Rambling from being sick- the internet can really make your head spin

I've had a bad cold- made worse by being pregnant, so for the past few days I've sat around on the couch reading lots and lots of parenting articles, blogs, and news items here on the interweb. Its like being pregnant again has put me at square one all over again like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day- reading again what happens each week of my pregnancy on the same website I read 3 years ago, wondering again about vaccines and all the new studies one way or the other, routine hospital procedures, and wondering what I want to wear when I give birth!- apparently you don't have to wear that hospital gown! you can wear something cuter- and I've spent waaay too much time surfing around looking for that perfect little black dress- that allows for skin to skin contact immediately after birth, intermittent fetal monitoring, and perhaps the perfect opening in the back for an epidural.* (Suggestions welcome I can't seem to find just what I want yet...)

But I guess I'm struck by how the same debates, the same things that confused and outraged me when Akiva was an infant, or made me laugh- are all so much completely the same, played out among just slightly younger people over and over again, similar news items, but now I've had days and days to be bombarded since I don't feel like really doing anything but sitting here in the couch.

There was a recent news article about a woman kicked out of a courtroom for breast feeding her sick baby who had an ear infection. Now I understand that breast feeding is a very loaded topic- people feel very strongly about it. Women who can't or who choose not to breast feed feel that they are made to feel like bad moms by women who are pro-breast feeders, and women who choose to breast feed are made to feel like they are doing the equivalent of taking a dump in front of everyone when they breast feed in public- (I was shocked how many replies to the story I read on Huffington Post included people equating this woman's breast feeding to someone pooping). So what is a new mom to do about this- that no matter what you do about feeling your baby, some one is probably going to try to make you feel bad.

I would love it if women could pop a bottle into their babe's mouths without those raised eye brows from the other moms at the playground- and pop a boob into a babe's mouth without someone else's raised eyebrows, what a nicer world this would be. People need to remember- you don't know why a woman is choosing to formula feed her baby, and so all that tsk-tsking you're doing inside is really based on nothing. And I have a burning question for those who are uncomfortable with a woman nursing a baby under a wrap in public. I'm asking this in all sincerity- what exactly is it about seeing a baby under a wrap close to its mother which is upsetting? Is it the idea the baby is eating? I would love some one to describe what goes within them when they see a woman with a baby who is nursing and it upsets them.

Now I also read another blog about parents judging other parents. Even though I've just laid out a plea to stop the judging, the internet has whirled me around and made me change my mind. When I hear about a child being abused, I judge and judge harshly. Like in this whole Judge John Adams video incident. When people see something happening to a child that they feel is wrong, its very hard not to look at the parent and judge. I judge this Judge, and I'm not sorry. In fact, I also judge those who don't judge this Judge, judging from support of hitting children that I have read in response to blogs about not hitting children. Being judgemental? Just now judged as just.

The internet is a wild place, full of people who in the cloak of cyber anonymity can be honest, and this honesty has been jarring to me sometimes. What do you guys think? Are you judgers? Do you follow lots of news about parenting? Do you know where I can get a great little number to wear when I give birth? Enlighten me, I'm a little all over the place after all this web surfing.

*my own opinion is that I would love to avoid an epidural, but since this birth will be a VBAC, I need to be prepared for things not going according to plan.