Wolf Shorty

I’m supposed to leave my sister’s breasts out of this. So I’ll be a good sister and obey. But when you send an e-mail asking if I’d be available to accompany you to a breastfeeding class as your Breast Feeding Support Partner (BFSP), you might as well have said a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar … Suffice it to say that e-mail string ended with my Mom assuring Erin that she would drop everything she had going on including major medical procedures, free tickets to Jimmy Buffet concerts or meetings with Jesus in order that Erin would not have to endure my commentary at her breastfeeding class. However, my sister is just about as sick and twisted as I am so I’m sure if I’d been chosen as the BFSP, we’d both have been tossed out of class 15 minutes in. In retrospect that might actually have been Mom’s concern.

It all started when my sister sent this e-mail to my Mom and I:

I have signed up for this breastfeeding class and they highly suggest having a support partner there in case I miss some sort of information that would be good to have the day of delivery and I am too overwhelmed to remember, and I think they also discuss other items besides just breastfeeding and Mario and I are doing a separate labor class. … I was wondering if one of you would be able to be my “support partner”?

So what I want to know is maybe can we both go? Cause someone definitely needs to soak in this information that they are going to be dishing out for Erin’s sake. But someone really should be there to document, make immature comments and collect jokes to tell at family dinners. And it just so happens I know someone perfect for that job. I mean let’s face it my Mom is head over heels a better candidate for the position of BFSP. Next to BFSP in that breast feeding class brochure, there is probably a picture of my mother.

But Mom’s diplomatic and says that she’s honored but vollies the option to me. A priest and a rabbi walk into a bar …

So I ask:

Can we both go? I can see about a million blog posts coming from this. So my mom and I accompanied my sister to a breastfeeding support person class the other night … Is there a day for that like Administrative Assistant’s Day? How do I answer the phone after being selected for this job? Thank you for calling Erin’s Breastfeeding, how may I direct your call? Also won’t some of the context be lost if you take separate classes? I’ve seen how arguments go down when you’ve understood information from the same class differently. My teacher said two short inhales and a long exhale. Well my teacher said one long inhale and two short exhales.

Does this e-mail firm up who you’d want to be there?

Then Mom being the model BFSP she is fires back quickly:

Erin, don’t panic from Lindsey’s e-mail. I’m going with you!

What a suck up.

Also what I want to know is … About that in case you are too overwhelmed to remember thing. I’m just gonna throw out there, speaking from personal experience, you’re not only not gonna remember the breast feeding part, but you also aren’t going to remember the breathing part or the finding a calm place part or the why the heck you wanted to have a baby in the first place part or any of that other stuff. However my information almost always gets trapped on the wrong side of the synapse. Those neurons fire away and then finally just look at each other, shrug their shoulders and say I’ve got nothin’. So maybe I’m speaking out of turn on this one.

Erin chose Mom of course:

Clarification: Mario and I are taking a labor class together that is separate from the breastfeeding class. However if we weren’t and we were getting mixed information, we all know that in the end I would be right.

We’ll just go with Mom coming with me, but thanks for the offer of exposing me to all of your Wolf Shorty fans. You’re still welcome to blog about it but maybe just leave my breasts out of it. Maybe you could sit in on a class if you would like to blog about it and then not have to worry about answering phones in any which way.

Thanks for all the support!

Since I didn’t get selected for BFSP, I’d just like to give my sisterly advice.

At 3 a.m. when you are trying to calm the spawn of Satan that most certainly was switched in the hospital with your actual baby but is now in your house sleeping feet from your bed and is summoning the beasts of hell with a shrilling siren of a cry, you won’t remember a damn thing from that class. And while you are crafting strongly worded letters to the hospital administration about their carelessness, which resulted in the “babies” being switched and you’re digging through all those free pamphlets and formula samples they send you home with you to find the hospital’s mailing address you might come across The Nursing Mom’s Companion book. You’ll think this book is just more free junk they sent you home with. It’s cheaply made and looks like all those other informational things that are actually advertisements for nursing pads and other implements for babies and breasts.

That book is the key to everything. And you’ll want to have Mom there when you are digging through all that stuff looking for mailing addresses because 1. she is skilled at letter writing and 2. she’ll actually open that book and thumb through it. And when you say it’s just some dumb advertisement she’ll say now wait let’s just look at it. She’ll discover that the book actually has bullet point information about breastfeeding that is easy to understand even at 3 a.m. without your glasses on and no hours of sleep with the spawn of Satan in your hand.

You’ll discover things like Kung Pao chicken and a dozen chocolate chip cookies may taste perfectly wonderful to you, but don’t taste so well when turned into milk.

Mom will also drive your husband 30 minutes to the nearest purveyor of implements of breast feeding, pound on the door before the store opens and explain the situation to the shopkeeper, who will nicely open the shop ahead of schedule just for her and then load her up with all the implements you could ever think you might need and some you didn’t even know about.

You have the perfect BFSP. I’m just honored you think I have fans, even if that was a sarcastic remark. Oh and if they don’t give you that book at the hospital, I still have my copy dog eared, highlighted and annotated.