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Community Corner

MOMS TALK: Breastfeeding in Public

A weekly starting point for local parents to discuss hot parenting topics.

I’d have done it.

As it was, I bottle-fed my babies in public because I was unable to breastfeed. I packed powdered formula in one bottle, fresh water in another, and then, outrageously, egregiously, publicly, I combined the powder with the water, shook it up, and fed my babies.

No one was shocked.

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Apparently the hunger pangs of infants do not offend society.

I did not throw a blanket over the heads of my feeding children. I didn’t hide them, stifle them, or excuse myself to go feed them in a bathroom. I fed them in restaurants, where other humans feed themselves without embarrassment. I fed them in the mall’s food courts, where everyone else with two legs eats when they’re hungry. I fed them on my own front porch, where I too, could have a snack and catch an outdoor breeze.

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No one, ever, was disgusted, offended or angry when I fed my babies.

But if I’d breastfed my babies, I have no doubt I’d be telling a different tale right now.

You know what? That’s a shame.

If you have a problem with a breastfeeding mother’s lady parts, take it up with Mother Nature. The mom sitting on a bench in the mall didn’t make the evolutionary plan of having the most natural, accessible and healthful method of feeding her infant also be an objectified, sexualized and taboo one. That’s society’s problem, not the mother’s, and certainly, certainly not the baby’s.

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