(Breast) Pumping my way to insanity

I had one of those moments yesterday, zoning out in Costas, that the endless faffing about with coffee machines was not dissimilar to the mechanical putting together of a breast pump.  My husband used to liken this to my assembling a machine gun.  I suspect that this was a stoic, if fruitless, attempt to make me feel that I struck a glamorous and edgy figure in the kitchen.  As opposed to just being some task that I was destined to do approximately 8573 times, in preparation for the ritual throwing out of the OCD quantities of frozen breast milk that had been stockpiled once several thick lines had been drawn under breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding.  Ah yes, how could I forget?  That quagmire of failure, bastion of middle-class competency.

It is fair to say that I was not a natural at breastfeeding.  I shall spare you the exceedingly long and very dull story, but my eldest daughter ended up being mixed fed.  Which I can tell you for free is the worst of all worlds.  My inverted nipples didn’t exactly help matters in an already sorry state of affairs, so we ended up with this ridiculous, self-patented scenario where – apart from the very occasional concession to a nipple guard – I ended up pumping and feeding it to my daughter in a bottle.  In addition to formula feeding, as I was convinced my milk wouldn’t be enough.  Basically a one-way ticket to insanity.  There is very little as pointlessly time-consuming as pumping and then bottle-feeding it straight back to your child, but that was the way I rumbled.  For 13 sodding months.   And then I wisely stopped, had a good drink, and promptly fell pregnant again.

You’d think that there would have been some lessons learnt here, wouldn’t you?   But no, with my following two children – who miraculously breastfed ok - I continued with the nonsense of pumping.  Nominally in case of some emergency scenario like alien abduction or a burst appendix.  I say they fed ok, obviously I mean ok in the sense of the obligatory 3 months of toe curling and health visitors sending you well-meaning (but essentially useless) articles on wet-wound healing.  It’s magical stuff.

Clearly this doublespeak feeding strategy was the cause of some frequent discussion in our house about the logic of keeping a freezer stacked with milk that was on a constant going-out-of-date watch.  But I probably wouldn’t have liked to push this point too strongly with me at the time either.  A sane person would have also invested in an electric breast-pump, in some sort of a nod towards efficiency, but I was much too far some down the road of crazy by now.  Instead I worked my way through about 10 models on eBay, learning along the way that I couldn’t get a drop out with some makes no matter how hard I tried.  I also learnt that if you want to stimulate the letdown reflex then don’t bother reading anything that might even vaguely stimulate your brain.  I became exceedingly skilled at zoning out, and imagine I was pretty amazing company of an evening.

In retrospect I think the feeling of total failure with my first was not exactly helped by the fact that I went on a post-birth NHS course where we learnt a series of outstandingly helpful techniques like how to brush teeth, and when to start thinking about weaning.  I am not even slightly exaggerating when I tell you that one session was pretty much dominated by discussing the versatility of an Annabel Karmel guacamole dip for dinner parties.  The dip, incidentally, was very good; I wasn't so big on dinner parties at the time so can't comment on that eventuality.  All stuff that I presumably could have read in a book, but in my state of new-parent panic felt that a good old course would settle one and for all.  After all, this theory had worked in most other aspects of my life up until now, and it also kind of distracted me from some of the scary health stuff that was rumbling on with my daughter at the time.  I was normal, see!  Anyway, the other parents on this course were totally rocking the breastfeeding thing, and the following few months were punctuated with this weekly drain on morale.  I’d gleaned that I probably wasn’t in the same social group as them from the off when they all talked about their husbands’ practices and Very Important business trips, but when a post-course knees-up was organised at one of their houses, my suspicions were confirmed.  My car recognition is poor at the best of times, but even I could see that there wasn’t a car in that cattle-gridded drive worth under £30k.  So I turned around, and drove home in my 10-year old Micra, punching air that being - nominally - a grown up I was free to go, and that the ritual humiliation was at an end.

The breastfeeding was actually rather lovely with the second two after the first horrific weeks.  But the pumping sucked big time.

Fairies in the Wood: Furzey Gardens

Over the bank holiday weekend, when Charlie was off running his favourite marathon (Avebury to Stonehenge, in case you’re interested), we took ourselves off fairy hunting.  Furzey Gardens is this hidden gem in Minstead in the New Forest.  It's fairly unique in not being the traditional stately home and gardens set-up, but a charitable trust in which the wonderful gardens are tended by volunteers and young people with learning difficulties.  It was one of the first places we were brave enough to embark on day trip to when Charlotte was a baby (I know, we are pretty hardcore, venturing all the way to the next village: we should probably write a book about this kind of stuff!).  And it’s one of those places that keeps us coming back because every time there’s some new structure or discovery to be made.  And of course there are the fairies ...

Same child, same wall of pink ... eight years on

When we first started coming the fairies had just moved in.  Now they seem to be pretty well established, with over 30 fairy doors waiting to be found.  The great thing about these is they’re not set on a trail, and while there’s a vague kind of map it’s more a nudge in the right direction.  So you never discover them all, and finding a new one is genuinely magical.  Some of them are probably totally secret.  This time we found Midas’ Mansion for the first time, off the beaten track: a door at which fittingly a pile of coins had been left to be turned into riches.  It would be rude not to join in.  We found about 10 doors today, and the expression on Katie’s face – who thinks Ben and Holly totally rule, and who is gutted that there is no sign of the tooth fairy visiting her yet – was priceless.  Throughout the gardens little offerings of flowers have been at the fairies’ doors, and it struck me, particularly after Long Barrow a few weeks ago and the sudden death of someone in our village whose doorstep has since been decorated with pots and wildflowers, how compelling our need is to reach out to fairies and the dead with colour.

 

We’ve been to Furzey loads, but the spring is truly spectacular, I haven’t seen pinks and reds like it anywhere else on earth (I haven’t retouched any of these pictures).  There’s an adventure playground, inventively made up of a series of African treehouses, tunnels and a dry boat.  There’s a great three-floored treehouse with views over the Isle of Wight, a bug barn, eccentric scarecrows, alpacas studiously ignoring the interlopers, a giant’s picnic table, a hidden star-gazing hut, and 16^th century cottage complete with a family of sleeping children guarded by a spider (you really have to see it to get it).  It’s a place for stories to unfold, and you don’t need to say very much at all because the children are immediately drawn in.    For the adults there’s a rather good coffee shop, art gallery and plant sale (I say for adults, like I would have the slightest clue how one negotiates a plant sale). But really, with the massive lawn looking down over the spectacular mass of colour, picnics win every time.

It’s true at one point Katie had a total meltdown after cruelly being taken away from the swings. (Am I the only person in the world who totally hates swings?  You spend your whole time either queuing or riddled with guilt that your turn might go a millisecond over the agreed norm.)  We made some cursory attempts at distraction, making grass guns, fountains and horns, which she treated with the disdain they deserved.  But such is life, and as my older children point out, it makes it somehow it more memorable remembering the various places where strops have been had.  It was only really when we discovered the next fairy door that some semblance of order was restored.  And such is Furzey Gardens that there are so many compelling new spaces to be discovered; it’s hard to maintain a funk for very long.

The pros and cons of oil pulling

I’m not quite sure how the world got so polarised that oil pulling has already become more or less passé within the online community.  Yet whenever I mention it in real-life I get a ‘Huh??’  Followed, when I explain it, by a look that rapidly turns into mild suspicion, and finally backing away.  Indeed my dentist all but fell about laughing when I mentioned it, so bang go my hopes of being taken seriously as a human being there again.