It must be really annoying when people say they have an emergency when they clearly don't but let me go some way to explain why. Here is an account of what happened for me this morning....
At each of these times I phoned my GP practice
7:58 : "Your practice is closed, please phone back after 8am"
7:59 : "Your practice is closed, please phone back after 8am"
7:59 : "Your practice is closed, please phone back after 8am"
8:00 : Engaged
8:01: Engaged
8:01: Engaged
8:01: Engaged
8:02 :
Me : "Hi, I'd like to make an appointment for my daughter"
GP : "We can give her an appointment next week, all the appointments for today are already gone"
Me : "Really?!"
GP : "If you feel it is an emergency you can bring her to the emergency clinic at 11am"
Me : "I wouldn't use the word emergency but I'd like her seen in the next couple of days
GP : "We don't have any appointments left"
Me : "I guess I'll bring her to the emergency clinic then"
Sort it out!!
Monday, 26 August 2013
Friday, 23 August 2013
Inexpensive date night ideas
My husband and I have a date night every week. I couldn't recommend this highly enough, it means that every week there is one evening where we are both together and we have a rule that we don't do jobs on the computers or even look at our phones, we are just with each other. Makes such a difference to our relationship. Let's be realistic though, as much as we would like to go out more, we have children and don't have a never ending supply of babysitters so the vast majority of dates happen at home. Therefore we try and think of different things to do so we don't just end up watching *another* movie that I will fall asleep half way through. We are also on a budget, with this in mind I thought I'd share with you some of our date night activities that don't cost a fortune (I'm hoping these should all come in under £3) and I'm not including TV/movie watching as I think that's a little obvious and unimaginative!
1. Games! We love scrabble and chess. Sometimes we even just play connect four! We sometimes get the Wii out and play some Mario cart or something like that. The game doesn't matter but it is always a great conversation starter too, especially scrabble when you get to talk about the words being put down.
2. Food! We love food so sometimes I will buy us a treat, my latest favourite is to buy some camembert and nice bread (in Sainsburys a value camembert and a tiger baguette costs a total of £2.13)
3. Baking! (We do love food a lot). Sometimes we bake a cake together (and then eat it). Last night was date night for us and we made bread together, we needed bread anyway but this way it was yummy and we had the fun of making it first. Baking is essentially messy play for grown ups.
4. Reminiscing. Get out the photos from holidays gone by or even just look at them on the computer (in this digital age). Remember all the fun you've had as a family, laugh at ridiculous outfits you've worn, recall the romantic nights out you've had or the places you used to frequent as a student. This is one of my favourite things to do and as a bonus it is completely free!
5. Massage. Give each other a massage, if you want some oil but don't want to buy just use a little olive oil from the kitchen, it is a perfectly good option. Set a timer and do however long you want each. The great thing about this date night is often leads to other very fun *cough* marital activities ;-)
6. Make plans together. Plan that holiday you've always wanted to go on, think of the places you'd visit. Or design your dream home together. My husband and I like making up quizzes, sometimes a date night has just been making up a quiz for the fun of it! You could even just imagine what it would be like to grow old together.
7. I'm not sure this would work for me and my husband as we are into quite different kinds of books but have a book club for two. Discuss what you like/don't like about a book or what challenged you or whatever you would normally discuss in a book club.
8. Set up a romantic cafe for yourselves. Especially if it is summer and a bit warmer, get a candle lit and sit over a lovely cup of coffee (I always have nice coffee including decaf in so could make a latte style thing). If your budget wasn't as tight as mine, get a bottle of wine or some beers in instead but still get sitting in a more romantic scene with candle or flowers or whatever.
9. Sex! While this is obvious, why not take some time to be more imaginative with positions or take longer over foreplay. Make this more special than the odd quicky!!
Do you have your own suggestions? I'd love to hear, we need to fill 52 date nights a year, it's hard not to get bogged down in date night routine!
1. Games! We love scrabble and chess. Sometimes we even just play connect four! We sometimes get the Wii out and play some Mario cart or something like that. The game doesn't matter but it is always a great conversation starter too, especially scrabble when you get to talk about the words being put down.
