I needed that

A week ago I took my eldest to her toddler "gymnastics" class.  She loves this class and I am a little sad that she won't be able to go after the summer as she will be in nursery in the mornings (as opposed to the afternoons like just now).  Each week is a bit of a struggle though, there isn't particularly anything to do with my 19mo while the 45 minute class takes place so we potter around the place and she looks at me occasionally with a look of  'I'm bored' and more to the point I have 50 minutes from the end of the class to nursery drop off so fitting in lunch can be a bit of a struggle.

This means we tend to take a packed lunch and eat it in the leisure centre before we come home (before running out the door to make it to nursery).  Sometimes I feel a little of that all-too-common maternal guilt about the rushed nature of lunch or trying to feed them something substantial enough on the move.  I have blogged about our lunches before.  They tend to look something like this

This day in the leisure centre was no different, so my children were tucking into their fruit and vegetables and yoghurt tubes when someone sitting near us struck up some conversation about how they were jealous of my children's lunches.  I made some suitably non-accepting remark about it just being the stuff I had lying around the kitchen, the culinary equivalent of someone complimenting my outfit and me saying "oh, this old thing".  Someone on another table also chipped in that they had been admiring the contents of the lunch boxes.  I was a little taken aback but pleased, the conversation continued for a few moments, about the challenges of feeding small people and about how organised I must need to be to get it all sorted in the morning (although in my defence, a crap sandwich in that particular leisure centre costs about £4.50 so it definitely adds some incentive!).  The conversation drew to a close and one of the ladies stood up and before she left looked at me, looked at the kids and said, "you are doing really well".

Thank you to that lady, I have no idea who you are, I have no idea if you have kids (although I suspect you do) and I will likely never see you again but I have thought about that comment many times this week and I have smiled.  Thank you for recognising my hard work.  Thank you for voicing it.  Thank you for not choosing the 20 things you could have judged but for speaking about the thing I was doing well.

I am hoping it will inspire me to speak good things to all my other mum friends (and strangers).  parenthood is fraught with difficulties and we can all feel judged and even make judgements but that compliment has kept me going for a whole week and beyond so let's all just say nice things to each other!

Reality Mothering

Yesterday I posted this picture to Twitter and Facebook with the caption "It is possible I have fallen a little behind in putting away our clean laundry"

I received many responses which all loosely could be summed up by "My goodness, you mean I am not the only one? This makes me feel so much better".

Some people have this pile on their kitchen table, some in their bedrooms and some, like me, have it on their spare beds, but it would seem that more of us have this pile than would care to admit it.

One of my favourite responses came from one of my friends and neighbours, she said

We should all have "reality mothering" days when we open our homes in their true state to our friends without any frantic pre-visit tidy ups, sweeping into cupboards or closing of spare room doors. I think we'd all feel a lot better about ourselves! I think I've pretty much got to that stage with a lot of my friends now.

I LOVE this, so in the spirit of the motion, I am hereby opening up my home with all it's blemishes for you to see

Here are my children, watching Peppa Pig while toys lie, unplayed with on the floor and the post nursery-run coats are discarded

Here is the play area of my living room being ignored because I put on a DVD and haven't tidied the toys away or made the children do it either!

 Here is my kitchen complete with broken egg shell lying on the work surface from making lunch and various bits of dirty crockery and such like...

Here is the washing machine, complete with washing that has been sitting clean but wet in it since yesterday evening

Here is the juice *shock horror* that I fairly regularly put inside my children!

Here is a large bag of bags that used to contain fresh milk that I have been meaning to take to the recycling point for about three weeks

Here are the chips I will feed my children tonight because I am too knackered to make something else!

And before we move upstairs, here are the curtains I haven't bothered opening all day and now at 4pm probably won't get round to opening today

Oh and the wet (not dirty) nappy I forgot to tidy up after I changed M earlier!

Here is the very disorganised bedroom of my children and an odd sock collection that I'd love to know if it can be rivalled (especially when you consider it is about half the odd sock, those belonging to my husband are elsewhere and I wear odd socks every day in order to deal with the problem another way)

My very disorganised bedroom

And my full to bursting wardrobe that I have been meaning to sort out since I found out I was pregnant (about 15 weeks ago)

This is my book shelf that for some reason also hosts a now empty chocolate tin, some hair detangler, shoes that fit no-one in our household and some nappy cream, not to mention the fabric and what might be the insert of a washing basket!

