to feel saddened about " breast feeding covers

[Theas18]

lady on the next table in the cafe I'm in ifs beat feeding a lovely month or so old baby under a huge bib.

maybe she feels " happier about it" and all that but really. What do you see for a happily breastfeeding b baby-the back of a sweet little head? no big deal and very normal.

Why are we ( society) doing this to mums and babies. surely a 6 month old won't tolerate it anyway, so I guess they give up then :(

good night all...

NO Ice

Not all men as you said - feel OK with going topless.

My DH doesn't give a fuck about exposing his nipples.

He just doesn't like to take his shirt off, neither does my brother.

Going topless isnt all about nipples.

Blimey - and I only introduced the word "modesty" to the thread as a possible slight improvement to ICBINEG saying we must all be ashamed of our bodies if we feel the need to hide them away ?

What do you say to that ICBINEG ?
Do you deny it ?

There is a poster here that dives into all BF relating threads, in a manic way that makes me want to go and bottle feed right now because it makes me so cross.

Well I've just had a little read about the Himba tribe of Namibia and just as I suspected, they are an ancient tribe who still dress according to ancient traditions. They have preserved their culture and do not generally mix with the outside world, so as we have moved forward with new thoughts and ideas, they have not. So comparing our modesty to the modesty of the Himba tribe is a bit of a moot point.

I don't understand why you're getting so het up about this. Some women feel comfortable covering themselves whilst breast feeding. It's not really any of your business is it? Do you also look at muslim women wearing the hijab with pity because you think they're not comfortable? Or a Sikh man wearing a turban? Do you feel sorry for him too?

Interesting whether topless means nipples. For women I think it does (a photo shoot wouldn't be topless if you had something over them, for example) and a dress can be as low as you like, but is considered indecent if a nipple is exposed a la Janet Jackson.
I looked in to these covery things when I was pg with dc1, but fortunately I found the MN "one up, one down" advice and went with that instead. As an earlier poster said, it's creating a problem where there isn't one.
Not the bf mother's fault; it is a societal issue that business has tapped into for a profit, as per.

Modesty is not an intrinsic human trait...it is a means of oppression

So would you have sex with your dh in public then? On full view? Because we've been oppressed to keep intimate moments private aswell haven't we?

As I said at some point in my rambling, I'm not ashamed of my body.
I'm in my 50s now, grey hair, crow's feet and a rotund arse. None of which I'm attempting to hide.
OH and I had a fit of the giggles over an article in one of the weekend supplements, 50 essential products for women to beat back the signs of ageing. Well, he was laughing until I got out the calculator and started totaling up how much. Hundreds of pounds because women are not comfortable with their own bodies and the effects of time. Ridiculous.

I just find that they're a bit "HELLO! I'M BREAST FEEDING DISCRETELY!!!" and therefore a bit self defeating.

I usually have a scarf avaliable should I need a bit more coverage, but normally a sensible choice of clothes, baby's head, and chosing the best location available means that I can feed and not draw attention to it.

It's a bit like being in a communal changing area. You don't register a person getting on with it naturally. You notice the faffer that gets themself in a twist by half covering up, squirming around in t-shirts/ towels taking 3 times longer.

It's good if it encourages someone to feed publicly that otherwise wouldn't, but is also a bit sad that it exists because of a lack of confidence in doing a natural function of motherhood.

I have breast fed three kids. I have breast fed while pregnant, tandem breast fed, extended breast fed etc and have always used a shawl or cover when feeding in public.

It's just my preference. I'm quite shocked to hear that would make someone feel sad.

I even covered up while breast feeding in a room with a close friend. She didn't seem bothered either way. My two year old was also fine with it and actually brought over the blanket when she wanted feeding.

It's nothing to do with how society feels about breast feeding or me being ashamed of my body. I just feel more comfortable with a cover. It really isn't a big deal.

DS wouldn't latch without shields for 6 weeks. Sticking huge silicone things over your nipples is not a) something I could do without my whole nipple being out, or b) very familiar to most people - I had no idea shields even existed before then. They'd peel off from time to time spilling milk everywhere and looking like my nipple had fallen off. This combined with my agony and DS thrashing/screaming etc meant even at home I found feeding in front of anyone difficult as all conversation stopped, drawing focus entirely to what I felt was my inability to perform this function that was supposed to work as nature intended.

I bought a butterfly cover but it just made it worse - I couldn't see what I was doing and DS hated it. Scarves the same.

Had we started feeding in a cafe, I'd have then been stuck there for two hours because that's how long feeding him took, so all these factors add up to make you self conscious before you even start!

