Silver Dollar Pancakes

Thanks to TIME magazine folks have been in a breast feeding frenzy lately. Media outlets latched onto the story as fiercely as the little kid on the cover. But I think they missed the real story.

Get a bunch of moms in a room and very rarely will fights break out about the best way to raise children. The real mommy wars are waged not over who is right, but who has the best story.

How do I know this? I'm not a mom (at least not a "real" one, despite my insistence that having a dog qualifies me), but I recently spent an evening in the company of a roomful of mothers, which provided one of the more revealing conversations in recent mammary. (Wah wah waaaaahhhhhhh.)

The daughter of an OB/GYN, I am not bashful about many things, but even I rouged at the frankness of their titillating tales. Little, if anything, was off limits as these moms compared stories of birthing and breastfeeding. But the one that got me was nipple size. Yes, you read that correctly. Nipple size.

In the flesh, moms – like so many of us – are more concerned with fitting in than taking sides. These ladies shared stats about nipple radius (money references were big here: from silver dollar all the way down to dime) and hardened length (stand-outs included: three inches, inverted, and visual approximations usually associated with raunchy men's locker room fare). As they shared (and shared and shared), it occurred to me that - mothers or not - we all want the same thing: to not be total freaks. And the things we worry make us most freakish are the very things we're too mortified to discuss. This conversation blew that out of the water for me.

What I hope to bring to you from this night is not an open forum to discuss nipple size. I discovered I'm much too prudish for that. What I hope to bring you is the assurance that you are not alone. No matter what your nipple radius or length, there are others like you. No matter what your take on breastfeeding, there are others like you. No matter if you pooped during childbirth, there are others like you. With regards to pretty much anything you're worried about or ashamed of, there are others like you. We are all freaks. So let your freak flag fly… just keep your shirt on.