The Better Decision

I laid in the near-dark, feeding E2 down for the night, her little body curled into mine, and me drifting in and out of semi-sleep as she fed.  After awhile, I became conscious that she’d stopped and I could feel her breath, slow and even, across my skin.  I gently pulled my top back into place, careful not to disturb her at all, and got ready to carry her to bed and go downstairs, to have a cup of tea and a little mindless telly.

And then… I changed my mind.  For my daughter, there is no better place in the world to be than asleep in her mother’s arms, safe against the warmth of my body, completely at peace here with me in the dark.   I pulled the covers a little tighter over the two of us, and allowed myself to drift back into sleep for a while longer.

This is the best part of the day — for both of us.

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Extended Breastfeeding: What’s on the Cutting Room Floor

I was contacted recently by a television producer from LA who was looking for people to take part in a documentary she is making about extended breastfeeding.  I was excited, flattered, and… a little wary.  Depending how it’s handled, the women on the programme could end up looking like amazing mothers or absolute freaks.  I answered the producer’s questions and then added a couple of my own… But really, I knew I wouldn’t get picked.

Television producers are out to make eye-catching television shows — no doubt this producer was looking for extended-breastfeeders who were militant, activist, perhaps shaking an angry fist.  They’re not looking for women like me — I’m still breastfeeding E2 as she nears her third birthday partly because of a medical need (to supplement her severely restricted diet) but mostly… well… just because we’ve never stopped.  It’s really nothing more exciting than that.  I still changing her nappies every day, which I’ve been doing since the day she was born.  I still dress her and bathe her and lift her in and out of her cot (crib), as I’ve done since the day she was born.  And, two or three times a day, we breastfeed, just as we’ve done since she was born.  It doesn’t feel weird and it doesn’t feel radical…  it feels perfectly normal.  It’s just what we do, same as we’ve always done.  And that’s probably pretty boring television.

But if that television producer focuses on only the freaky of extended breastfeeding, she’s going to miss out something much, much better.  It’s quiet and subtle — so soft I hardly noticed it at all — but it is really worth noticing.  The best thing about extended breastfeeding — the real surprise of it — is that it is wonderful, and wonderful because it is the kind of bonding time that mothers of newborns always hope for, but never quite get.  When my daughters were newborns, breastfeeding them was (cue script) amazing, of course, but it had a certain… a certain one-sidedness to it.  Sometimes it felt that the love — much like the milk — was flowing only one way.  I fed and I loved, I cuddled and I stroked, and my baby noticed nothing more than the breast.  There were days when I felt like a milk-machine: the baby demanded, I produced, the baby demanded, I produced, endlessly, endlessly  …and I wanted something more.  I wanted something more from my baby.

It came — eventually — in dribs and drabs: a little eye-contact, and then deep, meaningful gazes — a connection at last!  And then, one day, smiles, and then giggles during feedings, and cuddles that went both ways.  That feeling of being nothing more than a walking milky-bar began to slowly fade.  And it’s just at this point — just as it’s all about to get so much better — that so many mothers are told it’s time they weaned their babies.

Feeding a toddler is completely different from feeding a baby.  For a start, all that panicked frenzy for milk is gone and, in its place, we’re in a nice, easy routine that we both understand.  We feed at home, at the same times every day, and it’s rare for E2 to ask for her milk otherwise (indeed, on those rare occasions when she does, it’s a sure sign that she’s coming down with something).  And she’s really good at feeding now — where she used to take an hour to get the milk she needed, she can now do the same job in 15 minutes.  Breastfeeding a toddler is just so much easier than feeding a baby — like night and day.

But the real change is something far more significant than those purely practical considerations.  The real change is quiet joy.  A toddler, by her nature, rarely stops moving — if her mother gets a kiss, it’s fleeting; a hug is a violent bodyblow before the whirling dervish whirls off again.  Life with a toddler is constant movement, never-ending noise — it is exhausting.  Quiet does not exist… except when we’re breastfeeding.  It’s only then that all the chaos and the wild energy stops, when my daughter crawls up into my arms, and snuggles against me, rests her head on my arm, and we spend that little time just being together.