And finally we have the computer desk I am sitting at now to write this! (while the children watch more Peppa Pig).

Normal doesn't mean easy

I am about to have a rant.  Feel free to comment if you life but the main point of this post is just to rant and get my feelings out.

I am dealing with a few issues just now and all of  them are very, VERY normal.

1.  I live in a town where I have no friends.  I have met lots of really lovely people and I look forward to getting to know them better but right now they don't know much more about me than my name, how many children I have and that I moved here recently.  My really good friends live in Aberdeenshire or Loughborough. And you know what, I am lonely.  Really lonely.  So lonely it makes me cry sometimes.  This is normal, we've not long moved here and missing the people I have deep relationships with is normal.  Wishing I could just pop round and say hello is normal.  Feeling down and wishing I could have coffee with them is normal.

2.  My children fight.  Constantly.  With each other and with me.  Now that Miriam can move Naomi gets upset that her toys are stolen but equally doesn't understand that Miriam can't really play with her yet.  Naomi doesn't listen to a thing I say from the beginning of the day to the end, unless I am offering her cake.  This is normal, she is two.  She is working out the world doesn't revolve around her and she is sad about it.  It is normal that Miriam wants to explore her sister's toys and doesn't understand that Naomi thinks they are all hers.

3.  I am exhausted.  This is normal, I have two small children and I am with them constantly as neither of them have any childcare so I look after them morning, noon and night seven days a week.  At this point in life I shouldn't expect to feel anything other than tired.

The thing is, though.  Just because it is normal doesn't make it easy.  Just because it is normal for my two year old to go through a phase of refusing to use a knife and fork doesn't mean I shouldn't try and make her at least try.  Just because it is normal for me to feel lonely when  my friends live so far away doesn't make it any easier for me to get through each day longing for deeper relationships and doesn't mean I should just get over it and stop feeling low.

I have stopped telling people about my difficulties, at least not so much as I feel all I get is a platitude of "it's normal".  It is normal, and that provides a small amount of comfort that my problems aren't of a magnitude that can't be dealt with but it doesn't change anything, not least of all that life feels a bit tiring, challenging and difficult right now and I feel like I genuinely need help, be it advice or 10 minutes off in a day and don't know where to get it.

Anyway, we'll get through this phase, like we've got through every other and move on to the next "normal" problem.

My Issues with Baby Led Weaning

Having enjoyed some weetabix and banana for breakfast

This post has been rattling around in my head for ages and before I start typing it I would like to make the following disclaimer:

How you wean your baby is your decision and I believe there are pros and cons to all methods and I do think there is a lot to be said for baby led weaning (I use little bits of the concept myself) and I have dear friends who I love dearly who swear by it and I still love them despite anything I am about to say.

Weaning, it's another one of those contentious parenting issues isn't it.  That separates people into "good" parents and "bad" parents depending on what you do.  Do you use purees? Are they home made or do you used shop bought packets of puree? Do you start at four months? Wait till six? Or do you do baby led weaning?

In case you don't know the idea with baby led weaning is that babies eat lots of finger foods/things they can pick up.  They can munch on what they can manage and get all the rest of what they need from milk, as they get older and more proficient at eating they get more of there nutrients and substance from solid food and less from milk, it is so called because the baby sets the pace.

Here are my issues though...

The name!  Baby Led Weaning, and even more so when you think that BLW folks tend to refer to the alternative as spoon led weaning, makes it sound like having decided to spoon feed my children that I am force feeding them!  They still dictate when they have had enough, they are more than capable of communicating when they are done and we don't finish every meal that we start.

The idea that just because we are puree feeding we are chained to the kitchen making special foods for ever more.  In the early days we just pureed some of the veg that we were having in our dinner anyway and very quickly we progressed to just eating whatever the rest of us were having for dinner.  I think that Miriam was 5 months old when she had her first curry (a dinner she loves!) and she continues to just eat whatever the rest of us are having, just pureed to a texture and consistency she could manage.  Now that she is a little older it is normally just mushed up with a fork or increasingly I just put bits down for her to pick up for herself (there's that nod to baby led weaning from me)

My baby (both of them actually, but even more so Miriam) was ravenous, long before she was ready to do baby led weaning, she could hold her head up quite the thing but nowhere near being able to sit up.  And I don't just mean she was waking up more (I am well aware this isn't necessarily a sign that it is time to start weaning), I mean she was grumpy, she was obvious hungry and at meal times when the rest of the family ate she screamed her way through.  I started weaning at four months and if I had waited any longer I would have been subjecting everyone to a very sad two months, everyone was happier (not least of all her) when she starting having some extra food inside her belly.

