Many nursing mothers have learned to multi-task while breastfeeding. If you have other children, you often need to be doing other things while you feeding your nursling. Sometimes nursing is a chance to have some time to do something you like such as reading a good book (or just sitting down). Some little nurslings are also multi-taskers.
My older daughter was a multi-tasker from early on. She liked to have a book to look at, a toy to play with, or my hair to play with. As she got older, she would sign to have conversations with me and later added singing (well, humming) to her repertoire.
While I nurse my children whenever and wherever, that doesn’t apply around my husband’s family. As a low supply mom who has to use Lact-Aids to supplement while we nurse, I haven’t wanted the additional grief they would give me about it (or the ensuing gossip and grief from other extended relatives on that side). I’ve always left the room to nurse when around them.
On Halloween when my daughter was two years old, we had taken the kids trick-or-treating in my in-laws’ neighborhood and stopped at their house to visit. It was later in the evening and my daughter was stressed out from the visit. She wanted to comfort nurse (i.e. nurse just for comfort without the need for the Lact-Aid), and I decided to go ahead and nurse her in the living room. My daughter was a blueberry fairy that year and had a big tutu that stuck up and blocked any view of use while she laid in my lap.
After a couple of minutes, she began humming. I’m certain my husband was chuckling to himself. After a few minutes he couldn’t help it and innocently asked, “Is she singing?” I, just as innocently, replied back, “And nursing.” The wide-eyed shock on his parents face, and the resulting grin on my husband’s face, told me he had gotten just the reaction he had been going for. He had a good laugh about it later.
living peacefully with children 
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