I wanted to bring you an email my friend sent me, because it seemed so very fitting for our discourse here. This is a tale from Anni, whose son Cyrus was born on Thanksgiving day last year. I used to have a glass of wine while nursing Kate because, I reasoned, the alcohol couldn't possibly get into my system that fast, and then by the time she was ready to eat again, it would be gone. I worried the sight of it was a tad, er, inappropriate, but my desire for wine outweighed my desire to be socially acceptable. This is just one of the many reasons I'm friends with Anni:
We were just up on Mackinac Island for a couple of days and I wanted to
tell you about a high point in my yet-small experience as a vacationing mother.
We were in a bar having dinner (well, waiting for the food). We
ordered beers and they came in those really tall slender glasses. I was
breastfeeding Cyrus and drinking my beer. (I think I breastfed in every
establishment open on the island, since there are only a few places and since it's
before tourist season.) There was this nice couple sitting across from us
trying not to notice. But then I knocked my beer all over myself (and a
little on him) and broke the glass all over the place. So I had to
disengage him from my boob (he protested) while mopping up beer and hoping there
weren't shards of glass in his clothes.... The nice couple nicely
continued to not notice. There was so much beer and glass around that we
just switched tables and Cyrus went over to the other boob. Then the food
came and we ate. When we left the nice couple gave us a big smile and said
a hearty goodbye -- was it sympathy or just amusement? We played it cool,
you know -- who doesn't spill a beer on your breastfeeding baby every now and
then? and having a kid made me even clumsier (though not as much as when I
was pregnant -- I was a total train wreck then).
1 comment:
Perhaps the nice couple were having a flashback to a similar experience of their own. I like to think so.
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