For as busy as yesterday was, I spent a lot of time bored.

I went to the OB in the morning, and Matt and I sat around for almost 45 minutes before the doctor finally came in to see us.

I had a meeting in the afternoon, and of course that was boring.

Then I went to the dentist, and they were running half an hour behind because of a whole series of emergencies they'd had to work in earlier in the day. So I spent a long time sitting around (in what is, I might add, not the most comfortable chair for a pregnant person) there, too.

And then Matt and I went to the free breastfeeding introduction class that the hospital offers. We spent a lot of that bored, too.

I'd thought the class would be led by one of the hospital's lactation consultants. I think that was the plan, but something came up, and they wound up having it given by the same woman who teaches our Lamaze class.

All of our other experiences with Williamsburg Hospital's staff have been very pleasant and positive. They've told us over and over, "We'll do things the way you want. Don't hesitate to ask us for help. We absolutely do not make any judgments about your decisions. We'll support whatever it is you want to do. Here are the rules, and here are the ones we can bend for you." Like that. Absolutely supportive and understanding.

This woman, however... I'm very glad she doesn't work for the hospital, or I'd already be worrying that she'd show up as my delivery nurse. She's got very firm opinions, she's not the least bit compromising about them (she admits only true medical necessity to interfere, not preference or philosophy), and she's almost openly contemptuous of the nursing staff at the hospital.

It's not even necessarily what she says, but how she says it.

I had already been planning to try to nurse in the first couple of hours after the baby's born, but she made it sound like if I allowed the hospital staff to so much as weigh the baby and take its temperature first, then I obviously just didn't care enough. And if I had any kind of drugs to ease the pain of birth that might make the baby sleepy and less inclined to nurse immediately, then I might as well just feed her to the wolves.

I intend to breastfeed exclusively for a couple of weeks before introducing a bottle, but she made it sound as though the instant you let the baby have a bottle, it would never even think about going back to the breast - and furthermore, that if I didn't watch them closely, the hospital staff would sneak bottles to my baby when my back was turned.

Of course I'm going to keep the baby with me as much as possible - but she made it sound as if sending my baby to the nursery for a few hours (so I could do something trivial like try to rest and recover from the delivery) was tantamount to tossing the baby out the window.

Okay, I'm exaggerating her positions a little bit, but she was pretty reluctant about anything that wasn't in her specific little plan for the Perfect Mother. The last thing I'm going to need during labor, delivery, and my first days as a mother is an opinionated, judgmental person hovering over me. I already know what the ideal situation is, and I'm probably going to be hard enough on myself if it doesn't happen that way. I don't need someone telling me it's my fault the baby didn't latch on correctly, or that she's not getting enough milk because I was holding her wrong.

At least the class was good for some actual information (after we ran everything through the Opinion Filter) on different ways to hold the baby, how to take care of various soreness and pains, how to make sure the baby is getting what she needs, and other tidbits like that. She brought an assortment of hand-held pumps for us to fiddle with, which was nice, since I've never so much as seen one up close before.

(As a possibly TMI aside - I'll almost certainly be renting an electric pump when I have to go back to work, just to keep my supply up and to store milk for use at the daycare center and for Daddy-baby bonding/feeding moments. But after playing with some of the handheld pumps, I might get one of those, too, to keep at home for those inevitable days when she just isn't as hungry. The model I liked best, she said was available all over, at Target and baby stores.)

Anyway, I'm glad we went to the class, but I wish to hell it had been led by one of the hospital's lactation consultants, who would have been better able to tell us about what to expect from that hospital, and (I certainly believe) would have been a little less militant about the whole thing.

--Liz