The Reluctant Earth Mother

Places I’ve fed babies:

• In bed (obviously), lovely with a newborn, awful when you wake up and your nipples feel like razor blades have been shredding them all night.
• Cross legged on the sofa with baby 1 on my lap and the cat purring between my feet
• Regular spot on an arbour seat at the local garden centre.
• In the orangutan house at the zoo with the orangutan mother feeding her tiny, much more able baby at the same time.
• At a steam show, amongst rows of vintage tractors, twice, different babies.
• In the middle of a, mostly empty, silage pit.
• On the toilet having given in to the strop when I said I wouldn’t feed him while I was on the toilet.
• By the porsche garage just off the motorway having listened to 20 minutes of screaming and giving up before going on the motorway only to shock a lorry driver who needed me to move.
• On a miniature train ride at Llanberis.
• On a miniature train ride at Rhyl.
• Whilst running along a platform to catch a miniature steam train for baby 1 with baby 2 clamped to me losing the tiny shred of dignity I had left.
• On the side of a weir, clinging to a bench to lie back slightly because my toddler is too big for a discreet koala hold.
• In our rocking chair.
• On my grandmother’s nursing chair.
• On a lot of floors.
• Watching a huge tank of fish at the aquarium.
• At the kitchen table.
• Stood up over the highchair at the kitchen table.
• Lent over a car seat in the narrowest gap possible praying no one is looking.
• Hiding a baby and my boob under the sofa during a teams call.
• Hiding just out of shot, on teams call, with baby balanced on my leg because I now work on a pretty high chest of drawers so technically have a standing desk.
• Sat on a sand dune watching baby 1 flatten lovingly built forts.

This list may never end…

I really hope it does one day.