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Need another excuse to go shopping at El Corte Inglés?!
The Summer edition of the El Corte Ingles freebie magazine arrived yesterday and while I don’t usually bother going through it, as I was holed up in the nursery yesterday avoiding the dust being created by the builders replacing the fireplace, I needed some reading materials in the nursery as “Peluche va a la playa” wasn’t going to keep me entertained for more than about 90 seconds. And I am glad I did because the Corte Ingles has just given me the perfect excuse to pop in there again with a new “Mothers Corner”.
The newly opened Mothers Corner is a brand new breast feeding area for mothers on the 1st floor next to the fashion clothes section in the Banus store. Complete with comfy seating, easy pram access, a food prep area and bottle warming facility, the new area looks like a perfect place to top up the little one to extend your shopping time without needing to rush home “because he’s due a feed”. Hooray!
I may have to do some research and review the new facilities and by extension I may also have to do some light shopping. Who’s in?!
Breast milk ice cream for sale in Covent Garden?! I mean seriously, I can imagine someone making ice cream using their breast milk but actually selling it from an ice cream parlour in Covent Garden? Surely that’s just wrong, plain wrong!
Yum or Yuk?
All I’ve seen over the last few days are references to the latest craze in central London: Breast milk ice cream now on sale at The Icecreamists. Served in a cocktail glass, the “Baby Gaga” creation is priced at £14 and has apparently been a huge hit and the company are looking for more women to donate breast milk. For a donation of around 10 ounces the lactating mothers are being paid £15 and around 30 ounces of milk will apparently stretch to around 50 servings.
I thought the “pitufo” flavour, which translates literally from the Spanish as “Smurf”, I first saw sold at an ice cream parlour in Murcia, south east Spain, was the weirdest flavour ice cream I had ever seen. With an almost neon blue colour the pitufo ice cream was not so dissimilar to the wacky blue flavoured slush puppies we used to get in the local park all those years ago.
Would You Give Breast Milk Ice Cream A Go?
The Icecreamists recipe blends the breast milk with Madagascan vanilla pods and lemon zest and is then freshly churned into ice cream. Served with a rusk by a costumed waitress, the Baby Gaga creation has liquid nitrogen pumped into the glass via a syringe.
Golden Shower anyone?
While there may be people queueing up to try the new flavour, personally the idea just brings a frown to my face. I’m far from prudish but the idea of ingesting someone else’s bodily fluids just seems gruesome, irrespective of the health benefits. That’s like telling me a Golden Shower has superior skin moisturising qualities, it certainly doesn’t make me want to go out and have another type of bodily fluid splashed all over me by a stranger either! In the past I have donated blood but you can be fairly certain your blood is going to be used for a more life-saving need than that of the breast milk so I won’t be racing to London to get £15 for my breast milk when it comes in.
The basic concept seems genius enough though and as I am having a baby in Spain, a little boy due in May, I can certainly imagine thinking I could give it a go myself this summer. I’m sure my OH (other half) would need little convincing to give it a go, especially given that these days I am asked every other day whether I am lactating yet but I find it a little off-putting that I wouldn’t know or have any connection or relationship to the recipient of my breast milk. Although whether knowing the person reduces the weird factor I don’t know.
£15 per 10 ounce donation. Anyone game?
It would be a completely different story if I happened to be in the middle of absolutely no where with someone else’s newborn in my arms and nothing to feed him. In such an incredibly rare and probably-not-likely-to-happen-any-time-soon event, I would happily and freely feed the newborn with my breast milk. In addition to the “stranger” element is the fact that it’s not like all of those trying the new flavour are purely interested in the natural health qualities, if you know what I mean, and I’d rather not think of some central London weirdo getting some perverse kicks out of my breast milk ice cream. Is it just me who would think that or do I just know too many breast-inclined men for whom the idea of breast milk ice cream really is quite a turn on?
As his son is going to be surviving on my breast milk for some months I know that my boyfriend has a healthy curiosity about my breast milk, and of course it also plays right in to the usual breast-man fantasies but I very much doubt I’d be able to convince anyone else to give it a whirl. And I won’t be offering either!
The lactating donatees are given a thorough health check and is apparently non-intrusive and a fairly simple procedure with a breast pump and some who have donated so far have said that they believe it to be a natural and healthy ice cream flavour but I’m not convinced I will ever be giving anyone else’s breast milk a go myself. And on that note, armed with a fresh purchase of Tommee Tippee electric breast pump I’m off to check if Jamie Oliver has a simple ice cream recipe I can keep handy for this summer.
Supermodel Gisele Bunchen recently stated that she believed it should be made law that all mothers should breastfeed their baby for the first 6 months. Gisele was reported as having said: “There should be a worldwide law, in my opinion, that mothers should breastfeed their babies for six months.”
Gisele believed that breastfeeding her baby helped her regain her figure, even though she apparently only breastfed her newborn for 3 weeks but she was modelling swimwear only 6 weeks after giving birth!
Having created a certain amount of furore over her comments, she was forced to backtrack and apologise and state that she was in no way judging mothers who bottle-fed their baby.
Having spoken to other mothers, the general opinion is that it’s not always possible to breastfeed your child for a variety of reasons and while many mothers are aware of the benefits of breastfeeding, there are many who see bottlefeeding as a more suitable option. If you have any opinions you want to share, feel free to let us know.
