BRATTLEBORO — I was born in the late 1970s during the breast-feeding revival. My mother, always slightly on the crunchy left of society's well-established “norm,” was a model pregnant woman. No caffeine. Natural births. Lots of pie.
It was a non-issue for her: she would breast-feed.
And, she did. All four of us. She breast-fed through the breast-feeding revival and into the corporate formula push of the 1990s, happily feeding her children, in hip times and in bad, 'til nipple did we part.
She never owned a nursing cover.
* * *
In 2006, when my first daughter was born, I was happily corporate. I worked in a hospital, and the jury was in. The public face of medicine was pro-breast. I would try to breast-feed.
Stockpiling samples of formula on the sly, I was happy to have a backup plan. While I played out the scenes of effortless breast-feeding in my mind, I rarely considered the alternative.
When I did, it was business and logistics. If I was unable to pump at work, I would switch to formula. If my breasts became so big that I was unable to maneuver through doorjambs, I would switch to formula.
It never occurred to me that my daughter would be unable to nurse. And, no one - no one - told me how difficult those first few months of breast-feeding are on the fragile psyche of a new mother.
In the pamphlets, connected by a firm lock of eyes and a knowing smile, breast-feeding was sold as a bond without complication. And for some women it is as natural as it looks in glossy cover photos, but that is not the universal truth. It wasn't mine.
I never saw the brochure picturing a newborn screaming from hunger yet refusing to nurse while her mother sat in a hospital bed, tears streaming down her face, with a look that says, “What the f- is happening?”
After simulated nursing systems, formula supplements, and tears - so many tears - my daughter and I had developed an awkward breast-feeding union.
And then, it was time to enter the world.
* * *
Breast is best, unless you're in public. And then, everyone is horrified. Thus, the ever popular nursing covers.
Before struggling to even attach my daughter to my breast, I would first have to engage in half-pilates, half-sideways-boob-slingshot to put on the cover (a glorified blanket) while keeping her starving, squirming head underneath.
With limited vision, I would try (with one hand) to make a latch that we could both be proud of, as beads of sweat began to accumulate on her small head and my furrowed brow in the unkind swelter of the California sun.
After one minute, she would always unlatch, grab a corner of the cover, and begin flailing wildly while I tried to hold her, my leaking breast and the nursing cover in position.
I cared then.
* * *
By baby number three, I was almost nursing-cover-free. By baby number four, my war-torn breasts and I ceased to care.
Like my nipples, my resolve had been toughened. I had the years of experience to back up my truth; in order for breast-feeding to work for me and my babies, it worked without a nursing cover. It was a new world and all of the damns I used to give were gone.
Conversation with offended passerby #1:
-“Do you mind covering up?”
-“I do, but I have a nursing cover right here I keep handy for adults. Please feel free to put it over your head if you are offended.”
Conversation with offended passerby #2:
-“What am I supposed to tell my children?”
-“That I am feeding my baby.”
-“It's not that simple.”
-“Yes. It is.”
The conversation was followed by a glare-off. I always won.
Conversation with offended passerby #3:
-“I'm trying to eat.”
-“So is she.”
-“Do you mind?”
-“Do you?”
-“There is a bathroom here.”
-“Well, then you let me know how your sandwich tastes in there.”
* * *
I don't believe we can have it both ways. A society can't insist that women attempt to breast-feed and then simultaneously make them uncomfortable about where and how they feed their children.
If breast-feeding is natural, then it must be done in a way that feels natural for baby and mother. If you prefer a cover? Rock on, mama. If you can't stand the cover? Rock on, mama.
Here we are, a species so advanced in our understanding, yet completely offended by the human breast.
Its function? To feed young. In the hyper-sexualized world of the American breast, where form is always before function, we are offended incorrectly.
So if you don't mind, please take your righteous indignation over seeing breasts while you're eating and save it for your trip to the family restaurant.
Hooters.