Getting the Brush Off

            St. Bob says men won’t read this blog post because they’re uncomfortable with the topic.  Are you kidding me?  Man up and read this, guys.  If I promise to amuse you, can you read one blog about breastfeeding?  I think you can.  I believe in you.  Here we go: 

            Zillions of mothers are right now nursing their babies.  Okay, maybe not zillions, but certainly millions.  And they’re doing just fine with it.

            They probably don’t have monkeys for children.  For some reason my babies were born with an extra comedy chromosome, and have proceeded to make a mockery out of this lovely bonding moment. 

            I’ll share just two examples, to illustrate what these children, who think they’re going to be in my will, did while nursing.  Nicole decided she only liked one side, flatly refusing the other breast.  I know what you’re thinking: So hold her like a football and trick her, and she’ll never know which side she’s on.

            Wrong.  She knew.  No amount of slight of breast could fool her, so I walked around looking like Quasimodo for six months-- except with a hump that had slipped around to my front side.  Here I was with a normal breast on one side and a cantaloupe on the other.  

            With Richie I made the mistake of using those little plastic bra inserts that look like donuts, advertised to catch the milk that leaks out.  Unfortunately they also press on the breast creating the problem in the first place.  I had taken 6-month-old Richie along with me to my eye doctor appointment, and was holding him on my lap in the waiting room. 

Where I waited and waited.  Finally, to entertain him while I read a magazine, I gave him the hairbrush from my purse.  Now remember, I have that hyper-focus problem that comes with ADD, so I was totally engrossed in my reading when I realized I could faintly hear Richie banging on something with my hairbrush. 

For just an instant I thought he might be hitting the wooden arm of the chair, and I lowered my magazine.  There, staring at me with a dozen eyes, were six other patients who were aghast at what they were watching.  Richie was hitting those stupid plastic inserts in my bra!

            Yep, here I was with a baby on my lap who was banging LOUDLY on his mother’s chest with her hairbrush.  Every expression in that room said, “What on earth is she made out of?” as they watched him hitting my plastic breasts with a hairbrush.  Clack, clack clack!  

            And of course I couldn’t leave, because I was waiting for my appointment.  So I was trapped with a baby, a brush, and six dumbfounded patients, every one of whom appeared to see just fine, which made me wonder why they were even there.

            “Gimme that,” I remember saying, snatching the hairbrush and shoving it back into my purse.  I could still feel their eyes, piercing me like lasers as I waited, red-faced, for my name to be called.  Those eyeballs could do Lasik surgery, I tell you.  One by one the nurse called in the other patients, who continued to stare as they stepped around me, as if avoiding whatever I had.

            And what I had were children who were determined to embarrass me at every opportunity.  That, my friends, is what teen years are for: Payback.

            See, Gentlemen?  You survived a post about—horrors—nursing!  Now you can check that off your bucket list.  And for heaven’s sake, subscribe in the little box on the upper left hand corner of this page!