Maggie Gyllenhall shows the world her breasts while James Spader pretends to fuck her = critical acclaim. Maggie Gyllenhall kinda shows off the side of one breast in the act of feeding her child = taking things a little too far.
(Not trying to snark at you, LavenderBlue, just making an observation about our culture.)
In favor of it, so long as the baby is, in fact, a baby, and not running off the playground to ask for a snack.
I’m late getting back, but I’d like to make it clear that I did not nurse a 4-year-old in public. Ever. Occasional, discrete public nursing ended when the baby was old enough to wait and/or was otherwise too wiggly to nurse discretely. I would never consider nursing an older child in public.
Sorry that I left that impression.
I bottlefed my son (adopted) and breastfed my daughter (bio). I got a lot more nasty looks and comments from bottlefeeding than breastfeeding. People who are huge proponents of breastfeeding are downright rude and nasty. Including, as I’ve mentioned before - a LLL meeting of women when I was looking into inducing lactation who told me I shouldn’t be a mother at all. Granted, as I said upthread, I didn’t breastfeed much in public - it didn’t work well for us. But early on there were a few dozen unsuccessful attempts - so I did flash a considerable amount of boob when she was six weeks old or so.
And btw, UC, you always say this, and I always tell the same story. I know you are a huge fan of breastfeeding, but you need to acknowledge that there are some really offensive folks who you’d benefit if they weren’t on your side. You are about to apologize for the LLL meeting I went to and assure me they aren’t all like that. But SOME of them are and I’m not the only person even on this board to have a horrible experience with the pro-breastfeeding set.
It doesn’t bother me. I think it’s very sweet and wonderful.
Yup, that’s inexcusable. And if mothers at a LLL meeting (remember only one person at the meeting is necessarily a representative of LLL) said such things, the Leader should have opposed what they were saying.
I wasn’t saying that no lactivist is ever an asshole, and that no one ever said something nasty to someone bottle feeding in public (I knew someone would bring some examples when I posted that - it’s just that I have never had personal knowledge of it happening.) But it actually helps illustrate the point I was trying to make - take all the rage and disbelief you feel when you see/hear of someone harassing a bottle-feeding mother, and realize that it is just as inappropriate for anyone to do it to a breastfeeding mother. Just don’t comment on how people are feeding their babies in public - it’s rude, period!
FWIW, when I see a mom using a bottle in public, I choose to assume it’s breastmilk, or the mom has hypoplastic breasts, or adopted the baby, or whatever. Surely there are plenty of asshole parents who always put their own convenience before the welfare of their children, by why assume that the individual in front of you is one of them? I say, be charitable, and both of you will probably be happier.
Those of us who understand that formula isn’t rat poison and firmly believe that our ‘convenience’ isn’t something you get to decide the value of invite you to take your ‘charity’ and rotate on it. Howsabout you refrain from commenting on other people’s perfectly reasonable parenting choices purely because it’s none of your business? :dubious:
Sure would, if I were hungry at the time.
:dubious:
I mean, for the hamburger!
– Good grief, do I have to explain everything to some of the folks here?! 
DT, I agree with what you had said earlier. While mild prudishness is something I’ve learned to accept, and even find charming, the strong objections come under ridiculously prudish.
- “Jack”
Hey, I’m not going to tell someone IRL that they shouldn’t take their kids to McDonald’s twice a week either, because it’s rude. That doesn’t mean what they’re doing is healthy for their kids, responsible, or exempt from people commenting on the general practice negatively.
When public health figures note that eating too much fat and sugar and being obese is bad for your health, I don’t get all bent out of shape and demand that they “rotate” on their sphygmomanometers. I’m fat, in part because I eat unhealthy food, and I own up to the reality of that. If you get tetchy hearing that a choice you made is inferior, maybe you aren’t as comfortable with that choice as you thought.
Also, please try to recall which forum we’re having this discussion in.
The ENTIRE GROUP picked up on it. The leader was the one that said “well, maybe God is telling you not to be a mother.” And if you visit a bottlefeeding support group on the internet, you won’t spend much time there before you discover my experience is not completely unique.