I sing to her while she feeds.  She smiles — skilled enough now to smile without dribbling.  We hold hands, walk our fingertips together, and trace shapes on each others’ palms.  I momentarily forget the lyrics and she pulls off, corrects me sternly, and then latches back on.  Sometimes she stops feeding and sings to me — a whole song from beginning to end — before returning to her milk.  I ask her questions while she feeds, and she tries to answer them, still feeding and mouth full and sounding ridiculously indecipherable.  It makes me smile…  The whole thing makes me smile.  Breastfeeding has become a time we truly share, a few short windows of quiet and togetherness that punctuate our chaotic days.  She loves to be held,  I love to feel her body-weight on mine, to stroke the soft fullness of her cheeks, to smell her hair.  When she falls asleep, I look at her face — so relaxed, eyes closed, rosebud mouth open, her breath slow and rhythmic, her smell so sweet…  and for a moment, she is a newborn again.

This is nothing freaky.  It’s a mother and a daughter doing what they’ve always done, and finding that’s it changed and become better as time has gone on.  You could never capture that change on film — and, even if you did, it probably wouldn’t interesting television, and so that producer won’t be emailing me back.  But I wish she could capture it, I wish people could understand what it is.

Because the extended breastfeeding story that I’ve got… it’s nothing short of beautiful.

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The Last as Much as the First

I was bored and hot on Sunday in church and letting my mind wander, when I spotted a family across the aisle and a few rows in front of us.  The two older daughters looked to be in their early teens and very close in age, and were sitting on either side of their mother.  Their sister was considerably younger, probably four or five, and she was sitting on her daddy’s lap, her head curled into his shoulder and looking as bored as I felt.

Ah, the magic third — a term that a dear friend of mine had used to describe that third child who so often comes as a complete surprise to the parents and some considerable years after their more carefully-planned older siblings.  Except that my friend had made a Freudian slip as she spoke, and it had come out as “the magic turd”, which has had me quietly snorting with laughter ever since.

But as I looked at that father holding his daughter, and noted her long legs nearly reaching his ankles and the way her body slumped down to fit against his, I  thought to myself that he won’t be doing that for much longer — holding her on his lap like that.  She was nearly past that age, as her sisters had been for a long time now.

And then a thought occurred to me…  I wondered when was the last time he’d held his other daughters on his lap, and did he remember the last time?  One day he would have held them and it would have felt as natural as it did with his third now, but then it just wouldn’t have happened again… quite naturally.  And, I wondered, did he ever notice?

Because parenthood is circular.  Even though it is the firsts that get all the attention — the first step, the first smile, the first word — the lasts are just as significant, even if they go unnoticed.

I cried the last time I breastfed E1 — sobbed, in fact.  It broke my heart to do it, but I was five months pregnant and it had got to be too much, the way she threw herself with abandon onto the bump when it was time to latch on, the energy she was draining from my exhausted body — and she’d recently begun to bite.  The midwife had told me that older nurslings often self-wean anyway as the milk begins to change for the baby that is coming, so I decided it didn’t matter much if I took matters into my own hands and helped her wean a few months early.  It’s a decision I regretted ever since — not only because I’ve since learned that it is possible to nurse two children in tandem, but also because, immediately I weaned her, my ever-healthy daughter came down with one of the nastiest colds I’ve ever known.  She then passed it onto me and, with my body focused on protecting the unborn child inside me, everything above the bump was left to fend for itself.  Unmedicated, one night the infection moved to my ears and, within a couple of hours, the pressure was so great that it tore holes in both of my eardrums — the loudest sound no one ever heard — and my hearing has never been the same since.

But I digress.  At two-and-a-half, E2 is still breastfeeding and going strong.  And, given her severely restricted diet, that is a very good thing.  My plan is to let her feed until she is ready to stop, and I don’t really care when that is.  Never having done child-led weaning, I’m not quite sure how it will go, but I assume her feedings will gradually begin to grow further and further apart until they just quietly cease.  And like the last nappy change, the last night feed, the last kissed boo-boo, and the last time she sits on my lap, I won’t even realise it’s happened.

And then one day, I will.  And then I will cry.

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Size Matters Most When You Are Small

I was lying on my side feeding E2, the two of us snuggled up together on the couch with my arm under her head and her feet resting on the top of my legs.  I took a deep breath and drew in the sleep-smell clinging to her hair, then ran my hand down her bare leg to her foot, still small enough to cup nicely in my hand.  She is getting bigger, but she is still small.  Sometimes I look at her and can hardly believe that someone so little can be real, a whole person in herself.

