World Breastfeeding Week

This week is World Breastfeeding Week which is sponsored by the World Alliance For Breastfeeding Action. Some of you might say, why is Agi T. Prop writing about breastfeeding? To bring light to an important health issue or just to make a crude joke? Hmm. 

The health benefits of breastfeeding a child completely outweigh giving them corporate bottled formula. It is true that some prominent media personalities have expressed dismay over breastfeeding in public. These prudes are simply unable to get over their trite misgivings about a natural phenomenon that is as ancient as fire and water. I say, let women feed their children the natural way, in public or private. Victorianism is like so 19th century man! Let mothers be mothers.

Sing your heart out Johnny Boy! Lord knows you must be bored sitting at home trying to resist the temptation to dance to your salacious tunes.

I apologize for the image above. I've been wanting to throw in an Aschroft/breast reference ever since I started this blog web magazine.

Comments

[DHN]

Hear, hear.

Though I must relay my wife's observation that "when they're old enough to ask for it, they're too old to have it."

[An Angry Old Broad]

I was a working mom and breastfed(her dad would bring her to me at work so she could nurse)when my daughter(who is now 21) was small.

Of course,this got to be a little contest among the young men I worked with,to see if they could catch sight of a breast(oooh).So,I just invited them all in to sit down with me while I nursed in the employee lounge.I only had one taker on that one,lol.The one guy(early 20's)who did come in to sit with me,was actually just curious more than anything.He had questions like"doesn't that hurt?","doesn't it feel sexual at all?"I spent alot of time educating him,and a couple of years later,when he got married and had a little one,he wrote me a long note,thanking me for being open and not embarrassed for nursing in front of him.He even encouraged his wife to join La Leche League,and ended up being very supportive and encouraging to his wife(rumor had it he also was very into helping change diapers and other non feeding baby maintainence)who had trouble nursing at first.

I had the sneaky nursing thing down pat,if you didn't know I was doing it,or didn't hear my kids snorting like little pigs while they nursed,the casual observer never would have known.I didn't nurse publicly to make a statement of any kind,I did it because it was EASIER than lugging bottles all over the place,and it honestly helped me to fall head over heels in love with my babies,more than I was already.My rule of thumb ended up being that when they had little baby fangs and used me for teething,it was time to begin the weaning process,lol.

This culture is wierd.Breasts being all over the place for fun and profit?No problem.Women nursing babies in public?Oooh,that's nasty,or disgusting,or something"granola moms"do.The bottom line is breastfeeding is good for baby AND mom,and,I hate to break it to folks,what breasts are perfectly designed to do.I have no issue with bottle feeding(in fact,both my kids HAD to be supplemented with bottles,one weighed 9 lbs at birth,the other 12,yes 12,and they were always hungry,sometimes I couldn't keep up),but this nonsense,coming from other women no less,of breastfeeding being "icky",says alot to me about how this culture makes women feel about their bodies.

[Diane]

If I were on a plane seated next to Walters, I'd be "uncomforable" knowing I was almost skin-to-skin with a friend of Roy Cohn's.

[via]

Great post, Diane! It is a shame how immature many people are in this country. In Sweden, even in the south on the Baltic it is often too cool to be comfortable sitting around in a wet swimsuit, so women have become very adept at discreetly changing clothes with a bathrobe around their shoulders. It's really neat, people could see what the girls were doing if they stared, but, people just don't stare. So nice to be relaxed about things like that.

via