"I'm breastfeeding her" I said simply Janis looked like she had seen a ghost, she looked at me in complete bemusement, then apparently decided that she was dealing with someone who might be mentally deranged and reached for her phone to no doubt phone security "Wait," I said," before you phone let me show you" "Show me what?" she demanded. "How I can breast feed" I replied. "But you're a man!"   A Mother's Love - Part 1 by Alys

I eased into the small gap in the traffic slowly moving around the massive roundabout near Archway in North London. The middle aged male driver in the battered white Ford transit glowered at me momentarily and then accepted the inevitable with good grace. I smiled back and acknowledged him letting me into the flow of slow moving traffic.

How I hated Monday mornings, the jolt of going back to work after the winding down of the weekend and having to compete for space on the overcrowded roads. It was a particular shock to my system after my five weeks off work.

The reason for my five weeks off sighed in her sleep and moved her little head a fraction in the back facing baby carrier in the car seat next to me. She looked so beautiful in her pink babygro, wrapped in a woolen shawl as a protection from the Spring morning slight chill.

The traffic crept down the main North East London artery road, so much for driving on a clearway with draconian double red lines, it still wasn't possible for the traffic to move faster. I looked at the car clock, it read eight-sixteen. There were only twenty minutes to get to work, park the car, drop off Bekka at the nursery and get to my desk. I began to regret that I had not studied black magic in an earlier life in order to wish into non existence all the fellow commuters who were in my way.

Suddenly, as if in answer to my non magical plea and without prior warning or obvious reason, the traffic started flowing freely. Within ten minutes I had turned off the main road, just past the ungainly clutter of the local campus of London Metropolitan University, into the private underground car park of Adventure Travel PLC.

"Hi, John," I said to the friendly elderly security guard as I walked though the automatic doors into the marble floored plaza carrying Bekka in her car seat.

"Hello Mr Jones, welcome back, and is this your little one?" he asked as I stopped by the lift.

"Yes, John. Her name's Bekka. How's Mrs Everrit?" I enquired.

"She's bearing up thanks, her arthritis is affected by the damp weather of the last week, though" he replied.

The arrival of the lift ended our brief conversation. I said goodbye to John and pressed the button for floor three.

The doors were almost closed when two young women smartly dressed in the customer service uniform squeezed in.

"Hello Jules," I said to the dark headed tall attractive woman, who worked in the same department as me, "floor one?"

"Yes thanks," she responded, "oh hello Steve, I was looking at your little one, is it a girl?"

"I guess the pink babygro is a give away," I replied with a laugh," her name's Bekka"

"That's a nice name," said Jule's companion, a smaller pretty woman, about the same age with long natural red hair.

"Yes it is. Steve you haven't met Kathleen, she started last week" commented Jules.

"Nice to meet you Kathleen," I said, "how are you finding the work?"

"It's exciting, especially the international aspect of it," she replied.

"Kathleen speaks even more languages than the rest of us, Steve, she can speak Japanese," said Jules a little enviously.

"Wow, that's amazing"

"How is Mary? Is she happier now?" asked Jules.

I hesitated, there was an embarrassing pause for a few seconds. I looked at the floor where Bekka was sleeping oblivious of the conversations.

"She's gone," I said quietly.

The arrival of the lift at the first floor relieved of the burden of providing further explanation. About half a minute later I was walking along the third floor corridor towards an area marked out with primary colours and murals of cartoon characters. I was lucky that the office block housed both the specialist holiday section that I worked in and the much larger package holiday division which meant that the company could provide a workplace nursery.

"Hello, I'm Steven Jones, I had an email from my line manager about bringing my daughter in today" I said to the thirty something attractive nursery nurse sitting behind the small reception desk. She was typing something on her computer. After a couple of seconds she looked up and smiled at me.

"Good morning Mr Jones, I'm Janis Smith and this must be Bekka" she replied.

"Yes"

"Put her nappies* in the locker with her name on and your labeled bottles in the fridge" she said routinely to me.

I hesitated.

"you have some made up some bottles?" she asked a little dismissively.

"No"

"You men are so useless sometimes, lucky we have some spare formula for these situations. do you know what label she is having, they don't like change"

"No, but......" I tried to explain.

"Well, I'm sorry," she interrupted a little angrily, "I can't be expected to look after a baby that I can't feed since you and your wife have been too disorganised to prepare some feed and I don't have enough time to introduce your child to formula milk, I do have 3 other babies to look after"

"She can't have formula, she's intolerant of cow's milk," I explained.