“What a little foot you have!” I said, and she, still nursing, shook her head in disagreement.

She pulled away abruptly.  “I’m not little!” she announced, and then promptly latched back on.

E1, who was sitting tucked into the space behind my bent legs, now stuck her foot up over the other side of my thigh and pressed its sole against E2′s.  Her foot dwarfed her sister’s.

“See?” I said.  “E1′s is big, your’s is little!”  I lifted my leg up in the air and held my own foot aloft.  “Actually, my foot is big, E1′s is medium, and your feet are little.”

This was too much — she pulled off again and paused to contemplate the three different feet on display.  None of this is what a two-year-old wants to hear.  Her world now is one of new conquest after new conquest: she can run and jump, she feeds herself and uses a big-girl cup, she can ride a tricycle, she is starting to use a toilet.  She is a big girl now, and she knows it.  It is eminently important to her.

But her foot was still undeniably the smallest of the three and her face showed her displeasure as she worked to reconcile this in her mind.  After a full minute of frowning, she unfurrowed her brow — she had reached her conclusion. “I am big,” she stated, matter of factly.  ” I am little, but I am big.”

And having thus resolved the problem to her satisfaction, she turned back to her milk and began nursing again with gusto.

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Over the Rainbow

I was chatting with a friend today — another mother I have met whose children are the same ages as my girls — and I was describing the way E1 breastfeeds her doll.  Now, I know that might sound strange if you’re not used to the idea, but it makes sense — little girls mother their dolls the way they see their own mothers mother them.  And I breastfeed E2, so she breastfeeds her doll.

But what makes me laugh is the absolute accuracy she brings to it.  She pulls her top up, she carefully positions her doll, holds her head gently, and then…  and then…

Living in rural England, we were surrounded by farms — never more than a mile away from a flock of sheep or a herd of cows — and after a while, their ways become part of the fabric of a person’s world, much the same as the sound of birdsong or the cycles of the seasons.  One thing that had always struck me was the very bizarre expression that every ewe takes on as soon as her lambs begin their (surprisingly violent) suckling — it always registered a strange mix of resignation, pain, boredom, and duty.  It looked so odd  to me and I never really understood it.

Until, that is, I had my own babies and began to breastfeed them.  One day, soon after E1 was born, I was nursing her — trapped in my spot on the couch, slightly pained from her still-rough sucking, and bored in that quiet room with only the tick-tock from the clock in the kitchen to entertain me — when I realised I was pulling exactly the same face as all those ewes.  That particular look has nothing to do with being a sheep, per se, and everything to do with being a mother.  And it is that same bored, pained, resigned expression that E1 pulls off with absolute perfection every time she feeds her own doll so tenderly.  She is my image, mirrored in miniature.  And it is — no, honestly — hilarious to see.

So, I was telling all this to my new friend and I said, “…and  then…  and then she gets this look on her face…  Well, you know that look that sheep always get when they are feeding their lambs?…”  And from the momentary flash of bewilderment on her face, I suddenly twigged that she didn’t.

The thing is, I have told this story probably half a dozen times before, and I have never once had to explain that look.  Everyone I knew just… knew.  Until this afternoon, I’d completely forgotten that there were people — city folk! — who wouldn’t.

Toto, we’re not in Dorset anymore…!

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Keep This to Yourself

Shhhhh… Don’t tell anyone — and you didn’t hear this from me, but… On Tuesday night, E2 woke up and started to cry as normal twice, but never really got into a full cry, and then settled herself back down before I got up to go in to her. To my utter astonishment, we went the whole night without my going in to feed her even once — for the first time ever in the more than 18 months since she was born. I wanted to be ecstatic, but wouldn’t allow myself to get too hopeful about it.

And then last night… last night she never woke once. Not once. She slept the whole night through!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I got more sleep than I have had in the whole duration of her life — over six hours in a row. I was like a woman reborn today, and I remembered, after all this time, how normal life was supposed to feel.

This may not last — I know that — and I’m afraid to talk about it much in case I break the spell. But I am hoping a little despite myself, and reveling a lot.

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It’s Not Over til It’s Over

I gave birth to E2 nearly 18 months ago and, to all appearances, that birthing process is long over and finished. She is a lively little girl now, toddling about under her own steam and babbling in her own language to anyone who will listen. That I am no longer pregnant is obvious, that I am no longer post-partum is simple arithmetic, and I’ve even lost most of the weight (of this last pregnancy, at any rate). To most people’s perceptions, the whole process is an event in the past.

But, in reality, it’s still ongoing, and my body reminded me of that today: it is finally attempting to return to normal cycles. It’s been so long, I’d almost forgotten what it was to experience the ordinary rhythm of being a woman. When I look back and tally it up, it’s quite shocking to realise that, between three pregnancies and the subsequent breastfeeding, I’ve experienced only four or five cycles in well over four years. But it is clear my body is presently creating a surge of hormones, and I am feeling the effects.

It is an enormous strain on a body (and a mind) to breastfeed a baby and work through these hormone spikes — and then get only broken sleep at night — all at the same time, and the result is that I am experiencing that same indescribable exhaustion that overwhelmed me at the beginning of each of my pregnancies. Back then, I fell asleep anywhere — on the floor, standing up, once (terrifyingly) whilst driving, and once very nearly, on a bench in the gym whilst resting between sets lifting weights.

Back then, I understood why this was happening and I could revel in the joy of it, even as I bemoaned the inconvenient weirdness of it. But this past week, I’ve had no idea why I was overcome with exhaustion. All I knew was that I seemed to be getting absolutely nothing done day after day — in this week when I’ve had so much insurance-organising to do — and time seemed to disappear in a haze. All week I’ve been always aching aching aching to go to my bed and, when I did manage to sleep, it came as heavy as if I were drugged and I found it almost impossible to rouse myself to waking again.

And so I am educated again in what an enormous and all-encompassing endeavour this making babies is for my body — it is not merely one of the things it does, it is the thing my body is designed to do — and that it puts every single resource it has into doing that job, at the expense of every superfluous thing that I might want to accomplish. I was reminded today that no process that produces a whole new person — a whole new life from scratch — can ever be over so quickly, so neatly. It would be easy to look at the mother of a child as old as E2 and assume that everything is long finished, that everything is back to normal — that she is back to normal — but there is so much more going on under the surface than we ever really appreciate. This process which began over two years ago is still working its way to its slow conclusion, and I am still feeling daily the strain — the incredible drain — as it does.

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Poisoned Kiss

There are many reasons why extended breastfeeding is a pain — the continued broken nights, the physical strain on the mother, the teeth! — but so many ways that it is a joy. Probably the biggest way is how it gives a mother and child a chance to recapture of that same intense intimacy — that private time — that they shared in those early days just after the birth. Except now it is even more joyful, because the baby is aware of her mother and so the love is reciprocated, the interaction goes both ways.

My baby has begun playing games with me as she feeds. I kiss her head and talk to her and she, mid-suckle and mouth full, grunts her replies back to me. If I put my head back and start daydreaming, I find a tiny hand reaching up to pull on my ear or poke my eye — we have been working on the names of face-parts, and she wants me to say the word for the part of my face she is pointing to. I oblige, “Ear… Eye… Nose…” and she is delighted, smiling as she feeds and dribbling milk out of the corner of her mouth. Often she stops feeding and looks up with a beaming smile and repeats the words back to me, so mangled as to be unrecognisable to anyone else and yet so clear as to quite startle me. “Hair”, for some reason, always sends her into fits of giggles.

Toward the end of every daytime feed, she looks up at me and then shakes her head violently back and forth. It is an invitation: I press my nose against hers and shake my head rapidly back and forth too, our mirrored grins blurring to one another. She squeals with delight, completely enchanting her mother, and I always end up abandoning myself to that real, genuine laughter that I feel I ought to be sharing with my girls all the day and yet so rarely seem to get time for.

And for a couple of weeks now, she pulls off several times during every feed and looks up with lips puckered, wanting a kiss. There is no better moment during the intimacy of feeding than this — possibly there is no better moment in the whole of Life. To be half-asleep, to be day-dreaming, and then realise that she has come off the breast.. and to look down and see that she has stopped taking from me the nourishment that sustains her life in order to give me the love that sustains mine… There is nothing on earth that fills me with more joy.

While the girls were napping today, I began to feel ill — really quite nauseous — and suddenly cold all over. I said to M that perhaps I am coming down with something, but he told me I am malnourished and too stressed. Perhaps he is right. The pain has cowed me, so that my diet is now so restricted that I eat next to nothing all day — usually only some toast and peanutbutter, and a few pieces of fruit. And the stress… well, I hardly need tell you. He sent me to bed and I went, reluctantly at first, and then gladly, realising I really did need to rest. I stayed in bed the rest of the evening, while M got the girls up from their naps, fed them, and then eventually got them ready for bed.

