Breasts

'I have lots of milk'

These are words you should never hear from your sister.

'I'm lucky, I have lots of milk'

It was my mistake bringing up the subject. I had strolled into no man's land last week: a baby shop down the road, just near a guy with a cart with onion and garlic strings spilling over every side. Baby shops and onion strings. Hampstead is that kind of place.

They had cute stuff, toy stuff, early learners and clothing and then a whole bunch of stuff that I had no idea about. Exhibit A: Boob Tube, a Mama Mio product.



This product promises:

'Within a week you'll notice that the skin on your neck, chest and boobs looks firmer, fitter, glowing, more dewy and youthful. As it reduces crepe and creasing above and around boobs, reduces wrinkles on neck and chest and plumps up skin so it looks young & bouncy. This high quality product is super nourishing in Omegas 3,6 and 9 and packed with very high levels of nature's amazing anti-oxidant, CoQ10 (co- Q- ten).'

What is crepe? How does skin look dewy?? What the hell is CoQ10? Dewy..?

I considered all of this, then I thought about picking it up for my sister as a joke present but in the end the price was a little prohibitive.

Exhibit B was a little further into the shop. I can't deny that as I went further in I felt a shiver of nervous excitement, an illicit frisson something like when pocketing penny sweets in a corner shop.Small time stuff, but enough to make you think twice. And there it was, top shelf, surrounded by all of the other practical mum/baby goods- the manual breast pump. The horror, the horror.

I felt a little strange staring at this product, but I was totally enraptured. In spite of this, I failed to note the brand name. Here's what it looked like:



Application, usage etc remain a mystery. Exhibit B I also considered picking up as a joke present, but I didn't have the chutzpah to walk to the counter and pay for a manual breast pump. Instead I picked up something else and later brought up the breast pump with my sister on the phone.

'How about a manual breast pump?', I asked, jokily.

'Actually, I already have an electric breast pump', she said.

There ensued a 3 minute monologue, the details and gist of which I'm sure you can imagine. Suffice to say the phrase, 'express milk' (my sister used this as a verb) entered my vocabulary. God-willing it will never again surface.