Have you ever notices ONE little baby noise in a room full of adults can seem
to resound like a echo, yet day in and day out many of us manage to conduct
business quite nicely in a whole room full of playing kids and at least one
gurgling babe in arms?  When I was a new LLL Leader I went to the LLL
International Conference in Aneheim.  What a revelation to me- you could even
have a fancy dinner banquet with children present in the room, and NO
highchairs, BTW.  I was amused to watch the waiters and waitresses progress
over the course of the conference- the first day they walked around with a
strange "what have we gotten ourselves into" look, and by the end, they were
happily weaving in and out of the room, smiling and laughing at the children
and babies.  IMHO it has a lot to do with attitude, (and some to do with
strategic seating.)  There is always going to be one screamer in every crowd,
though.  In Chicago, alone and less accustomed to the baby noise, I sometimes
caught myself annoyed by a noisy  child.  I found it helpful (for me) to
assume the mother was trying her best to gather herself, her belongings, and
her kids together to exit.  This almost always turned out to indeed be the
case,  if I was able to visually locate the particular mom.  I imagined that
she had indeed brought along her husband to "help out" but at this moment he,
stressed by having spend numerous hours already with his children on the
plane and so on, was sleeping up in the room while she carried on alone.
 Can't most of us identify with this prediciment and have some compassion?

On the other hand, I absolutely refuse to try to conduct an LLL meeting in a
room or house, for that matter, where there is one of those popping-ball push
toys.  My co-Leader and I, both getting long in the tooth as LLL Leaders go,
will search high and low to ferret out these obnoxiously noisy toys...
Sue Jacoby, IBCLC & LLLL