Knit Together

It’s that time again. Monday! This week there was no racking my brain for a topic. It came to me quite naturally while at the zoo with my family on Saturday. We were enjoying a lovely morning at the zoo when I realized it was time to nurse Matthew, who is 8 months old. I figured I’d find an out of the way spot and use my nursing cover a la bebe au lait when lo and behold I realized: I didn’t have my cover! I didn’t even have a blanket! I had nothing with which I could cover myself to feed my son.

There was a time, when my daughter was an infant, when I would have panicked. Or more likely I’d have had my back up bottle and formula and fed her that instead of nursing her. But Matthew has never HAD formula (and no, I don’t wear this as some kind of badge of honor or mark of my “better mommy than you” status, I promise, I’m simply stating the fact).

But I still thought perhaps I’d find a bench behind a tree or in a closed exhibit (see headline: Nursing Mother Arrested at LA Zoo for Illegally Entering Closed Elephant Exhibit!). As I wandered around the immediate area I found a bench no one would really be walking by facing a building that held a closed exhibit, hurray! Except it was in the sun. Like, I’d be sweating and blinded by sunlight. There was another bench around the corner that was in the shade, with a back to lean against, but it was right in a thoroughfare where lots of people would be passing by. Hm… So I had to feed my baby, in public, and I had do it, well, rather publically.

So I sat down and got down to business. And of course Matthew wasn’t just latching on quietly and doing his thing quick & easy. Oh no, Mr. Busy Pants had to squirm and cry and latch and look around and yell at me and squirm some more first. This is a very important part of the nursing an older baby process, or so my son tells me anyway.

But heck, it had to be done so we did it. At first I sat there feeling very self-concious and thinking I might be able to will myself into invisibility. But the longer we sat there nursing (aka wrestling) the more I started channeling the strength & wisdom of my mama friends who have btdt (been there done that). I held my head up, I looked at people as they walked by, realized what was going on and looked away quickly. I thought “You have a problem? Screw you!” (Uh, this is a REAL post, right?)

Okay, so I wasn’t really feeling that aggressive, but I was feeling confident. This is how you feed babies. This is what breasts are FOR. Breasts have been nourishing babies for far longer than they’ve been plastered on billboards and playboys. THIS is their true design and function so everyone can just get over it already.

I felt quite powerful in fact, a la my imaginary friend Camille. And you know what? I felt very, very REAL.

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July 26th, 2010 | Category: MOR Monday, Motherhood | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL