Wired For Noise

I don’t watch America’s Next Top Model, but apparently there is a model on there who is breastfeeding. Since she has to be away from her baby she is pumping and storing the milk. There was an episode where she drank her own breast milk on the show.

Obviously I don’t think breast milk is gross, but I’ve never been tempted in the least to taste it. There is definitely a social taboo there that gets in the way. I can see for other people a necessary taboo, like all great ones, created with health concerns. Drinking a strangers milk could be unsafe as certain diseases can be passed through the milk.

But what about your own milk?

I’ve been told it tastes like the milk at the bottom of your cereal bowl, the stuff that is almost syrup from all the sugar. And warm. I think that might be squicking me out some, the warmth. I can’t even drink warm cow’s milk, it has to be ice cold or it’s no deal. And yeah, that fact that it’s BREAST MILK does kind of freak me out. But why? Milk from cows comes from their, you guessed it, breasts. I obviously know the source, and I promote breastfeeding so much for babies that I am well aware of the health benefits. But pouring a drink n a Riedel glass just makes me raise an eyebrow.
Instead of squirming and looking away at the idea of her drinking her own milk I should be applauding her for breastfeeding her child. If nothing else looking that hot should go next to working out with Christina and having superpowers like Gwen. Just think of all the not-yet moms getting ideas in their heads.

*Quick plug* Amy from Crunchy Domestic Goddess is pitching to donate funds to Global Giving. Just buy something from one of her two shops and part of the money will be donated. Like, oh say, the I Make Milk: What’s Your Super Power? shirt.

Tags: breastfeeding, breast milk, breastmilk

We’ve had such a busy day I almost forgot about this, so I hope it’s OK that I get in late to the breastfeeding carnival over at Sarcastic Mom’s blog. Lotus shared her breastfeeding story and left space for others to share their own and linkup with her. Because I never get enough of talking about my boobs I had to join in. Here is my breastfeeding story.

When I was pregnant with Evan I don’t think I really thought about what to feed him. I bought bottles, got the free formula samples, and just fell into the cultural trap that never mentioned breasts for anything other than selling beer and bouncing in tight shirts. It was during one of my midwife appointments as I sat on the table waiting looking around the room. On the wall hung a poster with an image of a woman holding her baby. Around the poster listed all the benefits of breastfeeding. I stood there and read the entire poster from top to bottom and when I was done I was a breastfeeding mother.

I nursed Evan for 15 months. The longer I breastfed the more I learned about the amazing benefits. Not just the physical ones, the emotional ones as well. I could calm him from any tantrum, make any owie go away, and ease him down to sleep no matter how grumpy he was. Unfortunately I was also a scared breastfeeder. I hid in bathrooms, covered us up with blankets, and ran away to other rooms whenever he needed to eat. When he was 15 months we went on a family vacation, during that time he was so excited about everything he saw nursing was the last thing on his mind, breastfeeding slipped away. I never imagined going past a year, but doing so felt so normal and natural I couldn’t imagine anything else.

When I had Trey I knew I would breastfeed him. There was no questions about it. We went through thrush, clogged ducts, some reflux, and a toddler who hated having to stop long enough for mommy to feed the baby. He ate all the time, and still does. But he grew fatter and fatter and I knew that was all on me. I knew more the second time around. Now I nursed at the park, at the store, talking a walk, on my in-laws’ couch, or anywhere else we were. I dropped the blankets and covers, I learned how to judge how full he was, and became a full on lactivist. Not only supporting breastfeeding mothers but also encouraging more women to breastfed.

Trey is now 18 months, still nursing strong, and probably more in love with my boobs than his father is. The side effect is that I’m very lopsided. Before nursing I was an AA, now I’m an A and a C. For whatever reason my right breast doesn’t “work”.  But it’s worth it to see how happy, healthy, and strong my boys are. My breasts did that.

Tags: breastfeeding, boobs, children, parenting

Here we go again. Seriously, when will some people learn?

Mom told to stop breastfeeding in NYS Museum

In New York, the law states you can breastfeed in any public place. But an Albany woman says a State Museum employee must not know that. Kristin Kelly is a young mother of three including a 4 month old she breast feeds.

Tuesday she says she was insulted and humiliated for feeding her baby in public even though she knew she was well within the law.

“I absolutely felt like I was doing something wrong,” said Kristin Kelly with tears in her eyes.

Kelly and her three children ages 5, 3 and little four month old Zachary were enjoying an afternoon at the New York State Museum. Near the end of their visit Zachary got hungry and Kristin says she found a bench up against a wall and began to breast feed her baby.

“I sat down and made sure I was covered, three blankets over him actually, and I began to nurse, while my other two children sat beside me,” she said.

Suddenly, according to Kristin all this was interrupted.

“A lady that said she was an employee of the museum they had another person report me and so I had to go to the bathroom where they had a chair set up where you could nurse or I would have to leave the museum,” she said.

Kristin says was speechless when the woman with the museum ID tag came back a second time, stared at her and asked her to move again.Read more >>>

People, people, people. Breastfeeding is none of the following:

• obscene
• immoral
• sexual
• perverted
• or any other stupid thing you come up with because you don’t like your view of boobs to be blocked by a baby.

And if she was covered with 3 blankets, which is insane to me, that already blows your whole “trying to get attention/flashing her boobs everywhere” idiocy out of the water. I’d also like to point that being in a museum there are likely to be images displayed that are more likely to corrupt your children’s poor innocent eyes than a woman simply feeding her baby. Heck, I see more obscenity just going to the mall than a breastfeeding woman.

Get over yourselves already. Your personal feelings do not create laws out of thin air. Trust me, if they did there would be a whole lot of people not allowed to talk in public because they offend me with their every word. Luckily we live in America, you know with all that freedom and stuff. Which, by the way, means freedom for other people too. Even the ones doing stuff you don’t like. Like blocking your peep show with a baby’s head or reminding you that boobs weren’t created to sell beer and sports cars. Inconvenient, I know.

And yes, before it’s pointed out I’m well aware that the museum worker was a woman. A) Some women, surprisingly, like other women and might have wanted a peep show just like some men do, and B) many women buy into the patriarchal crap of “boobs are for men only”.  So just because she has a pair doesn’t mean she doesn’t think they should be covered up unless bouncing in a bikini on a beer commercial.

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