Things I Did and Did Not Think About While Breastfeeding in Public: An Exhaustive List

I breastfed my bio-child. It was a choice that I made for myself and the baby. It seemed like a natural choice to me having seen my mother breastfeed my younger siblings and aunts breastfeed cousins and even family friends breastfeed their babies.

Because it seems so natural to me, even though it wasn’t always easy, and although I honor everyone’s right to make different choices, I don’t understand the consistent outcry against mothers breastfeeding in public. How other people feel about breasts doesn’t change my thinking because how other people feel about breasts never entered my mind at all when my baby was hungry.

Perhaps breastfeeding, though rising in popularity, wasn’t as politicized almost a decade ago when I had my child. In the time since, I have seen people online outraged and claiming that breastfeeding is like using the bathroom, vomiting or bleeding, and arguing that we try to do those things in private. Here’s the thing though, breastfeeding isn’t like those things at all, and instinctively many of us know this. You know what breastfeeding is like? In fact, is? Eating. Breastfeeding is an extremely popular way of eating. That’s why the word “feed” is right in it. And we happily eat in public all the time.

Human beings love food. We love food. In fact, we have entire industries, restaurants, channels and stores focused simply around the pleasure of food. Our instagrams are (maybe just mine?)…