Shopping with Lily is interesting. Until today she's been pretty co-operative at sleeping while I shop and today I learned what a blessing that has been.
There are some great things about living here - even without a baby in tow someone takes your shopping out of your trolley for you, packs it all up and carries it to your car all for a small tip. This was such a blessing while pregnant I can tell you. Last week I got to the check-out with Lily asleep in her sling and a man rushes to bring me a seat so I got to sit down while he packed my shopping, slightly embarrassing, but I think an idea that could catch on among tired Mums everywhere!
Today, Lily decided that she would exercise her lungs in the supermarket. I should mention at this point that the locals get quite stressed about her crying, which makes having an unsettled or colicy baby quite stressful even at home or in the school grounds. And while being very caring, the shop assistants made the whole thing pretty stressful. To be honest I have learned to ignore a certain amount of crying- assuming Lily is fed and clean, sometimes life just has to continue. Which is difficult when by the first aisle someone brings me a chair, which I politely declined, by the second aisle I had about ten members of staff either waving keys at her, asking me something about her or just staring at me like I had two heads and by the third aisle one of them decided they would come with me around the rest of the shop pushing my trolley. By which point I really couldn't concentrate so besides stopping for toilet rolls I figured we could manage without anything else and headed for the checkouts!
Next stop - our fruit and veg man, where the crying started again and every passing person had an opinion about Lily that they wished to share, 99% thought that she should be fed, which I guess people might suggest back home too if a baby cries. Although rather than asking if she is hungry they are fairly insistent here that she should be breast fed on the spot even if you say she has just been fed and use a lot of gestures to tell me so which make me smile. One woman asked if she could take her home, so we had a bit of a laugh about that as I questioned whether she really wanted that noise to go home with her.
So here is to hoping she sleeps next time as if she makes this a habit I'll run out of food in a few weeks...
There are some great things about living here - even without a baby in tow someone takes your shopping out of your trolley for you, packs it all up and carries it to your car all for a small tip. This was such a blessing while pregnant I can tell you. Last week I got to the check-out with Lily asleep in her sling and a man rushes to bring me a seat so I got to sit down while he packed my shopping, slightly embarrassing, but I think an idea that could catch on among tired Mums everywhere!
Today, Lily decided that she would exercise her lungs in the supermarket. I should mention at this point that the locals get quite stressed about her crying, which makes having an unsettled or colicy baby quite stressful even at home or in the school grounds. And while being very caring, the shop assistants made the whole thing pretty stressful. To be honest I have learned to ignore a certain amount of crying- assuming Lily is fed and clean, sometimes life just has to continue. Which is difficult when by the first aisle someone brings me a chair, which I politely declined, by the second aisle I had about ten members of staff either waving keys at her, asking me something about her or just staring at me like I had two heads and by the third aisle one of them decided they would come with me around the rest of the shop pushing my trolley. By which point I really couldn't concentrate so besides stopping for toilet rolls I figured we could manage without anything else and headed for the checkouts!
Next stop - our fruit and veg man, where the crying started again and every passing person had an opinion about Lily that they wished to share, 99% thought that she should be fed, which I guess people might suggest back home too if a baby cries. Although rather than asking if she is hungry they are fairly insistent here that she should be breast fed on the spot even if you say she has just been fed and use a lot of gestures to tell me so which make me smile. One woman asked if she could take her home, so we had a bit of a laugh about that as I questioned whether she really wanted that noise to go home with her.
So here is to hoping she sleeps next time as if she makes this a habit I'll run out of food in a few weeks...
No comments:
Post a Comment