UK National Breastfeeding Awareness Week

Still nursing Linnea - more often than a month ago, in fact, because she asks more. She is often quite content to have me count to five ("One milk, two milk, three milk, four milk, five milk - down now!").

I want some of the Nestle cards one can buy from Baby Milk Action. I may source envelope re-use labels from them too; I've been thinking about them for a while now, and I think I really like the BMA ones.

My breastfeeding supporter course is going well. I am getting better, slowly, at not talking too much - but it's hard; I did learn that always knowing the answers in class gets you beaten up, but that was a long time ago and I worked hard at getting over it during my stint with the Open University. Now I need to learn to shut up again.

It doesn't help that sometimes I give information that the teachers don't have. Not often, but occasionally.

I did learn a neat trick to illustrate how the composition of breastmilk changes throughout a feed. There are two main parts to breastmilk - the watery, protein-bearing part, and the creamy, fatty part. For this illustration you will need:

200 ml of water and 5 ml of vegetable oil (or scale it up to see it more clearly)
1 natural sponge
3 glasses (tall thin ones work well)
1 bowl

Put the water and oil in a bowl, mix them up as best you can, and soak up as much as possible with the sponge.

Squeeze it out in three stages over the three glasses.

You will see that the first glass is mostly water - the sponge lets that out first. The second glass will have much more fat. And the third glass will have a much deeper layer of oil on top of a much, much smaller layer of water.

The point is that milk composition changes gradually throughout a feed; there isn't a foremilk part and a hindmilk part, like the oil and water in the bowl before you mix them; it's all mixed up together like inside the sponge and is released in gradually changing proportions.

Sort of :)

Bladder control

Linnea's bladder control is about as good as mine now, as far as we can tell. That is, she hasn't had an accident once today, and has demonstrated a few times that she has a lot of time between realising she has to go and actually going. She decided while in the downstairs bathroom that she wanted to go on her upstairs potty, and went from the bathroom at the rear of the house to the stairs at the front of the house and then up to her room. She also brought me from the front room to the back room and back again, so that I could fetch her potty to her so she could use it in her preferred location.

I'm pretty impressed. I need to buy her bigger pants, as the ones she has fit perfectly but are a little too snug to whip off in a hurry. Having bigger ones for use while out would be good.

(Other things she's learning are the Alphabet Song, the one to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle, and I have no idea where she heard it but I assume TV, and how to skip, which is causing her real trouble, but she's pretty persistent).

I sorted Linnea's room so there's a bit more space division; it's slightly awkward for an adult but perfect for her and I think will keep the mess in one half of the room, and discourage playing with the contents of the wardrobe. It also panders to her fiction that she has her own bathroom inside her bedroom; she opens an invisible door before using her potty.

Parental and domestic

My new hair may need to be clipped again soon. I have two crowns making a mountain ridge at the back of my head. Interesting, but not stylish.

Also, for the first time, I actually heard a holocaust denier (BNP) on the BBC earlier - part of a documentary. Ugh. Made me feel ill.

I need to write to the solicitors.

Yesterday, Rob made the CD shelves so CDs and DVDs are better placed. Now to get some more of the unshelved books sorted out - today I sorted comics and graphic novels, which is a nice small section. Very small.

Rob has suggested - which means he likes the idea - taking up the carpet in the back bedroom and painting the floor, prior to moving our own bed in there. Hurrah! We'll wait until our last houseguest of the season has left.

Now I need to source eco-friendly floor paints.I'm sure I had a link around here somewhere.