>How to Cause a Nipple Ripple
>Seeing as how I’ll discuss everything from my hoo ha to to my bra size with thousands of strangers on the Internet, it might be hard to believe that in real life, I’m a very modest girl. But it’s true. You’d think my bare bottom had the whereabouts of the Holy Grail tattooed on it the way I check bathroom stalls for hidden cameras and race to cover myself when my husband walks in on me while I’m dressing.
So you can imagine that as far as modesty was concerned, breast-feeding my first baby was a torturous act, even in the relative privacy of my own home. Woe to the family member who happened to enter a room where nursing was taking place; My melodramatic blanket arranging and death-laser glare were enough to make a body forget why he came in there in the first place and subsequently run scurrying for cover.
Since Punky was an accomodating little thing and readily fed on a schedule, I’m ashamed to say that I was a bit put off by the moms I knew who’d pull out the boob any time and anywhere to feed their babies. Why can’t they save that kind of thing for later? I’d tsk to myself. Surely that baby could wait an hour until he gets home. Or is he spoiled? Smugly, I’d congratulate myself on my superior mothering skills, which allowed me to keep my precious boobs to myself.
And then karma paid me a visit.
Read all about it- and find out why my bare breasts may be coming soon to a theater/shopping mall/restaurant near you- in this week’s Nashville Scene edition of Suburban Turmoil.
>You modest… really ? I don’t believe it.Great article. I mean great in the sense that it was very well written but sad in the sense that so many people are disturbed by a breastfeeding mom. What’s even sadder is that some of them are mothers themselves. Anyhoo, enough said. I know that discussion was “beat to death” several posts ago.
>Oops, nice grammar…I meant to say “beaten to death”.
>As long as a mother is being modest about breastfeeding I don’t understand the harm????I mean have these people seen some of the outfits on teens today?? I’ve seen more clothes on Playgirl’s!
>NICE WORK. LOVE YOUR BLOG.
>I read your article and I disagree strongly with breastfeeding in public. It is a private matter between a mother and a child and should not be open to public consumption. I hope you will listen to the mothers who warned you against breastfeeding in public and reconsider your position.
>Loved the column. You already know my stance on this non-issue. But I still can’t help but comment on the comment above! How funny is it that Anonymous uses the expression “public consumption”? Is this the effect that reality shows have had on the American public? Or does Anonymous assume that mothers who nurse in public do it not for their hungry child, but for the public passerby? Please.Also, the mention of how you’ve “warned against breastfeeding in public” cracked me up. As if there were consequences to pay.The column was great and I loved the wrap-up. I remain a faithful fan!
>I will NEVER, NEVER, EVER understand how anyone would ever think there was any controversy in this subject. God made our bodies wonderfully, to do amazing things, and one of the greatest is to feed our babies, with healthful, nutritious, antibody filled milk!! How on earth is that controversial. It is also not healthy to never expose our children to the world, to allow them experiences beyond the four walls of our homes. Our children, babies alike, should feel the warmth of sunshine and the smells of the mall (well some of the smells, not the bathroom) People need to wake up and remember what those boobs were made for and get over the sexualization of them. I honestly think that anyone who has trouble with a breastfeeding mother has serious, serious issues that haven’t been dealt with. WOW. Thank you for a great column.
>Love your blog and loved the column. I breastfed three kids – it is so hard for me to belive in this day and age that this is an issue of controversy! Thanks for a wonderful column with the right amount of humor!
>Excellent Article!
>I don’t understand why you women refuse to go somewhere private to b/f. If it makes people uncomfortable (and why wouldn’t it? Who wants to see your naked breast?) then you should show some courtesy to others and b/f in a bathroom, a car, or a dressing room. It’s not that hard to do.
>I have to say that nothing drives down my opinion of someone faster than finding out that they’re strongly opposed to nursing in public. Even the most modest mother can find a way to nurse discreetly, pretty much anywhere! And yes, I’ve seen women who were of the “just whip it out school”, but really, this should not be that big a deal. One of my friends had a baby who would not take a bottle and who nursed ALL THE TIME, so she just did not leave the house for six months. She was so happy when her baby could take solids and she could take little tentative jaunts out of the house again, finally. That story makes me SO sad.
