The Breast Pump. (Warning: Boob Talk Inside.)
Mood:  happy
There it lurks, in the corner of my office. I haven't used it since, oh, March or so, yet I can't seem to bring myself to get rid of it. What do you do with a used breast pump? Sell it, my husband says, but you are absolutely not meant to do this, and also, a lot of the little doodads that came with it have been scattered to the four winds. I'm tempted to donate it to Goodwill, but the mental image of some member of the Goodwill-shopping public coming upon it and puzzling over it is too much for me. Why does this backpack have a motor? And what are these conical things with the bottles attached? And what is up with the TUBES?

It is the pitfall of the nursing mommy that we speak too much about our boobs. It's inevitable! Fortunately for you, I stopped pumping in advance of starting this blog, so you don't have to hear hilarious stories of me sitting semi-topless in my locked office, listening to Howard Stern while some crazed attorney pounded on the door because he couldn't be bothered to read the little post-it on my door that said, in essence, Please go away now. I am pretending to be a cow. Okay, so not so hilarious. But you have mostly been spared.

Until now, that is, because I am confronted with the prospect of breaking out the pump again. I have recently become afflicted with something known as a milk blister, which in layman's (layboob's?) terms means that one of the little places where the milk comes out has become clogged, and also hurts occasionally like hell. Now, what in life prepares you to deal with something like this? I am quite certain they didn't cover this topic in Health class, or even in undergraduate school. God knows they didn't touch it in law school. So I posed my question to the PumpMoms, an awesome mailgroup for moms grappling with the breast pump. Those chicks know everything.

And their advice amounted to this: Break out the pump and bust through it. (Pun not initially intended, but I'm leaving it in, because it's just too perfect.)

So here I sit, nervously eyeing the breast pump and contemplating the idea of turning my nipple into a miniature scale model of Vesuvius. And what I think is this: Matthew, someday if you ever doubt that I love you, I hope that you will (a) snap out of it, because of course I do, you silly boy, and (b) take a look at this entry. Mothers have done some awesome stuff for their kids through the ages, but this here is cruel and unusual, and By God you'd better appreciate it.