Yes, its rude regardless - why anyone thinks its their business how a woman chooses to feed her child is beyond me - or at least save the disapproving glare for the obese six year old with a big bag of cheese curls and a big gulp (seen it). But don’t assume that bottlefeeding mothers get a free pass on the comments and the stares. As someone who has done both, my experience is that its FAR more acceptable to breastfeed in public than to bottlefeed at all.
Breast milk is better than formula. Formula is not ‘bad for you’. And what makes me tetchy is people who think that they get to decide the value of other peoples’ ‘convenience’.
I’m all for it. I think it’s one of the most beautiful and natural things in the world.
I won’t be trying to apologize for this LLL group, because what they did is indefensible. What a bunch of twats.
I can understand this point completely and rather agree with it.
At the same time I can understand the point of view of someone who may be a little bit squinked out by nursing in public. I really don’t see anything wrong with making a reasonable effort to be as low key as possible about it.
Yep. But they are unfortunately not unique. Its a real shame I would never be comfortable recommending the LLL to a woman who was struggling - they should be and are supposed to be a resource for that - not a club for mothers who feel morally superior and put upon by society. However, I’m afraid that a woman who is struggling is much better served by a LC and one that is open minded enough to say “baby needs to get FED, mom needs to remain SANE - breastmilk is preferable, but it don’t always work.”
Speaking as someone who is a G cup when not nursing, and who actually broke a bra when my milk came in the first time…
Yes, you are probably always going to have to support the boob at least a little when the baby nurses, but you can make it a lot easier with a hardcore nursing bra. I really like the Jeunique bras. They are expensive but worth every penny, and I still wear them almost a year after the baby has weaned on occasions when I want really firm support. It is also easy to undo the flaps one-handed (although I always seem to need two hands to hook them up again).
I would like to see more breastfeeding in public.
+1 here
But you’re wrong here, even ugly babies are cute.
Shit, I had a great response lost… basically I agree with Dio, and I personally sometimes get uncomfortable, but that’s my issue. I don’t expect people to change normal behavior because I don’t know where to put my eyes.
To me it’s like saying people with missing limbs should hide or something. People going about their daily business shouldn’t have to worry about someone’s discomfort. If you take insulin shots, belch a lot because of acid reflux, etc. those are all things that shouldn’t curtail your life - but of course, it’s probably best to do these things discreetly if possible. But if your well-being or your kid’s is at stake, to hell with social conventions. You shouldn’t not breastfeed your baby because you don’t want to make people in line feel uncomfortable and you don’t have a shawl, etc.
It’s weird that it’s an issue at all. I’ve lived in countries where it was as normal and mundane a sight as seeing somebody eat a sandwich and nobody gave nursing mothers a second look. That’s what breasts are for. That’s how feeding babies is supposed to work. It would be hard to imagine anything less inappropriate. The fact that we think it’s an issue at all in this country is emblematic of our own pathology, it’s not a function of the act itself. We fetishize breasts as sexual organs. Not all cultures do that. It’s a cultural thing, not an organic thing. Because we have eroticized breasts, we have created a false cultural perception that the exposure of a female breats is automatically sexual, and that a woman doing so even to do something as innocent and necessary as feeding a baby is doing something vaguely transgressive and naughty and might make people uncomfortable, so she needs to “be discreet,” and mindful of other people’s fetishes.
A lot of people eroticize feet too, but we don’t see anyone complaining that people should be discreet about bare feet in public.
The funny thing is, if you se a lot of breast feeding, or spend a lot of time in a culture where bare female breasts are not an unusual sight, the novelty wears off very quickly and it becomes as boring and inconsequential a sight as it is for shirtless men.
I really don’t get what kind of feelings nursing mothers are supposed to be so mindful of. What damage is it doing to anyone to see a boob? What exactly IS the “discomfort” which is supposedly being felt?
I would submit that it’s exactly the same culturally trained discomfort that people in Arab countries have when they see a woman in public with her face uncovered, and that it’s just as irrational (and just as curable).
Sorry, but that makes me sad.
You’ve seen shirtless men, right? Baby jaysus is crying.