>GO LINDSAY! Of course they have a right to be offended…. But the law’s the law. If I lived near you, I’d go out with you as your bodyguard, and serve up the dirty looks right back at ’em!Like Moms need another reason to feel like martyrs? Feed the baby in the smelly dirty public restroom?? Give me a break.The female body is designed as it is for a reason. It is nothing to be ashamed of. And fer pete’s sake, a nursing mother is doing just what Mother Nature intended she do. I wonder if any of the anti-BF-in-public crowd secretly represents the formula industry? BIG business. HUGE.
>beck, I can think of another thing — abstinence only education! But I’m right there with you with the nursing in public as well.Great column Lindsay. I find it hard to believe that some people actually advocate never leaving the house as an alternative to breast feeding in public.
>We recently moved from Los Angeles (where I had two babies, both breastfed discreetly in public) to a suburb in NW Indiana. I just gave birth to boy #3 and I’m really shocked at the general “go somewhere else to nurse” mentality when you are in public here. Its a totally normal thing in Cali to nurse wherever you are, so I wasn’t expecting this different mentality. Why should our lives totally stop because there’s a new baby in the house? I seriously don’t get it why people can’t just look away instead of bitch about it anonymously on websites.
>I didn’t get involved on that post because I never got the pleasure of breastfeeding. So that makes my opinion on the matter about as credible as the Anonymous Threat person up there, but I would probably be uncomfortable if a woman just whipped out her boob and went to town…even if we were in a so-called ‘private’ place. BUT, if you take the effort to cover yourself a bit…then everyone else can just piss off and deal with it.I know a lot of people who think it’s weird to BF period – I’m not going to attack their view (and I know lots of women use formula because they HAVE to), but God did not make the first mother with a can of formula and a bottle – to say that public bf is unnatural is absurd.
>Awesome article. I, too, had a 2nd born like Bruiser, and to top it off, she NEVER took a bottle, cup, spoon, syringe, Jesus, the kid wanted nothing but my tits 24/7. So I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to ever go anywhere, I’d nurse in public, and pardon my french, but screw anyone who had a problem with it. I’d nurse in the park and at starbucks and at the library, and I never had any stares or comments, so my experience was pretty good. (Loved the article wrap…)
>Going to the bathroom is a natural act too but we don’t take shits in public. There is such thing as human decency. Use it.
>I never BF my girls, but if others want to do so, go for it! Boobs don’t bother me any. As for comparing it to taking shits in public, they are two completely different things. I will take this moment to enlighten you. The reason we DON’T poop in public is it’s hard to concentrate 🙂 and coming into contact with decaying fecal matter can make you very, very ill!!! And it smells bad. NOT THE SAME.I love the comment above about the “reality shows” and BF-ing in public just for the attention. I highly doubt it’s the highlight of their day, trying to feed a whining baby while being shunned openly by passersby. WOOHOO – look at my big stretchmark covered breasts!
>I always get so upset at people who take everything to the extreme. Feeding a child by breast or bottle is just that, a way to give a child sustenance. If your so offended by either than turn away or leave. You don’t know what that mom has been through so don’t judge. I had a very ill newborn w/ severe acid reflux. She was tube fed for 3 weeks of her life. She went from 6 pounds to two pounds in a matter of day. The doctors actually made me say good-bye because they didn’t think she would make it. Obviously, breastfeeding was out of the question and my heart broke. I live in a very “crunchy” town so when I went to my local shop to pick up my daughter’s special formula, I got a lovely talk from the cashier that I was slowly killing my daughter. How is any different from you people judging moms who breastfeed in public? You’re shaming them for feeding their babies!! Do you people undestand that?! You don’t know how hard mom struggle to feed children until you do, LAY OFF!! Come talk to me when you have to stick a tube through your baby’s nose so she can eat in public or when just water passing through your child’s lips causes pain. You don’t know what health problems that baby being fed is going through, he/she might finally want to eat after two days of his/her mom struggling to pass a few drops of nourishment through their lips. May none of you never experience such heartbreak.
>I can’t believe that someone would plead with Lindsay to stop publicly breastfeeding here on her blog. I know Lindsay and Jack, I’ve been present when he’s nursed, and I’ve never seen any overly-fetishized part of her body. Jack’s a little pro, and Lindsay is an experienced mama. There’s no flashing, no statement-making, no attention seeking. Just nursing. I bet all of you grossed out conservatives have been in the presence of a nursing couple in public and not been aware of it. The only problem here is that some people are unwilling to allow the female breast to be anything but sexual. The sad thing is that for you, clearly anything sexual is also dirty.
