My Television Interview

On Monday, I was interviewed for a local television story. I had been called as a La Leche League leader the prior Friday. The reporter had left messages for several leaers and I was the one who called her back soonest: lucky me? Who knows. Anyway, I answered her questions over the phone, thinking I was giving her background information from the LLL perspective. Then she asked, "So, great, can I interview you next week?"

"Oh? This wasn't the interview?"

So, we scheduled an interview time. And then, because I'm really slow on the uptake, I thought to ask right before hanging up: "Um, will you have, like, a camera with you?"

"Of course!"

So, I spent the next three days cleaning the downstairs of my home spotless (even sending Chris and the big kids out of the house for several hours) plus narrowing the points I wanted to present and memorizing statistics. Oh, and washing laundry, picking outfits, and wishing I could lose 15 pounds in three days.

And as soon as the crew arrived on Monday, they sought a place to film and suggested we go upstairs to the nursery. My upstairs was trashed and dirty because I had focused all my attention downstairs! The best laid plans of mice and men . . .

Those camera lights really are astonishingly hot.

Chris entitled the above modified photo, "Is She A Mother?"

And what is sad is that those sensible shoes I was wearing are my most hip and cool shoes!

One other humorous moment of the two hours I was being interviewed was upon arrival and setting up the intiaial shot, the reporter asked me, "Do you have any 'nursing bling'? Like a baby bottle?"

I laughed and explained, "I don't bottle feed. I don't have bottles. Besides, how does a bottle represent nursing?"

So she asked, bewildered, if I had any other 'nursing bling'. I told her that one of the nice things about exclusive nursing is that it requires zero equipment. I searched and said maybe I could dig out of the closet my Boppy pillow (she declined).

Other than that, I'll say that giving the interview left me disconcerted and discombobulated, as the reporter's angle was different than what she told me ahead of time. It was a salacious angle--salacious about nursing babies? oh yes!--so I felt disheartened that once again the media will probably present God's design for nourishing the species as something weird, immodest, fringe, or dangerous.

After the crew left, I was so exhausted from three days of go-go-go, but I foolishly launched into meal planning for the week and cleaning the upstairs (expecting house guests the next morning), and then took two un-napped preschoolers plus one baby to Costco for a major shopping trip at three o'clock in the afternoon. I ask you: what person in her right mind does that?

Me, apparently. And thus followed a limp rag of a four-year-old and a two-year-old throwing a major tantrum in the busy, dangerous parking lot. I seriously considered packing the crew right back into the van at that point and driving home. But, no, I wasn't that smart and I pushed forward to do our shopping trip.

That means I was that mother wearing a screaming five-month-old while pushing a heavy cart containing two siblings in it who would not stop screaming, hitting each other, and shrieking to me for justice. Try to have sympathy when you see those mothers! I was very grateful to a few shoppers who saw my plight and sympathetically lent me a hand instead of casting dirty looks at me.

I'll let you know if the story for which I was filmed ever makes it to air!