I frequently hear that BLW is better for avoiding allergies, and I am happy to admit that I have no evidence that it isn't but I would love to see some evidence that it is!  As far as I can tell apart from delaying the age we wean at the only difference between what I feed my child and what a BLWer feeds their child is the form it is served in...  Maybe I am just lucky but both my puree fed children are completely allergy free!

Also, and this is a very minor issue, how do children who are exclusively given meals to pick at learn to use a knife and fork? (I know they must do but for my children it was just natural to start using the spoon when I left it sitting to get a mouthful of my own dinner and then progress from there to a fork...)

Mainly though. I think my issue comes down to the fact that I feel judged.  I feel like if you have chosen BLW that you think I am harming my children or doing it "wrong".  My children are happy, healthy, love fruit and veg, not overweight and don't eat lots of junk food so please can you try and adjust your language? Or maybe I just need one or to of the baby led weaning camp to tell me what beautiful children I have and tell me I must feed them lovely healthy food for them to be doing so well.  Because you know what? I do and they are!

Got to Dance?

With a toddler running around my feet and a baby needing lots of my time it can be very difficult to find things to do just for myself, however, the girls have been getting better at having one nap a day at the same time allowing me five minutes to put my feet up.  Often during this time I stick the telly on and recently I have been watching Sky One's "Got to Dance".  I like the fact it is a competition where people do it for the love of dance rather than a desire too get famous.  I like that it is gentle and I love that the kinds of dance are so wide and varied.

Today, though, I watched it and my heart broke.  A dance troop came on, it was entirely made up of 10 and 11 year old girls.  Little girls.  Precious little girls.  They put on their game faces and they danced, danced like their lives depended on it to the dance track, "I'm sexy and I know it".

Everything in me wanted to buy each child a doll and get them to sit down and play with playdough, or maybe to build a den.  They can play with cars for all I care, I don't buy into gender stereotypes  I'll be honest, they can even dance, they can do street dancing, I have no problems with that, I approve of them getting some physical exercise.  It was all about the song.

These children were not sexy, they were 10 and 11, no-one should even begin to think of them as sexy, least of all themselves.  They should be young, innocent, protected from such concepts and yet instead we get them running around a stage showing us how sexy they are.

Why are we so desperate for our girls to grow up? They will have years and years where they can be sexual beings (as one I can confirm it is rather a lot of fun) but don't make it start when they are 10.

Am I alone? Am I old-fashioned? Should I just accept that my little girls will be thrusting her groin when her age has only just hit double figures? Or should I help them stay young, innocent and pure for as long as I can?

I will be trying my best to shelter them for as long as I can, regardless of whether I should or not.  I will do everything I can to keep them children for all the time I can, as their mother I believe I owe them that much.

Where do I fit in?

I love breastfeeding my little girl, here we are having a snack one day

However, Naomi is about to turn one, once she does I plan on reducing her booby-milk feeds by replacing the two day time ones we still have with cow's milk from her sippy cup.  We'll still be keeping the morning and night ones for a good bit longer, unless she decides she doesn't want them any more.

Following some advice from a friend I plan on doing this by offering her some cow's milk, once she is done/throws it on the floor she can have some booby-milk and in time I hope that she will drink more from the cup and less from my boobs!  She gets more and more distracted during booby feeds and so I am hoping she will enjoy the cup as it will allow her to look around, though I'm planning on still having her on my knee for settling down and cuddles, to keep those snuggles we currently have.

One issue that I am having is that I don't know how much milk she should be offered, I've never had to measure it coming out of my boobs ;-) but the main issue that I am having is I don't know where to go for support.

Health professionals don't know what to do with me because I have been breastfeeding exclusively (as opposed to giving formula) for a year, they stopped knowing what to do with me when I kept breastfeeding beyond about  6 weeks!  I also find though, that breastfeeding advocates don't know what to do with me because *I* want to choose (some of) the rate at which Naomi stops breastfeeding.  It doesn't make sense to me that I would let Naomi be completely in charge of this, I don't let her be in charge of other stuff (like how much she sleeps or whether she is allowed to eat (as she often does) rocks, so I am not sure why she should be allowed to be completely in charge of this.  I do want her to have a say, but I don't want her say to be the whole story.

