As a new mother I am slightly obsessed with

It is not that I love being a mother.
I don't.
I enjoy parts of it, but I hate parts of it as well. I am just obsessed because I spend most of my time with a small child and she doesn't give me the option of thinking about anything else.

When you become a mother your life changes in ways that you never expected. You do things that you never thought about doing. And you think about things that you never thought about before.

I don't think I ever respected my mother as much as she deserved
until I had a child of my own.

I also think about her mother and her mother before her and how did they manage to cope when I am barely surviving.

I can buy prepared baby food, disposable diapers, plastic re-usable bibs, disposable bibs, and all sorts of other prepared ready made items that were not previously available.

Not to mention my electric steam sterilizer.

It takes only ten minutes to to completely sterilize up to four bottles.
No large vats of boiling water, no chemicals, no hassle.
And you know your baby is a year old when you get to clear out the sterilizer for the last time and put it away safe in the knowledge that your child is eating enough dirt on her own that sterilizing bottles has become a moot point.

Children throughout the ages have died from drinking out of dirty bottles. Just one small bit of technology not only saves time but also saves lives.

Pretty amazing.

It is a bit of lifesaving technology that I have no qualms with.
There are other bits of technology that I seriously question though.

When my mother was ill in the hospital she was hooked up to all sorts of life saving equipment.

Fortunately before she had her first stroke she had signed a Living Will giving power of attorney to my father to decide whether what she was living was life. After the fifth or sixth stroke when the doctors determined that she would never recover from the coma she had entered, my father had the strength to decide that even though her heart was beating my mother was no longer alive. Technology had not provided my mother with a steam sterilizer when her children were small, but by the time they had grown, technology had turned doctors into gods, who kept people breathing even after they had died. My father and I had a small battle to convince the hospital to let my mother die.

It is an experience that I never want to relive.

Before my daughter was born I had long discussions with my husband to decide what we would do if our child was born with something seriously wrong. I have a nephew who was hooked up to machines from the minute he was born until his death six weeks later. I did not want a child of mine to live like that. I did not want to have to fight with another hospital about their right to use their technology to prolong a life that was not meant to be.
Fortunately our child was born healthy and I did not have to make any decisions.

This week I will put my steam sterilizer away in the attic until I need it for the next child.

Technology is great when it is used to make your life easier.
It is terrifying when it is used to try to take it over.