Consequently I've never fed in public and was pretty much a recluse for weeks because I became phobic about it. BFing is now dropping off at 3 months because my supply just isn't there so rather than torture DS with hours of forcing him to suckle I feed him EBM mixed with FF when we're out. I feel I'm judged for that more than if I was BFing tbh.

If I'd have found a cover that worked for us I'd have absolutely used it to combat my own insecurities about my feeding capability - not about my boobs. My shame was more in NOT being able to do it. I knew my boobs performed as sexual objects but the fact that I couldn't get them to work for their other primary purpose really affected me.

its people like you staring that make bf mums want to cover up , stop judging and stop staring .

I use a cover, not for modesty but because my baby gets distracted and refuses to feed otherwise.
It must look very odd as I have my head under it too so we're in a little tent together cut off from the outside world.

FFS

purple that is SO lovely! I can just picture you doing that! The perfect baby bubble!

OP... Do you stare? I would want to cover up because you sound horribly indiscreet and leering almost. Whatever happened to being generally aware of what's going on and making a point of not noticing? I long for those days to return, for just about everything. People now feel so free to observe and comments on every-bloody-thing that is absolutely none of their business.

A woman feeding a baby is so 'un-newsworthy' that I can't see why you would need to comment on covers. You make me feel self-conscious with your post. Knowing that there are other leerers and or judgers like you makes me very, very uncomfortable.

I'm sure that's not what you intended by your post but way to go, eh?

lying

The only reference the OP makes to what she was actually doing in the cafe is as follows:

"lady on the next table in the cafe I'm in ifs beat feeding a lovely month or so old baby under a huge bib."

Can you point to which bit makes you think the OP was staring? Or leering? Or being horribly indiscreet?

Seriously...in your own head much?!?

"OP... Do you stare? I would want to cover up because you sound horribly indiscreet and leering almost."

She doesn't.

You, on the other hand, sound like you want to turn this thread into a witch hunt.

You find a lot of witch hunting going on in relation to this issue on this forum. It's disturbing.

"It's nothing to do with how society feels about breast feeding or me being ashamed of my body. I just feel more comfortable with a cover."

It IS something to do with how you feel about your body, because if you'd been bought up in a society where breastfeeding was seen everywhere and pretty much everyone did it, the likelihood is that you wouldn't feel the need to use a cover. I lived most of my life up to 20 outside of the UK in countries where breastfeeding is the only way most women can afford to feed their babies. You simply don't see women using nursing covers in these countries, or draping scarves over their babies' head. It is something which is specific to countries where a) breasts are fetished and b) where ubiquitous bottlefeeding has made normal breastfeeding almost invisible.

mini research has shown that peer/societal pressure is on average the most effective way to make people change their behaviour. The same research also shows that people on average think peer/societal pressure doesn't affect them.

What you can deduce from this is that people are on average spectacularly bad at realising when their behaviour is being controlled by their peers/society. It is like a huge communal blind spot.

There are a truly astounding number of people out there who think they came up with the whole idea of 'feeling more comfortable feeding under a cover' by themselves with no reference to society or their upbringing.

When you point out that no-one feels this way in societies which don't associate nipple coverage with virtue, they just think that they would have been the first .

You see the same thing with people who are convinced that they actually prefer this months fashions to last months...just because they are better...and believe they have come to this conclusion all by themselves. Similarly with people who think hair on adult female legs actually is disgusting in some way, rather than realising that they think that due to conditioning.

ICB you're right, of course, that attitudes to modesty, nudity and breastfeeding in general are really all about social conditioning. But pretty much all human behaviour is socially conditioned. Men and women who live in communities where breasts are exposed whilst feeding are socially conditioned in exactly the same way as we are, they just have different social rules. The fact is we don't live in a society where women bare their breasts routinely when in public, just as men don't expose their genitals. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing in itself. The value judgement as to whether it's 'sad' or 'modest' comes down to the individual. And (as has been said by other posters) it's a bit odd to expect women to suddenly be comfortable with exposing a part of their body which has always been covered.

It does make me cross on these threads when breastfeeding covers are mocked by posters who then advocate muslins, scarves or voluminous tshirts as an alternative. It's the same bloody thing! Covering up is covering up, however you choose to do it.

Yabu I use a cover as my baby fusses at the breast and goes on/off a few times before settling in to a feed I like my cover when i'm out and about...if I forgot it I would feed away happily but I don't see why you should be saddened by the fact she chooses to feed under a cover....

Well said captain

ICB and mini... That's how I feel from reading the OP. Not only does she feel 'saddened' about another woman's method of feeding her baby she feels the need to post about it on a chatboard and turn it into an issue of 'societal conditioning'.

There are far, far too many armchair bandits on this forum, keen to take any issue and project their own agendas onto it.

No witch-hunt here but then again, I don't have an agenda and don't feel the need to question what other women do... unlike some.