2. Food! We love food so sometimes I will buy us a treat, my latest favourite is to buy some camembert and nice bread (in Sainsburys a value camembert and a tiger baguette costs a total of £2.13)
3. Baking! (We do love food a lot). Sometimes we bake a cake together (and then eat it). Last night was date night for us and we made bread together, we needed bread anyway but this way it was yummy and we had the fun of making it first. Baking is essentially messy play for grown ups.
4. Reminiscing. Get out the photos from holidays gone by or even just look at them on the computer (in this digital age). Remember all the fun you've had as a family, laugh at ridiculous outfits you've worn, recall the romantic nights out you've had or the places you used to frequent as a student. This is one of my favourite things to do and as a bonus it is completely free!
5. Massage. Give each other a massage, if you want some oil but don't want to buy just use a little olive oil from the kitchen, it is a perfectly good option. Set a timer and do however long you want each. The great thing about this date night is often leads to other very fun *cough* marital activities ;-)
6. Make plans together. Plan that holiday you've always wanted to go on, think of the places you'd visit. Or design your dream home together. My husband and I like making up quizzes, sometimes a date night has just been making up a quiz for the fun of it! You could even just imagine what it would be like to grow old together.
7. I'm not sure this would work for me and my husband as we are into quite different kinds of books but have a book club for two. Discuss what you like/don't like about a book or what challenged you or whatever you would normally discuss in a book club.
8. Set up a romantic cafe for yourselves. Especially if it is summer and a bit warmer, get a candle lit and sit over a lovely cup of coffee (I always have nice coffee including decaf in so could make a latte style thing). If your budget wasn't as tight as mine, get a bottle of wine or some beers in instead but still get sitting in a more romantic scene with candle or flowers or whatever.
9. Sex! While this is obvious, why not take some time to be more imaginative with positions or take longer over foreplay. Make this more special than the odd quicky!!
Do you have your own suggestions? I'd love to hear, we need to fill 52 date nights a year, it's hard not to get bogged down in date night routine!
Wednesday, 21 August 2013
My Issues with Baby Led Weaning
 |
| Having enjoyed some weetabix and banana for breakfast |
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!
Wednesday, 23 January 2013
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.
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.
Thursday, 12 April 2012
Reasons to be cheerful
I'd started to notice the hashtag #R2BC floating around twitter and I've finally found out it stands for Reasons To Be Cheerful. What a great idea! Each week people link together their posts thinking about reasons they are cheerful. The good/happy/positive things going on in life that help us maintain a positive outlook on life.
I had decided yesterday I would give it a go and as it turns out I had a terrible night's sleep and so this is exactly the tonic I need for my tendency to be a little bit grumpy when feeling sleep deprived!
So, here goes
1. It has taken me 18 months but having gone for a wee walk at the weekend I have found an amazing wee park next to my house, only a 3 minute walk away (just in a direction I don't often go) and it is just right for Naomi's age!
2. An unexpected benefit of being a user of real nappies is that when you go to the park after it's been raining and need to dry the slide you can use a nappy, after all it is terribly absorbent!
3. This wouldn't be up everyone's street but I love crafts and I love saving money so I am over the moon to have found a website that brings together these loves and I am very excited to start making some stuff!
Thanks for reading, hopefully I'll do this again!
I had decided yesterday I would give it a go and as it turns out I had a terrible night's sleep and so this is exactly the tonic I need for my tendency to be a little bit grumpy when feeling sleep deprived!
So, here goes
1. It has taken me 18 months but having gone for a wee walk at the weekend I have found an amazing wee park next to my house, only a 3 minute walk away (just in a direction I don't often go) and it is just right for Naomi's age!
2. An unexpected benefit of being a user of real nappies is that when you go to the park after it's been raining and need to dry the slide you can use a nappy, after all it is terribly absorbent!
3. This wouldn't be up everyone's street but I love crafts and I love saving money so I am over the moon to have found a website that brings together these loves and I am very excited to start making some stuff!
Thanks for reading, hopefully I'll do this again!
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
Finances
Some conversation appeared on twitter today about how much we all spend on our food shopping. Apparently I was declared the "winner" as I spend between £40 and £45 each week and for that I feed my husband, myself and my (incredibly hungry) toddler!! It was suggested that I should blog about it and so here are some of my thoughts on frugal cooking!
First though some general thoughts about finances and money in general as it all has a part to play in keeping our food costs down.
