Last night’s session seemed to go well. They were well-informed and interested. Not only had they done their research, but there was at least one there who seemed able to grasp the big picture of the baby as a tiny dependent being with real needs that can be met by breastfeeding. I wonder if I should try to convey in a class more about what it means to be a mother. There was one woman last night who asked me question after question. I could barely finish a sentence without her interrupting with another question, so I abandoned my usual routine with the how-to stuff and just ad-hocked about. She stated at the beginning that she really wanted very much to breastfeed. This statement always ends in one of two ways. The more usual ending is but I won’t beat myself up about it if I can’t, and the ending I heard more than once last night, which was refreshing, was so I want to find out all about how to make it work.
However, Ms Question was coming at it from quite a different angle to Ms Big Picture.
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When I teach antenatal classes, I always send out an email afterwards with various supporting information and a link to an evaluation form on surveymonkey. This form replaced my old paper form that I would hand out at the end of the session, and I find now that although I don’t get as many responses, the ones I do get are generally more considered. People don’t tend to bother, unless they have something to say; and of course that means that quite frequently, they want to say something that isn’t comfortable for me to hear.
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Arguing the cases for and against continuing with the allotment may become an annual event, at least until the case against wins.
Earlier in the year, we had a plot I actually felt quite proud of. Approximately divided into quarters, there was the fruit/herb section, the potato section, the veg section, and the compost/fallow sections.
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Every now and then, Bernard’s linguistic abilities explode, and new avenues of communication are opened up to him. It’s always cute to hear him muttering to himself, practising new sounds or words that he has just learned. This morning we all woke up around 7:30, which for us is a good lie-in. We could hear the boy down on his mattress beside our bed mumbling stock cars. stOCK CArs. STock carZZ. So that’s what he wants to do this weekend, we thought.
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Pete celebrated his birthday this weekend. He did it in style, at The Priory Bay Hotel in the Isle of Wight. This hotel boasts its own private beach complete with a stream to be dammed and rerouted, rock pools, shells of different shapes and colours, and a great deal of sand. This whole shebang was the Summer Outing of the very nice company he works for, so there were plenty of willing hands to build the enormous sandcastle demanded by the boss (big enough for me to sit in the middle, with a moat)
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