I often find I am a bit scared of people who are very pro breastfeeding (despite being very pro breastfeeding myself) because I fear that if I tell them I want to give my child cow's milk at one, or that I might try and steer her away from booby feeds that they might tell me I am a terrible mother or barbaric in some way.  The thing is though, that I think these people, I sometimes call them the breastfeeding mafia, would think they are being supportive, encouraging me to breastfeed for as long as possible.  Unfortunately, though, it can come across as condemning rather than supporting.

This, then, leaves me in my dilemma, where can I go for support as a longer than the first few weeks but not as long as self weaning? Do you want to own up to being like me and join me for being a support network for each other?

Could have been written about me

I came across this blog post yesterday, in all my blog reading I know it isn't all that common to blog a recommendation for a blog but I rate this post incredibly highly

Don't Carpe Diem

The thing is, I feel like it was written about me!  I love being a Mummy, not least of all because I feel, think and know that God made me to be a Mummy.  When I am being a Mummy I am doing what I am designed to do I find it freeing, liberating, exhilarating, inspiring and I love it.  I also find it tiring, in fact exhausting! Sometimes I feel like I don't get time where I am not being a Mummy and I start to crave "me time" and then I feel guilty.  I am very much in favour of having another baby, I hope it happens sooner rather than later but then I start to complain that even with one I can't get a load of washing done in a day!  I complain that changing a poo-filled nappy is a terrible job or that I want to be able to go to the cinema (spontaneously)!

One of the thing that really interests me about this article though, is that since sharing it, everyone who has read it has said "that could have been written about me", "I feel like that" or "I wish I'd known I wasn't the only one".

Why, as parents, do we insist upon putting on a show for the outside world and then beat ourselves up because everyone else is better than us (forgetting that we only get to see the show that is being put on for us!).

Why can't we be honest about how difficult discipline can be, how awful we feel for not being able to persuade our children to eat, how we let them watch hours of television all day and can't be bothered taking them to the park because it's raining!

The best thing we could all do, I think, is talk to each other.  Let's be support to each other!  The closest I have come is my support network of Mums on twitter but I often find in real life (or especially on facebook) life is edited to show only the good bits.

So, will you join me in some honesty for the sake of all us parenting types?

An unexpected hazard of being a stay at home Mum

As you can read about here (if you so desire) my husband and I have very consciously made the decision that I will be a stay at home Mum.  I won't be going out to work and I will be in charge of bringing up Naomi (and any others that may follow).  This has obvious challenges to do with finances and to do with my sense of identity and most of them we saw coming.

In the last few days though I have become aware of another challenge though, one that I hadn't seen coming, one that has taken me by surprise.

When Naomi was born I set about taking her to all sorts of baby groups, she loves being able to play and I love being able to meet other people.  I got on really well with many of the other Mums and it was great to have some peers in real life who were going through similar things to me.

The thing is though, now that Naomi is 6 months old, many of the people who I got to know and enjoyed hanging out with are returning to work.  And because I didn't see it coming, I haven't made enough effort to get mobile numbers and to get in the habit of meeting with outside of group times, because I didn't notice or realise that I would need to.

Slowly but surely, my support network is dwindling because now-a-days being a stay at home Mum, at least being a full time stay at home Mum is not the norm.

I feel really sad, for losing my support and also for the number of people who say "I wish I could be a stay at home Mum", these people feel pressured into doing something they would rather not, and that makes me sad too.

I guess next time I make a round of friends with babies, I'll need to make sure I try harder to make "better" relationships more quickly, so they will stand the test of returning to work.

Babysitters

So hubby is away and yet life must go on.  So last night I tried to go out and do something just for me, it would have been pure indulgence in that I was meeting up with some people from church to try and talk through some stuff from my past and to lay some of it to rest.  It was time to forget about being a Mummy and just be me, it was time to focus on what my needs were rather than those of my little girl.

The babysitter came, we had dinner then I bathed Naomi and put her down to sleep.  She was asleep for about 25 minutes before I walked out the door.  I had an ominous feeling though.

I had been out for about an hour when the babysitter rang, she was crying and had been since not long after I left.  Clearly, I came back home.  I have now managed to settle my child, though experience tells me I have a pretty awful night ahead of me, as Naomi is likely to wake quite often in an attempt to make sure I am still around, or perhaps to punish me for going out in the first place!

