When I feed my daughter Anna in public, I often wish I could have a sign next to me which reads “This is breastmilk, I promise!”. Hopefully it is imaginary, but a little part of me thinks that people look at Anna’s bottle and wonder why I am not breastfeeding.
Other draft signs include: “She did try to latch on”, “The health visitor couldn’t get her to breastfeed either” and “At least I am feeding her”!
It might seem strange for me to want to write about breastfeeding in public. After all, I am an outsider when it comes to the whole idea. For reasons best known to my baby girl alone, I pump exclusively (she was never able to latch on) and there has never been an issue of ‘decency’ with giving a baby a bottle in public view. However, many of my fellow breastfeeders – those who do it conventionally – don’t have such an easy time when feeding out and about. If a mum cannot feel at ease providing her baby with the best food there is when and where it is needed, then surely something is wrong. And whatever is at fault, it certainly isn’t the breastfeeding!
I live in the U.K. where legislation was passed in 2010 to make it illegal to ask a woman to stop breastfeeding in a public place (actually it says you can’t “be treated unfavourably” but it often amounts to the same thing). Great! Problem solved? Not quite … passing a law isn’t the end of the road as far as being breastfeeding-friendly is concerned. It might stop people asking you to leave, but it doesn’t stop the looks, comments and generally being given the cold shoulder. The fact that some places put up signs saying that they welcome breastfeeding just goes to show that the overall consensus is not a happy one.
The feeling of being judged for doing your best for your baby is horrible, but very common, for new mums. If you formula feed, there are those who think you should be breastfeeding. If you breastfeed, (some) people think you should be doing so somewhere else. Whilst I might sit in a cafe worrying that others are condemning me for using a bottle, the breastfeeding mum on the other side of the room might well be experiencing something similar but for a totally different reason. It seems you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
The problem is not the legislation, but neither is it the whole solution. Breastfeeding needs to be accepted as a natural and mutually beneficial way to feed. In the same way, mums who choose to use a bottle need to feel at ease with their decision too, as long as it was made with the right information and for the right reasons. I can’t think that there are many cafe owners who would be prepared to take on the mighty force of an army of united mums!
So, as a service to all of my fellow mums, however they feed their babies, I have drafted a sign that we can all display: “I’m doing my very best for my baby, now mind your own business!”.
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