Susan Ludington-Hoe, in a conference session last August in Cincinnati, had
an interesting anecdote concerning one of the fathers in her studies on
kangaroo care. The dad, a pro football player, was scrubbed, hooked up to
the monitors, etc., and holding the baby on his (hairy) chest, when the baby
proceeded to latch on to the paternal nipple. The dad was quite
uncomfortable with the situation, as evidenced by the look on his face in the
slides Susan took, but he put up with it, and eventually relaxed. At the end
of his "kangarooing" time, he told Susan that he already felt closer to his
newborn than he did to his older children.
The point here? I don't know, except that babies will seek warmth and
comfort wherever they find it (remember Harry Harrison's monkeys?), including
their dad's chest...and that dads have powerful nurturing feelings, too. I
think that the pro football dad would have bonded with his baby just as well
through kangaroo cuddling alone, but it seems to me that this experience
certainly did no harm to either one.
Personally, if my own baby was rooting on my husband, I'd ask him to hand him
over so I could nurse him. There were plenty of other ways he could bond
with our baby, and times when only his wide shoulder, warm hands, and low
voice could calm our fussy baby at 1 a.m. He had no wish to take over for me
in the breastfeeding department, and that is fine with me. Vive la
difference.
I agree that I would find it interesting to speculate on what life would be
like if both sexes shared the nursing of the young like the previously
mentioned bats. I wonder how that society would be different from ours,
where many families share the feeding of the young through
bottlefeeding...(including bottles of mother's milk, of course)?
Fuzzily philosophical at midnight...
Lisa Mo
LLLL, Bowling Green, KY
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