Tracy, my friend in China, gave birth to a lovely chubby boy last October. Busy tending to her son, she hadn’t contacted me for ages until last week. It turned out that the baby was such a hearty eater that her breast milk was not sufficient for his appetite. As her baby is allergic to cow milk and she doesn’t trust the milk powder in China, she assigned me a special task: hunt for goat milk powder. It’s not an easy job for a single man. I chose to start at Albert Heijn. But I was immediately at a loss when I stood in front of various brand names of milk powder. And I was too shy to ask for help: I felt awkward to do so as a single man. While I was helplessly lingering, a warm-hearted mother came up. ‘There’s no goat milk powder in the supermarket,’ she said, ‘but you can find it in the organic shop.’ Luckily I met another genial young Dutch lady in the organic shop. She seemed more familiar with milk powder than the shop assistant, which caused the latter walk to away gladly and leave her customer alone to give me a crash-course of various milk powders. She told me almost everything: the difference between cow and goat milk, milk allergy, baby porridge and so forth. She rapidly helped me to build up the big picture of milk powder. I’m really grateful to her. Later when I passed all the gleaned info along to Tracy, she was impressed by the terms I fluently used. ‘Derek, I’m sure you’ll get a job in Holland, at worst you’ll become a milk-powder vendor,’ she jested. ‘No, too late. Many Chinese have occupied that market,’ I showed her an article and a photo of empty shelves I took in the AH. Interestingly, on the same day I saw a post by a Chinese in Wageningen on twitter: ‘Dutch baby milk powder wanted? Contact me.’ Hmm, is there a link between the post and the empty shelves? Anyway, it’s was a joyful trip full of motherly love.
Vid of the Week Even the Simpsons discussed about breastfeeding in one of its latest episodes.