The Hubster, my sister and I went to San Francisco Japantowne today with The Little Empress in tow. (We went last weekend as well but without my sister as she was working.) We did the usual — got lunch at one of our favorite restaurants before walking around to check out the Miyako mall. We came back to the Kinokuniya building to visit our favorite dessert place, Sophie’s Crepes. As usual, the place was packed so I sent my sister in to order the crepes as it would have been too crowded for me to wear TLE on my back safely. TLE was getting fussy in her carrier and so I found I nice place to sit next to Sophie’s while waiting. It soon became obvious that TLE was hungry so I nursed her, using my jacket to partially cover her up. At some point, she got antsy about the cover on her head so I let it slide off.
My sister later told me that a guy in line at Sophie’s noticed that I was breastfeeding. He pointed it out to his girlfriend who commented, “I wouldn’t breastfeed in public. That’s so gross.” My sister was standing at the same angle as the girl who made the comment said it was obvious that I was nursing but it’s not like you could see anything.
I don’t consider myself a hardcore lactivist but I believe that my child has as much of a right to eat in public as anyone else does. If TLE is hungry, I’ll feed her. That would be true whether she was formula or breastfed. It just so happens that TLE is a breastfed baby so instead of being offered a bottle, I offer her my breast. (Or she’ll fuss and throw herself down to boob level, which is what happened while we were waiting.) Nursing covers don’t work for us; she likes looking around at the world and it is too much trouble for me to force her to be covered.
It burns me that people consider breastfeeding to be gross. What is so gross about it? Breasts are for feeding babies! ARGH!!
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Text and photographs copyrighted by Michelle N unless otherwise noted.
Ignorance is grosser.
Just sluff off the bad comments. Some people are just ignorant. When Kadi was about 9 months old I was nursing in public, and even covered for that matter, I had someone tell me that I was disgusting for getting “pleasure” from my baby, because I was nursing her. Huh? As rude as it was I didn’t even give her the benefit of getting me unraveled about it. I didn’t care what other people thought.
Kadi didn’t like to be covered either. . . another breastfeeding friend of mine gave me an AWESOME lil hankie looking thing that had some pretty earthy tones to it. . . AND you could see thru it. haha Just enough for her to see out but not enough for people to see in. Worked great for when we went places, but I do kinda feel bad for my hubby’s friends that unexpectedly walked in on a full boobed popped out. LOL Oh well!