They do have their uses

Baby Spouse does find, especially if he's in a sling, that my 34Es are jolly useful for holding his pacifier in. And keeping his hands warm.

Although I am pretty sure those in the know, here, will not be asking why I am not breastfeeding, there has been the odd smug comment (can't possibly leave the year-old baby with husband for more than a couple of hours because he doesn't have the required anatomy - which will also be mildly irritating to the colleague who knows this person, is breastfeeding, but desperately needs to start full time work in about six weeks as her husband has lost his job...), and I've yet to meet any new random groups of mums that are not friends of friends that therefore know the full story.  

Fortunately because adoption of a baby is so rare here, no-one will have a friend of a friend of a friend who adopted and fed her baby entirely by breastfeeding and found it so easy and fulfilling. I also strongly suspect that Baby Spouse would have been sucking his thumbs or a pacifier from day 3, when he discovered said thumbs fit nicely in his mouth, however he was fed. So the "my baby's never had a dummy" brigade will be told they are just lucky.

But I did have occasion to ring up a colleague (who actually knows a lot about social care as her work is on that end of the spectrum of what I do), to talk about a project we need to get done in the next few months, for which I'll arrange some child care, and then work will owe me a day or three when I go back properly, which is fine by me. She said "oh, you won't be breastfeeding, will you, so someone else can care for the baby". Well yes, but it is not easy to find "someone else" who is not Baby Spouse's father and who will be able to take over a whole day, or three, of care, and although he may not need my actual anatomy every two hours, he still needs a knowledgable caring adult to produce feed and change him about every three hours, and preferably, some days, to sit on the sofa cuddling him most of the rest of the time.

In other news, our county council social work department are useless, but we knew that. They legally had to come and visit us within 7 days of Thursday last week, but only thought about this, and about not having anyone spare to do this (well, except for the whole team of social workers 10 minutes walk from our house) on Tuesday. So they are going to pay our own very nice social worker from our agency to do this, so we'll see her every 6 weeks, but that is fine, she doesn't even drink tea or eat cake so we don't need to get anything special in for her. She came today at very short notice, because legally she had to, and she is of course in love with the baby (especially his very fat nappy).  

We also are in love with the baby, though Mr Spouse less so with his nappy (it's fat because we're trying reusables - we were given a large stock by a friend). What I am not in love with is Mr Spouse's crazy business school coursework schedule, he has been very good about doing overnight feeds, but although I know this will get better shortly, I really don't want to be the "expert" and do everything my way without him knowing how it's done, and therefore have him in a few weeks' time when he has his evenings free, not know what he's doing and therefore leave it to me because it's easier that way for both of us.