Why I Breastfeed in Public

The first time I ever encountered a woman nursing her baby in public I was nineteen years old and working as a waitress in a Tex-Mex restaurant in a very conservative Southern town. The woman was feeding her son at my table and to further complicate things, her son was probably three or four. I was flustered by this event - as were numerous coworkers (primarily of the male breed).

The second time I remember seeing a woman breastfeed in public I was twenty-one and my husband and I were at a wine tasting. After tasting several wines a woman we had been chatting with stopped what she had been doing and excused herself to a quiet corner to nurse her son. I don't know if I was more horrified that she was nursing him or that she was nursing him after tasting a few sips of wine.

I did not have positive experience with women nursing in public and as a result, I was firmly in the camp of "come on, enough already, take that thing in the bathroom." I mean, I didn't want to see anyone's "boob" out there.

That was until I had my own child. He was three weeks old and we had ventured to a Johnny Carinos with my mother and father. The baby began to cry. I was situated in a corner booth. It was a discreet location. Someone had given me a cover-up as a shower gift and I knew it was in the diaper bag. I had three options.

Option one: Go to the car and feed him, but it was a cold, winter day and I had a fairly small car. To feed him in the car would have been challenging, to say the least, and certainly lonely. This was not the option I wished to take.

Option two: Go into the bathroom and feed him.While I was certain Johnny Carinos keeps a pretty clean facility, I certainly wouldn't want to eat there. Plus, where in the bathroom would I feed him? Most bathrooms do not contain a lounge area, so the only seat remaining would be the toilet. Do you like to eat on the toilet? Would you bottle feed a baby on the toilet?

Option three: The last option was the one I swore in my youth I'd never do. Nurse him right there at the table, which is what I did and no one in the restuarant bat an eye.

After that initial adventure into public nursing, I realized there are many reasons why nursing in public really isn't a big deal.

• Breastfeeding is becoming more common, so most people don't really care that you're doing it. With more and more mothers breastfeeding today than in years past, the sight of a nursing woman is much more common.
• I keep covered up. I was able to slip my cover over my shoulders. It is a discreet black shawl that easily covered most of my child and certainly all of any objectionable body parts.
• I always try to plan ahead, but sometimes your child gets hungry so you need to do what you need to do. I figure my breast is far less obvious than a three-month-old having a meltdown.
• I will always try to be discreet. I don't have any desire to become some bare-breasted lactivist, running around sans cover-up in an attempt to convert people to the cult of mommy's milk. If they are comfortable, I am more comfortable.
• Nursing in public helps people become more comfortable with breastfeeding, and may encourage a mother to try it or stick with it. I do think seeing a nursing mother helps normalize breastfeeding. After all, if more women did it, the sight would become commonplace and lose the stigma it carries now.

I can now say I've nursed my son in all sorts of places. If he's hungry I feed him - whether it means slipping into the changing room at Banana Republic or sitting in the grass along a trail. And so far, no one has ever made a negative comment, perhaps as a result of my attempts at modesty. But if they were to make a negative comment, so what? My primarily goal is to care for my son -- whenever and wherever.