Moo

I know I will regret raising this issue, as I am no doubt destined to be wrong. I am prepared to be corrected for my insensitivity and lack of insight. Afterall, I have been wrong so many times in the past...

Before I was blessed with the munchkins, I considered those electric swing thingies to be a sign of completely lazy parenting. Why put a baby in an appliance to settle - when the poppet clearly prefers the motion in her mothers arms?

My darling Freya cried her eyes out for the first two years of her life. The tiny buttercup was accustomed to the sound of machines when she eventually came home from hospital - she had spent so many weeks in an incubator after all, and I doubt my womb had been that quiet to begin with. There was the sound of all of the Haagen Dazs ice cream sloshing about in my tummy for a start, then there were the endless nursery tunes and 'Monkey Music' tapes I had been playing to my fair haired boy Max.

Freya required noise (lots of it) and motion to fall asleep. I jiggled perfect Freya about for months, all night every night, and when eventually I could take no more, Brenda turned up one evening off the train from Bromley South with an enormous ugly electric swing (and a bottle of holy water). The unsightly contraption had loud music and a revolving mobile. Suddenly the storm had passed. I was wrong, I admit it. The person who invented this machine should be on the New Years Honours list.

I have concluded that one baby is an exhausting hobby, but two ... well that is a completely full-time job and a half. A mother should accept all the help she can get. The bouncer suspended from the doorway, battery operated revolving mobile, vibrating baby bouncer, rotating sit in play centre - every gimmick money can buy should be issued with the birth certificate.

I have noticed of late, advertisements in the local free mummy type magazines for 'nursing necklaces'. Please enlighten me? I enjoyed breastfeeding, it was wonderful, intimate and special. But accessorising for this most natural of functions seems to me to be wholly unnecessary. I have scoffed in the past at the thought of nipple creams, shells, pumps, enormous bra's with cups like sails, and ended up buying them all. But why would one need now to purchase a 'nursing necklace' in order to feed successfully? Surely you have your baby, you have your breasts, everything else is frippery?

Isn't a 'nursing necklace - the ideal way to occupy tiny hands' just a step too far? Isn't it just a hop and a skip away from hanging a bell around your neck while feeding and calling yourself a fresian? I think it has all the charm of a bovine cow bell...

NO, no, no.

Please correct me if I am wrong.