To yesterday’s post.

Just cuz, well, there’s always more to say. And today I don’t really have anything new to say. So, POSTSCRIPT…

Yesterday’s booby blog can be taken as Exhibit A, solid evidence that motherhood turns perfectly respectable thinking women into effluent-obsessed, body-baring Creatures of the Earth.

Prior to pregnancy and childbirth, I would NEVER have publicly discussed my breasts. I probably wouldn’t have discussed them privately. (This is not to say that I mightn’t have discussed other people’s breasts. I have. Like the ones belonging to a certain Skanky Person I Know, a quote-unquote colleague, who has always insisted upon wearing low-cut tops even though the skin of her upper chest area is in dire need of a dermatologist’s attention. I’ve discussed her breasts. Not publicly though. ‘Til now. DUDE – COVER IT UP.)

But I wouldn’t discuss my own. Unseemly. I have a very long and distinguished history of extreme prissyness. EXTREME prissiness. As in, not remotely earthy. ANTI-earthy. Totally, totally averse to the gross, the dirty, the biological. (1)

(This prissiness was exploited, I might add, by my exuberant mother who always revelled in the ease with which she could cause me extreme embarassment. A topic for another day, when I have the energy to burrow beneath those particular scars.)

(It was also revelled in by my earthy sister, who used to throw worms and bugs at me just to see me freak out, and who said to me, when she had her first child, “YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO DO THIS. YOU WILL NOT. YOU ARE SO ANAL. YOU WILL DIE.” (2) And yes, she said it with full caps.)

BUT now, the prissiness, it has shriveled and retreated, like a man-part meeting cold water. (3) Now that my breasts are no longer my own, I discuss them freely. I walk around topless in my home (oh god when I read during pregnancy that breastfeeding women do that I gasped and whimpered neverneverneverNEVER. Like with the snot-sucking. (4) HA.) I wear ugly catch-and-release nursing bras. I garland the boobies with gaudy jewellery to lure a Hoover-powered infant to my chest. I BLOG ABOUT THE BOOBIES.

I have – my mother is LAUGHING SO HARD somewhere right now – NO SHAME.

But apart from these moments of clarity when I horrify myself, the fog of delicious baby-love makes it all okay.

Spit happens.
And all I see is the big blue eyes.

Which is good, because otherwise my sister would have predicted correctly. What with the indignity and mess of childbirth and the river of effluent that is babycare and the aforementioned utter shamelessness that is breastfeeding, etc, etc, I would totally have died from the grossness long before now.

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PPS:

Apparently the grossness just gets worse.

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PPPS:

Menthol also reduces milk supply. FYI.

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1. Cf. my discussion of squeamishness v.v. prissiness at this post.

2. Yo, Sis – I’m not dead. Yet.

3. And yet I am still prissy enough to avoid saying ‘balls’ or ‘testicle’ in a semi-public forum.

Wow. Got over that fast, didn’t I?

4. Did it again today. Still gross.