It’s been 7 weeks since we began this little adventure, and things are pretty smooth at this point. Grant still feeds on demand (not on a schedule) – a luxury I have due to my long maternity leave. He eats between 10 and a million times a day. 

We have breastfed out in public quite a bit – restaurants, playgrounds, malls, the library, friend’s houses… And the list will continue to grow. 

As we’ve figured it out together, we have fallen into a rhythm. Grant alerts me to his need to eat with grunts and coos. If I’m tending to the other two kids, he sometimes has to wait, and then he cries. One part of parenting is always gambling on what course of action is the lesser of two evils. It’s something that never gets easier or that you particularly get better at – you just get more comfortable with accepting you may have made the wrong choice today. 

Anyway, when Grant spies the nipple, he gets excited. He demonstrates this by waving his arms and legs and whipping his head back and forth. I’m not sure what you’ve ever tried to guide your nipple through, but if it’s not a baby windmill, you simply haven’t lived. 

Then, he starts with the heavy breathing, which, combined with the head whipping, makes latching him on challenging. Finally, to signal peak excitement and imminent latch, the farts start popping out of him like Eve popping bubble wrap:

Then when he’s latched, his hands grasp each other over his chest, his legs flop, and his toots slow to a more dignified pace. 
And to think, this is how we all began life.