Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic FDK: In the Beginning (2/?)

Sorry. A bad cold is taking up all my free time, so I got very little writing done this week and had no time to get online.

Still feeling pretty poorly, but hopefully I'll have some time to get back online to reply to feedback now that it's the weekend.

No idea when the next chapter will be up, though.

Ok I am confused. These are world class reporters who KNEW they were having a child and they are acting like total idiots.

La Leche League

I was 19 when my wife delivered our first child. That was 32 years ago this month.


Frankly my wife and I were both young and stupid, who else gets married that young and has their first child ten and a half months later but stupid idiots?

No internet access yet we were able to find the La Leche League and get all the help needed for my wife to nurse our daughter. In fact she nursed all three of our children.

We had books, you know those old fashion printed paper things, on breastfeeding long before our first was born.

And no it was not because I work in healthcare. My first healthcare job wasn't till 1979 and I've never worked peds. I'm in addictions.

We can cut Lois some slack, having a baby is hard work and the moodswings and exhaustion during pregnancy and possible postpartum depression might interfere with her ability to seek out information, but not Clark.

Eidetic memory and super speed leave him without excuse. If an idiot 19 year old can do it so can he.

After four kids, my thought processes are way different than with the first and I'm trying to read this through that first baby filter. Even though my first was born in 2001, I can definitely relate to this Lois - though the nurses were a lot more help than Nancy describes here but the baby - not so cooperative. I'd been through the classes and had the lactation in and still nothing worked.

I know Nancy based part of the previous story on her own experiences, so it's possible that she's done something of the same here [though I have no way of knowing for sure what]. I, personally, have had one baby lose 17% of her body weight in 6 days and be readmitted to the hospital, the first one mentioned above was borderline before she FINALLY caught on, and we all know the story of my DS as a failure to thrive baby [as retold in OTOH]. Even with the fourth, I relied heavily on the nurses who were not always as helpful as they should have been...

I agree that not everyone has an easy time of it. It wasn't too bad with my big strapping 8lbs 9oz boy, but it was a little tougher with my little girl who was a few weeks early. But I think what we most need to remember is that L&C both are so concerned about something being wrong because this baby is half Kryptonian; they just don't know what to expect much from a fully earthling baby, let alone a only half earthling baby! Also, it's tough after a c-section, trying to recover from major surgery on top of everything else -- I had that, too.

It sounds like Ellen is in on the "secret", so they need to have her stay and give them some direct intervention, as I thought it sounded like she breastfed Lois & Lucy, so has some first-hand knowledge. Also they need to stop being so worried about waking up the baby and try harder, but I remember having the same problem with my second.

Poor things -- they're so worried! They love her so much. But darn Clark -- how can he sleep so soundly while Lois is getting more and more upset? I can't imagine that he won't sense any minute and get up to comfort her.

Sorry, we had unexpected visitors last weekend and were out of town this past weekend. And a child which has decided there’s no reason for to go to sleep at night before I do. All of which means no free time for me.

Thank you for the feedback. It makes me feel badly as I haven’t written a word since this was posted…

Patrick – I have to admit, when I first read your feedback, I was a bit insulted. I don’t think either my husband or I are stupid (and I think most people who know us in RL would agree), and yet much of this, as Carol mentioned, was autobiographical.

But I’ve since remembered more of those first few days and realized that my experience was quite likely very different than yours. I won’t go into details, mainly as I’m not sure how many of those will end up in the story, but I have sufficient evidence that our experience was not the norm and generally nursing goes better than this.

What I forgot to do in this story is explain that Lois and Clark have done all the reading, attended the breastfeeding classes, etc. All of which my husband and I did as well. I’m not going to say those things didn’t help – when the nurses were little help, it did bring back some of the information on the way to hold the baby and things like that. However, it didn’t fix the fundamental problem that my DD didn’t want to eat. I did a lot more reading the first few days at home (both books and internet), talked to everyone I knew who had nursed their kids, and got no where else very fast. Long before I left the hospital, we had tried every suggestion there was that we could find and nothing worked.

That’s still a couple of days away yet for Lois and Clark, and I have to admit that perhaps it seems like Lois and Clark are idiots here. But it wasn’t until right about the moment they are at now that my DH and I realized we had been doing anything wrong. The nurses at the hospital kept saying if she wouldn’t wake up, she wasn’t hungry, and aside from trying every few hours, as we were doing, there wasn’t anything else to do.

To be fair, to Evelyn’s point, my DD was very small at birth which made all of the weight lost stuff more alarming, and I decided not to saddle Larissa with that since she has her odd parentage to deal with. A lot of what I read and heard (some of this from Carol who has experience with small babies) seemed to suggest that my DD’s small size may have contributed (she did act a lot like a preemie, but she was also smaller than many but the most severe preemies), but I’m sure there are normal size babies, and even large babies who have eating issues as well.

That may or may not shed some light on what is going on. Perhaps the next chapter (whenever I write it) may help. Or maybe not. Maybe Clark and Lois will continue to seem like idiots to you.

Thanks, Carol and Evelyn!

And Evelyn – yes, Ellen knows, as does Sam and Lucy and her husband. Also Perry and Jimmy. Everyone close to them found out in the last story.

And as for Clark sleeping through Lois’ crying, she’s being very quiet and he’s exhausted. Even for a super man, it’s hard caring for a newborn, particularly now when Lois isn’t able to help that much.

I hope to get some writing done this week, but don’t expect much, so it will probably be sometime next week or so before the next time I post. Sorry!