Your baby is hungry and howling for food. You are at the mall, on one of the first shopping trips since the birth of your small son. Your husband promised to pick you up, but he is not due to arrive for another hour. Junior is unwilling to wait. You are breast feeding your baby and he has not yet established a routine for his mealtimes. What should you do?
When you chose to breastfeed, you knew difficult situations might arise, but the benefits of doing so far outweighed the disadvantages. Breast milk is the perfect nutrition for infants. It contains the optimum amount of every nutrient that the child needs to grow. Through the breast milk the mother can pass along her immunity to many harmful diseases. This perfect food is cheap, portable and, in healthy mothers, usually available in abundance. In addition, there is evidence that breast feeling provides the mother with some protection against breast cancer later in life. It seemed foolish not to take advantage of nature's benevolence.
The alternative to breast feeding is bottle feeding. Formula is expensive. While it provides adequate nutrition, it is inferior to mother's milk. Sterilizing bottles, nipples and equipment is a nuisance and time-consuming. Who needs the aggravation if it's not necessary? Now, in the middle of the mall, with a hungry baby, you begin to have second thoughts. Maybe bottle feeding would have been better after all.
You now have several choices. You can ignore the baby's crying and continue with your shopping. The wails will disturb the other shoppers and you'll receive some critical glances. Your trip will be spoiled and you'll be a bundle of nerves by the time your husband arrives. This seems unfair. He's a baby; he's hungry; he needs to eat. The food is ready and waiting. The logical solution is to feed the baby, now.
Where should you do this? You could go to a public washroom, enter a stall, lock the door, sit on the toilet and feed the baby. This is unacceptable. The area is too small and you will both be forced to linger in a germ-laden environment. This solution reeks of shame, of embarrassment, and you must reject it. Your son deserves better and so do you.
You find a park bench beside the aisle in a side wing of the mall. As discreetly as possible, you drape a baby blanket over your shoulder, open your blouse and begin to feed your son. You are showing maturity, good judgment, and concern for your child. You are to be congratulated!
You will be pleasantly surprised by the smiles and encouraging glances you receive, from moms, dads, aunts, and grandparents. There may be a few curious looks from teens and that's good. This is a real-life scenario from their Family Studies course. If there is the odd disapproving look, ignore it. These folks are out of touch with the heartbeat of real life.
Our Western culture sometimes displays a puzzling contradiction in values. We allow our daughters and wives to parade around beaches and swimmimg pools clad in minute bikinis, yet some of us look askance at a young mother discreetly feeding her child in a public area.
For the good of the mothers, the children, and the physical and emotional health of each and every citizen, we must strive to correct these erroneous attitudes. May there never be another baby, at a mall, howling with hunger, whose mother is embarrassed to feed him
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