FML

Ros and I decided to take our longest adventure yet today... all the way to the Wrentham Outlets. Wrentham isn't that far from our house, about a 30 minute drive. But when you take into account that Dillon breastfeeds every 2 hours during the day, taking about 30-40 minutes to nurse, that gives you about 1 hour and 20 minutes before the next milking session is due it becomes quite a task to have to drive for 1 hour.

We are lucky that although she doesn't pass out in the car (of course our baby wouldn't), she does stay nicely asleep when she is being pushed around in her car seat and snap and go. So at around the 3 1/2 hour mark from her last feed (we did let her sleep so we could shop) we decided that we'd go and have some dinner ourselves at Ruby Tuesday and I'd try breastfeeding in public for the first time.

There was some preparation in this venture, as we figured she would probably have to eat during our outing. We brought the Boppy and some special cover your boobs type thingy made for whipping out your tatas in public to feed your child. Although well planned, we learned 2 1/2 weeks ago that the best laid plans hardly ever work out the way you want them to.

So into Ruby Tuesdays we went, unloaded the snap and go into our booth and sat down in the children's section of the restaurant. I got up and went to the salad bar to make the salad I would eat with my one free hand while breastfeeding Dillon at the same time. I sat down, put the Boppy on my lap, then Dillon, then that stupid fabric thingy around my neck, and whipped out the boob. Dillon just wasn't having it, after all we weren't sitting comfortably on the chaise of our couch propped with pillows and allowing the fresh air to blow freely over us. She was stuck on my lap between the table and my stomach with stupid fabric covering her little face. She wouldn't stay latched, it required both of my hands to try and keep her in position, and she would scream every time she pulled herself off of me. Our food arrived, and I just gave Ros a pathetic look. There was no way I was going to be able to eat, so we asked for a to go box. Then I realized, our life was never going to be the way it used to be, it's all about Dillon now.

Of course the woman at the table behind us easily bottle fed her baby while eating her dinner with her other free hand. It's just ironic the contrast, my struggle and her ease. If I didn't feel that the benefits of breast milk weren't so important, I so would have given up the breastfeeding already. It's amazing that something so "natural" is so unnatural in reality and practice. I wish that I was the type of woman with copious breast milk and was able to pump out ounces at a time then we could bottle feed the milk, but I am only able to pump 1/2 to 1 oz at a time.

Hopefully with some practice I will become an expert public breast feeder because I definitely can't organize our lives into 2 hour increments for the next few months.