He brought the baby to me for her feed, which we did on our sides without me having to get up. Once she had had enough to fill her, she began the games. A little hand poking at my face: “Mouth!” I said, “Mauuuuu,” she replied. “Eye!” as her finger threatened to push mine out of its socket. “Eyyyye!” she repeated perfectly — that one was easy. Then she tried shaking heads, but it doesn’t work well whilst lying on a bed. She sat up and smiled at me, and then, with an intense look on her face, pursed her lips, bent down and kissed me. I was enchanted, as I ever am. She did it again, leaned down and gave me her wonderful, intense baby-kiss. I looked up and laughed, and she laughed back, slapping her hands on my face in her delight. Then, again, that serious look came over her and she pursed her lips — three kisses! My heart glowed! This is what motherhood is about, this is what the endless nights, the never-ending work, the exhaustion, and the frustration are all for! This moment, this love. I pressed my lips together, ready to receive that kiss that I crave, that I have worked so hard for all this time.

She leaned forward, pressed her soft baby-lips to mine, and promptly threw up in my mouth.

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Co-sleeping: more like NO-sleeping

Desperate times call for desperate measures: last night, we tried co-sleeping. Now, I realise co-sleeping is not drastic to a lot of people, but I’ve just never felt comfortable with it — I worry enough about safety and suffocation and suchlike as it is, without bringing my baby into my bed while I lie unconscious next to her. But we’ve reached that point of needing sleep desperately and, encouraged by some other mums, I decided to give co-sleeping a go. Well, not true co-sleeping, but E2′s cot turns into a co-sleeper, so M set it all up against the single bed that’s in her room. Once reconciled to the idea truly had high hopes that this would be revolutionary, and I prepared for a night of blissful, semi-conscious bonding and renewal.

I have to say, it was not a resounding success. I fed her downstairs until just after 1am, as usual, and took her up and laid her asleep in her cot. I then came back down to turn the lights and telly off, and get washed and changed for bed. …except, is that safe? She’s not in an enclosed cot… she could wake up, crawl onto my bed, and then fall off the edge… I decided not to worry about it this time — she was solidly asleep and I wouldn’t be long away from her. Still, it made me uncomfortable and I wasn’t sure what the correct co-sleeping protocol was in such a situation.

At 1.30, I went in and got in bed. She was sleeping soundly in her cot, her body limp, her arms outstretched, her breath rhythmic and relaxed. Lying next to her in the dark, I became aware of how right this felt, to be next to her in the stillness of the night, to share the intimacy of sleep. Everything felt right and peaceful as I fell asleep.

Thirty minutes later, she woke and called for me. No bother, I thought. I am getting used to this pattern of being woken almost as soon as I fall asleep, but this time was so much better — I didn’t have to get up or out of bed at all. I turned on my side, pulled her to me, and began to feed her. She gulped the milk with gusto and snuggled into me. Bliss! I laid my head on the pillow and drifted in and out of semi-consciousness while she fed.

After 20 minutes, she finished, came off the breast, and relaxed into sleep. I woke, reached to adjust my nightclothes, and realised my arm was asleep — I’d laid it under my head at a bad angle. My hip was asleep as well, from holding my body at the right angle so she could feed. No matter — even with these small inconveniences, she’d filled herself in 2o minutes instead of the usual hour and a few pins-and-needles seemed a good trade off to me.

Except… she was now asleep in my bed, not the co-sleeper. This wasn’t what I’d meant to happen. Not quite sure what to do, I gently lifted her from my mattress to hers. She hardly stirred. Good. I leaned back into my bed. The mattress creaked and the duvet rustled and she woke with a start: eyes wide, head up, mouth open and she screamed. Shhhh… shhh… shhhh… She wasn’t having it. I patted and jiggled her. Shhhh… shhh… shhhh… Nope, not a hope. I would have to latch her on, so I unbuttoned my nightshirt again. But this time I would be a bit clever, and I kept her on her mattress, and moved myself closer to her instead.

