Civilization isn’t for me
Have you breastfed in a cotton field?
Many moms out there can hopefully empathize with me and my quest at breastfeeding in a rural New Mexican town. Because I live 103 miles from Target, I have to travel. People out here don’t bat an eye at traveling a few hundred miles a day to shop or eat. However, traveling these distances can become a little tricky when you’re breastfeeding a baby, driving a toddler around, and living a life with a husband who is in the military and deploys often.
Therefore, it was on this particular day that I had just dropped my husband off at the airport in Lubbock and was headed home. This feat doesn’t sound too bad, except if you add into the equation that I had a randy toddler who knew Daddy was going to be gone for a while, a little newborn who insists on breastfeeding marathons throughout the day, and a saddened mom who knew her full-time job was just beginning and I couldn’t even find comfort in Caffeinated beverages…
Thus, we began our trip home, 106 miles through cotton fields, dairy cow farms, and through towns that boast of populations of one-thousand people strong. We were fifty-two miles into our trip, when my potty trained two-year old started saying, “I tee-tee. I tee-tee.” Eeerk. Pull over the truck, get out, and then have him stand on my feet because God forbid he ever have his shoes on while in the car, and balance him while he tinkles on the tallest weed on the side of the road. Yes. That is right. There are no convenience stores out here where I live. This probably bothers a lot of people, but not me. It is the cleanest bathroom fora toddler – he doesn’t touch anything with tons of germs on it and I don’t have to help him while juggling my newborn. When he is done sharp shooting, I put him back in the car, put the DVD player back on his favorite Max & Ruby episode, and we’re off.
Sixty-two miles into the drive, and now the baby is screaming because he evidently has decided that he is starving. I see to the left and to the right of me nothing but corn fields, tall omniscient corn stalks that could only be harvesting all types of horror-like fictional murderers in their midst. This must have been where Stephen King filmed Children of the Corn. I can almost see Malachi peeping out from behind the scary tall stalks of corn. Sorry baby. Way too scary to pull over here. Lucky for my baby, not even five miles down the long stretch of this country road, there is a huge cotton field. Cotton fields are nice and inviting, unlike corn fields which freak me out.
I do what any country mom has to do now. I pull over. Get the baby out and begin feeding him and then I get my toddler out and let him run rampant beside the cotton field. I even pull a piece of cotton out of its shell and show him where cotton comes from. My toddler loves this and begins collecting cotton and putting it in his pockets. Oh to be a toddler! Why do I ever buy him toys? Right in front of this huge cotton field, my son is running around with cotton flying out of his pockets and is happy as can be while I breastfeed my newborn.
It’s moments like this that make me so glad that we do not live in the city. Because quite frankly, I don’t think the city can provide the clean country bathrooms that our rural small New Mexican town can, and I definitely couldn’t pull over and stop on a busy highway every time my toddler’s small bladder reached full capacity. And, I much prefer the openness and freedom of breastfeeding in someone’s cotton fields over a hot asphalt parking lot anyway.
So yes, I don’t think my little family is fit for civilization yet. We’ll take the country please.
Signing off,
The Country Momma
Scout's Experiences 