How do you feel about babysitters though?  I feel very mixed about them, on the one hand I think it is reasonable and healthy to need and want time away from the baby and to do things that aren't completely focused on being a parent.  On the other hand, I think it is perfectly reasonable for my baby at not quite 6 months old to expect her Mummy to be there when she needs her.  I think it reasonable that she won't settle for someone she doesn't know very well (which unfortunately includes grandparents, seeing as we live so far from family).

The night before last I went out and left Naomi with a babysitter and she didn't wake once, last night she woke almost immediately on my leaving*.  Should I have stayed at home?  Should I have waited for night her Dad was here? Do I only feel guilty because it went "wrong"? Or should I feel guilty anyway?

Naomi is a good wee girl, I hate the idea that I caused her to be upset but maybe it is a life lesson she just needs to learn?...

*This makes it sound like we leave her often, in fact this was only the 5th time she has ever been left with anyone other than Mummy or Daddy, ever.

Finances

Sometimes in this day and age I think it can be a bit of a social faux pas to admit it, but I am not ashamed in the slightest to say that my husband and I are broke! We have just a little bit more money coming in over a month than we do going out, which is good, but we don't have any extra and we are living each month by using (then paying off) the credit card, rather than using "real" money.

The thing is, though, that I am okay with that.  Last night hubby and I came up with a plan of action and by wiping out our savings we can start living in the black rather than the red but for the foreseeable future we don't have any spare money floating around, slightly exacerbated, though not caused by a mistake on the part of HRMC which means we are having to pay extra money to the tax people every month.

Thing is though, apart from a stressed day a few nights ago we have not thought about sending me out to work, Naomi being 5 months old now, you might think we should but we have decided that I will be a stay at home Mum and we have decided that Naomi will have everything she needs but not necessarily all the extras that it seems to me that some people see as necessities.

It is important to me that Naomi realises that just having food in her belly and a roof over her head makes her amongst the most well off in the world, the fact that she also has clothes and toys and will have the chance of an education makes her incredibly rich.  It is important that she understands that money is precious and that it should be used responsibly and not just for ourselves.

I have only bought Naomi 3 items of clothes new, it was a 3 pack of vests as she had none in the right size and I was unable to get any in the charity shops.  Other than that every piece of clothing she owns is either a gift, a hand-me-down or a charity shop find (and even then she has very little that fits into this last category).

As for toys, she has many that were given to her and on top of that she has a rattle that I fashioned out of a spice jar and some rice and lentils!  As she gets older I will look out for things on Freecycle and for her birthdays and Christmases she shall receive second hand things because she does not need bigger things.

You might say we are mean, you might say that my husband and I should have saved "more" before we had a child and that we are irresponsible, but actually I see that our responsibility goes further than our immediate family and extends to those throughout the world (who include many people in this country) who do not even have enough to eat, and it is not for us to be extravagant, therefore, my short term inability to go for a coffee or buy some new jeans, is neither here nor there!

Owning up to being mad!

So, this is the main point of this blog, mainly because it isn't a big part of me any more, but I thought I would share with you some of the challenges of being a Mum with a history of serious mental ill-health.

I used to be very unwell, I used to be psychotic, I used to be depressed to the point of so many suicide attempts that I lost count long before I stopped and I also used to have periods of mania.  I spent much of my early 20s in a psychiatric ward, sometimes the doors were locked and I wasn't always there at my own choice.  For a very long time the only thing that kept me well(ish) was having drugs jabbed into my bum once a fortnight.  Perhaps controversially, though, I don't mind you knowing this, it is part of who I was (and to an extent am) and I think that the fear of people who are not completely mentally well comes from people being scared to talk openly about their experiences.

I longed for Naomi (well a child) all that time, I was desperate, my husband and I even tried for a baby for a while.  I am so pleased, though, that God didn't let it happen at that time, for I could barely look after myself, let alone another little baby.  I am pleased that God's grace allowed Him to deny me my greatest desire.

I did get better though, I received treatment in a Therapeutic Community and my life turned around.  I love life now, I no longer tolerate it!  I love my friends and family and I love growing in being a Mum and a child of God!


I still find some things challenging though, I have always struggled to keep my mental health good unless I get enough sleep, and (particularly recently) Naomi has been keeping me up a lot and so I have to make sure I catch up when I can and that I do other things to keep me healthy.  I need to make sure I get enough exercise (a challenge in itself with a small baby) and I need to make sure I eat sensible food and don't ALWAYS just reach for the chocolate bar when the day has proved difficult!

