I juast have to note for those moms out there who are looking for a good pump. I love my Avent manual pump. On the Canada Day long weekend I was busy taking the CAPPA Certified Childbirth Educator course, and being away from my daughter, I needed to pump. I haven’t had to pump in a very, long time. My daughter really doesn’t like bottles, she never has, so I never really pumped as it always ended up down the drain. But at a full two-day course, I didn’t want to experience the pain of full boobs, so I had to pump.  It was a great reminder of just how much I love this pump.

I first started using this pump 5 years ago when I went back to work after my mat leave from my eldest daughter. I just kept it in my office, on a shelf, and everyday I would pump in my office, pour the breast milk into a freezer bag and drop it off in the fridge, then rinse my pump out in the kitchen. Most of my co-workers were young, unmarried, childless men who were very well-adjusted. I must say I was very impressed! The rest of my co-workers were married men with kids, also very well-adjusted. If I was particularly busy I would just leave my pump on my desk, full of breast milk, until I could get down to the task of bagging, storing and cleaning. I really didn’t think anything of it (the early days of my non-chalance about breasts and milk, no wonder I walk around with my nursing bra exposed). One day I had a really successful pumping, which I left on the desk when onbe of the project managers walked in. His eyes landed right on the pump (wide and a little surprised) and without missing a beat he looked up smiling and said “wow, that pump works really well for you. My wife had the hardest time pumping, she never found a pump that worked that well for her. What pump are you using?” Before we got down to business, we got down to the business of breast pumps.

Since I’m still at home I haven’t had the need for daily pumpings until this course. I am pleased to say I still pump like a dream with the Avent and it is still portable, discreet and easy, easy, easy. Feeling the love of let-down Avent, feeling the love.

Somehow I missed this at the end of June, but this is fantastically brilliant! The Daily Mail in the UK reported at the end of June that the Vatican would like to undo four centuries of church disapproval of traditional representations of Mary and allow images of her breast-feeding the baby Jesus. This is a Daily Mail article I want to keep for posterity. How is that for modernizing the church. But will it really catch on? Pray it does!

Vatican plea to uncover Virgin Mary and show her breast-feeding baby Jesus
By Simon Caldwell
Last updated at 11:09 PM on 23rd June 2008

It might be enough to make Banksy drop his aerosol in the gutter in surprise or cause Lucien Freud to spill paint down his smock in shock.

But the Vatican yesterday said it wanted to see more paintings of a semi-nude Virgin Mary.

What Catholic leaders have in mind is more images of Mary breast-feeding baby Jesus.

The official newspaper of the Holy See has declared it is time to undo four centuries of church disapproval of traditional representations of Mary as an earthy, fleshy mother doting on her newborn son.

Images like Virgin and Child, by Joovs van Cleve, painted in 1525, have fallen out of favour in recent centuries

The latest edition of L’Osservatore Romano ran two articles by respected art critics who said that for nearly 1,500 years the Madonna was portrayed partly clothed and shamelessly nursing the Christ child.

One of them blamed Protestant prudes for changing the trends in religious art  that then led to the Virgin being covered up and left critics wondering if the infant Jesus was bottle-fed instead.

Such currents were so strong that even the nudes in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel were covered up in fear of giving offence, and today the best places to see pictures of Mary nursing Jesus are not churches but major art galleries  housing collections of Renaissance paintings.

But  the hugely influential newspaper - which is often seen as having the support of the Pope - has now called for the “artistic and spiritual  rehabilitation” of “loving and tender” images of Mary breast-feeding.

The intervention could inspire a revival in sacred art that would spell the end  of 400 years of dressing up the Virgin to make her look “respectable”.

One article, written by Italian Church historian Lucetta Scaraffia, claimed a  vast iconography of traditional Christian art had been “censored by the modern  age” because images depicting Mary’s naked breast for her child were deemed  too “unseemly”.

It said that artists later depicted the nursing Mary fully clothed because the Protestant reformers were generally critical of “the carnality and unbecoming  nature of many sacred images”. 

But Miss Scaraffia argued that later depictions had also diminished the Madonna’ s human side “that touches the hearts and faith of the devout”.

Miss Scaraffia said that when the early Christian artists represented the Virgin breast-feeding they had sought to reveal the reality of God’s  incarnation.

A second piece, written by Father Enrico dal Covolo, a professor of classic and  Christian literature in Rome, said: “The Virgin Mary who nurses her son Jesus is one of the most eloquent signs that the word of God truly and undoubtedly  became flesh.”

Images of a semi-nude Mary breastfeeding can be traced back to early Christian  times and were popular during the Renaissance period of the Middle Ages.

But they came to an abrupt end around the 16th or 17th century with the emergence of Calvinism and other dour Protestant faiths that viewed representations of ’sexuality’ as essentially sinful.

Such ideas were resisted by Rome but they were accepted by Catholics particularly  in France, Ireland and northern Europe.

The result is that very few, if any, Catholic churches or newspapers will dare  to show such imagery even today.