Happy National Breastfeeding Awareness Month! Surely, you’re already aware of the health benefits, so I’m here to share one of the lesser known perks of breastfeeding: it can totally get out of stuff. Things you really don’t feel like doing. It’s the adult version of telling your gym teacher that you can’t participate today because you’re surfing the crimson wave.
Now, the truth is, we breastfeeders are superwomen who can whip a boob out on a street corner if necessary to soothe our babies. But let’s keep that between us, okay? Sometimes mama needs an excuse to peace out. Here are 10 not-so-fun things you can skip while nursing:
1. Bedtime routine for older kids – I have a preschooler who is amazing all day and a holy terror at night. It takes about 8 books, 7 made up stories, 6 negotiations, 5 backrubs, 4 long bouts of stalling, 3 tantrums, 2 minutes of straight up begging and a partridge in a pear tree to get her into bed every night. Guess who’s in charge of that shitshow now that I’m nursing a new baby? Daddy!
2. The dishes – Ditto the after dinner clean-up. I’m amazed I can get dinner on the table at all, frankly, and I’m usually eating it one-handed with our bambina on my lap, trying not to spill spaghetti on her. Once it’s time to scrub pots and load the dishwasher, I conveniently realize that the baby needs to nurse.
3. Making small talk – Stuck babbling about the weather at the neighborhood block party? Time to breastfeed!
4. Listening to solicitors – You know that feeling of dread when your doorbell rings around dinnertime and you just know it’s someone from Greenpeace trying to save the whales and you simply do not have the time, money or interest to hear out their well-meaning 20-minute spiel at the moment? Just answer the door half naked, holding a hungry baby. Stops the conversation before it even starts.
If you miss eating for two as a pregnant lady, don’t worry, you still kind of are.
5. Evening plans – Hey, actress friend, I’m sure that mime version of “Hamlet” that you’re starring in is great and all, but the baby really needs me at night… cluster feeding…you understand.
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