The Jane Austen Breastfeeding Club

I am not one for leisurely reading.  In fact, Cody and I always talk about what we would do with one free hour.  He would always sit and read.  I would either go for a run or take a nap.  While pregnant and postpartum sleep is always more important than reading, and even if I try to read, sleep wins out nearly every time.  This all changed a few weeks after I had James and my sister came to visit and brought a copy of Masterpiece Theater's Jane Eyre on DVD.  I watched it with her as I was nursing James and Sean was asleep.  I loved it.  We never read Jane Eyre in high school, and my first exposure to it was magical.  As soon as I could I bought the book and began reading it while breastfeeding James.

Jane Eyre became my first Nursing Novel as we now call them around here.  Once I finished with Jane and Rochester I watched the DVD one more time (this time with Cody, now having devoted a full month to watching or reading Jane Eyre as it is a long-ish movie, especially to watch twice) and picked up The Jane Austen Book Club only for lack of having another British Lit novel on hand.  This book however inspired me to read all of Jane Austen's six novels, and thanks to our friends at Blue Bicycle Books, I'm now working on that.  I read Sense and Sensibility when I was pregnant, and just finished Mansfield Park.  I just started Northanger Abbey and will move onto Persuasion after that.  That leaves Emma, and of course, Pride and Prejudice, although having read P&P and seen the movies (yes, mulitple) so many times, I'll likely leave that for the end. 

I love reading while breastfeeding James now!  In fact, I was a little dissapointed when he went to only 4 meals a day because that was less time for me to read.  I associate Jane Eyre and Fanny Price with quality time spent cuddling my little babe.  Cody would often catch me reading by the hallway light in James's dark room for his dreamfeed at night (the hallway light fell directly onto the rocking chair--I could read without waking up the baby with the light-- it was perfect!).  Even now, I have at least one or two nursing sessions a day while Sean is asleep and James and I delight in Catherine Morland's adventures in Bath.  I might have to become an extended-breastfeeder to continue this newfound pleasure of mine!