Today, while doing the weekly food shop, my 4 month old decided that she needed feeding and she needed feeding now! Luckily, in our local supermarket, there's a restaurant so great, I thought, I'll take the kids over there - they can have a meal and I can feed the baby. Win, win.
So we went in, we ordered, we sat down, the food arrived quickly, so far so good. I then proceeded to begin the adjustments needed to feed the baby. Now I'm a breastfeeding mum, this is baby number four, so I'm normally pretty good at feeding descreatly. Plus it was super quiet, all the booths were isolated with big, white plastic boards as part of the covid secure rules. So I scooted into a corner and began to feed the baby.
A few minutes into the feed, I look up from the baby and notice a women from another table cramming her neck round to scowl at me. I must admit this caught me off guard. I have fed in public many times and I have never really experienced anything negative from it. But there she was, very obviously staring at me feeding my baby. I gave her a smile (in thoughts that she might return it, maybe she was trying to be supportive) but I did not get one back, she just stared, eventually she must have realised that no amount of scowling at me would make me stop the feed so looked away but continued to look over every now and again to check if I was still performing such- possibly her mind- an offensive act.
Now you might wonder why I didnt say something, there are plenty of breastfeeding mums who would have. I guess that ultimately, I didnt feel a need to. My other children were happily enjoying their meal and the baby likes a calm environment when feeding, it wasn't worth the outburst. My baby needed feeding. The lady didn't need to watch, if anything, she should have been paying alot more attention to what her children were doing with their chicken nuggets.
Besides, I'm not easily embarrassed, with the way my baby was positioned and the clothes I was wearing you could hardly see anything. I had a high neck t-shirt on so actually in retrospect she was showing more than I was with her low cut blouse, which leads me to believe it was the idea of breastfeeding that bothered her over the act of it itself.
On leaving, my husband asked me if I noticed the woman staring. I said I did but I didn’t care. If anything I'm glad this happened to me and not a new mum as this could have been detrimental to her breastfeeding journey. This led us into a discussion around breastfeeding in public and the stigma that this country like a few in the western world still holds around breastfeeding.
I often see signs in shop windows saying 'breastfeeding mums welcome, come in have a cup of tea, feed your baby' and on one hand I think this is amazing, a safe space mums can go to when they need to feed their babies, because let’s face it having a nipple on show for all the world can be daunting and scary especially if you're in a situation similar to mine today. But on the other hand shouldn't bottle feeding mums be entitled to the same warmth and welcoming? I have done both, I have bottle fed, combine fed and breastfed and when it comes to feeding in public, breastfeeding is harder but only because of the culture in this country around breastfeeding.
Why should women feel embarrassed about breastfeeding in public when we live in an era where there are billboards covered in breasts, shops have magazines with revealing images on show for all to see, yet mums are made to feel as though they should hide in the shadows, stick a blanket over their babies head (try eat your dinner with a blanket on your head and tell me how that feels) ultimately this isn't about my right to breastfeeding, but my babies right to eat.
So if you’re a breastfeeding mum, please don't be afraid to feed in public, if it’s never seen it will never be normalised.
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