Parenting and family news, picked by parents

I’d been mulling over this idea for a blog post for a while: an exploration of the things we do whilst breastfeeding.

When I fed my first baby, it was generally from a position of comfort – on a bed, surrounded by an improbable number of pillows, in untroubled, civilized silence, as often as not.

Two children later, and it’s a different story. Now you’re as likely to find me simultaneously balancing DS2 on my knee, reading him a story, hoping that he doesn’t squash the baby who clings resolutely on despite the competition.

I’ve been known to walk upstairs whilst feeding, even answer the door (when I knew it was my husband knocking, I’m not that brave).

I’ve fed in playgroups, at friends’ houses, cafes, restaurants. In car-parks, on hillsides, in stately homes and in Ikea. In fact, at 4 am this morning, as I sat in the darkness and waited for DS3 to quell his night starvation, I did a rough calculation that at 7 months, I must have fed him over a thousand times, and as a busy mother of three young boys, a high proportion of them have involved me trying to accomplish something else at the same time.

However this story took my breath away – a woman in Sweden who crashed a car she was driving with her three children as passengers because she was breastfeeding her baby whilst driving on the motorway.

Now I’ve heard of multi-tasking, but surely this is beyond the joke!

What other tasks have you managed to accomplish whilst breastfeeding? Should we even be trying to get other jobs done at the same time as feeding our babies? Have your say below.

Image by Flickr user thekmancom