Lactation Advice

As young men we make the transition from Gi Joe and tree forts to a complete infatuation with breasts in approximately 12 minutes. It happens at different times depending on the person, lifestyle, and various other factors, but it happens quickly. One morning you wake up, go to school and they are there. Girls with breasts. You don't know where they came from or what you would possibly do with them, but they are there and they are a prize to be won.

Men talk about them, women have them, and at some point they help to define the differences between male and female.

Then your wife has a baby, and the boobs go to work. Your wife has a baby and the topic of breasts, and lactation as it were (come to find out the whole reason women tote these things around their whole lives) becomes center stage. You'll talk about them at home, at work, people will even ask you about them. A complete 180 degree turn from your adolescence.

What is even more amazing is what occurs at the doctors office. I fully expected the doctor (both pediatrician and OB/GYN) to ask about the breast feeding and how it is going. What I didn't expect was that they will ask, they will demonstrate on themselves, they will even grab your wife's breasts. The breast makes a complete transition from sexual object to tool. A utility of life. I guess what is so flabbergasting about this is that I can't for the life of me think of an instance where this would occur in the male experience. I will never go to the doctor and for any reason have him grab his testicles. This just wouldn't happen. If I am in a small room with another man (with the possibility of a prostate check in the air) and he even makes the slightest gesture towards his testicles. I will be out of there like I was fired from a cannon.

Nevertheless, my wife continues to be a stoic soldier on the battlefront of child care. Taking in stride everything the child, the doctors, and her bumbling husband can throw at her. Rarely complaining and never giving anything but her all. There is a reason women were given this duty, and I suspect that it has something to do with men folding like lawn chairs if given that responsibility.