>It is a sad sad time when taking a shit is compared to feeding an infant. It is sad because it means there is someone out there who is that stupid.
>I have seen a myriad of comments both on this post and on the last breastfeeding post that include the “modesty disclaimer.” People keep saying things to the effect that “as long as she’s discreet” and “as long as she’s not ‘whipping it out'”…I don’t understand. I have never seen a mom breastfeeding in public who has “whipped it out.” I have never seen mothers nursing in public who were anything but discreet. Where has this idea come from that there are mothers out there who are slinging their breasts around and trying to get attention while they’re feeding their babies? It seems like such a ridiculous statement to say that we don’t mind moms nursing in public “as long as they’re modest.”In fact, I’ve actually never heard of a woman harrassed about nursing in public who was anything but discreet. I’ve never heard of a mom being kicked out of Target because she stood up, dislodged both breasts, stuck tassles to them, and did a dance before she fed her kid. It’s people like this woman who was denied use of a dressing room in Victoria’s Secret for breastfeeding her baby (oh, the irony). And it’s people like Emily Gillette who was sitting in the next-to-last row of the plane, next to the window with her husband blocking any possible view of her when she was kicked off for refusing to “cover up.” It’s women who are simply trying to feed their kids who are getting harrassed, and that’s pretty disgusting to me.
>Did anyone else scroll down to the end of the breast-feeding article and see an ad for Adult Toys? Now is that some editor’s weird fetish, or just a coincidence? I don’t read anything other than Lindsay’s column in the Nashville Scene, so maybe they advertise Adult Toys on every page…
>That’s pretty awesome, dudeness. Nice piece, post, et al.
>we had arrived in a remote part of Belize after a long and dusty bus ride. we had found a guesthouse and were dropping our packs on the ground when a young woman walked up with a baby. as she introduced herself she whipped off her shirt and slapped the baby onto one breast, the other waving in the breeze. she didn’t break eye contact and handed us a beer during.and i thought it was one of the most beautiful things i’d ever seen. it reminded me of the naturalness of it, and how inhibited we are here, so damn inhibited.
>I have no issue with discreet breastfeeding, however, I have indeed seen women breastfeeding where I could see their entire breast save the nipple where the kid is attached. I’m not easily offended, but I can see how that might be awkward for strangers passing by.However, this is not the norm. Typically, most women will cover up and you can’t see the baby, let alone the booby.
>I will never understand why mothers make life so difficult for each other, why do so many judge when we should know better ? Babies need to be feed, mothers are working hard enough to raise there childern without having to endure disdanful stares are rude comments. When mothers breastfeed they are not trying to show you their breast because they are shameless hussy’s ! They are FEEDING their child. When my son was a baby I fed him when he was hungry regardless of where we were cause it is part of my role as a mother to do that…It made my laugh in a sad way to read some of the comments especially the ‘you women’ one. Women need to give each other a break and unless someone is endagering their child or causeing that child harm in any way shape or form, leave her alone and keep your narky comments and looks to yourself.I’ll just get off my high-horse now…From Melbourne Mama
>I have the opposite problem. When I see a newborn drinking artificial formula from a heated plastic, phthalate-leaching pvc bottle, I feel the mother should be cowering at home if she chooses to be so selfish. It’s all I can do not to ask them why they are not educated and why they are harming their baby. Why would anyone think that an artificial, genetically modified powder laced with antibiotics and filled with sugar would be the best choice when mixed with chlorinated water and put into a pvc bottle?To me, this lack of adequate nutrition and refusal to breastfeed is abuse. If she has a medical reason why she can’t breastfeed (in public or elsewhere) then so be it. I am still nursing my 2.5 year old… on a plane, in a movie, at church, in a restaurant. She’s still in diapers, is she not still a baby?? I can do it discreetly without anyone seeing so much as a peep of a nipple. What is wrong with people that their minds imagine pornography? Kicked out of church for breastfeeding?Does anyone stop to think that GOD wouldn’t make our breasts full of milk if they weren’t meant to nourish our children?Does the baby need to adhere to our busy schedules and starve until it is appropriate for some onlooker?Other countries nurse their children until an average age of 4. If America doesn’t start realizing the importance of an organic diet and limitations on chemicals such as phthalates and methylparaben, we will self-destruct. I just spent 3 years in the UK, where I freely nursed my infant and NO ONE ever had such idiot discussions over it. My kids never have had an ear infection and only a cold or two- ever. Keep on keeping on…. nurse that kid as long as they want to. They’ll stop on their own long before it gets awkward. It’s fleeting and those bonding moments will be a distant memory. You’re giving them the best chance at a healthy life by nourishing them with your own milk. Enjoy those quiet moments with your baby and stop worrying about what any old lady or teenage boy is thinking.
