Eight Ways The World Would Be Different If Men Lactated.

My [almost] four-month old has taken to waking up every hour-and-a-half beginning at midnight. I think he's either teething or possessed by sleep-stealing monsters that I must have infuriated in a former life when I was a cat.

My husband can do little because throughout-the-night snacks are the only things that seem to appease the screaming baby and I'm just too exhausted to train him out of this right now.

I started wondering, during one of the dreamlike feeding sessions, what the world would be like if men were the parents equipped to feed babies. Sure, I'd sleep a lot more, but the world would be markedly different.

Here are the eight ways the world would be different if men lactated.

1. Store shelves would overflow with Small and Medium-sized bottles as Large would sell out first even though Medium is adequate for everyone.

2. In the garage, husbands would boast about the size of their deep freeze instead of their car.

3. Medela would list horsepower on the side of the box.

4. Sporting venues would have pumping posts at every seat so the men wouldn't have to rush home ready to burst. They wouldn't be private as that would require missing the game.

5. Instead of sheepishly leaving meetings to head to the Lactation Lounge, the lactating individual would grab his engorged breasts and scream, "Off to pump, BITCHES!" Mid-exit, he'd make it rain with the 48 page deck his boss was in the middle of presenting.

6. A lost bet with drunken college friends would mean someone is trying some milk. At a bar. On the bartop.

7. Children would be breast fed until the age of 17 as men would be determined to make it longer than their fellow dads. This would be the end of packaged-goods as fruit snacks, granola bars, and pretzels would no longer be childhood staples.

8. An inventor would have invented a way for babies toe eat without Dad ever needing to get up because, let's face it, if men had to wake up five times a night to feed a child, humans would become extinct. Picture, if you will, a milk-filled bottle attached to the side of the crib ala a hamster cage. Who's up at 3am? No one. Oh wait. Mom's up, heating a bottle from the freezer and cursing her husband because the darn self-feeding contraption is out of batteries.

Maybe the world wouldn't be so different after all.