My husband and I have reasonable money coming in, not great money but not terrible. We have quite high outgoings for some things we would rather not, many of these are things that almost everyone has, so we need to pay back my husband's student loan, I recently worked out that at it's current rate we will be paying that back until hubby is approximately 45! We are paying back a loan we had to take out when our previous car was stolen, we chose to take the loan over a shorter time but this means the payments each month are a little more.
Another obvious outgoing is on our rent, this is slightly complicated for us, we own a house that we rent out in Scotland and rent a home here in the Midlands where we live. However, I would rather make cut backs in other areas of spending to improve the environment in which I live.
Another thing that we do is that we give away (to charity, to individuals we want to support financially and to our church) approximately a tenth of our total income. It might seem backwards to give away money but generosity is important to our family and it is a Christian principle that we live by, we would rather have 90% that is blessed by God than 100% that wasn't. We regularly look at how much and where we give to make sure we are making the best use of the money we pass to others and more to the point that we are allowing God to make the best use of the money we pass to others.
Oh, and save. Save, save, save! It's how you'll stay out of debt when those rainy days come, and that is good!
Anyway, food! If I try and sum it all up here are my "techniques" for keeping (food) spending down.
1. Budget! We have a budget for almost everything! We have a "dating" budget for spending on the odd take-away, going to the cinema or going to the pub or a cafe. We have a "luxuries" budget for things like chocolate, fizzy pop, booze or such like. We obviously have a food budget and we try and budget for things like fuel and holidays too.
2. Shop around. Don't assume that a place will be more expensive just because it has an expensive reputation. Being gluten free limits the food I can eat but you might think I am bonkers for buying my sausages in Marks and Spencers, they are by far the cheapest (and nicest) gluten free sausages I've found, £3 for 16 sausages! Another one that sometimes seems a bit backwards is that I buy my bananas in Sainsburys, I will only buy fair trade bananas and they are significantly cheaper there than in Tesco (I can't speak for asda, I don't have access to one!
3. Think about how to make meat go further. Makes sense, doesn't it? Meat is expensive, so how can you use less? When I make a bolognaise I add as much celery and carrot and onion as I can, it makes the meal as a whole go further and means that it's healthier as it has more veg in it! I add tinned beans to many things too, butter beans or caneloni beans make almost any casserole better! You can go even further and eat vegetarian a couple of times a week, 3 bean chilli is a firm favourite in this house and anything turned into a curry will go down a treat!
4. Vegetables. Another of the counter intuitive things I do is that I buy an organic vegbox each week. The one I buy is from Riverford though I'm sure other veg box providers are good too. The veg might be a little more expensive than supermarket stuff but it is definitely cheaper than supermarket organic and it just lasts longer and is better quality. I can keep a veg box cabbage for a couple of weeks with no major issues (though it is nicer eaten fresher), a shop bought one would never last that long! Nothing to do with money but I also like that because I am sent things I wouldn't necessarily choose to buy in the shops I am forced to look for new recipes, it helps reduce that stuck in a rut-ness that we can all suffer from in the kitchen!
5. Supermarket own brand is your friend. The value range is your better friend! (Although remember to look for short term offers that change this!). Now there are some things that I won't settle for less on, for example my hubby *only* eats Kelloggs cornflakes and I only eat Heinz baked beans but generally I buy the value range of almost everything. Even if you don't want to do that it is worth thinking about why you buy the level of anything you do? Most things can be bought at 4 levels - value, supermarket own brand, branded, supermarket "best" range. Why not think about moving down one level? One time when you go shopping you could try reducing everything you buy by one level. If people complain then at least you got one shop cheaper, if they don't then keep going! It is unlikely people will notice for everything.
6. Cook. Cook everything! Make your own stock, use leftovers, do everything. If you are busy working people and you have a freezer then make a weekend a month your cooking weekend and just stock the freezer to the brim! If you make something and have a portion then think about how much it is, is it a lunch portion? Put it in the fridge for lunch over the next day or two. Is it a dinner portion? Put it in the freezer, it is one less meal to make later on!
I'm sorry this has turned into such a long post, each point I've made could be a blog post on its own, perhaps one day they will be!
First though some general thoughts about finances and money in general as it all has a part to play in keeping our food costs down.
