Trouserweasel and the Hooter Hider

Way back when I was first dating the Fool, something like seven years ago, and he realized that he had the good fortune to be a fiddler who had hooked up with a guitar player, he began teaching me about Irish music, in an effort to grow his own accompanist.
(Granted, this wasn't a very big rabbit hole for me to fall down.)
Anyway. We would sit around and he would play tunes on his fiddle and I would attempt to figure out the correct chords by ear, and this is what we did rather than go to the movies together. Seriously. Inundated as I was by all this music, whenever I tried to think up the name of a tune we had played the day before, or the week before, I'd fail horribly and end up calling it "Weasel in My Trousers," sort of my own amalgamation of all the Irish tune names I'd ever heard him rattle off, inspired in part by a really funny article in Outside magazine on ferret-legging.
Eventually, the Fool wrote a tune. It sounds a little bit Quebecois, and he decided to call it "Weasel in My Trousers." Except we realized that title might be a bit ... vulgar, and in an effort to make the tune name a little less so, we thought we'd translate it into French. Because if it's in French, it's elegant, right?
Wrong. In French, "Weasel in My Trousers" is an ungainly mouthful. It's "la balette dans mon pantalons." So we gave up. Now we just call it "Trouserweasel," which, if anything, is more vulgar than what we started with.
I was thinking about this whole tune name evolution the other day, while the three of us were visiting with my friend Carrie and her two little kids at a local park.
Carrie watched me fumble around with a receiving blanket, trying to nurse with some degree of modesty, which we are spectacularly unsuccessful at (didn't help that her 4-year-old came over and carefully folded back the blanket so he - and everyone in the park - could see what we were doing under there.)
She said, "You know, there's this mom on my street who has this thing called a Hooter Hider - it's like an apron, with some horsehair braid in the top so you can see down the front, and you use it as a coverup when you nurse, but you don't have to hold it in place. She said it's really useful."
Yesterday, I fired up Google and looked for this item, intending to spend some of the money that kind relatives have sent us for baby expenses. I found the company's web site, and discovered that they make the product under two labels. One, the Hooter Hider, is exactly the same as the other - called Bebe au Lait.
That's right. It's in French. Because that makes it sound less vulgar.
I told Carrie about my discovery, and she astutely observed that the Bebe au Lait is something your mother in law can give you, but the Hooter Hider is definitely a girlfriend present. As Bebe au Lait sounds too much like "cafe au lait" for my taste, I ordered a Hooter Hider.
With luck, it will arrive tomorrow, and Jamie and I can try it out at Stitches Midwest, which is this weekend, and which the three of us plan to go to. If you see a woman swathed in a polka dot apron, that's me.
Now, Jamie is sleeping, and the Fool and I have plans to clean off the coffee table, which is covered in half-finished knitting projects. I've been knitting sock 2 of a pair I call the Gestational Diabetes Socks, because I cast them on during the three-hour glucose test sometime at the start of my third trimester. I think it's time I finish these things.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hooter Hider! What I wouldn't have given for one of those. With my first, he was all over the place, and it was all I could do to keep anything hidden. With my second, I decided to splurge. Ever hear of Motherwear.com? Nursing shirts. I had never heard of such a thing, but they were great! The boob slits are different for different styles of shirts, so if your baby is a "on the side" nurser, there's a shirt that'll work better for that type. If the babe is more of an in front kind of guy, there's another kind of boob slit shirt. Of course, in your spare time, you can always knit one. I know there are patterns out there somewhere. Have fun at Stitches. My dad, all the way in Montgomery, told me that I should have been visiting now, as he heard about "some yarn thing in Schaumburg." I said, "Yeah dad, it's a yarn show." Then I said, "If you're going, you can get me some...Dad? Are you there?" He wasn't. Fondle some alpaca for me.
ColorJoy LynnH said…
Looks like Rae and I plan to come to Stitches on Saturday. Hope to see you!!!

(is there Indian food near Stitches so I don't have to drag Rae to Devon Ave??? She doesn't eat Indian... sigh.)

LynnH in Lansing
Anonymous said…
My friend has a hooter hider and we thought the name sounds like something a frat boy would make up. It's very descriptive.

I love the baby stories, keep them up!

I'll be there on Saturday. I'm not taking any classes so I'll probably be the one asleep in the lobby (my mom is taking an 8:30am one and we're carpooling).
Anonymous said…
trouserweasel - heh heh heh (yes, I have a juvenile sense of humor).

have fun at stitches; I am attending stitches east in november and taking 3 classes.

smooches to jamie! :-)
LaurieM said…
Funny. Ferret legging sounds quite stupid though.

I nursed both my babies for over a year and never tried to cover up, though I did wear strategic shirts. At the most I was exposing a little breast skin above the baby's mouth, certainly less than you regularly see on TV.

I'll admit that I wanted to promote nursing, so I may have been agressive about it. ;-) We nursed at the library, in the mall, on the bus, at the fair and in the park. Where ever, and when ever needed.

Everybody is different and so I'm glad you've found a cover-up that will work for you.
Anonymous said…
The girl did not stand for any covering up, but I found that if I lifted a pullover shirt from the bottom and opened nursing bra from the top that relatively little of the pertinent bits would show once her big ole head was in the way (it helps to have very small bits to start with). The only ones who were brazen enough to get close enough to get a good look (small children, teenage boys and lactation consultant types) had a vested interest in knowing what was going on anyway. Good luck. I'm off to look up the ferretlegging and hooterhiding (now that sounds too graphic for me).
JustApril said…
HA! Funny name. I got something similar at Baby's R US back in the day when I was nursing three babies in a row. (I'm still tired) They are total modesty savers, though, I think I still have mine laying around somewhere - it's probably a super hero cape by now or somethin'

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