When a robustly healthy baby gets ill

[ailbhe]

You often can't tell the difference. She runs around like a mad thing, eyelids glued together with green ooze. Like she ran around like a mad thing, pausing to come to me for a cuddle when she felt the need to vomit (all over me, yes) a few months ago. She doesn't slow down. It's like being ill is something she fits in with all her other important tasks, like learning to use a telephone ("Hiya! Hiya! Adad adabba dabba") or climb up her tricycle to the windowseat (Do not watch this if you have a heart condition, like you own a heart. It will stop).

I found out late yesterday that the great big record-breaking assembly of breastfeeding mothers at The Baby Show this weekend isn't happening. I'm oddly upset. I hope this is because I've been ill, and not because it was somehow immensely important to me to be at a boob-in. It seems like an odd thing to have an emotional connection with.

I think it's important, though... a scary number of people never even consider trying to breastfeed as a realistic option - it doesn't occur to them to try it, because it's not what they recognise. That bothers me. They might find it as easy as I did, if they tried it. Some people do.

I wish someone would write my post on defensiveness and guilt and mothering and mothers bolstering their faith in their own choices by condemning other people's choices, because I'm too tired and ill-feeling to make it as coherent as I want to. And I don't want to end up writing "So what ever you do is ok all the time" because I'm much too judgemental to think that really, much as I'd like to sometimes.

Comments

[niallm.livejournal.com]

Syndicate this column, since 'boob-in' and 'heart failure' made me laugh quite a bit on a blustery overcast day.

[ailbhe]

How's your baby today?

[niallm.livejournal.com]

"Working on it". He gobbled some butternut squash for lunch, and has apparently been in a better mood when he's been up. But the energy levels are still quite low.

[k425.livejournal.com]

I too am upset about the feed-in. I was intending to go when it was going to be up here somewhere, then they moved it to the Baby Show and that miffed me somewhat because I wouldn't normally go to the show and I'd've had to pay to get in to breastfeed.

I haven't actually heard officially that it's not on, despite signing up to a Yahoo group for updates. Ah well, never mind.

[helenprev.livejournal.com]

I hope you write that post yourself, when you are feeling better and less tired. I'm sure you would do the subject justice.