In The Dormouse's continuing efforts to deal with having a new baby in the house, but not actually being that baby's mother, may I present:


Little Mother in the making, complete with burp cloth on her shoulder.

Not yet an expert with the swaddle, however. That baby will squirm out of that in no time.

Now let me say, I'm pretty liberal about the whole breastfeeding thing. I'm not a particularly modest person and I don't really care who sees my bosom when there's a baby attached to it. It's not like I haven't seen more loblollies watching the Grammy awards in prime time TV. So I don't get the whole whoa, we don't expose our gazongas in this society attitude.

But I'm not all "Hey I'm canceling my Facebook account" either. (Mostly because I am a geezer and do not have a Facebook account, but you get my point.) I get that it makes some people uncomfortable and they don't want to see other people's yabbos and I think that's okay too. Hence, I do try to use a little bit of judgment and not be all flagrantly whipping out the one-eyed monster with no warning.

I guess having The Caterpillar at work with me (and The Dormouse before her) has made me more sensitive to how others may be uncomfortable around La Leche types who unholster the howitzers without a thought. I have my own office with a door, which I close while nursing The Caterpillar. It only seems right to respect the office environment and that then carries over to other places in public as well. But the office is full of mothers and they've seen it all, so the policy I've instituted for when people need to talk to me in the office is If it doesn't bother you, it doesn't bother me. If it does bother them, they either wait until I'm done or talk to me on the intercom.

Just this morning a colleague brought some paperwork in for another person who wasn't there full time when I had The Dormouse at work.

"Sally wasn't sure if she should come in and I caught her just standing outside your door," she explained as she handed me Sally's paperwork.

"You tell Sally if she doesn't mind seeing my boob, I don't mind her looking at it," I joked.

She then walked out of my office and yelled what I said down the hall to Sally.

At home, my policy is Hey, it's MY home. So I offer no such closed door policies and the billibongs come out when they need to regardless of who is in my house. I've sent my elderly neighbor running from the house more than once. Sometimes I feel badly that it makes him so uncomfortable but that's what you get when you overstay your welcome.

So why then does this put me so ill at ease?


"What are you doing honey?"

"I'm feeding my pretend baby with pretend milk from my pretend breast."

She is, after all only modeling what she's seen me do... right down to the blanket under the baby doll's head. I guess I may not be as progressive as I thought.

By the way, I'm afraid I may have missed a few euphemisms... go here for the whole list.