Perfect Little World



There had been discussion about how the babies would be fed from the moment the families had gathered at the complex. When they first arrived, mothers breast-fed their own baby or pumped so that the father or another parent or caregiver could handle the duty. After two months of this system, Dr. Grind offered the suggestion of a milk-sharing scenario, where all ten mothers banked milk, which could be used for any of the babies, to create an even more communal style of parenting. Julie, the most forward-thinking of the parents, who seemed to have chosen The Infinite Family Project not because of circumstance, but from a genuine desire to be a part of something so unique, then suggested cross-nursing, where mothers nursed any baby that needed it, but most of the other parents, including Izzy, opted against it, either because it simply made them uncomfortable or because it prevented the fathers from taking part in the feeding process. Finally, after careful consideration, everyone having their own vote, including Dr. Grind and the postdocs, they decided that they would keep using the current system, that if they were not available to feed their child, they would pump and store that milk in the bank and it would be reserved for their own child. It did, however, make it necessary for the mothers to pump several times during the day and night. Some of the mothers would meet in the TV room to pump, the machines whirring while four or five women watched a baseball game or The Price Is Right on mute. Others preferred to do it privately, in their own home. Now, at any time of day, one could hear the whooshing of the pneumatic tubes that had been fitted throughout the complex, as another mother sent milk to the bank for immediate labeling and refrigeration. This was the future, Izzy decided, which was never the future you imagined.


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