Nursing in Public

Over the past couple of days, I have heard several stories in the news of women being asked not to nurse in public, and it makes me a little angry.  I think it's ridiculous to ask a woman to go nurse in a bathroom or some other private place, and I guess part of this is because I grew up in Peru.  As a kid, I always saw women nursing their babies in public, and they weren't discreet about it at all.  They would completely pull their breast out in the middle of a church service to feed their baby.  And you know what?  Nobody cared.  Everybody there grew up exposed to this, so nobody thought twice about it.  In Peru, feeding your baby is perceived as a normal, natural behavior - which is exactly what it is.

So why is it such a big deal here in the US?  Why do we see nursing as something dirty that should be done in private?  Why is an exposed breast such a horrifying thing?  (And I should point out that a breast is rarely exposed for more than a second or two during nursing, and not at all if the mother uses a cover.)  I personally did always cover up when I nursed in public - these days Eleanor gets way too distracted so we usually nurse in the car - but it doesn't bother me when people don't.  I really wish that more women would nurse in public because the more it happens, the more our society will come to accept it as part of nature instead of seeing it as "freaky", "creepy", or "disgusting."

I also want to add that anybody who thinks a woman should go nurse in the bathroom has obviously never breastfed.  Just think about the logistics.  For the first 3 or 4 months, it took Eleanor 45-60 minutes to nurse.  Most public restrooms don't have chairs to sit in, nor do they have lids on the toilet that you can pull down and sit on (and those are usually dirty when they do!).  So do you sit on the toilet seat for 45 minutes?  Gross!  Or, do you STAND, holding your 8 to 15 lb baby in your arms for 45 minutes while you nurse?  I don't know about you, but that sounds extremely uncomfortable to me!  On top of all of that, this means that the mother is spending up to an hour in a room by herself while the people she came with are eating their dinner or shopping or whatever it is they are out doing.  It is lonely and isolating.  No wonder more women don't nurse if this is what they are expected to do!

By the way, in Florida women are legally allowed to breastfeed anywhere that they are allowed to be.  It is illegal for a store manager or other person in charge to ask a woman to leave or stop nursing.