One Late Night…
Talk about a long meeting.
We had the quarterly membership meeting at church last night. It started at 7 (we were late), and didn’t end until past 9. Some parents came prepared with kids already in pajamas. We didn’t.
The meeting went fine, but I had to go feed Baby Boy before it was over. I went into the nursery where all the kids were, because Auntie had taken Baby Boy with her to the nursery to be with the Munchkin, but she had no diapers for him. He was very grateful to see his food – um, Mommy – show up.
The nursing mothers’ room is right off the nursery, and I had quite an audience follow me in. The Munchkin didn’t want to leave me, and one little girl who really loves Baby Boy (she was on the receiving end of the Munchkin’s “my baby!” command) tagged along as well. “Can I help you feed your baby?” she asked me earnestly.
I winced. While she does have a younger brother (only a year younger), she is in the process of being adopted by a family at our church after being their foster child, and I knew that she had never seen anyone breastfeed before. So when she asked to help, she was thinking that she might get to hold a bottle. “I don’t think that you’ll be able to help me,” I said gently, as I began positioning Baby Boy on my lap and lifting my shirt to unhook my nursing bra.
As I plugged him in, she regarded me with a funny stare. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“The baby’s eating. See? His mouth is moving,” I pointed out to her.
“He’s eating your shirt?” she asked in bewilderment.
“No, he’s eating me, sort of. See?” I lifted up my shirt just a little bit further so she could see that he was actually attached to something. She stared in confusion. “When you don’t have a bottle to feed a baby, this is what some mommies do for their babies. This is another way God designed for babies to eat,” I tried to explain.
This delicate situation was not helped by our youth pastor’s daughter (age 4, and has a younger brother who she did see breastfeed), who walked in, saw the baby nursing, pointed at me and said, “The baby’s eating you! Ha ha ha,” she giggled.
Eventually all the kids, even the Munchkin, were lured out of the peep show by the promise of a snack (pretzels). Glad to be your anatomically correct breastfeeding lesson for the evening, kids. Really.
And on another note, we’re experimenting with our new digital camera! The idea is that I can post pictures along with my daily musings. Here is a picture of our night owl, Baby Boy, his stuffed lion, and me:
Yes, he’s worth staying up for. 🙂
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