"Then your wife should have expressed some milk for your daughter." said Janis getting more irate.

"It's umm ok, I don't expect you to feed Bekka"

Janis looked like she was about to explode, she stood up and pointed her finger at me

"You are either some dumb idiot or worse still you are deliberately neglecting your child, now get out of my sight and take your baby home and look after her properly" she stated firmly emphasising herself with her wagging finger

I looked down at my lovely daughter, I gently moved a curl off her forehead as she slumbered peacefully in my arms,

"I'm breastfeeding her" I said simply

Janis looked like she had seen a ghost, she looked at me in complete bemusement, then apparently decided that she was dealing with someone who might be mentally deranged and reached for her phone to no doubt phone security

"Wait," I said," before you phone let me show you"

"Show me what?" she demanded.

"How I can breast feed" I replied.

"But you're a man!"

She hesitated and I took advantage of that pause to unbutton my loose shirt with my right hand as I held Bekka in my left. I opened the shirt, lifted my baby to show my nursing bra. Janis's eyes almost exploded, I opened the pocket of the bra and exposed my nipple and my left breast firm with milk, a little of which was running down onto the breast pad.

"Oh my god! You are too"

There was a pause as she recovered from her shock, then she resumed her professional posture.

I covered myself up again

"OK I don't have time for explanations now, the other children will be arriving soon, but I guess you can have the same arrangement as for the other children who are breast fed here. Here's the pager that will tell you when you need to come and feed your baby. Please get here as soon as you can when you get paged"

As usual on a Monday the work was hectic, problems that had arisen that the skeleton staff on the weekend would only monitor, unless there were emergencies, had to be dealt with quickly. Soon , along the with small team of eight fellow workers, I was working through my list of phone calls, emails and faxes and replying to the high priority ones. After some phone calls in French, German and English and sometimes a mixture, to agents, hoteliers and suppliers, I was replying to an urgent email from a tour operator in South Africa when I heard a loud beeping noise.

"What's that noise?" asked Jules, working at the desk next to mine.

"I don't know," I said, "it's very loud though."

"That's because it's coming from your jacket pocket, Steve" pointed out Kathleen, sitting opposite me with her hand over the mouthpiece of her phone.

"Oops sorry," I said as I took the pager out of my pocket. I read the message 'Time for a feed' in incomprehension for half a second. Then realisation crashed into my awareness. I stood up.

"Sorry I have to go and feed Bekka," I said over my shoulder walking quickly to the lift.

"OK, see you later, probably lunchtime, Steve, we'll be in O'Learys," said Jules to me before I opened the doors to the stairs, which seemed a quicker option to the lift as I thought of my little baby girl probably crying for her feed.

I ran up the stairs, two steps at a time, my rapid movement forcing me to hold my small but sore breasts to try and reduce their mad jiggling. I passed a couple of woman walking down from the package holiday call centre. They looked at me strangely.

Janis was holding Bekka, who was whimpering loudly, beginning to disturb the other three babies who were sleeping. I took my daughter into my arms and went into the small room indicated by Janis with some comfortable armchairs. Very soon my hungry baby was suckling and taking her nourishment from me. I felt happy and so connected emotionally with her. We were the whole world, my helpless child depending on me completely for everything and I was meeting her very basic needs with my body.

I became aware of Janis standing by the door to the room. She had a bottle in her hand and was looking at me and Bekka taking in the peaceful scene.

"Now I have seen everything, you both look so relaxed there. How long have you been doing this?" she asked.

"Since she was born" I replied

The sound of a baby crying interrupted our conversation.

"Sorry got to feed Alex, you must explain all this to me sometime"

A little later I put my changed and fed little angel back into her cot. I took some dry breast pads out of Bekka's bag and inserted them into my bra. I left Janis coping with feeding two little infants at the same time and having noticed the time I made my way across to the pub.

I entered and crossed the crowded lounge bar of the Irish themed pub. Some rebel music was playing on the juke box in the corner when I squeezed down next to Jules at the small table where they were waiting.

"We haven't ordered yet, how's Bekka?" asked Kathleen.

"She's great thanks," I replied," Thanks for keeping me a place, let me get the order".

By the time I had worked my way up to the bar, ordered the food and brought the drinks back to our table, through the packed throng, I was feeling very warm.

I took my work jacket off and hung it over the back of my chair.

I turned around and I noticed that Jules was staring at me.

"What is it?" I asked.

She lent forward toward me.

"I can't help noticing," she whispered into my ear, "but are you wearing a bra?"

*Nappies known as diapers in the US I believe