My husband and I have reasonable money coming in, not great money but not terrible. We have quite high outgoings for some things we would rather not, many of these are things that almost everyone has, so we need to pay back my husband's student loan, I recently worked out that at it's current rate we will be paying that back until hubby is approximately 45! We are paying back a loan we had to take out when our previous car was stolen, we chose to take the loan over a shorter time but this means the payments each month are a little more.
Another obvious outgoing is on our rent, this is slightly complicated for us, we own a house that we rent out in Scotland and rent a home here in the Midlands where we live. However, I would rather make cut backs in other areas of spending to improve the environment in which I live.
Another thing that we do is that we give away (to charity, to individuals we want to support financially and to our church) approximately a tenth of our total income. It might seem backwards to give away money but generosity is important to our family and it is a Christian principle that we live by, we would rather have 90% that is blessed by God than 100% that wasn't. We regularly look at how much and where we give to make sure we are making the best use of the money we pass to others and more to the point that we are allowing God to make the best use of the money we pass to others.
Oh, and save. Save, save, save! It's how you'll stay out of debt when those rainy days come, and that is good!
Anyway, food! If I try and sum it all up here are my "techniques" for keeping (food) spending down.
1. Budget! We have a budget for almost everything! We have a "dating" budget for spending on the odd take-away, going to the cinema or going to the pub or a cafe. We have a "luxuries" budget for things like chocolate, fizzy pop, booze or such like. We obviously have a food budget and we try and budget for things like fuel and holidays too.
2. Shop around. Don't assume that a place will be more expensive just because it has an expensive reputation. Being gluten free limits the food I can eat but you might think I am bonkers for buying my sausages in Marks and Spencers, they are by far the cheapest (and nicest) gluten free sausages I've found, £3 for 16 sausages! Another one that sometimes seems a bit backwards is that I buy my bananas in Sainsburys, I will only buy fair trade bananas and they are significantly cheaper there than in Tesco (I can't speak for asda, I don't have access to one!
3. Think about how to make meat go further. Makes sense, doesn't it? Meat is expensive, so how can you use less? When I make a bolognaise I add as much celery and carrot and onion as I can, it makes the meal as a whole go further and means that it's healthier as it has more veg in it! I add tinned beans to many things too, butter beans or caneloni beans make almost any casserole better! You can go even further and eat vegetarian a couple of times a week, 3 bean chilli is a firm favourite in this house and anything turned into a curry will go down a treat!
4. Vegetables. Another of the counter intuitive things I do is that I buy an organic vegbox each week. The one I buy is from Riverford though I'm sure other veg box providers are good too. The veg might be a little more expensive than supermarket stuff but it is definitely cheaper than supermarket organic and it just lasts longer and is better quality. I can keep a veg box cabbage for a couple of weeks with no major issues (though it is nicer eaten fresher), a shop bought one would never last that long! Nothing to do with money but I also like that because I am sent things I wouldn't necessarily choose to buy in the shops I am forced to look for new recipes, it helps reduce that stuck in a rut-ness that we can all suffer from in the kitchen!
5. Supermarket own brand is your friend. The value range is your better friend! (Although remember to look for short term offers that change this!). Now there are some things that I won't settle for less on, for example my hubby *only* eats Kelloggs cornflakes and I only eat Heinz baked beans but generally I buy the value range of almost everything. Even if you don't want to do that it is worth thinking about why you buy the level of anything you do? Most things can be bought at 4 levels - value, supermarket own brand, branded, supermarket "best" range. Why not think about moving down one level? One time when you go shopping you could try reducing everything you buy by one level. If people complain then at least you got one shop cheaper, if they don't then keep going! It is unlikely people will notice for everything.
6. Cook. Cook everything! Make your own stock, use leftovers, do everything. If you are busy working people and you have a freezer then make a weekend a month your cooking weekend and just stock the freezer to the brim! If you make something and have a portion then think about how much it is, is it a lunch portion? Put it in the fridge for lunch over the next day or two. Is it a dinner portion? Put it in the freezer, it is one less meal to make later on!
I'm sorry this has turned into such a long post, each point I've made could be a blog post on its own, perhaps one day they will be!
Saturday, 21 January 2012
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?
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?
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