Funniest/worst breastfeeding moments?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Yesterday I happened across an old friend I hadn’t seen since her wedding in 1982. During the course of dredging up old memories, I thought about the trip I made home with my infant daughter to attend the wedding, and realized that both my favorite breastfeeding stories happened on that trip.

My baby girl was about 6 months old, and it was her first plane ride. I had read how to avoid her having painful ear problems during takeoff…just making sure the baby is nursing (bottle or breast) during the crucial altitude change. I din’t want to disturb anyone on the plane with a crying child, so I was anxious to get the timing of feeding her just right. Since they board people with babies first, we settled into a window seat so that we could have a little privacy when the time arrived. But she was hungry right then and there, so I covered her up with a blanket and started to feed her. A mother came on to the plane with her 9-year old son who was going to be traveling alone. When she saw me, she plopped the boy in the seat next to me, apparently grateful that he could sit next to another mom…until she realized what was happening under the blanket. Now keep in mind there was nothing to see, and no noises…Pookie was a silent nurser. Well, that mom yanked that boy out of the seat and across the aisle a row back…anything to keep him away from the sight of a nursing mom. And she gave me a dirty look as she left the plane. A businessman sat next to me, and the whole flight was uneventful…Pookie stopped nursing just as we lifted off, but didn’t have problems with her ears popping, and she slept through the entire flight. When I went back to the bathroom, I looked at the 9 year old boy, and he was deep into the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition! His mom thought she was protecting him from finding out what breasts are for by not having him sit by me, but he ended up getting a different kind of education!

Then on the day of the wedding, my daughter not only slept through the night, but slept in in the morning, and I didn’t want to wake her. I pumped a bottle for Grandma to feed her, and raced off to the wedding, wearing a new ivory print dress in a silky fabric. Halfway through the ceremony, I’m getting very uncomfortable. My breasts are more than full, they are straining dangerously at the buttons on my dress, and then it happens. Someone else’s baby starts to cry, and that triggers the letdown reflex, and all of a sudden I’m soaked to the waist with milk. I’m drenched, and the ivory dress? Transparent. I get through the receiving line with my purse clutched to one breast and my program (thank goodness they had a program) to the other side. I race home to change and fortunately my daughter is awake, so I grab her and start to nurse her, but the pressure level is still too high, and before she can even latch on, milk is spraying across the room. She tries valiantly to nurse, but she’s practically drowning in the stuff, gasping and getting sprayed in the face! Eventually everything simmers down, and she gets fed, and I grab a quick shower, change into the only other dress I’d brought, and head back to the reception (thank goodness there was a three-hour break between ceremony and reception!)

Pookie is 22 now, and I told her this story yesterday. She just shook her head and muttered something about crazy mothers.

So what adventures have you had in breastfeeding? I’d tell you the one about nursing in line at DisneyWorld, but this post is long enough.

2

Well, I can’t top that, but the morning after I had #3, I did have the apple-cheeked 23-year-old Youth Minister of our church abruptly come around the curtain and walk in on me in my hospital room during the No Visitors “Mom and Baby Time”. There I was, in flagrante from the waist up, lounging on my bed comfortably, nursing Baby, watching TV. He blushed madly and exited hastily.

He was an official “minister”, see, and he was solemnly doing his duty by visiting all his church members, so the nurses didn’t stop him at the main desk like they would with regular visitors, with that polite frowny face, “it’s Mom and Baby Time, please come back at 2:00”.

3

This thread is better suited for In My Humble Opinion. I’ll move it for you.

Cajun Man
for the SDMB

4

Really? It seemed rather mundane and pointless to me. I wasn’t asking anyone’s opinion about breastfeeding. Ah well, who am I to question the wisdom of The Moderator. Move me, baby!

5

wow. i had no idea some of that was possible.

chalk me up three credits for anatomy!

6

Not a story but I always got a laugh out of watching people not watch me nursing. I always nursed very discreetly with everything covered but people would get so tweaky about it. I’d be having a conversation with someone while nursing and one of two things would happen. Either they would stare directly into my eyes, never wavering, until their gaze started burning holes in my retinas. Or they would look at everything (the ceiling, floor, passing aircraft) except me and the wiggly little lump under the blanket. :smiley:

7

Huh. Times must be changing because I never get looks that I’m aware of. Of course I generally tune everyone out anyway.

I do have to say, though, after a lot of experience, I’m glad to see I wasn’t nuts those first few post-partum days. It’s a pain in the ass to nurse in a hospital bed that has been cranked up to “sitting” position. You’re flung halfway up and halfway down, the kid is splayed randomly across your body, you can’t get any support or purchase …

I just figured I was completely inexperienced and that’s why it was so hard to nurse in bed in the hospital (and why I started nursing in a chair as soon as possible). But then a quick trip to the ER the other day (just a fever and virus, he’s fine) reminded me how much that nursing position really sucks. When we got to our room, the bed was flat, so I put a pillow to my back and snuggled up against the back rail; nursing was a breeze.