With my hips on my mattress, my right elbow and shoulder on her mattress, I pulled the pillows so they stradled the two and tried to settle in to feed. She latched on hungrily but, as she did, the two mattresses began to sink unevenly under my weight and I found myself lying in a sort of ditch between the two beds. It was really very uncomfortable, but she was latched nicely and I hoped she’d go back to sleep in short order, so I sat tight. My arm and hip started tingling again almost immediately.

Now that was an uncomfortable feed. Again, she took about 20 minutes but, even though I tried to shuffle about gently into a better position, I never got comfortable, so I never slept. I have always hated the agonising boredom of sitting in the quiet darkness, overtired but wide-awake, and I usually read to keep my mind occupied. But lying in that position — rigid, pinned down, stuck — I couldn’t reach my book and wouldn’t have been able to hold it up anyway. I watched the clock in the semi-darkness, minutes ticking away slowly as if Time wasn’t all that bothered to about punctuality tonight.

At last, she came off again and rolled onto her back. I prised myself from the gully between the mattresses and settled into my bed. The pillows rustled as I pulled them back onto my mattress and… she woke up, just like before: wide-eyed and crying in an instant. I’d had enough. I sat upright, put the pillow behind my back properly, grabbed the Boppy cushion and, hauling her up onto it, fed her the way I know and like: upright, comfortable, on one bed. When she was finished, it was 3.30am. I laid her down and finally — finally — she was out for good.

She woke me for another feed at 6am. I didn’t even attempt a lying-down feed this time, just sat up and plopped her straight on the Boppy. I realised that I didn’t even know how a lying-down feed would have worked now, as I’d need to feed her from the left breast this time and she was lying on my right. So, the ideal of being able to just pull her gently to me and feed with both of only semi-conscious wouldn’t work. I sat in the dark and tried to figure out if there was some way of lying on my right side and feeding her from my left breast, but I couldn’t mentally contort myself into a position that worked, and my visions of falling asleep and smothering her horrified me enough that I had to quickly change the subject.

When she finished an hour later, I realised I needed the loo, but now that the cot was pushed against the bed as a co-sleeper, even just getting out of bed was a challenge. I pulled the duvet back gently and s-l-o-w-l-y scooched toward the footboard. The mere sound of my bedclothes rustling over the sheets woke her, and raised her head complained and loudly. Oh! I sat at the foot of the bed and held my head in my hands. It was nearing 7.30am, I’d had less than 3 hours’ sleep, and I couldn’t even go and have a pee! In that moment, I realised something significant: half the problem is that this child is simply so incredibly sensitive to her environment. She needs completely silence and darkness in order to sleep, and with a toddler in the house as well, I can hardly ever provide that. So she never gets to nap. And, of course, that messes her night sleeping as well. I have no idea how to both care for E1 and provide E2 with the tranquility she needs to get into a workable routine. I also realised that by having the cot as a co-sleeper, I had lost the use of it for naptimes, as I can’t put her in it and walk away because she could work her way to the bed-edge. Even less chance of getting her to nap.

She settled again eventually, I got to the loo, went downstairs and raged at my husband that co-sleeping was an utter disaster, and went back up to bed. Quietly… quietly… quietly… I crept into bed. She flinched, pinched up her face, then relaxed. She woke me again at 9.30, and we got up for the day. I’d had just under 5 hours of sleep, broken over 3 segments.

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Applebee’s unfortunate response to a breastfeeding mother

Applebee’s, the popular American restaurant chain, recently let itself down when it made a very disappointing public statement, after one of its Kentucky employees asked a nursing mother to cover herself up despite knowing of the state’s law protecting a mother’s right to breastfeed. Instead of using the opportunity to formulate a good breastfeeding policy and educating its employees, the company said it would “keep a stack of blankets so breast-feeding moms could cover up” at its restaurants. A peaceful public nurse-out has been organised for today in response.

I urge you to read this post by The Lactivist. If it makes your blood boil (or even simmer a bit), why not write to Applebee’s to let them know your feelings? Perhaps suggest to Dave Goebel (President & CEO) that Applebee’s is unlikely to be your restaurant of choice until they clarify to their employees and the public exactly how their breastfeeding policy is going to comply with the law. After all, who can relax over lunch if they know they might be publicly embarrassed by a member of staff when their baby needs to be fed?

Here’s Applebee’s addresss:

Applebee’s International, Inc.
4551 W. 107th Street
Overland Park, KS 66207

If you’re glad that Senator Tom Buford (R) has strongly supported the nurse-out, why not let him know? Click here to send him a message.

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