Breastfeeding in public is somewhat legal but mostly socially unacceptable, so when I need to pump so my bottle-fed baby still gets all the great benefits of breastmilk, I tend to eschew public arenas. So, yesterday when I found myself traveling with a two month old baby and needing to pump, I was grateful to find a nursery area next to the women's restroom at Boston's Logan airport. It was in use, so I waited. I had 30 minutes until my flight began to board, and I began to worry that the woman currently breastfeeding her child wouldn't finish in time for me to do my business. After several minutes, an older woman -- must have been in her 50's or 60's, emerged from the nursery. She took one look at me -- it was obvious I was waiting for the nursery, it was obvious I was a mom, considering the size of the stroller nearly blocking the entrance not only to the nursery, but to the restroom it adjoined -- and came up with some lame excuse for using the nursery. "I'm sorry, I needed a place to sit down, and I needed to hang up my coat." I hate to break it to you, lady, but there is no coat hook in the nursery. And, considering the large number of unoccupied chairs in the waiting area of every nearby gate, I hardly thought it necessary to "hang" your coat when you can simply put it over a chair.

What is up with a woman (who, judging by her age, is completely incapable of producing breastmilk, not to mention the fact she clearly had no child) using the nursery as her personal napping place? She probably parks in handicapped parking, too, because her groceries might spoil if she parked 20 feet farther from her apartment. Grr...

I made $50 brownies last night.

I pulled out the mix, put the water and the oil in the bowl, then realized I had no eggs. I was about to scrap the project, then my husband said he would go to the store for the eggs -- he really wanted the brownies!

With a young baby (7 weeks!) in the house, I don't get out much, so my husband suggested I take the opportunity to grocery shop. Sounds magnanimous, unless you know how much my husband hates grocery shopping. While I'm there -- could I pick up some potatoes for dinner tomorrow, and how about some root beer?

My list of eggs, root beer and potatoes grew to about 9 items, including bread, so that I didn't have to go back in the next couple days. However, once I got to the store, I remembered that we had no more dishwashing liquid, and considering we were having people over for lunch tomorrow, I thought clean dishes might be in order. Then of course, there was the matter of ham. If my husband has ham and english muffins and a wife to cook the egg to go on them, then he eats at home in the morning. Otherwise, Dunkin Donuts is the happy recipient of his patronage. Evaporated milk to make that pumpkin cake I keep meaning to make, until I remember I have no evaporated milk. Then spring water to make Sammy a bottle when we are out and about. Mmmm....eggnog since it isn't available year-round, and two more packages of brownie mix, since now I have eggs. Eggs! I almost forgot the eggs!

At the cash register -- $49.71. Cha-ching! Hannaford's loves it when I make brownies.

By the time I got home, mixed in the eggs and baked the brownies, it was well after midnight. I ate my brownie, carefully made in a muffin pan so as to make individual serving-size pieces. My husband, well, I guess he didn't want the brownies after all -- he went to bed without even a bite. So, I ate his piece, just for good measure.

My 24-day-old daughter regularly develops hiccups, and I don't care what the child development books say -- they DO bother her. She may be sleeping, excuse the expression, like a baby when they start, and they wake her up, crying. Mind you, my daughter cries very little, so her crying over hiccups tells me a lot about how they affect her.

I have tried everything I know to quiet the hiccups -- burping her, feeding her, rubbing her tummy. The only thing that works is nothing. They simply have to work their way out on their own.

The significant thing about hiccups and my daughter is that while I can do nothing to help them go away, I can still help. She cries, fusses, and generally is upset when she has the hiccups. But when I pick her up and hold her in my arms, she calms down and just lets the hiccups come. Sometimes a really big one will blast out, and the sound and fury of it will frighten her enough to cry again, but she can always calm down in my arms.

And it isn't enough to put my hand in her bassinet and lay it on her forehead. She must be picked up and enveloped in the arms of someone who loves her.

It reminds me of a movie, the name of which eludes my attempts to find it, in which a man who loses his children to a terrible car accident, then loses his wife to suicide. In the next life, he goes looking for her, and finds her in the most stark and frightening depiction of hell I can imagine. His attempts to save her, bring her out of the depression that became her pathway to this miserable place, utterly failed. He sends his children back to the beautiful part of the afterlife, but chooses to stay in hell with his wife. He cannot save her, so he chooses to suffer with her.

So many events in life can't be fixed, they must be experienced. How beautiful when someone loves us enough to experience these with us, the good and the ugly.

Breastfeeding trauma. Nobody talks about it until you are pregnant, and then it's too late. You see all these loving mothers who smile as they painlessly breastfeed their infant, and the message is clear -- breast is best! Even the formula companies know that. They forgot the first part of the slogan -- breast is pain.