Feeding the Babies

I never did get the hang of nursing a baby while I was lying down.  You might think, after six babies, that it would be second nature to me; but it does not and never has felt comfortable to me, in part because I've always been afraid I would fall asleep and roll onto the baby.  And so I sit up while I nurse my baby (and regularly fall asleep while he's drinking, but sleeping while sitting in my rocking chair to nurse him feels so much safer than sleeping while lying down with him); and once in a while, I even nurse him while I'm standing.  But never while I'm lying down.

Willow, on the other hand, was a pro, from the very beginning, at nursing her babies while lying down.  As a matter of fact, the very day she gave birth, she was so skillful at lying down and nursing that she could even do that while the last few puppies were being born.  Talk about multi-tasking!  ;-) These days, however, she very, very rarely lies down to nurse her munchkins; but tonight while she was on the porch with them, they didn't let that stop them.  ;-)  Now that they're old enough and big enough and strong enough to latch on while she's standing up, they are on her every time she comes around.  Like it or not, Willow has learned to nurse while on her feet.  ;-)

 In other feeding-the-baby news, I have not yet started Benjamin on rice cereal or any other food; and I'm in no great hurry to do so.  We'll get to that eventually (which is very, VERY different from how I was with Josiah...with him, that whole first-time mom thing made me so eager to get to the baby-food stage that practically the minute he turned four months, I was shoving rice cereal in his mouth, like it or not).  ;-)  But we did take a little step in the direction of baby food for Benjamin.  Jeff carried our highchair up from where it had been residing in my dad's basement and put it in our kitchen.  I figured that even if I didn't need to feed Benjamin baby food for a while yet, he could still enjoy sitting in it, particularly when the family is gathered around the table eating together.  Sitting in the highchair puts him on the same level as us, and I was pretty sure he would enjoy being up that high so he could see the action and be a part.

 I think he's pretty happy about it.  ;-)