page 123

Because everybody's doing it:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

Here's Lady Elizabeth Clinton, in The Countesse of Lincolnes Nuserie (1622) on why she didn't breast-feed but thinks that every mom should:

I knowe and acknowledge that I should have done it, and having not done it; it was not for want of will in my selfe, but partly I was overruled by anothers authority, and partly deceived by somes ill counsell, and partly I had not so well considered of my duty in this motherly office, as since I did, when it was too late for me to put it in execution.

Failing to breast-feed when one's not sick, lunatic, or desparately poor, it seems, is sinful. And wet-nurses can't be trusted--indeed, the countess blames "dissembling nurses" for the deaths of two of her own children, and tells her readers that out of all the nurses she'd ever had for her 18 (!) children, only two were "thoroughly willing, and carefull."

So, take heed, you moms and moms-to-be. You just can't be too careful.