The formula for success.

I went to visit my family today which is always eventful, if only for packing my Gibraltar sized bag for a three hour visit and a one hour car journey. I swore before I had children that I would keep things simple, but this is keeping it simple. If I didn't take this monstrosity of a hold-all I would have to walk around covered in baby vomit all day, not to mention what having no nappies would add to general appearance and smell. No feeding cushion would mean a bad back; no moses basket - no opportunity of peace and quiet, no emergency milk - a day of crying... you catch my drift. So we basically drove an hour up the M1 as though we were jetting off on a holiday (I wish), or maybe more of an expedition. If you forget even one essential item the expedition would be far from a success.

As soon as we walked in the room everyone wanted to hold the baby of course. Grandma nearly dropped him which left me half in a panic and half chuckling to myself, watching everyone else gasp and leap up to catch him. Then all my friends came over - about 8 of them which meant that every space of the minuscule lounge was filled with bodies, passing Albie round like some sort of weird pass-the-parcel for adults. And you probably don't want to get to the prize, it doesn't smell so good.

Then came the point where he needed feeding and I started to panic that I would have to get my boobs out in front of all my friends and their partners (you all know Albie's feeding habits by now!!) but I don't want to leave the room because I know he will take an hour to feed and all my friends will have to leave. I coyly grabbed my bottle of pre-squeezed breast milk and gave it to Albie as the room fell silent and watched. I felt everyone thinking things about my feeding choices. One friend piped up with 'is that breast milk in there?' And I thought, 'phew, I'm off the hook'.

My Grans noticed the feeding bottle later on and asked if I were still giving Albie 'a bit of breast', which made me jump to my own defence: 'It is breast milk!' Then ensued a full conversation about mathematical formulas for how much expressed milk you need per weight of child and so on, leaving me wishing I'd stuck to formula in the first place so I didn't have to do any maths.