My OCDish ways also need to be negotiated, I wear odd socks, I do this because wearing matching socks would stress me out unless they matched EXACTLY, even having had one go through the washing machine an extra time and so be a slightly different shade, really makes me anxious and so I have made it part of my personality to wear odd socks.  All this to say, I can't let that affect the way I deal with Naomi and not just in her dress style, but also that when she gets older and wants to colour the man in the picture in blue, I will just need to let her, it will however cause me no end of anxiety!  As will her putting her books back on the shelf but not in alphabetical order!

The thing I am working through at the moment, is that as the mother of a 5 month old baby who doesn't sleep through the night and struggles to go back to sleep without having my boob put in her mouth, it is completely normal to have down days! The adrenaline of the first few weeks has gone, this is me settled into my new life and things are challenging.  Sometimes she cries, sometimes she refuses to eat even though she is hungry, sometimes she cries because she wanted that toy and I gave her a different one and often she cries when I leave the room (isn't her separation anxiety supposed to come at more like 9 months?), but having a down day isn't the same as being depressed.  i have to allow myself to feel rubbish without worrying that I am becoming ill, for that will only perpetuate the problem!

I love my little girl and I wouldn't not have her for the world, but my mental health had been stable for only about 2 years when she showed up, I took a big risk and I am pleased to report that, so far, we are all doing well :-)

Breastfeeding in public

If you are a Mum with a blog on parenting, you eventually need to do a post on the topic of breastfeeding in public, so here is my (first)attempt on the subject.

I chose to breastfeed my daughter for many reasons and although it was quite far down the list, one of the reasons was that I wouldn't need to make up bottles/warm bottles and that particularly when we were out and about I wouldn't need to think about it in advance, my boobs would just be there! What? I hear you cry, but being able to breastfeed in public was one of the things that attracted me to the idea.  It just seems easier to me.

Naomi has a picnic in the park

That said, there are a few things to think about when you are getting ready to actually *do* the feeding.

Now, I am quite happy to argue that during a feed my breast is not a sexual thing at all, it is an implement by which my daughter gets food, that said, I don't really want everyone looking at my boobs and many people don't want to look at them either (and I don't blame them!) so I have had to find ways of being subtle about getting my boobs out.  To begin with I though I would use a booby tent (as I like to call them) (link only given to show you what I mean!) and I was given one by a friend, but when it came down to it I just got myself in a muddle if I tried to use it.  I often ended up exposing more of myself in attempt to get the baby under it, my boob out and in her mouth! Although I know lots of people who swear by these things.

My next thought was to use a muslin or something similar, just get the baby on the boob and quickly cover her (and more to the point me) up, but she did not approve of this plan, when she was younger she wanted to be able to see me and now she is older she wants to be able to see everything (although I sometimes use a muslin now to attempt to reduce distractions) and so would wriggle around and pull at the muslin till it was gone, again only drawing attention to my semi nakedness!

Eventually we have come up with a compromise, I didn't want to be one of those Mums who just gets their whole boob out and to hell with what anyone else thinks, I find that slightly passive-aggressive, yet  am not ashamed of breastfeeding my little girl and I do think it is one of the most natural things in the world.  So we have developed (through practice) and technique that involves pulling my jumper down over my boob (although with the nipple still accessible) and then letting Naomi's head provide a screen to the rest of the world, I have looked at my reflection in shop windows and think that although it is very obvious I am feeding there is nothing to see at all, most girls in a skimpy top show off far more than I am.

There have been one or two major disasters, most notably the day that for some reason I became completely confused as to how to work my clothes (let's put it down to baby brain) and before I knew it my whole boob was out and the baby was nowhere near it.  One poor lady turned round and caught a glimpse before turning away, she apologised.  I told her not to worry as it wasn't her fault that I had got half naked in my town's shopping centre!

By and by this works though.  I am very fortunate not to have experienced some of the issues that others report with people giving them a hard time or asking them to move on.  This brings me to the reason I started this post, a few days ago I was sitting on a bench in town feeding Naomi and using my spare hand to turn her buggy round into a pram so she could sleep and making a bit of a pigs ear of it.  A lady walked past and then came back to me, "I just want to say..." Oh No! I thought, this is it, and I can't even go anywhere because Naomi was in the middle of what seemed to be a terribly satisfying feed! Anyway, random lady continued "...I am so proud of you for breastfeeding".  She told me how she had fed all three of hers for at least a year and it made her sad that so many people used formula and then she went on her way.  It is quite random to think that someone would come up to me and tell me they are proud of me, but I guess I quite liked it!