Breastfeeding in public gets a lot of flak, the brunt of which mothers experience first hand. Of course not everyone has an issue with it, but in an effort to reduce the amount of bad attention they already receive, mothers have resorted to many ways to make everyone more comfortable with the act.
One mother, however, refuse to do this one thing when she is nursing in public: covering up her baby.
In her Romper story, Katherine DM Clover explains why she is not a huge fan.
She says: “I don’t have a problem with breastfeeding covers in general, and I realise that they make some nursing parents feel more comfortable while nursing on the go, and I’m all for that, but personally there’s one thing I won’t ever do while breastfeeding in public: I won’t ever use a breastfeeding cover.”
For the most part, covers make life a lot harder “for the two who matter most: the nursing parent and the baby.”
The one time she tried it, she created a makeshift cover for her baby and used it when she found herself waiting in the ER.
“It was a total disaster. I was miserable, but more importantly my baby was miserable, and I realised that it just wasn’t fair to put that on him,” she said.
The blanket kept falling down.
Her baby got too hot.
And when she peered down at her baby, she found him drenched in sweat and she immediately felt bad.
“As a mother, I felt horrible for letting him risk overheating, just to avoid risking offending someone with my scandalous breasts.”
That was shy she never tried it again.
Katherine doesn’t want anyone to think that she is judging mothers who do use covers, neither is she trying to guilt-trip them into eschewing the act. But she did realise that covering her breast doesn’t necessarily provide her comfort; covering her breast was an act of appeasing others.
And that’s not good.
“I feel really strongly that all parents, no matter who they are, constantly have to decide which things to prioritise in our lives,” she said. “Ultimately, I decided that my baby’s comfort, as well as my own, had to be more important to me than other people’s delicate sensibilities.”
And so far, it looks like it has been working for the both of them.
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