h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

calpol. Brilliant stuff. But yes, seek medical advise has to be the best answer....

How is Callum now? Recovered and making up for it?

Oh yes. Feeling fine and dandy now. After about a week he was fine, only a few spots that caused any real bother. Then the fun started. Suddenly he was walking, talking and no longer looking like a baby. He's just suddenly grown up on me! At the moment everything is an apple. We took him for his first big outside walk yesterday and he loved it. He went chasing after our neighbours dog and walking up everyone elses garden path!

Next week we're off to see Thomas the Tank Engine at the Great Central Railway. A ride on a real steam train sounds like an ideal way to spend an afternoon.

How's the pregnancy going? It's mid October your due isn't it? One of our cousins recently had a home birth and she said it was fantastic. Take care.

Well it would seem this thread has feeding babies all sown up. Fathers have once again been totally excluded. Would the child not benifit more from having equal involvement from both parents in all things including feeding, than from the difference between breast or bottle feeding? Unless of course it is your intention to exclude the fathers but then why not go whole hog and endorse rooming in? As a previously single father that had to protect the baby from it's own mother, I have to say that father is sometimes best and almost always of equal importance. I now have another baby with my new partner who is not a danger but still the mother is not the most skilled, nor most patient, nor most instintive and if the baby was only to be breast feed she would have staved while waiting for mum to bother to wake up.

There are unfortunately always some mothers who can't cope with a baby, but breast milk is _always_ better than bottle milk for the baby. (That's not the same as saying that breast feeding is always better for the baby ). Also there is a closeness in breast feeding that a bottle can't replace. I find it one of the most wonderful feelings in the world.

There are many ways in which a father can feel close, and if you start weaning at four months the father can be equally involved from then.

I occasionally expressed milk to begin with so that James could feed Charlotte sometimes - that way he was able to feed her without having to give her formula; however she was never really happy with a bottle. When she was very small I fed her and then James took her to wind her, which seemed to us like a fair division of labour.

I think that if the mother is prepared to do it, breast feeding is much better for the baby, but if for some reason she feels unhappy with it, and it affects her relationship with the child then obviously the child's happiness must come first.