My right wrist hurts! My lower right arm is in pain and I have the start of a blister on my right thumb.
Normally
symptoms like this would indicate that a new amazing game has been
released. But no! I haven't gotten some sort of early access to a D3
Reaper of Souls instead I have been pumping.
I had to be away from my baby girl for two days and she is still exclusively breastfed. Naive as I was, I thought the main challenge would be to sort out enough milk for the two days I was gone. It was not.
While away I found myself in so many absurd situations that I bet many people will have a very hard time relating to. That is why I have decided to share this. If you feel uncomfortable reading about breastfeeding, you probably should click away now. (And then you might want to talk to a professional about why you are freaked out by one of the most natural things in the world.... ;))
One of the aforementioned situations occured when I strongly considered asking the nice couple sitting next to me, to get up so I could go and sit 10000m above earth pumping milk in an airplane toilet. It would have made for a fantastic story if nothing else.
I didn't go, instead I entered a booth in the airport and sat for 20 minutes squeaking away. Y|es squeaking, because my pump chose that moment to start imitating the sound of two grown ups going at it in a very old bed.
Luckily for me, most people don't spend much time when going in public restrooms so I avoided the stares I would surely have had otherwise.
I wasn't so lucky on the way back... there was a huge queue when I emerged, slightly red in the face and massaging my wrist. (Pumping is hard work).
People were polite enough to only stare for a few seconds, but I am sure that there has been some interesting conversations after I left the room, especially by the two giggling teenage girls in the front of the queue who had had the most time to enjoy the audio performance.
It was also an interesting experience to pass the scanners in the airport. I was traveling light with just my cabin baggage so of course the bag including the pump had to be run through the machine.
The guy checking the x-ray video looked quite confused for a second, then let it go through and I drew a sigh of relief. I am not embarressed about breastfeeding, but having to expose my pumping equipment to the entire airport and explain the use was not something I really felt like.
The nights were trouble as well. I had been looking forward to sleeping through the night as the only positive thing about being away from my little girl, but on cue I would wake up when she normally nurse and in order to avoid exploding I then spent 30 minutes pumping away. So much for catching up on sleep.
The most absurd moment occured on the way back. I didn't have much time between the airport before my train left so instead I had to resort to using the toilet on the train. I don't know if you have ever peeked into a train toilet? Well they are disgusting. They usually look like people (men and women alike) decide that their train toilet trip is the perfect time to practice standing up while peeing and they really aren't very good at it so it all goes to shit (pun intended).
Anyways, sitting down on the toilet cover is not an option, so I found myself standing like a sailor in a storm, trying to keep my balance, while pumping away. The whole time I could hear people get on and off the train and through the entire thing I was terrified that the train personel would come to check why the toilet had been occupied for so long. I had vivid pictures of them opening the door to find a kinda sweaty woman standing like she shat herself, hair slightly messed up, with one breast exposed into a hand pump.
In my imagination I could hear the horrified mumbles that would run through the row of passengers who did not have a seat and had to resort to standing in the hallway.
Of course nothing happened and I arrived back home without scarring anyone (except perhaps myself) for life.
This whole experience was horrible, I missed my daugther and I spent approximately a 6th of my day stuck in toilets with a pump on my boob. It got me thinking though.
I consider myself to be a fairly openminded person, but I must admit that I have judged others from time to time. Whether it was because they were shit at a game or because they wore tracksuits or pyjamas to the store.
I guess you can't ever know the entire situation so I think in the future I will attempt to at least come up with funny excuses for people when they are seemingly acting like idiots/slobs/sillypants. Who knows, maybe their boobs are secretly on the verge of exploding and that is only a plus if you are one of the fembots from Austin Powers.
