Introducing the Faux Titty

As I informed you last week, Mama K has officially returned to work. Thankfully, her employer has allowed her to stagger her maternity leave, temporarily only going back Tuesdays and Thursdays for a month, then adding Wednesdays till December, at which point she'll go back full-time. I say thankfully not only for her sake, but for my sanity, as it allows me to transition more smoothly into this whole "Mama K's Away, Dad's Here Today" thing. Young Old was confused as all hell the first day we hung out together alone, constantly looking around, wondering where that big ol' booby with the face attached to it happened to be. Luckily, bottle-feeding, or mock-milking, as we've been calling it lately, was a none issue. A few days before Mama K went off to the coal mines, we decided to do a few trial runs with the bottle, delivered by Daddy Old. Young Old instantly got it, probably because he's a genius. Relief instantaneously flowed through us...every parent fears the baby won't eat anything but milk direct from the source. But there were downsides to the ease with which Young Old was imbibing from the glass booby. Mama K felt more than a little jealousy at how much less work it was to bottle feed. You'd think breast-feeding to be a naturally simple act. Stick the nip in the mouth, baby feeds. What no one tells you is that it's a learned action for both parties, involving correct methods of latching, holding, squeezing, rotating, supporting, and cleaning. The bottle involves none of that (and in fact, requires only eight or so baby mouth muscles, whereas breast-feeding requires close to seventy). Mama K also felt some feelings of uselessness, something I'd been feeling these last weeks of breastlessness, despite my near-constant diaper changes and late-night rocking sessions. We had to have a long talk about how necessary we both were to this process of raising a healthy happy kiddo, and that regardless of how we feed him, the milk was something only she could provide (halle-fucking-lujah). In the end it all worked out, we came to terms with our changing roles, and reaffirmed the importance of both of us working together as one...

The product...one belly-satisfied babe.

A few pictures of his first experience at hittin' the bottle: