Breast feeding is natural, nurturing, and normal. My wife compares it to having your testicles sucked by a jellyfish. I was about to tell her that jellyfish don't suck when I caught a look in her eye that suggested more harm to the family jewels.

Despite the pain, some aspects of breast feeding are really wonderful, for me. Such as:

• the ghost shirt: an old t-shirt with holes cut in it like a ghost costume. Promotes healing they say. Whatever it takes, I say.
• little Madonna cones (pictured), employing wiffle ball technology.
• Flavored(and therapeutic) olive oil creams.
• The boppy, which sections off the wife, to accentuate the breasts.

But none of this comes near overcoming the sight of my wife cringing as our baby happily sucks away. It would be as if you gave somebody pasta made from plucking your own hair out one strand at a time.

Not that I could even consider switching.

According to radical anti-bottle pamphlets Non breast fed children have no immune systems, (boys), are more likely to subscribe to men's magazines as adults, resent their mothers forever, learn to become dependent on easy response systems, like television, welfare, and frozen dinners.

But everyone says it's a beautiful experience. So for now, she cringes, I wince, and the baby sucks. And my wife blows off each nipple after each feeding like a gunslinger after a wild west quickdraw.

A Fatherhood Moment.

Here is a Polaroid from the Sarino household.

So my wife is finally getting the 45 minutes of sleep the baby allows her between feedings. And I am doing my best to keep her child quiet and happy, and by that, I mean asleep.

Typically I begin by putting her in the sound-activated automated rocking swing, or the Rockinator. That rarely works, even with soothing music: "Fur Elise" played incessantly on a one-note synthesizer. I find her screaming loudly and rocking out of control.
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