Dear Thalia

Once you're a mother, it is always easy to beat yourself up. I have spent not an insignificant amount of time worrying and berating myself about

1. Not supplementing enough while breastfeeding my son
2. Not having proper nutrition while pregnant with my son (nausea throughout the pregnancy)
3. Not having enough fat in his diet when we cut out milk products as we thought he had an allergy (he was just one year old and it turns out his rash was because his nanny wasn't cleaning his face after meals)
4. Not staying at home long enough with him (I spent about half of the time before he went into kindergarten working part-time)
5. Not providing enough play dates and social interactions for him
6. Not having any close family nearby for him to bond with
7. Hiring our last nanny for the five months we employed her (when I realized how bad she was I fired her between retrieval and transfer during one of our IVF cycles - that's how bad she was, I didn't even wait)
8. Not providing a sibling who was closer in age to him
9. Not having figured out how to get him to eat more vegetables

I could go on here but you probably get the generally drift. What I have realized through all this worrying though is that

1. There will ALWAYS be something I think that I should have done differently.
2. By worrying, I am implicitly saying that there is something wrong with my son. If I had only provided x or y then he would be ...what? better? The fact is that my son is not doing very well academically (if I can use that term in grade one) but is probably the most empathetic person I have ever met. He loves to make up stories and sometimes has to pause and blink rapidly if it is very sad (so as not to cry). He has a wonderful sense of humor and is very sociable. I have never seen (or heard of) him hurt anyone, either physically or verbally. He will include everyone in play (even the little sisters of his friends) and dotes on his new sibling. And maybe, just maybe, some of what I did helped to develop these traits.

So the Pob - I can understand her lack of motivation. If I had to harvest my own vegetables or just pick them up at the vegetable stand - my hands wouldn't be getting dirty. So Pob has somehow realized that she can work really hard for her dinner or she can wait and have it presented in a form that requires much less effort. Can I give her an A for analytical skills?

I try really hard not to give advice but in this case I would say: continue on, pump when you can, top her up when you need to and introduce formula when (and if) required. But above all, realize that you have many, many years (decades in fact) to beat yourself up over what you do and don't do. In order to keep your sanity, you need to realize that regardless of what we do, they will generally thrive as long as they are loved (and that you can do blindfolded, with hands tied behind your back and with no lactation whatsoever).

DinoD