Two linen changes later (messy attempt at a blood draw and a very leaky diaper) they cranked the bed into a sitting position to make it easier on me … nope. Pain in the ass.

I can’t think of any best and worst ones … unusual places and positions … laid the kid on the counter at a foodstop at a Target. Snuggled my chair and breast up to him and he ate while I did, some nice hands free nursing. I’m more of the semi-dramatic type; I don’t use a blanket (aside from the fact that it’s hot enough down here without smothering under a blanket or drape) but I’m discreet. I’ve been waiting to be “asked to stop” to I can decide if I want to go “topless” at the suggestion ;).

8

Oh I can relate to the OP. I remember hiding in a public loo while my mum went to buy me a t-shirt after hearing a baby cry and ending up with dinner plate sized wet patches on my t-shirt.

Milky wet t-shirt competition…not so good :smiley:

9

My funniest was with my first kid. I was eating with my mom at my aunt’s resturant. My baby was hungry, so I threw a blanket over my shoulder and he ate as I was eating.

Enter the friend: a male 17 year old friend.

He didn’t apparently know that blanket over shoulder = baby eating. He comes up and says to me, "Oh, I haven’t seen you baby yet " and removes the blanket. His face turned bight red. My mom’s face turned bright red. They both looked at each other. I started laughing. It was quiet funny. I know he had seen boobs before, I just don’t think he had ever seen them feeding a baby.
I probably scarred him for life.

10

I’ve got some funny moments but I think my favorite memory was at a La Leche League meeting. One new mom was stressed about not being able to find bras that fit and worked well for nursing. This got quite a discussion rolling and one mom just yanked up her shirt and started to show all the features of her bra. Now, she wasn’t a small woman and her breasts weren’t small, either, but nobody cared about her body because of the subject at hand. And several other moms did the same thing. It just struck me as so funny, how breastfeeding so changes the idea of the body and the breast to those in the thick of it. I can’t imagine being at any other kind of meeting where a bunch of suburban moms who were relative strangers would pull up their shirts and start showing their underwear, and yet it made perfect sense in context.

Along these same lines, one of my grad school friends asked me to come over and help his wife with a quick visit after their new baby was born–she was having latch problems and couldn’t get in to the see the lactation consultant for another day (which felt like an eternity given how many feedings she had before then). I’m no expert but since I had some personal experience, I said I’d try. Now, I’d met this woman exactly ONCE before. But there I was, with her bare breast in my hand, talking about getting her daughter’s mouth on her nipple right. And it didn’t seem weird at the time!

11

When our daughter was making the transition from breast to bottle, she would get cranky about it, and want to nurse even if she had just finished a whole bottle. Stupidly, I let her. She was under my shirt nursing as Harborwolf and I sat on the couch watching tv. Suddenly, she pulled away from me, still inside my shirt, and PUKED. I’m not talking a little baby spit-up. I mean a projectile spew that filled my entire t-shirt.
So there I was, sitting with a baby in my lap and a shirt filled (I MEAN FILLED) with vomit. Harborwolf just sat there cracking up as I handed him our daughter and ran to the bathroom to shower.

What? No pukey smiley?!?!

12

This weekend I went to visit my parents. It was the first time that my niece, age 4, had seen my baby. I was nursing my baby, under a blanket, when my niece edged up.

She asked, “What are you doing?”
I looked at her mom because I wasn’t sure what to tell my niece.
My sister-in-law said, “She’s feeding the baby”.
Niece said, “What is she feeding the baby? I don’t see a bottle!”

My sister-in-law said, “Ask your Aunt for a look”

So, I lifted the blanket and let my niece see.

My niece turns to me in HORROR and says, “You feed her BLANKETS?!!”

:slight_smile:

13

Heh. . . that would be me. My wife nursed both our kids, stopping wherever we happened to be when they got hungry. Always very discreet. We used to laugh at the people who would glare at her, and cringe a little when folks would come up to her with a hearty “good for you, don’t let them stop you” solidarity schtick. She just wanted to feed the kid without making a political statement about it.

With that background, I try to be sensitive to nursing mothers. I certainly don’t want to appear critical ('cause I’m not), nor do I want to intrude. But heck, I like babies, and I’m a little slow on the uptake. I’ll find myself looking at a woman holding a little baby, and I’ll smile, and think “how cute,” and all that, and maybe I’ll wait for the kid to loll around so I can see its face, and then I’ll realize that she’s nursing, and I’ve been staring at her a long time.

Now I look like a creepy staring guy, and I get all flustered 'cause I don’t know if the mom thinks I’m a weird nursing-mother-letch, or a hypercritical moms-shouldn’t-nurse-in-public jerk, or a power-to-the-people-fellow-traveler. And I’m none of those things; I just like babies, and I don’t always notice when they’re attached.

Really. And my wife just cracks up when I do that and have to skulk quickly out of sight.

