Katie Allison Granju

“So, like, we went out to lunch at that restaurant where, like, I went with Dad that time, and I, like, had the chicken salad, and it was like, totally not as good as that other time we went, and I said to my friend that I was, like, not eating this salad because it’s like, completely gross, and she was like, I agree, I’d never eat anything that smelled that, like, gross.”

Count the uses of the word “like,” in the above sentence, and you will have a conservative idea of how often my three eldest children seem to be inserting the word into their conversations these days.

It’s driving me NUTS.

I have declared war on the word “like” in their conversation with me. They can use it all they want in conversations with others, but with me, they are going to be asked to strip most uses of the word from what comes out of their mouths. J. says she is so attached to the word that she actually finds it difficult to communicate with me at the moment, knowing that she cannot too liberally pepper her language with likes.

We’ll see how it goes.

Interesting rundown of signs that today’s dads are truly doing their share.

In my universe, however, I still see an awful lot of fathers who - while they love and adore their children - definitely leave the bulk of the primary care (also known as the grint work part of parenting) to their wives.

There is a great gallery of pregnancy photos from different places and different decades at Slate today. I’m always amazed at how different women grow and change during and after gestating another human.

Another great site is Shape of a Mother. It’s gallery after gallery of real women showing of their pregnancy and post-pregnancy bodies. It;s a good reminder to those of us with real bellies, boobs and bums that the bodies you see at, say, Celebrity-Babies.com are often A- airbrushed (when they actually pose for photos and B - work continually and at great expense (trainers, chefs, stylists, Pilates, etc) to look the way they do.

A lovely letter to a new parent:

Your son will make mistakes, too, as he grows, and some of those will make you cry. Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. Try to be in control of yourself rather than of him, and you’ll be okay. Love is hard on the heart. Your heart can’t remain perfect and proud, unscarred and perky. It will be worn and joyous, wise and beat up, and full of sorrow and amazement. It will tremble with the awful knowledge of how helpless you are to keep him from pain, of how closely he will watch you to see what to become and what not to become. I would rather have this heart than the one I had before the first baby.

There’s a great essay in Babble today by a woman who chose to have a homebirth in Missouri, where it’s actually illegal.

Well…ummmm. duh

This information seems pretty obvious, but the hard data is important if we are to get the mainstream medical establishment to take notice of the fact that human lactation is a medical specialty that requires the same sort of training and monitoring as any other medical specialty.

From the study:

Research has shown that what happens in the hospital or birth center plays a crucial role in establishing breastfeeding and helping mothers to continue breastfeeding after leaving the birth facility.

The study, “Breastfeeding-Related Maternity Care Practices among Hospitals and Birth Centers - United States, 2007,” analyzed responses from nearly 2,700 birth facilities in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. It asked birth facilities about their practices and policies in caring for women who choose to breastfeed their newborns. The practices were scored on a scale from 0 to 100 points.

The study found that hospitals and birth centers in many southern states scored lower in practices supportive of breastfeeding compared to other regions of the nation, with average total maternity practice scores ranging from 48 to 58. Seven southern states - Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and West Virginia - also had the lowest percentages (less than 30 percent) of children who were breastfed for 6 months, according to the 2006 National Immunization Survey.

Western and New England states generally had higher scores compared to other parts of the country. Vermont and New Hampshire tied for the highest overall maternity practice scores (81), followed by Maine (77) and Oregon (74). In addition, Oregon, Maine and Vermont report that more than 75 percent of children were ever breastfed.

The study reported scores related to seven aspects of maternity care. Nationally, the average facility score was 63 for key maternity practices in infant nutrition and care.

Do you blog? If so, you might be interested in submitting an essay for this proposed new anthology.

Be my pal on Facebook.

I was sad to hear that Edwina Froelich, one of the seven amazing women who founded La Leche League, International, has passed away.

I don’t think LLLI gets enough credit as the groundbreaking feminist health initiative that it is. The women who started it went against huge odds, and using a real grassroots approach, they built what started as a coffee klatch into one of the most important health NGOs in the country.

I have been tasked with writing an essay for a magazine (as a companion piece to this essay, which they ran a few weeks ago) on why in the world I like having more than the average number of 2 kids. Obviously, this is a topic that has come up on my blog a lot recently, and so I thought I’d get readers’ thoughts via a more specific discussion of the issue.

So here are my questions for you:

-How many kids do you have/want to have?

-What factors shaped your decision?

-Describe the family in which you grew up.

-What is your opinion of parents who have 3,4, 5 or even more children? Do you have a stereotype?

-Do you believe it’s possible to parent a larger family well, or do more kids necessarily mean a lower quality of parenting overall?

-What benefits do siblings offer each other?

If you feel so inclined, discuss in the comments below this post. Answer as many or as few of the questions as you like.