
1. If you don’t pump for a day, even at eleven months into your breastfeeding journey, you WILL live to regret it
I knew this. So my single electric pump was sitting there in my handbag saying “Hey, lactating lady, remember me?” but like a n00b I ignored it because I was having too much fun at Cybher, my first blogging conference. Also, despite working out where to pump with Mummy Limited who’d been organised enough to check it all out days before, I plain copped out. I’d worn a dress with no boob access as I wouldn’t have to breastfeed. Pumping would’ve seen me topless in the Cybher office. Lovely.
2. My daughter is a stubborn boob enthusiast and she will wait
As in, she’ll wait the 14 hours it takes mummy to get back home. I was so stressed out before going about the milk situation because every time we or anyone else offered her a bottle of ANY kind of milk, she wouldn’t have it. Water – fine. Milk? That only comes out of boobs. This from the baby who was combination fed for months. Anyway, people assured me that she wouldn’t starve herself and she didn’t. She ate lots of food, especially yoghurt, and drank lots of water. Then boy did she make up for it, feeding every two hours the whole night. And yet, I’m still pumping the excess for my aforementioned stupidity.
3. If you’re planning to meet someone so you can go in to a conference together, make sure you mean the same place
I ended up standing outside Charing Cross waiting for Mum2Babyinsomniac having totally missed that she’d said Embankment. So no morning coffee before the games began. At the moment I don’t function without caffeine at the start of the day. I soon found myself cutting short a conversation with Mother’s Always Right like a serious junkie in search of a fix.
4. Plan your journey ahead of time
In fact, I hadn’t got coffee at the station because we’d booked train tickets last minute late the night before and written down the booking code wrong. Then I couldn’t get through to Laurence or Talitha’s godfather Kevin (we were down in Brighton this weekend so they were both looking after her – walking along the beach and looking like a modern family as strangers knowingly smiled at them). So in the end I bought a second ticket, making it the single most expensive Brighton to London journey I’ve ever made. Tell me I will outgrow this? That I’ll one day turn into this thrifty, organised, perfect homemaker? No? Well, OK.
5. Always go into sessions with an open mind
When we got there, I spent time looking through the timetable and thinking: “What on earth is that about?” I vaguely picked what stood out but nothing seemed like it was going to be particularly relevant to me or something I didn’t know about or something I couldn’t search for later. How wrong I was. Virtually every talk was stimulating. I was reinvigorated to keep blogging and trying to create something meaningful. I was challenged to think about what would make it meaningful to me.
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