Little Rock Star.

Damn You, Sexy Nurse!

Babe just before her first Halloween. The day of she actually went out dressed as an owl.

Been looking for a Halloween costume for Babe.

I know this has been in the news around Vancouver lately but I'm getting so frustrated that of course I want to weigh in as well.

So,

To pretty much every Halloween store in the Lower Mainland:

Are you fucking kidding me with the options for little girl costumes this year?

Why are the only choices for my three-year-old daughter either a Disney princess or a sexy version of anything else?

When she was smaller I could get her the cute, warm, fluffy costumes from places like Old Navy. But now that she is bigger we have been looking at other ideas. And I am so disappointed.

Why is it that in order for my not even three-year-old daughter to dress up for Halloween she has to look sexy. Why can't we find a regular nurse costume? Why does it need to be Stripper-Nurse? For a fucking toddler.

Babe wanted to be a lady bug. I've been to a bunch of stores. But do you think I could find a regular chubby, round ladybug costume? Nope, not this year. (And I'm kicking myself because I actually do have exactly that in storage and can't find it.)

Every single one was ladybug wings with a short little dress attached. And when Babe's second choice was a cat I thought that would be easy peasy. But nope. Same shit. Every cat costume was cat ears, a tail and a tight-fitting leopard-print number usually reserved for the only clothed scene of a porno movie.

But one isle over, in the boy section - lots of realistic, warm and practical lion and tiger costumes.

I got so sick of seeing the same damn Disney Princess costumes and tight, short-skirted everything else costumes that I finally took her over to the boy section of the store. And I shouldn't have to do that. If she wants to be a doctor there should be an appropriate doctor costume in the girl section.

Because that is the whole point of a uniform isn't it? It's basically the same for everyone. Real firefighters, policemen, doctors and soldiers dress almost exactly the same, regardless of gender.

But not for Halloween. The boys can be regular doctors, the girls are limited to hooker-doctor. Like the only way a woman should perform surgery is if she still manages to look beautiful doing it and remembers to carve out time to perform blow-jobs in the evening.

At the last store we went to, the boy section had; dinosaurs, zoo animals, firemen, policemen, zombies and construction worker costumes. Perfectly age-appropriate and fairly close to realistic for $30. But the whole girl section was pink, sparkly and slutty. And the only costume that wasn't pink and slutty was an offensive First Nations costume...which was brown and slutty. And remember...I'm looking at costumes for THREE to FIVE year old girls.

Even the days of the ever-faithful, big round pumpkin costumes are gone. Or at least they're gone for the girls. The girls get Pretty Candy Corn Princess (which is just marketing for a striped orange miniskirt). Of course, in the boy section - regular fat pumpkin costumes.

And the sick thing is I can't even blame the stores because it's the consumer that's buying this crap. We continually overly sexualize women at younger and younger ages, hold them up to impossible standards of beauty, convince them early on that no matter how hard they work they'll have to look good doing it too and now a little girl can't even trick or treat on Halloween without freezing her buns off in some sick, booty-shorted version of a policeman costume.

And then we turn around and over-protect the same daughters because there's so many perverts out there who sexualize kids. Well, gee...I wonder why?

Over my cold, dead corpse is my daughter dressing up in anything even remotely sexy before high school, and definitely not before she enters kindergarten. For now, she can get something from the boy isle and I'll take another twenty minutes out of my busy day to talk her out of a panic because the costume is for boys and not girls.

And really? Like I said before, why is there even separate boy and girl sections for little kids costumes anyway. A doctor is a doctor, a dinosaur is a dinosaur and a pumpkin is a gourd for crying out loud!

Can't the kids isle just be for kids? Isn't Halloween supposed to be for kids?

It's supposed to be laughter and staying up late and ghost stories and candy - not JELL-O shooters and hooking up in a crotchless Catwoman suit behind your current elementary school.

Babe last year on Halloween in Smithers.

This Sucks: another sucky symptom of breastfeeding.

My boob is shrinking. And no, I don't mean boobs plural. I mean boob - singular! I think I'm losing the milk in the one.

It took awhile for my milk to come in after Babe was born. Probably because I had a cesarean. After a few days I caved and supplemented Babe with formula because she was losing so much weight. I also started taking Domperidone (a medication that increases lactation) to get my milk flowing and I rented an electronic pump from the hospital.

Eventually my milk came in, Babe was latching well and all was fine.

Until I woke up one morning and only one breast was full of milk - and twice the size of the other. Uh-oh. I thought in my exhausted haze I must have mistakenly nursed only one side all night. I really don't know what happened, maybe that was it. But for all the extra feedings I directed at the small breast it never fully recovered. And as the hours turned to days Babe became less and less interested in nursing on the "runt boob" and finally began refusing it altogether.

So I took up pumping the runt. And drinking a ton of nursing mother tea, which contains Fenugreek (a herb purported to increase lactation). But it was too late. While milk shot from my other breast like water from a hole in a hose, it would only occasionally drip from the runt. I would pump and pump and not even cover the bottom of the bottle. This lack of production combined with the embarrassment of my now lopsidedness (as if a new mother doesn't have enough body issues to contend with) drove me to seek out help from our local health nurses.

I didn't get the answer I was looking for. Instead I was told that it's quite common for a woman to have one breast which produces less milk. Sometimes one will dry up completely.

I thought, SHIT! I'm only a few months in and this tit is quitting on me? This is a team effort guys. How is one breast supposed to tow the line? How am I supposed to walk around town with my extra 20 pounds and uneven breasts? They don't even make bras that come in a B and C cup, do they? Do I buy both sizes and cut them up and sew them back together as a lopsided pair? Then do I try to sell the reverse pair on Craigslist or something? If this is such a common concern of breastfeeding moms maybe I could start a business making and selling two cup size bras.

But I wasn't ready to accept defeat. Haven't I sacrificed enough? I still had half a bottle of the Domperidone so the nurse said I could try taking that again.

It seems to have worked a little. I have more milk in the runt than I did before and they're getting closer in size again. Now Babe will nurse for a couple minutes on the runt before she gets frustrated. I'm trying to always give her the small boob before she gets the big one.

I tell her she needs to eat her raisin before she can have her melon. It's a new rule in our house.

So True.

I love this onesie that my friend gave me. Because I have taken care of so many babies I do get kinda annoyed with the well-intentioned, "just wait until your baby is born" comments. I ALREADY KNOW IT ALLl!!!!!! I actually don't but those comments do bug me a little. Not everyone goes into parenthood without having ever even changed a diaper.

Can't wait to put this on Baby when we go out in public.

Stay Tuned: After we move I will post some of the items I picked out for the first year and why I chose them.