Breastfeeding in Public

I found this column by Sandra Hume and I just love it. It describes perfectly how I feel about nursing my babies in public. I've often wondered if, when people gave me the evil eye, they honestly thought I was doing it to make a statement or simply to make them uncomfortable. By some of the looks I've gotten I really don't know what else to think.

You may not believe it, but we nursing moms are not all that hot about feeding in public either. But we have to, because breast-feeding requires serious commitment. With so much at stake, we're not going to cloister ourselves to cater to someone else's issues. Breast-feeding is not about you. It's not even about me. It's about the baby. Moreover -- and I'm sure I'm not the only one with this talent -- most of my public feeding sessions involve a quick-change that's so clever even a perverted soul just waiting for me to flash him would be disappointed.

Like using a carseat or not letting my baby sit in a dirty diaper, breastfeeding is something that I do just because. It's not a question of switching to a bottle when we're out; when I don't use my breasts to nurse, I lose the milk. And you, the breast-o-phobe who dreads a public feeding session the way nonsmokers dread someone lighting up, aren't even part of the equation. Nursing babies eat a dozen times daily for months on end. If you had to do something 12 times a day, you'd stop worrying pretty quickly about who's around when you do it.

You can read the piece in its entirety here.

And, in case anyone is interested, I do nurse in public if necessary, but I try my best to wait until we can have some privacy (although usually that's more for my convenience than any possible on-lookers) and always use a blanket.