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If you don’t like it, don’t look!
When I was a new-to-motherhood person, still in the maternity ward, a nurse came over to me and asked if I were going to bottle or breastfeed. I said I wanted to breastfeed and, bless her heart, she spent the next 20 minutes telling me what happens to a woman who decides to breastfeed. Basically, she told me I would be told to cover-up or go to another room and definitely make sure there weren’t any men around while I was breastfeeding my newborn. She hinted, “You know what men are like when they see bare breasts.” And the mothering-women in my life weren’t much help either. The women who had breastfed told me the same thing, “Women who breastfed their infants were, essentially, begging to be isolated from the rest of the world”. Breastfeeding was “not normal”, or so it seemed. Breastfeeding was old-fashioned. Breastfeeding was so third world. The Moms in my life told me I was a fool to try, when bottle-feeding was so much easier. According to almost all of those Moms, bottle-feeding was the way to go. The doctor who played “catcher” in the delivery room, rolled his eyes when I asked his opinion prior to the actual birth. He dug around in his desk drawer and pushed a can of Enfalac™ toward me and said, “It’s scientifically proven to be best for a newborn.” I didn’t stand a chance, nor did my newborn kid. LOML and I packed up the “freshly-minted” babe, a six pack of pre-made bottles of formula and headed home. The saga didn’t change with the next child. By the time youngest daughter arrived, I’d had enough and dove into breastfeeding. There were still a lot of naysayers and shocked faces in the late 1980s. Breasts were meant to be covered, or viewed as something sexy.
Decades later, our youngest daughter (the breastfed kid) has just delivered her first son. During the pregnancy, much was discussed around the topic of breastfeeding. In her case, all of it was positive talk and with people who had breastfed, people who understood breastfeeding and specialists who would be available to help throughout the process. The decision was made. The newest child in our wacky family would be breastfed. And then? Well, and then the child arrived 10 weeks early. Too early to have developed a sucking, gagging, swallowing reflex. Too immature to be fed by mouth and the wee fella was given a feeding tube. For our daughter, the breastfeeding gauntlet was thrust at her feet. In spite of all the issues, and while it would have been easier to give up and go from tube-feeding to bottle- feeding, DOM has decided to stick with breastfeeding, as complicated as it might be to accomplish and to maintain.
With the help of lactation specialists, her doula, her midwife, a great breast pump (apparently vital in this circumstance), a very supportive partner and the supremely excellent medical staff of the NICU in Winnipeg, breastfeeding is slowly being accomplished and established with Littlest Love of our Lives. The sucking reflex is happening. The swallowing and breathing is happening. The falling asleep while feeding is still a problem for such a little guy, but even that is being dealt with by everyone involved. I am so impressed. In this oppressive world, smart women are turning away from formula feeding (if they can do) because they are now getting good information and wonderful support. All fifty US states have made it legal to breastfeed in public—hard to believe it was illegal to do so. In Canada, the right to breastfeed, anytime and anywhere, is protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As far as I can see, the only barrier might be those few among us who just can’t accept the fact breastfeeding is natural. A breastfeeding Mom doesn’t need silly rules about “not offending” gawkers. A breastfeeding Mom doesn’t need to cover-up, go elsewhere, hide in a corner or sit in a public washroom to nourish her child. Time to get with the programme. Breast is best. Support and respect is paramount to success.
So, I say to a few of all y’all, “If you don’t like breastfeeding, don’t breastfeed.” And, “If you don’t like the look of a woman breastfeeding in public, don’t look.”
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