this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
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Don't be mean. I promise to do my best to judge that fairly.
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When my kid was but a newborn, they were having trouble latching. We had to take them in for a very small procedure to get them to be able to feed properly. I could see their mother was having trouble dealing with it, so I tried to say "the doctor says it won't hurt" and "do you want me to hold [the kid]?" Ended up saying "do you want me to hurt them?"
The doctor counseled against that action.
On a separate event, years before that kid was born, I had to take my first dog to the vet and he had to get a shot. He was clearly nervous but the vet tech was holding him, so I rubbed his neck and ear to comfort him throughout. Only just as they were finishing up did I realize I had also, entirely accidentally, been rubbing the vet tech's hand. She didn't say anything until I realized and apologized profusely, but it was still mortifying.
edit: Punctuation.
This happened to our second as well, but sadly the surgery didn’t help.
Was this to fix a tongue tie? I'm not sure if it was the surgery or some other factor, but ours started breastfeeding after having the procedure. The post-surgery "exercises" were the worst though - basically massaging a newborn's recently separated skin twice a day was not pleasant for anyone.
It was for us but, at least as far as I can remember, we weren't really given any aftercare instructions. Once it was done they put us in a private room and told us to try feeding. It went better than usual but that was more or less a fluke.
We wanted to do breastfeeding but couldn't; ultimately what worked was that the doctor gave us a syringe with some plastic tubing and told us to run the tubing along a finger, let the kid basically latch onto the finger, and use the syringe to push formula through the tubing. That kept the kid fed until we were able to switch to bottles.
I'm glad you got it sorted and your kid is doing well. They seem pretty damn resilient.
Love your username, btw.
My kid is awesome (and yes, resilient, if terrified of bugs and a little traumatized by pet loss). So much personality. I was scared of being a parent but I'm happy I did because I'm so proud of them. Thank you for noticing.
Thanks! Why? Most people connect it with the Toynbee tiles (which are cool and interesting, but not where I got it), but most people who do so mention it in their comments. You didn't, which makes me curious.
It was the Toynbee tile connection for me. Something that I look for while traveling.
If you ever go to Philadelphia and I randomly happen to be there, I can direct you to one.
I got it from Marvel's Toad. Specifically the novelization of the first X-Men movie. I didn't become aware of the tiles until well afterwards (and I'm not exactly sure whether they existed beforehand).
I've told this story on both Lemmy and Reddit beforehand, but just as a matter of interest ... I used to take the train to Philly, then walk to where I worked then. One day I took a different route, keeping my eyes down, and stumbled - almost literally - on the aforementioned tile. It was genuinely shocking to see my online username embedded in the ground.
Thanks for the offer - I used to live in Philly, so have seen a few around. I stumbled on my first while walking through a sketchy part of Port Richmond.
I would not have guessed that source of your name - after reading the Toynbee tiles Wikipedia page I would have guessed the historian, Bradbury story, or Clarke story.