When my son, my first baby, was born, I settled easily into breastfeeding him, and was overwhelmed by how symbiotic the baby-mother relationship really is. And is supposed to be. Baby cries, your hormones react, milk lets down, and every instinct you have urges you to hold and nurse your baby. Baby thrives. Our very nature compels us to nourish our babies. Good plan, God.
So was I surprised to find that our society stubbornly extinguishes that instinct? Not really. I grew up like most everyone else, seeing bottles as the standard for infant feeding. I was actually fortunate enough to see my own mother nurse my baby sister, and I can remember once seeing our upstairs neighbor sit on our patio nursing her baby. It was all very mysterious to me, though. Both were exceptional experiences, both brief, and both very private. Bottles were how babies were normally and openly fed.
Why, almost thirty years later, is this still the status quo? A landslide of studies have well established the dramatic benefits of breastfeeding, as well as the inadequacies of formula. Numerous national health organizations now emphasize the importance of breastfeeding exclusively for six months, and continuing for at least a year (international organizations recommend two years). Breastmilk saves babies’ lives, prevents serious illness, reduces healthcare costs, and is ecologically responsible. These days, we supposedly have more respect for our bodies and are better informed about health and nutrition than ever before. Yet our society still discourages women from breastfeeding.
How? Well, the hospital tells new moms about the advantages of breastfeeding and then sends them home with a free bag of formula and bottles (compliments of the formula industry). Hollywood stars do commercials for formula (et tu, Brooke?), but none do ads for breastfeeding. Department stores and amusement parks place a chair in the smelly, germy bathroom so nursing moms will have “privacy.” (As though nutrition and excrement go together?) Grandparents and busybodies ask, are you still nursing? Isn’t that baby hungry? Isn’t he eating cereal yet? And ironically, in this progressive, skin-baring, body piercing, sex-sells-everything society, most people are uncomfortable around nursing moms and babies.
Barbara Walters saw nothing wrong in telling the mostly female viewers of her talk show that she thought the nursing mom on her airplane was inappropriate. So you better get your baby on a bottle before traveling, mommies. Editorials(see here and here) supported her opinion, equating nursing in public with public urination. There, there, screaming baby, breastfeeding may be healthiest for you, but it’s rude and disrespectful. Possibly downright gross.
Why? Why are people so uncomfortable with a baby just being fed? Now, to be fair, grandmas tend to have a reason for questioning a style of baby rearing they never grew up with. They of course feel they did the best by their kids, and bottles were just great. Breastfeeding was weird. It’s what they know. (Though to give credit to my own mom and mother-in-law, they both have been very supportive and have never, ever criticized where or for how long I nursed my baby. Kudos to them for being so open-minded, and for nursing their own babies back when almost no one else did.)
Women who nurse in public are mothering their baby best, doing what millennia of women have done, all over the world. It’s the only way we survived this long! In other countries it is normal, it is no big deal. Course, we Americans are known for our hang-ups about our bodies. Nursing breasts are not being flaunted or displayed for attention or even for Mardi Gras beads. It is just nourishment, plain and simple. Lunch. It is functional. It is a symbiotic experience, and a mutual need, but not exactly an intimate experience. Baby must eat. Mom can’t realistically hide for all of baby’s meals.
And the bottom line is that if you make her feel she should hide, than she is discouraged from following her instincts in nursing her baby. She will usually give up on her instincts. After all, she doesn’t want to be a social pariah. She just wants to go out and be normal again! So out comes the formula and baby bottles. And baby loses.
Breastfeeding cannot possibly become the norm, until society views it as normal. Breastmilk, the unequivocally superior infant food, will never become the standard infant food, until breastfeeding moms are a standard sight.
So I will keep nursing in public, hoping that other moms will be encouraged, and that future moms will remember the sight. And if others notice and are uncomfortable, I hope the experience is just one more step toward becoming used to it. But mostly, I will nurse in public because wherever my babies go, so does their milk. And believe me, they know it.
