Feeling sad/hurt about breastfeeding

We've got a long way to go for that. Even cebeebies changed the details of a Rosie & Tim episode. A neighbour has a new baby. On tv it's bottle fed. In the books it's breastfeed.
Big big fail for the bbc there. Totally not fulfilling their public broadcasting role.

What really needs to happen is for breastfeeding in public to be presented in soaps as routine - not as a big ishoo storyline but totally incidental and matter-of-course. There are obvious logistical problems but they're not insurmountable.

I absolutely know how you feel op. After things I have read and heard about over the last couple of weeks I am very, very sad and also worried for my two dds. I want them to grow up knowing that breastfeeding is normal and wonderful and not shameful and disgusting.

I breastfed my dd1 for two years and 6 months so far for my dd2. I am overseas in a country where mostly no one bats an eyelid if you breastfeed and it is actively encouraged. I am coming back to the Uk for Christmas and am bizarrely worried about feeding in public despite me doing it for two years with no issues. I'm very sad that some people see it as unnatural or that it she'd be hidden. Makes me very, very angry!

I think Glosswitch has the best analysis of this debacle that I have read.
www.newstatesman.com/society/2014/12/why-bodily-functions-are-feminist-issue

To Quote:

"Changes in sexual mores have allowed us to pretend that women are no longer under enormous pressure to be “ladylike”. However, being ladylike and being chaste are not the same thing. If anything, the more flesh we are permitted to have on show, the greater the pressure upon us to make said flesh hairless, unscented and perspiration-free. "
....
"Breastfeeding is neither disgusting nor unhygienic; it does, however, create at least one scenario in which it is clear that a woman is her body, inhabiting it as a functioning organism rather than presenting it to the world as a façade. I imagine that’s why, to the likes of Jeremy Clarkson, it really is as repulsive as public urination. It’s as close as a woman – and not just any woman, a mother, of all people – gets to dropping the act and being more than just an object beneath the male gaze (and what a shame that to do this, she first needs the excuse of nourishing another human being).

Female bodies don’t just exist to be looked at; they leak, smell, make involuntary noises, and what’s more, if they do all that then it’s also likely that they think and feel. But a woman having thoughts and feelings won’t do. Best put her in the corner so no one can see."

With my first my 'look' said. 'I'm breastfeeding here because it is the right thing to do for my baby and he has a right to eat here, but please don't notice me'. I faffed all over the shop trying to avoid the teeniest bit of flesh being seen and looked at EVERYONE to check they weren't staring at me or being offended. It ended up often being quite a drama.

With my second I don't think I had any kind of look at all and seemed to be able to breastfeed the baby whilst tucked under my arm, texting with one hand and holding a cuppa with the others. Sometimes the baby would unlatch and it would take a couple of seconds for me to put down my accessories and re-latch or cover up. I never even looked to see who was bothered by this.

With my 3rd it was as above but I was accomplished enough to feed on the bottom step of a double decker bus, talking to the bank manager, in a lifeboat and whilst receiving communion and NOONE EVER noticed at all.

I find that Express quote interesting, (after a fashion) because what they're describing isn't breastfeeding as a weapon, it's aggressive-defensive bfing. I did feel like that sometimes when I breastfed in public, of course we all would when we're brought up in a culture that sees women's bodies as existing for male pleasure. It can be very nervewracking getting your boobs out in public, especially if, as so many of us have, we've suffered from male sexual harassment in the past.

Hang in there op. Just wanted to say, we're with you.

I agree and feel sad virtually every day that members of my family are embarrassed of me bf. really dreading .christmas for example. It is so wrong.

I feel really passionately about this and have contemplated giving up my current career and starting a social enterprise with the aim of changing attitudes towards bf, education of the next generations, making it commonplace. I am a bf peer supporter but would like to do something more on the campaigning side than peer support. But I need to focus my aim into some actual action points.

I thought about starting a bf centre / cafe

However does this just perpetuate the idea that bf should be in it's own separate space which is the opposite of what we want? But the fact is this would need to finance itself somehow.

Does anyone have any ideas ? I'm being vague I know. I want to do something, but needs to interest people

I do like Dr Mosely, good on him, I need one of those baby hats!

BeCool I am getting that quote printed and sticking it on my wall. It is brilliant.

OP, good luck with your volunteering.

I have two DDs, only 16mo apart in age. I fed the first til 9mo and the second til 11mo. Both of them kind of went off it at each of those ages (I think my supply was affected by getting knocked up with DD2 which did for DD1's feeding). I miss it - and I do get a bit misty when I see a mum breastfeeding. It's such a lovely, precious thing to witness. Remember what BeCool quoted and keep on with what you're doing. Enjoy this time - I do miss those baby cuddles....and I'm NOT having another one!

www.facebook.com/DrMichaelMosley/photos/a.512775732068725.126803.122093147803654/917444404935187/?type=1&theater

Can you lot see this?

This ongoing media "debate" on BF keeps me coming back to this brilliant quote from Mark Twain:

“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”

Essentially this is what we are dealing with.

Honestly? I've never BF thinking “Got a problem with this? Well you.” Until all this rubbish in the news came about!

I'm also deeply depressed by it, but I think it could be partly because Brits have a problem with BFing due to our prudishness about nudity. Other western countries seem to be more relaxed about nudity (I'm thinking nudity being natural on beaches and changing rooms), whereas here if someone is naked we don't know where to look because we've been brought up with the idea that bodies should be hidden because they're sexual.

