More Adventures with Mavis - Sort Of.

*** Warning: this post contains talk about breastfeeding. You may be offended if you're conservative or have never breastfed a baby.***


What I said: "Stay tuned for tomorrow's edition..."

What I meant: "Stay tuned for next week's" ... or "next month's"... or maybe just "next edition"...

So, yeah, life is busy around here. So far this year we've had a bit of trouble getting everyone in the household healthy at the same time. Between sickness, school, snow, a broken washing machine, and the daily cooking/cleaning/blah blah blah I have been... feeding a baby.

Little miss Babycakes is 5 months old. Five months of exclusive breastfeeding. And by exclusive I mean EXCLUSIVE. As in, she won't take a bottle. At all.

I honestly think she'd have to be half starved first.

And then she might consider it.

Under the right circumstances.

These days she would much rather be in my arms and near the food source than anywhere else on earth. She worships the ground my boobs walk on. Or... at least that's about where they'll be saggin' to when she's done with 'em! OH, the CHOMPING! Teething is going to be SO fun!

Honestly, I don't mind it. My life fully revolves around my home and my kids, it's not like I have somewhere else I have to be instead of nursing my baby. All I want to do is soak up this last bit of little babyness in my life before it's gone. I LOVE nursing my little ones.

And I'm firmly in the camp of those who say, "If you're offended by breastfeeding, put a blanket over your own head!". I've nursed babies in all sorts of public places. In the mall, in restaurants, in airplanes, at the play area. Oh sure, I put a blanket over us and stay as decent as possible, but there are still those people that find nursing in public to be... disturbing.

I just don't get it.

Although... I'm not *quite* as open about breastfeeding in public as one mother I know. I met her through the midwife who delivered my first kiddo. She was the calm, capable mother of nine that I picked up the birthing tub from. She met me at the door of her home, a baby in her arms and chaos running in circles around her legs. Several months later her family showed up at a seminar we were attending at a nearby church. I sat next to her and we chatted between services. Her baby grew hungry, so she unbuttoned the top half of her dress and without a second thought nursed her baby.

In the SANCTUARY!

I may be brave and I may be slightly crunchy and I may be very pro-breastfeeding, but I am not THERE yet!

And I likely never will be. I'll take my curtained mothers' room during church services, thank you.

So anyway, back to Mavis.

There we were, back home with a fixed flat tire after our little incident, and Friday dawned nice and snowy - a Snow Day! Yippee! Sweet relief that I didn't even have to think about getting anyone to school that day. Colby took Mavis up to town and put 4 new tires on her.

Hallelujah.

Except for one thing.

One of the tires kept going flat. For 10 days my husband would go out every morning and night and check on the tire, then air it up if necessary so I wouldn't have a flat on the way to school again.

"It's just the valve stem," he said, "stop in at the tire place and have them replace it."

*sigh*

Taking four children into the tire place was JUST what I wanted to do with my afternoon.

Sure, I have fond memories of sitting for hours as a kid in the Les Schwab lobby where there was a nice big square of chairs and a coffee maker and stacks of magazines and quarter candy machines that we'd have all had a few rounds from thanks to the old folks who thought maybe we'd actually sit down and shut up if they just bribed us with candy.

But this was no Les Schwab. This place looked like it had about 4 square feet of customer lobby space and one chair. All I could picture was me standing there, jostling a grumpy baby while the other three fought over the chair and then having to pay some enormous amount that I didn't have quite enough cash for so I'd have to whip out the debit card and stand awkwardly at the counter trying to sign my name with one hand and hold the squalling baby with the other.

*sigh*

My phone rang one morning just after I'd dropped the kids off at school.

"Take the car in today, Honey."

"I'll try...?", I hedged.

"Please?"

"Oh, all right, I'll stop in on my way through and see what their hours are.", I promised.

As I turned the corner at 7:38 am I was immensely surprised to see their "open" sign lit up and flashing.

Uh.... what do I do? What do I do? I thought. Of course, I did realize that it was completely impractical of me to be hoping they'd have some ridiculous hours of operation, say, 8-12 am on Fridays only, but I was really hoping Colby would get to do the honors instead of me.

We pulled in to the parking lot. There were two guys busily stacking tires in front of the building so I rolled down my window in the predawn stillness of falling snow and talked to one of them. He said they'd get me right in as soon as they were set up in the shop for the day so I rolled up my window to wait. And right on cue, the baby started fussing. She'd been running a fever off and on for the past two days, and I had thrown out the regular schedule to nurse her on demand for the duration of her sick days. After two sleepless nights and two hectic days, I had no idea when she would want to nurse next.

But it surely did dawn on me over the next ten minutes that she was ready to nurse NOW.

"Just a few minutes, baby, just a few minutes!", I said, still hoping that she'd somehow change her mind and we'd make it back home before the whole feeding thing became critical.

Nope.

The guys kept bringing out more and more stacks of tires, Evelyn kept fussing and fussing.

Of course, just as Murphy's Law would apply to this situation, the minute I had that baby out of her seat and attached to me the tire shop guys decided they finally had enough tires displayed to be optimally attractive to passers-by and the one I talked to originally turned and in two quick steps was standing just outside my door.

And then he was backing away.

Quickly.

"Oh! Oh, I see you have small children...something something...don't need to get out...blah blah...we'll just have you...*whisper whisper*" ...

He retreated from the car at breakneck speed into the inner confines of his office never to be seen again.

I looked down. Was I showing something completely inappropriate?

Nope. Nothing to be seen here but a purple blankie and little kicking feet sticking out at one end.

Huh.

I put her down briefly and pulled the car into the garage before continuing on my blissful way of feeding the little gaffer.

In the car.

Up on jacks.

Hey, baby's got to be fed! And a Mom's got to do what a Mom's got to do!



Oh, and in case you were wondering how the thing with the brakes going out went, it was Colby who was driving THAT time!

Thank heavens!