I’m in a brilliant mood tonight for several reasons:

1. I just finished my essay and have sent it off to my tutor to check over - hopefully she won’t suggest too many changes, then it will mean polishing it off a little and being able to say ‘only three more assignments to do!!!!!!!!!!!!!’.

2. I managed to finish my presentation in time for our tutorial today and, despite the fact I thought it sounded very monotonous (I hadn’t made much effort to do any fancy visual aids or anything, other than pinching a couple of my tutor’s nipple shields and a knitted breast which I got her to demonstrate anyway as I’ve never used a nipple shield in my life!), my fellow students said it was very good - hurrah!  Besides, I learnt so much from doing it, I don’t really mind what they said LOL.  I’ve always shied away from learning about nipple shields, having an instinctive aversion to anything that takes breastfeeding away from the natural.  However, I’ve recently had to support several mothers trying to wean their babies off nipple shields, so the presentation came at a good time for me.  I now feel no less horrified at the suggestion that they are ever essential and that there aren’t better ways of helping women with the various problems it is cited they are useful for, but a whole lot more prepared to support a mother who is trying to cope with the aftermath of an unhelpful person getting her to start using them . 

3. My friend emailed me back to say she didn’t know what I was talking about and of course I hadn’t done anything to upset her - it was just a bizarre internet-induced misunderstanding caused by blog comments mysteriously disappearing.  So I’m very happy about that indeed!

4. An exercise we did on our tutorial today managed to open the floodgates a bit for me, and I ended up crying for the first time ever over Flopsy weaning.  I won’t go into it now, or I’ll probably start crying again, and it’s far too late at night to start a torrent of tears just now!  But what I wanted to say, really, was that I think it was a good thing as it had been slowly building up lately, my sad feelings about weaning, and I think that crying today will hopefully spur me on to write a good old cathartic blog post about it asap!