…since I last had a gin & tonic. It might be longer, I’m not sure, but it’s definitely been at least 15 months. I found out I was pregnant at the end of February 2012 and immediately stopped drinking my favourite little tipple.
I’ve been exclusively breastfeeding Baby N who is now 7 months; he started having solid food last month but his milks feeds are still pure mama milk *high fives self* (if you read my post about what happened after his birth then you’ll know this hasn’t been easy). So I carried on with my abstinence from alcohol, except for the odd sip of The Mister’s beer now and then and a total of about a glass and a half of champagne during this whole time.
On Sunday The Mister, Baby N and I went to The Croft in Hitchin for some lunch. I had a massive craving for a gin & tonic. Baby N had had his milk before we left home so I knew that I would have time to metabolise the alcohol and figured if I interspersed sips with water then I would be fine. I knew from reading on Kellymom that having 1-2 alcoholic drinks occasionally wouldn’t harm my baby. So I ordered one. Hendricks gin, Fever-Tree tonic, ice and cucumber. Oh, it was good.
Pre-baby I used to drink a lot, socially I mean. I have lost some friends since becoming a mama because it turns out that all we had in common was getting drunk and acting daft. One of my best friends still hasn’t met Baby N, we didn’t even get so much as a ‘congratulations’ card. It’s sad, but to be honest I didn’t expect anything different. I thought I would miss my social life but I have a different social life now. I have new friends – fellow mamas! – but with my old, REAL friends we just do different things together now. In fact, that’s a lie, we don’t do different things at all. We do the same things, we just don’t do the alcohol-related things.
I love my life as a mama, our breastfeeding journey is nowhere near ending and feeding my baby is more important to me than getting hammered. So, as lovely as that G&T was, it’s probably going to be a long time before I have another!