14

Yesterday I was at a church confernece, which means that I was out in the hall with DangerBaby, with a whole lot of other people with their wee kidlets. I got to talking with an old acquaintance who lives across town, and we were sitting on some steps. Both her kids wanted to nurse (they’re very close in age, one is 14 months and one is about 10 months older than that. I think she just never quit nursing), so they’re in and out of her sweater, and it was really pretty difficult for her to be discreet, though she gave it a shot. I’ve never seen anyone nurse quite that openly in church, but none of the men who passed by blinked an eye, despite the rather large amount of skin showing.

I’m not sure if it’s that nursing is more accepted now, or that I live in a more relaxed area, but I’ve never had anyone show a sign of discomfort when I nursed my kids anywhere. I’m almost disappointed; I have so many snappy comebacks all ready to go!

Anyway most of my stories revolve around DangerGirl, who was fascinated by the baby’s eating habits. I would talk to the baby and ask her if she wanted some milkies, and DGirl decided that breasts were called milkies. So she talked a lot about how “I have small milkies now, but when I’m big, they’ll grow and be big milkies!” She would ‘nurse’ her teddy bears, and pretend to pump milk with a little hourglass from a game.

15

One of my stories is similar to misstee’s. My mom finished up nursing school last year and got her degree and there was a big party. Em was about 3 months old at the time, and I’m sitting near the back of the room, nursing her with a blanket around her and my little brother comes up, eager to see his niece. He says “Hey Angela, is she sleeping?” and pulls the blanket down so he can see her face. I said “Nope, she’s eating!” and laughed at him.
A fewa days later he came by and was wearing a shirt that had a circle in the design on the front, near nipple level. (Oh, you already see where this is going, don’t you?) He never holds babies, but decided to make an exception for his niece, so he sits down and I hand her to him and everything is fine until she starts looking for a nipple. He kind of laughed and said “What is she doing?” My mom and I both said “She’s trying to eat!”
I got her back pretty quickly. :slight_smile:

Once, when she was still pretty small, she was nursing one night and it hurt. I thought that must be normal, because everything I read talked about how nursing was painful. It got worse and worse, though, and she got madder and madder, so I unlatched her and held her for a moment and then let her eat again. Everything was fine that time, no pain, but I woke up the next morning with a little hickey about a centimeter away from my nipple. No wonder it hurt.

I also had the badly timed letdown, the first time we went out to the mall after she was born.

16

The best one with the wife and kid so far was coming home for christmas. O’Hare’s a mess (like usual), we’ve been waiting for 3 hours at two different very hot, stuffy terminals for a plane. BabyVor is holding up as well as can reasonably expected, although by this stage he’s just wearing a pair of baby-panties and a diaper (too hot for the clothes we had with him, but he had just discovered that he likes playing with the velcro straps for the diaper, and the gift shop in WI didn’t have any baby-shorts, but they did have a Packer dress with matching panties).

Finally, they announce our flight will board in 5 minutes. At a terminal a few hundred yards away from where we had been waiting. Did I mention that BabyVor had latched on about 30 seconds before the announcement? The wife, in her best “mommy” voice, says “Don’t you dare pop off” and promptly gets up as we walk across O’Hare with her still nursing the kid. He drank the whole way there.

And my wife and her mom’s group actually had to deal with “that guy”. They’d go to the food court for lunch once a week, and sit around a talk for a couple hours afterwards or whatever. Anyhow, one week one of the moms realizes that there was this guy who was holding a book, but was staring at whomever was nursing, and moving to different tables around the group so that he had a straighter shot at whomever was nursing at the time.

One of the mom’s get’s his picture with her camera-phone, and tells security about the incident as they’re leaving. Security is real nice, says to make sure to tell them if he shows up again.

Next week, he shows up again, security is notified, man is removed from the mall, told not to come back.

Next week, he shows up again, but security intercepts him before he even sits down and shows him the door, tells him that next time it’ll be tresspassing charges.

-lv

17

Our Walmart (surprise!) doesn’t have a place for a Mom to sit and nurse except for the dressing rooms and the ladies’ room, where they had at least put a dining-room-style chair in the corner. Some years back, I was in this chair nursing my daughter when a woman comes in with several young children, at least one of them a boy. I wasn’t making any efforts at being discreet–I was in the ladies’ room–and the woman glared at me and said something like, “Well, don’t try to keep it covered or anything,” and walked out. I was too surprised to say anything for a moment, and anyway, she’d left the room, but all I could think was, “If she didn’t want to risk that her kids might see something private, she should keep them out of the public restrooms.” Oh, and, “What a bitch!”

When I was expecting my second child, my little girl was four years old and I’d told her about the baby and how little he’d be (that ended up being a lie, he weighed over 12 pounds), and how I’d be feeding him. I had always called breastfeeding “noo-noo” to her when she was a baby and she came to refer to my breasts as “noonies.” One time, my teenage sisters came to visit and brought a friend. My little girl told her all about the baby and informed her that “the baby’s gonna drink out of Mama’s noonies!” The poor girl laughed so hard that she had to sit down on the floor before she fell down!

I really wish stores would provide a small area for moms to sit comfortably and feed their babies. For all of you who can carry a baby around the store and nurse, wonderful! But you should just TRY to hold up a nine-week-old who weighs just over 17 pounds!! :smiley: