself BLESSED to have felt what I can only describe as the most empowered, invincible feeling ever. That should be enough. You shouldn't feel compelled to judge the moms who didn't get to experience that, regardless of whether it was a choice for them.

2. That hypno-birthing stuff works.

I think. I actually still don't know for sure what it is. But, like a week before my due date, my also-pregnant cousin mentioned that she had been getting into it. I panicked, briefly, feeling like I was back in college and realizing the night before an exam that there was an entire section I hadn't studied. I Googled it (shout out to pregnancy's best friend), and read that it was about calm breathing and imagery. Sure there was more to it, but that much seemed pretty self-explanatory to me, so I just stopped there. And also, I think you're supposed to call contractions "pressure waves" or something. (Two days before my due date, I saw "pressure waves" in some other pregnant girl's blog post, and had to Google what the f--- those were, too. But it didn't really help.) Anyway, I didn't use the fancy jargon, but I did yoga breathing and sang Jack Johnson's 'Monsoon' in my head while picturing waves hitting the beach. I didn't practice it before labor like you're supposed to, so I definitely wavered between Jack Johnson's lyrics and profanity a little. But, I still think that stuff helped.

3. You forget the pain as easily as my husband forgets where things are kept in our house.

Contractions really hurt, no way around it. The only way to describe the pain is to say exactly what it was: It feels like a human is inside you, trying to get out. But even between contractions, I kept forgetting how bad they were. My contractions were really close together from the beginning; they were about five minutes apart right away. (Of course, this meant I was freaking out on the 5-1-1 rule, and got sent home from the birth center a bunch of times. My contractions aren't bad enough yet? Like, they get way worse? ... Yeah. They got way worse.) But still, those short five-, and later three-, minute segments were everything. Like, if I were live-tweeting active labor it'd go like this:
Please, Universe, make sure no one ever live tweets active labor.

4. You might want to give up after less than five hours even though you told yourself you'd only give up after, like, 20 hours. 

Fortunately our magical midwife somehow knew exactly how I wanted to be coached through labor. (It sure as heck wasn't from my birth plan, because I never did get around to writing that.) At one point, pretty close to the end, I asked her through grimaced teeth, mid-contraction (you can, actually, "talk" through contractions until the end, but it is an odd mix of a yell-ish whimper) what percent of women chickened out and got the epidural, in her estimation. She assured me that my contractions were just about as bad as they were going to get, and from that point on it was just endurance. I don't know if she knew she was lying or not, because they definitely got worse. For all I know it was too late for the epidural anyway, and she thought I'd handle it better if I thought I still had the option, and was choosing not to use it. Either way, I really think my labor was easier without the epidural.

5. You'll know if you poop.

Yea, I mean that as a good thing. I guess. First, let me say how appalled I was when I first learned that you might poop while you're in labor. That was before I was pregnant, and when I expressed this shock to my mom, she laughed in my face. Obviously. Believe me, You won't care. But I was sure I'd be mortified. Mom was right: Did. Not. Care. I did apologize and thank them, though, because who wants to clean up poop? My sister is a nurse. My best friend is a nurse. Nurses are magical. Heroes. Magical heroes shouldn't have to clean poop. I was glad I had the awareness, so I could express a little appreciation.

6. You feel little limbs flail around as you're baby pops out!

Weird? Really weird. Gross? I don't know. But, in the moment, it's magical. (Yes, I know I used that word already. More than once.) Finley's head got stuck in between contractions, and the midwives' eyes were glued to the clock to make sure he would be okay. I knew I had a reason to be nervous. Thank God, another contraction came in time, and I managed to get him out, and feeling his lively limbs was the best moment of my life-- even better than hearing his cute little squeal a second later.

7. Your baby's arrival is like a triple espresso. 

I was falling asleep in between contractions. My water had broken just before 2am, we hung out for a little while as I tried to convince myself that I just had lost bladder control, and then we went in to get checked at 4am. We had a stress test, ultrasound to confirm head position, etc., and got home around 7am. Contractions had gotten pretty uncomfortable around then, so there was no more resting for me. I was pooped from the start, and was falling asleep between contractions, which make the worst alarm clock in the history of the world. I remember telling my mom that she better be ready to take care of my baby for the next week because I was going to need to sleep for days and days. But, once that sucker was out and placed on my chest at 5:08pm, I was ready to go out for sushi. And, although I did pass out about 15 minutes after we got home at 10pm that night (another bonus, no hospital stay required, so our dogs didn't think we abandoned them), and although I did nap a lot with my new snuggle buddy the next day, I really never felt that exhaustion you hear about.

8. It's all cake after the baby's out.

Stitching. The thought still makes me cringe. After I had given birth naturally, I told the midwife I wanted local anesthesia for the ONE, SINGLE stitch I needed. She's the sweetest woman, who rolled her eyes at me in a loving way. She practically insisted that I not bother with it. I asked my husband for his opinion. He stared at me blankly. She reminded me that the needle for the local anesthesia would be basically half the pain of the stitch. Well, that was hard to argue with. She was right, it wasn't bad. Also not bad was the afterbirth. I know it's gross, but I just made a big deal about pooping, so, you know. I don't even remember what delivering the placenta felt like, so it couldn't have been bad. Oh, and I never got cramps as my uterus went back to its normal size and position. FYI.

9. Recovering from having my wisdom teeth removed was WAY worse.

I know I shouldn't write that, because it's not always the case, but, of course, none of this is a promise. A natural birth certainly doesn't guarantee minimal tearing. (I just happened to give birth at place that almost never needs to use more than two stitches. I'll say it again, they are magical.) I used the epi bottle every time I went to the bathroom, and I sat down kind of slowly just in case, but I was literally never in pain. Oh, and I didn't even think of using one of those pad-sicle things they tell you to load up your freezer with. (And all those blogs that promised me I would need them scared the crap out of me.)

Every experience is different. That cannot be said enough. But, I wish I had known natural childbirth could be as easy as it was for me. Please forgive me, moms who didn't have it so easy, but I had to write this. If it makes you feel any better, I'm so afraid I used all my luck delivering Fin that we're considering adoption if he wants a sibling.