Suffer the children to come unto her -- but don't make her look at them!

I don't know if this is real bad mommyness or not, but I sure felt like a bad 'un. I nursed my son for about a million years, and I would always read when I did. My stepmother and a bunch of other moms I knew were shocked by this. "Well, when I nursed, it was special to me," my stepmother said. "I would settle down with him and just look at him. It was a very precious time." Which made me feel great -- like I didn't think my kid was "special" or "precious" or whatever.

Of course, much later I read this book by a woman who had eight kids or some such thing. Her mom gave her a hard time because she hadn't been reading when she nursed. "I managed to read the entire Bible by the time I weaned each baby," she said. So then I felt bad again, because I'd mostly just been reading novels and stuff.