Breastfeeding Exhibitionism

When I began breastfeeding, I felt self conscious about people seeing my boobs and so I either avoided going out at all, or struggled with covering up all the time. In fact, it was such an ordeal that there were times when I would just force my daughter to wait to eat until we got to the car or even to the house.

After I started to get the hang of things, I started to feel less modest about the whole thing but still felt worried about being judged for revealing too much of myself in public. However, unlike me, my daughter, Aubrey, who is never one to be overshadowed, decided she would no longer take her meals under a blanket.

This became very apparent one evening when we were out at a restaurant and Aubrey started to throw a tantrum after having a blanket put over her head. I had to excuse myself from the table and calm her down in the bathroom, which consisted of breastfeeding her… unhidden. Well, I couldn’t bear spending her entire meal in the bathroom so I sucked it up and went out!

And guess what, I didn’t melt! So, I decided then and there that I was going to start taking baby steps toward becoming a breastfeeding exhibitionist. My daughter didn’t deserve to eat all of her meals hiding in bathrooms or dressing rooms and I certainly couldn’t keep starving her every time we left the house.

A few days later, I was checking out posts on one of my mom websites and saw a mother asking whether or not to breastfeed in public. I clicked on the post to voice my opinion and after doing so, I scrolled through some of the other responses and noticed a very disturbing pattern. It seemed that all moms were for breastfeeding in public but most of them felt that it should only be done very discretely.

I became very disheartened that mothers were so adamant about covering up in public. These posts seemed to single-handedly shatter my confidence once again. All this time I had believed that breastfeeding mothers were a team that was constantly battling the non-breastfeeding community and the only way we were going to win was to stick together; now, I was battling against other mothers too.

Instead of cowering, I decided to take a stand in hopes of helping others in my situation gain confidence. Thus, the next time my daughter began to cry in the store because it was time to eat, I gave her my breast! And yes, I heard people whispering about my exhibitionist behavior and part of me wanted to hide myself or cover up; but, judgment be damned! No bottle fed baby would have to endure such ridicule and I wasn’t about to be ashamed anymore!