Seriously - in the communal changing rooms, a boy (about 10-12 years old) covered an unrelated little girl's eyes because my very young ds was naked in the shower! The girl's mother told him it was ok, that she had a brother and to stop it and he said "I just don't think its right that children should see something like that!" I still shower ds in the same way, but I feel icky about it now and I hate that I do. :(

If we were more used to seeing naked bodies in a non-sexual way then I think there'd be less of an issue.

I think BFing is the same - people are afraid that they'll see breast/nipple - they don't realise that 99% of the time you don't see anything as the baby's head is in the way.

oh god this just makes me so sad. I am infinitely more uncomfortable breastfeeding in public at the moment, it almosts feels like people are rating my ability to be discrete/ostentatious.

its all so fucking sad.

fortunately my lovely bottle-refusing baby doesn't give a shit where we are. when she's hungry, she's hungry, so she gets fed.

There's four asterisks between the 'Well' and the 'you' in that quote but they didn;t appear with copy and paste!

This is in the Express:

www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/peter-hill/545090/Peter-Hill-on-foreign-aid-breastfeeding-in-public-mansion-tax

"UKIP’S Nigel Farage has been flayed by women’s groups and the sort of men who wear “This is what a feminist looks like” T-shirts for saying that mothers should refrain from “ostentatious” breastfeeding in public.

Once again Farage is only voicing what an awful lot of people think but daren’t say out loud.

The key word is “ostentatious” because there’s no doubt that some women use breastfeeding as a weapon.

They plonk the baby on the nipple and look you in the eye as if to say: “Got a problem with this? Well you.”

A weapon?

Has anyone here ever seen a woman breastfeeding like this?

This is hatred of women, and fear, and goodness-only-knows-what-sort-of-hang-ups.

Feeding is definitely a feminist issue - hatred and disgust at the sight, even the idea, of women breastfeeding, is misogyny, though of a very odd kind that dresses itself up in notions of good manners and consideration to others. It's also a hatred of babies, that their needs are somehow less important than someone's 'need' not to be uncomfortable.

As Deborah Orr put it in the Guardian, it's anti-human.

I do think it's a tiny minority of people who really think it's like pissing or shitting. But they are vocal on the internet.

One person - a man, apparently, though how can we tell for sure? :) - posted here last week likening it to masturbating in public.

I wish I had a £1 for every internet idiot who said something along the lines of 'Natural? Yes, but so is urination and we don't do that in public.'

It's so lame. The baby is eating and we certainly permit that in public!

The only negative comments I ever had were from my DGrandma who wanted to send me upstairs when I was bf-ing at my aunt's house.

I think she was projecting concern that my niece, nephew & grandad would be embarrassed.

They were fine. My teenage niece looked a bit concerned at first but when she saw that I really was just feeding my baby; not waving my breasts around she actually thought it was lovely.

My aunt was not amused at my Grandma, though...

It is ignorance and stupidity. As the breastfeeding mother of an ivf baby, I am doubly vilified (not only should I be feeding modified cows milk instead of using my own mammeries, I should be feeding it to one of the queues of babies waiting to be adopted I was supposed to have collected). I am fairly hardened to comments from those with a dose of the stupid after reading many newspaper articles on fertility treatment and the accompanying comments over the years.

I think the type of person who comments on online newspaper articles is predisposed to be a bit hysterical, so I take it with a pinch of salt (ie I'm not convinced that some of them would ever say that stuff to anyone irl, so I'm not sure their narrow minded inner life should be given any airtime), but I agree it's sad how vitriolic people are getting about something so normal as bf.

I don't take the distaste personally partly because I haven't lived it I think. In addition to not believing that newspaper comments represent "normal" behaviour, I have never had any comments or raised eyebrows or anyone look askance when bf DD, and I bf exclusively to 5.5 months when I went back to work then part time to about 10 months out and about wherever I was. And all my friends bf as did my mum back in the day and no one reported any issues.

My experience isn't the point though when it comes to this. I know a lot of women DO get hassled when they bf in public and I have no respect for the narrow minded idiots who feel that they can limit and control women this way. Everyone seems to feel like they have a right to tell women what to do, how to behave when bf etc, when it's having precisely zero effect on them.

"Offensive" is such an overused term these days and actually what I think people who use it mean is "me, me, me, think about meeee, you're not thinking about me". It's selfish and it's intolerant, and I'm not entirely surprised that the leader of the UK Intolerance Party came out with the comment he did.

Hooray! Well done

Op I agree. At first (re claridges) I thought it was just all daft. Now I'm realising how many people are actually disgusted by Breastfeeding. Like, what breasts are actually for. Not just ogling. It's really sad. And scary that everyone has been brainwashed so effectively.

Basically boobs are ok, as long as they are not lactating.

This is deep deep stuff. As these days there is likely to be little support for Breastfeeding, and your female relatives are likely to have not done it, due to the amazing success of the formula companies advertising. Likewise few of your friends. So any woman successfully Breastfeeding is unusual, and likely to be feeling pretty proud of herself.

And then to be compared to nazi war criminals? It just does not compute.

WHAT are these people so scared of? Is it just lactating breasts, owned by a woman who is clearly in control of her own body. And a woman who is in tune with her baby, not following a ridiculous clock based routine from a book.

It seems to actually terrify people that a woman, a mother, can be confident, happy, content. That makes me sad. And shake my head at how, how, how have we gone so wrong here?

(Ie all the women's magazines are just full of crap about fixing your 'problems', all about the men in your life, how to look like a barbie for your man. I've never read any that are positive. Other than the Oprah mag maybe.)

But I personally have turned anger into positive action. I have set up a bf group providing bf support & info in my area. If we all do what we can, we can make a difference.

It's so, so depressing. Can't believe so many people support UKIP