I just received this message and want to help get the message out there! Help us get the latest addition of the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding on the New York Times Best Seller list! Pass it on!

The all-new 8th Edition of the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, written by Diane Wiessinger, Diana West, and Teresa Pitman (yes, Canadian content!!) will be published on July 13th. We are encouraging people to pre-order copies if they are interested, because all pre-orders are counted on the day of publication, and if we get enough, we could get on the New York Times best-seller list. Wouldn’t it be great to have a breastfeeding book as a NYT best-seller??

If you do your pre-ordering through the Amazon.ca link on the La Leche League Canada website (www.lllc.ca), LLLC will get a percentage back for the books you order (including any OTHER books you buy at the same time - such as that novel you’ve been wanting to read on the beach this summer….)

Before pregnancy, before babies, before breastfeeding, my breasts were just there. Sure, I knew they were there, they were played with, I felt them, checked them for lumps. They were always smooshie, soft, squishy breasts. I often mused that they were just smooshie flesh. Who knew there was 15-20 nodes of milk producing alveoli and ducts?!?! Not me! I couldn’t feel them…until I was breastfeeding.

Once the milk began to flow and fill up those alveoli, then I felt something more than smooshie - I felt my functional breasts. Actually, I was constantly aware of my breasts - they had taken on a life of their own, how could I not be aware! Gone were the days when they were smooshie wine goblets ready at a moment’s notice to look pretty in my polka dot bra. I was now, every second, aware of my functional breasts which produced, stored and delivered bresh milk to my infant daughter.

In so many ways, taking care of my daughter involved taking care of my breasts. Always aware, to the point of not being aware when I was checking them and where I was when I was checking them. I was reminded again today when I was at the mall with my daughter. How can you tell a breastfeeding mom? She is the one who squeezes her breast to check for fullness, out in public, without batting an eyelash.

Well now that we have established my daughter is not self-weaning, time to boost the milk supply! I found a recipe to make plastic jewellery out of milk! The recipe does use cow’s milk, but I’m sure with some experimentation I can make it work with breastmilk. I only have a few bags of breastmilk in the freezer to experiment with, which isn’t much. So time to boost the supply and pump just in case it takes me a 3 or 5 or 10 tries to get this right. You do remember my excitement over discovering the breastmilk jewllery, yes?

How would I make jewellry out of breastmilk you ask? By mixing warm milk with vinegar to extract the casein in the milk. When milk goes bad it starts to curdle. Those chunks or curds are made of casein. They start to form when the solid milk proteins separate from the liquid proteins. Casein is thick and rubbery in texture, and is a type of natural plastic which can be molded into shapes and turned into jewellery. This really is the coolest thing ever!

 Must go pump, I have some jewellery to make!

It looks like she is not weaning herself off the breast! Night-time feedings have slowly tapered off and most nights she sleeps through without asking for boobie even once. But it seems I jumped the gun. As I type, she nurses. Aaaah, the life of a breastfeeder.

To mourn the close of summer and celebrate the arrival of autumn, my family went off on a Labour Day weekend adventure in upper New York State quite close to the Alleghany region. We camped, we played and we generally had a hoot of a time, especially at the park.

I am always overjoyed when I see my good behaviours modeled back to me by my daughters, especially when they are breastfeeding behaviours. My eldest daughter was the only one in her preschool class to breastfeed her dolls, and now my youngest is showing her breastfeeding skills!

Let me explain…

During one of our sojourns to the park over the weekend, my 2.5 yr old daughter decided to bring her puppy along. She has been developing a special attachment to this puppy over the past couple of weeks, so it was no surprise she wanted to bring puppy to the park. After playing for quite a while - up the slide, down the slide, on the swing, on the teeter-totter, on the swing - she decided to take a break on the bench with puppy. Within a moment she looked up at me and said “Oh puppy hungry” and proceeded to lift up her shirt and place puppy at her breast in an ever gentle cradle saying “see puppy hungry, I feed puppy”. With tears in my eyes and a “move faster, faster, faster, faster” tone in my voice I frantically grabbed myhusband’s arm and asked “where is the camera? Get a picture, get a picture!” But he is slow to draw and missed the moment. So I grabbed the camera out of his hands and refused to give it back, I couldn’t take the chance of missing yet another moment with those slow reflexes holding the camera. I am a quick-draw and stealth photographer, so it only makes sense that I have the camera. And thank goodness I took the camera, because a few moments later my darling breastfeeding daughter breastfed her puppy again and mommy quickly snatched a few pics for posterity’s sake.

Can I say again how proud I am of my daughters? 

So I emailed the Duende Collective about the their breastmilk jewellery and I got their automatic  reply, sigh, in French. I can decipher some but not all of it, but I wonder if there is any intention to actually reply to me, other than ”thanks for your interest!” I am hoping that maybe in a day or two I will receive an actual reply to my email. Maybe? 

