I’m a scheduling kind of girl. I live by my calendar, I make lists, and I find satisfaction in order. So when I was pregnant with my first child and found a book that promised an orderly, scheduled way to raise a baby, I jumped at it. I devoured the book, taking notes, and I talked to my friends, most of whom (at the time) followed the same baby “system”.

The 111th Congress is about to be sworn in and get to work. Their "to do" list is enormous-a mega-financial crisis, the war in Iraq, the bloody conflict in the Middle East. Under the circumstances it's understandable that the top matter on the agenda won't be long-standing legislation to make it easier for women in the workplace to breastfeed their babies. That's all fine and well.

This morning President-elect Barack Obama reaffirmed his strong commitment to health care reform. The United States Breastfeeding Committee (USBC) believes that breastfeeding is an "essential public health issue" and should be a high priority for the incoming administration. In light of this, the USBC has created a petition urging President-elect Obama to make breastfeeding a high priority.

I always wanted to breastfeed, although I'm not sure why. I wasn't breastfed, nor my was my mother or grandmother, so it wasn't something I'd ever seen or heard about in my own family. I just knew, long before my husband and I decided to conceive our first child, that I wanted to breastfeed.

When my daughter was born in 2004, I was all prepared to breastfeed. I had the bags, I had the pump. I wasn't psyched about it, but I wanted to do anything I could to ensure she had the best in life. I knew that was breastfeeding. So I asked my doctor for the absolute smallest "good" window. My doctor looked at me like I was nuts, stammered around for a while, then said six weeks. I don't know if he pulled that number out of the air or out of a medical book. I've never heard anyone ask that question before: Probably because it's so loaded.

"If women were meant to work outside the home, men would be able to breastfeed." This is more or less one of reasons that many uber-conservatives give for why women should be at home with the kids while men support their families. (Usually there is also something about God made it that way.) Except that men can lactate, and sometimes breastfeed.

We tend to be pretty quiet up here in Canada. You'd hardly know that we have an election coming up, for example. Nor is it obvious that we spend a lot of time worrying about things like the environment and our children and when the hell the Stanley Cup is going to take its rightful place in Toronto. (I kid! It would also look very nice in Vancouver!) You'd hardly know that we can get pretty gung ho about causes. Which is why it's time to remind you all about BlogHers Act Canada.

A new study including 151 mothers in Brisbane, Australia has found that first-time moms want more information about what life with a newborn will be like and says they often don't feel prepared for the recovery period after giving birth and emotional toll of caring for a new baby.

Hey, so guess which of the above three things - fish, boobies and blankets - are actually recommended as good for babies' health and development?

If you're a mom, and you nurse, you need to read this: codeine ingested by some nursing mothers can harm - even kill - their babies.

So, a long time ago, we had these people called wet nurses.  If for whatever reason you couldn't nurse your own baby, another lactating woman would do it. Maybe it was for status. Maybe you had no milk. Maybe you wanted to get pregnant again and didn't want the lactation to get in the way of heir production.   According to Wikipedia, Napoleon had one, and so did Mohammad.

Here's what breaks my heart about ongoing debates about the ethics of breastfeeding in public: that there IS any debate. Shouldn't this subject be considered settled? Wasn't that the whole point of World Breastfeeding Week last week? To celebrate breastfeeding, and our will and ability to do it whenever, wherever? Was nothing learned from the Facebook/Bill Mayer debacles of last fall?