What Is This Thingamajig?

For those of you who don't already know what this is, it's not a megaphone!

This is probably one of those stories that might be more interesting at the time it happened than as a story, but it was certainly one of the most memorable stories I had as a new parent.

One day during my last trimester of pregnancy a coworke rstopped by my office and lent me her breast pump.  She never really said she was going to bringit.  She just placed it on my desk, and said I could have it.  I remember being thankful because we didn’t have one, and it was one less thing to worry about for this new mom.  But honestly, I had no idea how to use it.  Later that day she showed me the accessories, which parts were replaceable, which ones weren’t, and it seemed pretty self explanatory so I was off.

A couple of months later our baby was born and the day finally arrived when I needed to use the breast pump.  It had been a while since I had the talk with my coworker so I couldn’t really remember all of the things she told me.  At the time I was also busy with the newborn that I wasn’t sure if I had the patience to figure out how to use the breastpump, so I asked my husband to figure it out while I breastfed our newborn on the other side of the room.

There I was rocking back and forth in my new rocking chair nursing our newborn, and I could hear my husband turning the pages of the little manual that came with the pump. Then, all of a sudden, I heard him turn on the switch.  Suddenly I heard my husband laugh like I hadn’t heard him laugh in the years I’ve known him.  I looked up and there he was with the two suction cups stuck to his nipples and I see him laughing and yelling “OW!” in between giggles.  Finally he turned off theswitch and promptly said, “Ummmm… I think I figured out how it works!”

It was one of the funniest moments of our new-parentexperiences.  After all the stress ofjust coming home from the hospital and being overwhelmed with the new baby inour lives, it was great to laugh, and I mean really crack up.

Thanks to my coworker who lent us her breast pump, we were armed with the best tools to nurse our newborn, and little did we know it would bring us a funny memory as well.