hoots ahoy

we're living back in the city where we lived when brooke was born, nearly 9 years ago now & we've been wandering around, seeing the sites & reacquainting ourselves with the lay of the land. today as we drove up to a huge outlet mall, i had a flashback to a trip we made there when brooke was only a couple weeks old and we were taking her to the mall for the first time.

it was a weekend and the mall was crowded, like it always is. i was on a mission to find a couple more nursing bras because i only had two & neither of them fit well.

*note to my male readers: i realize you are of the wiener persuasion, so i ran this story past my husband first to see if it was too gross or TMI (who am i kidding, i still would have posted it, but i just wanted to see if the mens would likely be distressed by it.) and he told me it was okay & not too icky or sexy for my manly readers. let's carry on now, shall we?

i tried to wake my sleepy little dumpling head baby up so that she'd chow down on my feed bags before i went bra shopping. for any of you who haven't nursed kids, you might not realize that nursing boobs are similar to water balloons and when the baby eats, they deflate somewhat & get softer. when some time has passed since a feeding, they get very full & hard and often painful because they're containing a few ounces of milk that's just waiting for a hungry baby to gobble it up.

i knew that brooke should eat before we went into the mall so that i'd be able to shrink the breasticles down a bit before i started trying on bras. alas, brooke had other ideas. she was a hardcore fan of napping back then & there wasn't much i could do to wake her up when she was in one of her serious comas of slumber. i stripped her down to her diaper and held her in front of the A/C vents, but still no luck. no amount of jiggling, tickling or noise could rouse her, not even when i aimed my teat & shot her in the face with a stream of milk like a dairy bazooka.

i didn't have all day to mess with the babe, so i tucked my milk balloon back into my crappy nursing bra & headed into the mall. i hunted around for a while before locating the little boutique where they sold a decent selection of bras, including those of the nursing flap variety. i selected a couple different styles in a couple different sizes, left brooke in the stroller with her daddy & headed into the dressing room in hopes of finding something that would fit.

it wasn't until i got into the fitting room and stripped off my shirt that i realized just how full my jugs were. this did not bode well for trying on bras since the lady lumps were already in pain. but i had a task to be completed & not being one to shirk my responsibilities, i proceeded as planned.

i quickly peeled off my uncomfortable bra, but no sooner did i get it off than my cans exploded like a double headed sprinkler. liquid was shooting in all directions, coating the mirror, walls and carpet with hot milk. nips are tricky little buggers because they don't have just one exit hole for all that dairy delight, they have lots of holes coming from the various milk ducts within the breast, so it was completely out of control for a couple seconds before i figured out what i could use to clamp them down and absorb that excess milk.

i was still an inexperienced first time mommy, so i didn't have enough supplies with me in my purse and i'd left the diaper bag with chris & brooke who had left the store. once i'd filled up the little breast pads i was wearing & the couple stray tissues i dredged up from the depths of my purse, i was at a loss for what to do next. i stood there with my hands clamped over my boobs, milk running down my stomach almost in a panic trying to figure out what my next move should be.

i'm embarrassed to admit that i decided the best course of action at that juncture was for me to just lean forward and let them spray until the pressure decreased enough that they weren't free flowing any more. so there they hung, like 2 punching bags with multiple little jets leaving warm milky puddles in the carpet. i was sick with the shame of my act and at the same time tremendously relieved to get some of that irritating liquid out of there. i was bent at the waste, hair hanging down, my cheeks flushed red, but a little smile on my face at the relief i felt to have the pressure in my chest relieved.

i didn't know how to apologize to the sales staff or explain what had happened in that dressing room. i also didn't know how to get out of the store without potential leakage all over my shirt even after i thought my nips were mostly done leaking. so i stuffed my old, wet bra into my purse & then put on 2 of the bras that i'd brought in to try on. i ripped off the tags and took them to the counter to pay for them and didn't provide the woman with any information as to why i was at the register with 2 tags, but no bras in sight.

after that, i hightailed it out of the store, collected my little family & went home. i never told that whole story to anybody before today, but sometimes it's good to come clean. and if you were one of the employees of that store, i'm very, very sorry for my actions that day. and i hope you were able to get the smell out of that rug eventually.