>Diana, that is an unfair assumption that they are selfish. Have you never read anything from a mother who wanted nothing more to breastfeed her baby, but can’t? How guilty she must already feel giving her child formula and you talk about wanting to make her feel worse?And you know, even if they choose the formula option out of want and not need, it’s still none of your business and you have no idea the reasons why they chose to do so.That kind of thinking isn’t going to help your cause. What’s wrong with the people who are absolutely against breastfeeding is what’s wrong with you as well – you will accept no view but your own.
>Butterfly, I do know. I had to stop bf my oldest earlier than I wanted to due to life-threatening allergies. It’s heartbreaking. I’m simply addressing those that prefer to view a bottle over a breast and those that prefer to choose the easiest path for their own lives and not those of their babies. This post is about expressing one’s opinion and that is mine… to make the choice out of selfishness is tragic. To make the choice out of necessity is heartbreaking and to berate a woman for breastfeeding in public is distressing.
>Women have the right to choose whether or not to breastfeed. Its their body and no one should judge them for what they choose or choose not to do.
>Lindsey,Thank You so much for writing your article in The Scene. My son is 9.5 months old and from the start I have breastfed him on demand. Despite the bad vibes I have received, it has proved to be both hugely convenient for me and beneficial for him. He is yet to have even a sniffle. He is very healthy, smart and happy.My son matters way more to me than the opinions of the “pursed lipped” (love it!) ladies do.Although I have to say it was so very comforting to read your perspective as I thought I may be the only degenerate around irresponsibly choosing my son’s health and happiness over the acceptance of others and someone else’s idea of “propriety” :)Keep it up. Its definitely a Southern dilemma. I am from California and no such problem exists there. Need I not mention those heathens in Europe. Anyways, just as everything else is slooooowly evolving here, I think this topic of contention will eventually flicker out. As long as women like you and I, don’t cave to peer-pressure.Remember that most of these old-hag’s mothers & fathers were breast-fed by their family’s Slave / Wet-Nurse / Mammy (or whatever the hell they called them)!!That is the uncomfortable truth and honestly I think it is why so many people think breast-feeding is disgusting and low-class (in the South) I think it is a weird cultural thing, as in Nice White Women don’t do that. And if they do they do it behind closed doors.* Ah-hem * There I said it.P.S…I also have half-sleeve tattoos… You can imagine the looks I get. Thanks Again for your determination!Regards,Brigid Hynes
>Maybe moms think its okay for other moms to breast feed but think about the rest of us who have never seen that kind of thing before and really don’t want to now. Covering up is a matter of respect for the people around you.
>In response to that. It is this type of thinking that is responsible for all prejudices. There will always be a person or experience that is not familiar to you. If you expect other people to live their own lives out in fear or hide these aspects of themselves to avoid offending your precious ignorance… than you need to move to Mars and start a colony of clones of yourself. With every stranger you meet, they will no doubt express ideas that are foreign to you or they may have different cultural practices than you. I have tattoos. So because there are people that are offended by them, am I to hide inside my house? African-American people have a whole set of people who despise them out of ignorance and are African-Americans to avoid going out in public as to avoid offending any of these Bigots? Gays.. Are they not to hold hands as to avoid offending sheltered freaks like yourself? Women that breast-feed will appaer as this.. A woman with a blanket over her shoulder.. You may see two little feet sticking out or perhaps the top of the babies head, maybe if you are really lucky, the mother’s clavicle.We are not talking about women taking their tops of and wielding their nipples for all. We are talking about people being offended for what they really can’t even see!Its just the act.. of what is going on beneath that blanket that offends people.Personally I am far more offended by women with huge-fake boobs, bra-less in tight tops. But I bet you are perfectly comfortable with that.. because it is something you can’t avoid these days.Good Luck on your safe limited little life. Don’t travel.
>Lactivists. Ew.
>this is priceless– I love how the people (or is it just one person) who choose to make such a big deal out of public BFing, and are offended by it, remain “anonymous”. Come one, if you are going to be such haters, at least you can have the guts to sign your name!