Last Day Of The Hols

The Easter holidays drew to a close here yesterday in pretty
busy style.  We had visitors in the shape
of my parents in law and my sister in law with her family.  Our nine year old returned from a friend’s
sleepover after having far too much fun to sleep and so was in the sort of form
you’d expect from a walking demon.  Our
teenager went to the last disco before her Junior Cert which started at 8
o’clock so obviously she had to start getting ready from 2 o’clock, (that
certain shade of tangerine they all like to be, takes a while to take hold) while
the “in between” kids played happily with their cousins without any regard for the
Department of the Environment noise pollution guidelines.
While eating we were treated to a floor show by my two year
old who is well capable of using the toilet but preferred to show the accuracy
with which he can aim at the potty , the sort of accuracy you tended to see
from the person who answered the questions on bullseye.  The five year old meanwhile imitated Dusty Crophopper,
complete with sound effects and actions from the Planes movie which was being
shown simultaneously on RTE and the seven month old looked on bemused but
definitely not fazed by the whole spectacle. It was a lovely afternoon.

When everyone was gone home and most of the kids were in bed,
all that was left to do was wait for my daughter to come home.  The baby, who doesn’t rate sleep, kept us
company and greeted his sister with a big smile as she came in the door.  It’s an almost surreal feeling sometimes to
have a child old enough to go to a disco and have a child so young he needs
propping up with cushions on the floor. It’s funny to have children who keep
you up at night for very different reasons.

Today, much to my kid’s disgust will be about getting ready
for the return to school tomorrow. 
Trying to reel back in bedtimes which have gone more than a little askew
over the last couple of weeks and making sure everything is ready for the week
ahead.  I have loved the break from the
routine, the freedom from homework and afterschool activities and the
reclaiming of our afternoons.  There has
been lots of fun had and far too many rows too but all good things must come to
an end. Now how to convince them that the return to school is not all bad……
#atleasttheresagrandstretchintheevenings #mamatude

Breastfeeding shaming

I have read a huge amount online in recent weeks about
episodes of breastfeeding shaming which still seems to happen on a much larger
scale than I would have expected.  My son
is almost seven months old and is breastfed. 
No big deal in my eyes.  He’s a baby.
He gets hungry.  He gets fed – pretty
much wherever and whenever necessary. He’s slightly (very slightly) more
predictable now that he’s older but, in the early days, I knew that any kind of
an outing would most likely involve me having to feed my baby in public. Now,
I’m not a whip ‘em all out kinda girl, (except that time I walked into my
daughter’s school for a presentation and hadn’t put them completely away after
feeding the little guy in the car – however, that wasn’t deliberate and she’s
slowly recovering from the trauma and embarrassment I caused her) but then
again I don’t know any breastfeeding mother who is. A huge amount of the time,
no one would even know I was feeding the baby and I think this is the case for
most mothers.  It has happened, however,
and usually at the most inopportune time, that my son has decided to suddenly
stop feeding, turn around, give a gummy grin to a passerby and expose my boob
to any poor unsuspecting and potentially easily offended individual sitting or
standing in my line of vision.

I’ve never been made to feel uncomfortable breastfeeding my
baby in public. I’ve never had a disapproving look, someone moving seat or a
comment about whether or not an appropriate proportion of my breast is on
show.  I hope it’s not just a case that
I’ve been lucky.  I hope the stories of
breastfeeding shaming, while apparently plentiful at the moment, are a
collection of isolated incidents. I would hate to think that something so
natural could cause offence to so many people. To paraphrase a midwife I met
while expecting my first child “Breasts have a function. They are there to feed
your baby, even if men like to play with the empties!” For me breastfeeding is
hugely convenient in that it allows me to adopt the motto “have boobs, will
travel”. It saves me a huge amount of time in an already chaotic life. The biggest
inconvenience it causes me actually, is the restriction
in my wardrobe choices.  I am now a
wearer, almost entirely of separates! #remembertoputthemawayafter #sorryhoney
#mamatude