When I breastfeed in public, many people look on with fascination, it is not something they normally see. I always smile and meet people's eyes and young women, pregnant women especially, often engage me in conversation and ask questions. (Yes it hurts at first, all children nurse differently, fenugreek tea and a nap help to improve milk supply more than anything else.) When I pump in public, I hope it will be the same.
Five years ago I left my breastfed infant son at home to go to a meeting, and on a crowded R train on the way home my breasts got engorged and painful. I pushed aside my blouse and bra, pressed a plastic shell with a bottle to my breast and began to pump breastmilk from my breasts with one hand while holding on to the pole with the other. My nipple could be seen through the plastic shell. People stared. It wasn't the ideal place to be squeezing out human milk, but I tried to remember that it was a part of breastfeeding: if I think women should nurse everywhere (and I do) then we should pump everywhere too.
So as a breastfeeding mom (my second was born in October), I read "BabyFood" in the January 19th issue of The New Yorker with interest: Jill Lepore wonders whether it's the mother or her milk that matters more to a baby. It's a good question: another version of the nature/nurture questions that continue to boggle us. Lepore writes that making it easier for women to pump at work is simply the cheapest way to deal with working mothers -- not by giving them longer (and more expensive) maternity leaves or offering infant child care at work. There's a lot of good stuff here, as Kate Harding wrote on Salon, the beginning reads "like Breastfeeding 101 for Serious Geeks."
But I couldn't help thinking that Jill Lepore was looking to stoke to the dwindling fires of the mommy wars. Now, instead of stay at home vs. working moms, human milk vs. formula, it's pumping vs. breastfeeding. Everyone now knows breast is best, now it's the delivery that's being questioned.
And in Lepore's zeal to question whether pumping is actually discouraging women from breastfeeding, she doesn't recognize the many ways that breast pumps can be helpful to nursing mothers.
I pumped for two weeks with my first child because he was premature and too weak to get my milk supply started. A pump was again invaluable to keep my milk up when he was hospitalized with an infection at 6 weeks of age and the doctors wouldn't let me feed him. I couldn't have breastfed without the pump.
Five years later I used my Pump in Style again when my second child was born this past October because of the opposite problem: she had a barracuda suck and my nipples cracked and bled; the breast shield on a pump didn't actually touch the open wounds my nipples had become. On the advice of a lactation consultant I pumped for two weeks to let my breasts heal, and I am currently breastfeeding successfully. And I "pump and dump" on occasion so that I can take a much needed break from my children while having a guilt free martini or three.
Lepore also wonders whether pumping in public is or will be considered obscene and asks, "Who would want to anyways?"
I do! I pump in public because I have to. When my husband and I treated ourselves to $250 worth of theatre tickets to see Kristin Scott Thomas in The Seagull on Broadway when our daughter was 7 weeks old, after the three-hour show I wanted a drink. It was an expensive and rare night out. We stopped at a bistro to have a glass of wine and I pumped at the bar. I wasn't going to waste 20 minutes in the bathroom; we were splurging on a babysitter. I wasn't an exhibitionist, but neither was I hiding it. I had my electric Evenflo buzzing under the drape of my scarf as I sipped my Haut-Medoc. Let's try to change the cultural norm. When the bartender asked, "What's that?" I told him. Vive la wet breast.
The lactating breast is hidden. We can see dozens of breasts with artificial implants in them intended to mimic the look of the milk filled breast (fullness above the nipple as well as below), but we don't see sanctioned photos of lactating women. Even the National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign made a commercial that likened not breastfeeding to taking risks (see the ridiculous log rolling ad here). Couldn't they have just shown a woman breastfeeding? Perhaps more women would breastfeed if they simply SAW it more often.
Even Facebook is trying to ban photos of women breastfeeding, so now there is a facebook group called Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is NOT Obscene! I posted photos of myself breastfeeding and pumping. People commented on the pumping photo: "This is so gross! Is this really necessary?" and the photo was promptly taken down. My nipple wasn't even showing.
So I guess pumping IS considered obscene, at least on facebook. But they left this one of me breastfeeding up.
The Health and Human Services Blueprint for action on breastfeeding states their objective to "Develop a positive and desirable image of breastfeeding for the American public" by the year 2010.
And that's all I'm trying to do.
This is an awesome article. I never had need to pump in public b/c I had a job in a hospital with a pumpin room for patients & staff. The one time I was gone from my kids in the early "must express every few hours" phase was very early on and I was in a movie theater. I went to the bathroom with my hand pump because I needed the light to figure out how it all went together rather than because I thought I needed to hide.
My kids are 5 and 7 now and whenever I see a woman breastfeeding in public, I try to give her a supportive direct eye contact nod. I would do the same thing if a woman were pumping. We shouldn't have to hide our bodies!
Pumping is important. There must be no restrictions on it or any other aspect of breastfeeding, including photos of it. Those play a crucial role in educating the general public, not just those doing the feeding.
The NY state law on women being topfree is as Christen says. It's a state law that came from the court decision of 1992. No law was passed in Albany; that was not necessary. The Court of Appeal ruling *is* the law.
Lastly, Christen has kindly shared three breastfeeding photos with the general public. They are posted at http://www.tera.ca/photos6.html#clifford --- the pumping photo banned by Facebook is there, along with other material.
I find it bizarre that people are so concerned what OTHER people do in public. Why don't they mind their own business?
Kudos to you for having the balls to pump in public! Never seen that so I found it quite funny. I admire your couldn't care less attitude.
Personally though if I had a baby I don't think I would ever whip my breast out in front of anyone except the SO, close friends or a midwife, I am an absolute prude when it comes to myself.
Thank you again, and I look forward to reading more of your work.
Cathy
I would love to see a day when mothers are embarrassed to bottle feed in public.
I had the good fortune to have spent my breastfeeding years (two and a half, actually) in Canada, where my experience seems to have been very different from the US norm. But, looking at how long it took for women in North America to have the right to vote; and for the liberty of such things as to wear trousers or short hair without raising eyebrows, and actually have any political, social or economic equality at all on a larger scale, even if it doesn't extend to all? Well, maybe my granddaughter will be able to nurse or pump to her heart's delight, without having to cover, for the comfort of others, a non-sexual act with a body part that men have been able to expose in public without shame or recourse, for what by then will have been over a century.
The card reads:
Kansas license to breastfeed in public - It's the law.
"A mother may breastfeed in any place she has a right to be."
"The State of Kansas acknowledges breast milk to be the most complete form of nutrition for infants, with a range of benefits for infant health, growth, immunity, and devlopment." HB 2284, 2006 Session
The back has information on the La Leche League and a number to call if you've been harrassed by someone for breastfeeding in public.
Its distriubuted by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and La Leche League International.
http://www.kdheks.gov/kdhe_news/2007/feb/download/Loving_Support_business_cards.pdf
The solution, of course, it to cooperatively de-construct the whole mess; instead, we attempt to pretend the constructs don't exist when it suits us, just because we deny them, and become shocked, shocked, when the rest of the world doesn't fall in line and play pretend with us.
I don't see a problem with breastfeeding in public. I also don't see a problem with men looking at an exposed breast, as long as there is a tacit agreement among the majority that exposed breasts are taboo. It isn't as though it stops being a secondary sexual characteristic because it's got milk in it.
Until we get to a point where men can walk about with their penises dangling about without anyone caring, until we're at a point where clothes become about warmth or physical comfort in general, until we demystify the body, period, we're going to all be trapped in this pretend-world of the mind where things are given meaning they don't have, and since there can never be agreement as to meanings that are subjectively constructed, there will always be discord in reference to the truth.
You say potato...