I am transitioning to using my cell phone camera since I am in the process of attracting my nicer camera that I lost back to me. These pics are taken with my cell phone. The darling baby is my new niece and my nephew is holding her in the pic above. Yesterday my nephew had his non-farewell for leaving to his mission this Wednesday so we attended it, an hour away from my home. This nephew is my brother’s son. I remember when he was born! Can I really be this old?! I remember babysitting him when we used to live in the same ward in Sugar House. He was sad that his mom wasn’t there and my husband and I distracted him with Barney.

My brother lives in the same ward we grew up in, just around the corner and down the street from my parents. Now he is the bishop of the ward. It was so weird to see him conduct a meeting and be the presiding authority. He’s always been a great brother. the big brother in Laddie reminds me of him.

During sacrament meeting I found myself in a pickle. My almost-two-year old started asking to nurse. I didn’t plan and forgot to bring snacks and water, although I did remember to bring the church bag of quiet toys. I was also smack in the middle of the pew, a consequence of scooting over to let my sister and her little family of seven sit by us. It was close to lunch time and the normal time when he asks to nurse because he’s hungry and tired and sometimes goes down for his nap.

“Should I just nurse here or not?” I started debating. I didn’t want to climb over everybody to get out. It would be so much less disruptive to just nurse where I was. I finally gave in and did it. I was hoping that nobody would give me flack about it. I don’t know if my brother the bishop noticed. The speaker, a female neighbor of my parents who I babysat for when I was growing up, probably did.

I never really gave much thought to nursing in public after I started doing it with baby #2. I got used to it as I learned that mothering with the breast is so much easier than mothering with artificial substitutes and I did it a lot. I started nursing in church with baby #3. Then I stopped because my babies would be so noisy about it, slurping and all. I still nursed all the time in other public settings. With baby #7 I was surprised when my sister asked me at a family gathering not to nurse in the presence of her son. I thought I had always been modest and not exposed my breast. Maybe I have and she still felt I  since he was becoming a teenager with hormones it wasn’t right for him to see me nursing because it might stimulate inappropriate thoughts. I don’t know. I was too shocked to probe. I am still sorting out my feelings over it. It was a wake up call for me to be more careful about what I am exposing when I nurse.

Supposedly there used to be a letter from the First Presidency asking moms not to nurse in sacrament meeting but I have never seen the actual document. If anyone can find it please let me know. I used to be so pro nursing in public. I have always thought, “People need to know what breasts are really for so let’s just keep nursing in public.” But I do know some people struggle with pornography. Perhaps seeing a women nurse stimulates the wrong kind of thoughts. I certainly don’t want to be pornographic material. It’s really sad. It reminds me of the Orwellian phrase I remember Marian Tompson, co-founder of La Leche League said in a speech that I attended at an International Conference for LLL, “We have come to the point like in 1984 where the obscene is good and the good is obscene.”

Anyway, I enjoyed the peace in sacrament meeting that came from him falling asleep at the breast. I took my baby to the nursery while the rest of the family did the rest of the block meeting. I was OK with staying with him in nursery, even my five year old wanted to stay with me.  We had a great time afterwards at my brother’s and my kids loved playing with all their cousins. My son won’t be seeing his cousin for over three years, until he’s off of his mission. I also found out from my aunt and uncle that my cousin got remarried. That was good to hear.