A Time of Magic

Breast-feeding seems to come in cycles like many things.

After the major promotion of breast-milk a decade or so back with campaigns to make it more socially acceptable in public areas, the interest in it seems to have died down considerably in recent years. Ten years back and you’d have seen women making a point of feeding their baby in public but I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen it done in a public place.

Whether that reduction in the visibility equates to a reduction in the amount of breast feeding being done is quite another questions obviously. The benefits of it certainly haven’t changed and it makes a great start in life for your baby as it always has done. Is it just that it’s become less acceptable to do it in public these days?

The 4oth birthday seems to have more of a significance than any of the other “oh” birthdays largely for historical reasons: it represented the half-way mark for one’s life.

However, when you’re looking for 40th bday gifts for her, none of that matters. It’s a difficult one to call as women rarely want their age bandied about and still less so when it’s the 40th with it’s feeling of “over the hill”.

Best to steer clear of anything highlighting the actual age I think!

The problem with sleeping problems is that it’s often very much a family problem with one non-sleeper keeping at least one other person awake because of it.

Which, of course, means that there’s even more of an interest in sleep aids than there would be normally. But do they work? Well, yes, but that’s not the problem. The issue is that when you can’t sleep there’s generally a reason behind it, most commonly some form of stress leading to your brain not closing down normally. It’s that problem that you need to look at as sleeping aids aren’t a long term solution.