And now for some rambling non bio crazy…

OK, so vee just shared and I (jay, obviously) have stuff to share too (and I will share with you, too, OOHM, if you email, because it has taken me all day today to just write this).  Maybe this is all a bit much sharing of the sad kind, but sometimes you just have to purge.  So here goes.

“Non-bio” makes me think of washing powder, but if pressed, I will use it to refer to myself as the non-birth mother because technically, it is what I am. Maybe I haven’t blogged this before [?] but I was actually brought up by my non-bio mother, because my birth mother died when I was very young.  This in itself is bringing up some weird issues now that I am a mother too, even though I have dealt with her death… vee and I knew this would happen, and it’s sort of manageable but stings sometimes, like a cut does when you put antiseptic on it.  In the same way, it’ll fade.

Trust me.  I am a therapy veteran. I know my mental health better than I should, perhaps.

But that isn’t what I wanted to blog about.  I would use the term “other mother” but it makes me feel kind of secondary, and technically, we are both Bonus Ball’s other mother anyway.  As I said to him the other day, “Hey little lad, I’m your mum. And your other mum.  And she’s your mum too.  And your other mum.”  The poor kid is going to be giddy by the time he can talk, albeit grammatically correct.

Whatever you call it, being the non-bio mum kind of sucks sometimes.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love my boy more than I can ever explain, and the same goes for my wife. I do everything I can do for BB.  I change most of his nappies. I dress him.  I SHH him to sleep.  I make him laugh.  I make it better when he cries. I take zillions of photographs of him. I absolutely love being a mother.

But I cannot feed my child and sometimes that kills me.

Vee has been pumping and freezing milk for a while, mainly because she wants me to have the opportunity to feed him too – at the moment, we’re both SAHMs who work from home; another post for another day – but also because it will allow her to actually leave the house for X amount of time if and when she needs to.  However, I’ve given him two bottles so far and didn’t really like it.  It definitely wasnt that “special time” that breastfeeding is meant to be.  I didn’t really like it because vee felt weird and looked upset, and because BB much prefers the boob – and fuck yeah, I would too.  A boob is way nicer than some specially moulded plastic and rubber-type shit any day.

And yes, I have tried comfort nursing, but I am talking nutrition, people.  I could breastfeed, but only started to entertain the idea when it was too late, and now, I’m too busy with nappies and SHHing and whatever else to induce lactation. So, I’ll just have to live with that.  Mostly, it’s OK but sometimes it’s not.

That’s life, I guess?

While I’m on the rant, I might as well add that I am sick to death of people commenting to me that BB looks like vee, when he looks nothing like her (OK maybe they have the same colour eyes, and similar lips, but that’s where it ends).  She agrees with me on that point, and if they DID look more alike, I wouldn’t be jealous or anything; that’s not what this is about at all; besides, vee is very gorgeous indeed, so that’d be great.  It’s just that – like vee said – if they were the spitting image of each other, would be understandable if people uttered stuff without thinking, but they really aren’t.

Somehow, it feels kind of rude, a bit like unneccessarily reinforcing the fact that we aren’t genetically related.  And, like many other weird parenting issues, it does make me wonder if I’ve ever offended someone similarly, because I’m one of those people who loves staring at kids and working out which bits of their faces came from which parent.  But if both of their parents are women, maybe you shouldn’t say anything? Especially not if one of those women is prone to extreme grumpiness?

So, like my Dad often used to say to me as a kid, if you’ve got nothing to say, don’t say it.

This has turned out way longer than it was meant to.  I do apologise. Please ignore me and go back to whatever you were doing before.  For the most part, life is good, and for that, I cannot be more thankful.

Beer. I need beer.

xx jay