Betrayal of the Buxom Bosoms

I've always been a big fan of breastfeeding, not only because it's best for the baby but also because Hello?! It's free! (Have you seen the cost of formula? Ugh.) Besides that, it's always the right temperature, you don't have to search for a bottle and nipple type that your baby will like, and yeah, did I mention FREE? (Besides, it's much easier for me to find my boob at 1 A.M. than a clean bottle.) I also understand that it's a personal decision and not every woman wants to breast feed and that's fine. (We are women, hear us roar.)

Unfortunately, for those of us who decide to nurse our children, there's always going to be those people who make us feel dirty and ashamed about breast feeding in public. I came across one of these people yesterday. My theory is this: I have a baby, a boob, and a blanket. We're good. Yes, you might know what I'm doing, but it's not as if I'm flaunting my Grand Tetons like I'm at a topless bar, so what's the deal? Even if there's a nipple slip because the baby pulls his head up to look at a noise he heard, so what? It's a breast, people, not a XXX film. And I'm pretty sure that breasts stop becoming a sex symbol once they start producing nourishment for a newborn. Then they turn into practical faucets o'milk.

What really was a surprise was that I wouldn't have expected this kind of small minded attitude from this person so it completely threw me off guard. It made me sad to realize that there's still such a stigma attached to feeding an infant in public if it's not from a plastic bottle. And I considered that it is people like this who will always make news stories for asking nursing mothers to leave restaurants. It's 2014 and we're starting to devolve as a species. A century ago, before formula and plastic bottles, breast feeding was the only way to go. There weren't any other options. No one would expect you to make your child go hungry until you could get to a more private place. No one expected you to re-arrange your life around your kid's feeding schedule. You still milked the cows, fed the chickens, made breakfast for the family etc.

After the initial shock wore off, however, I began to get mad. How dare anyone make me feel bad about providing my kid with food? Did they make me feel bad about growing another person inside me, which is admittedly a little Alien-esque? Nope, it was a "miracle" in there. Did they make me feel guilty about birthing him out of my "no-no" place? Nope, it's so much better than the sterile procedure of cutting him out of me via Cesarean section. So it's ok that my body grew and expelled another living being, but it's unacceptable that I want to feed him from this same body in front of other living people? GASP! The horror! There are adults out there who have never had the birds and the bees talk with their mummies and daddies and I'd surely be opening up a huge can of worms! No one wants to have that awkward conversation with their thirty year old child!

And while I'm trying to get over that, let me ask you this: It's shocking that I want to nurse my child in public, under a blanket, but Miley Cyrus can go on television smoking pot, kissing other women, and twerking and she's considered acceptable as an icon for our children to emulate? It's a sad, sad day when we are more accepting of deviant child television stars than feeding our children from our God given parts. For shame America, for shame!