Will try again, and in the meantime I am on the hunt for a recipe.

Now that we have finally entered the heat of summer, I can comfortably engage in immediate outdoor nursing when I pick up my daughters mid-afternoon. I typically meet my youngest and the sitter at my eldest daughter’s school, where I am promptly instructed to go sit down under a shady tree and nurse. So I do. On the school grounds. I live to breastfeed in public as you know, and I am not a throw the boob out there for all to see breastfeeder, but neither am I so discreet that it is not obvious what I am doing. I am not, never have been, and never will be a nursing cover kind of breastfeeder.

Seriously? Use a nursing cover? I don’t think so.  How easy is it to get one of those on you and set up when you are trying to get ready to feed a hungry newborn, or hungry toddler for that matter? How can a baby breathe under there? Yeah, yeah I have seen those nursing covers with the “unique rigid neckline” that supposedly allow for air ventilation and direct eye contact. Answer me this - how comfortable would you be with a big swath of cloth wrapped around on your body while you feed on a hot summer day? I’m telling you right now I would not appreciate it and neither would my toddler.

But why perpetuate the myth that breastfeeding is obscene and indecent bv covering up? Doesn’t the very act of covering up work against normalizing breastfeeding in our society? I am not going to feed my baby in the bathroom and I am only going to use one of those breastfeeding rooms if I can’t find another comfortable place to sit. Why? It’s not that I’m an exhibitionist. Well, OK, maybe I was, am, a bit of an exhibitionist. But if I was a breastfeeding exhibitionist I would be throwing my breast out there for all to see, and I don’t think I do that. I think throwing it out there, in your face style, also works against normalizing breastfeeding in public. In other parts of my life, yes I may show them off, and yes as a breastfeeding mom I check the status of my breasts in public, but that’s not out there in your face, is it? To normalize breastfeeding in public, I don’t think extremes on either side will be helpful, we just need normal breastfeeding, however it may happen. And normal breastfeeding does not happen under a cover. There is nothing normal about strapping a piece of fabric around your neck and torso before you sit down with your baby. I understand the modesty line as well. But you can remain modest without using a cover - some lovely new breastfeeding shirts will do the trick and neither you or your baby will overheat.

 I understand the market for nursing covers, and yet at the same time I don’t. In the heat we’ve been experiencing in this part of the world for the past few days, there is no way I will cover up to nurse. The public is lucky I don’t just tear off my shirt and go for it!

I love the word tits. I love the way those hard edges hit your tongue. I love its succinct, sharpness. I really am just quite fond of the word. I am terribly amused by the reactions of others when I say tits out loud. They run the gamut from the wide eyed surprise (you just said that in public with no shame?!) to the noticeable cringe to the outright shush.

Seriously, do they not use the word in Britain all the time?!?! Trinny and Susannah and Gok throw it around in general conversation like it’s nothing. And isn’t it really nothing?

I find it the word amusing. Now I tend to alternate between tits and boob when offering up the boob bar/titty bar to my daughter. My husband nevers bats an eyelash when I say boob, but his ears perk up when I say tit. Funny man.

I have always been an on-demand breastfeeder. I know many of my friends could not function that way and were surprised that I did not fall into the “babies must be fed on a schedule” brand of feeding. But I am just not a scheduler. If my baby is hungry, how could I refuse her saying ” oh honey, you just have to wait one more hour for your regularly scheduled feeding.” That is just not something I could do, I don’t have the heart. I’m sure scheduled feeding can instill a sense of sanity in the crazy world that is parenting, but I am one that does well flying by the seat of my pencil skirt, most times anyway.

If you are a breastfeeding mama on a schedule with an iPhone in your purse, then I have found the iPhone app for you!  Check out the Baby Tracker: Nursing, a new iPhone application that helps you keep track of which breast you last fed your baby on! No more safety pins pinned to your bra, rubber bracelets or beaded cuffs.

Want an app to help you keep track of more than just breastfeeding? Try Trixie Tracker, an application optimized for the iPhone created to help you keep track of feedings, pumping, milk inventory, diaper changes, sleep schedule, pumping and other baby-related tasks.

If Vista wasn’t enough to convert me to Apple, this just might be.

My daughter has been a bona fide boobie smacker for quite some time now. I thought it only fitting to try and teach her to say boobie. She has been very reticent to learn real words aside from mama, dada, hot, and a few other one syllable words. She really likes to pretend she is talking serious though.

So everytime she gives me a “I want boobie” smack, I point to my breasts and reply “You want boobie. Say boobie.” To no avail, she just smiles, nods her head ‘yes’ and gives them another smack. We’ve been doing this for a while. Finally, I got a response!

She just gave me the “I want boobie” smack and I replied ”You want boobie. Say boobie.” She shook her head ‘no’ and crossed her arms. I looked away frowning. She looked up at me, smiled, poked my boob and said “Mama? Boom boom?”

I have boom boom’s!