Breast is best, unless you want to fly Freedom Airlines.
On Oct. 13, Emily Gillette, 27, of Santa Fe, N.M., was ordered off a Freedom Airlines plane about to take off from the Burlington airport after a flight attendant asked her to cover up while she was breast-feeding her year-old daughter.
Emily was feeding her 22 month old daughter according to this blog. A year or 22 months? Well, a toddler of 22 months is still a year old. I was still breast feeding my daughter when she was 23 months old. There are pages and pages of discussion on this if you Google "Emily Gillette".
A commuter airline has disciplined a flight attendant who ordered a passenger off a plane for refusing to cover herself with a blanket while breast-feeding her toddler, the airline said Friday.
I am spluttering and speechlessly angry again. Lactivists across America have staged "Nurse-ins" by Delta Airlines check in counters.
Given Americans’ predilection for sex and violence in their entertainment, it is astonishing that someone might be so offended by a discreetly nursing baby that the only solution is to remove an entire family from their flight.
45 American states protect a mothers right to breast feed her baby on demand, the UK actively promotes breast feeding. I have never had any problems feeding my kids in public, but I know people who have. It’s ridiculous. A mother has the right to breast feed her child wherever she needs to. I found this anecdote online too. (Slightly changed so people can’t be identified)
When my daughter was about 3-4 months old, a friend of mine and I were at out having lunch one day, and my daughter, too, decided it was time for her to have lunch as well…
So, I pulled her out of her car seat and began feeding her….
Now, mind you, she was definitely a card carrying member of the "Breast is Best" club. This child refused ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that didn’t come directly from my breasts… and I mean EVERYTHING…. this child wouldn’t even drink MY milk from a bottle… oh no… it was directly from the source or not at all….. this child wouldn’t even suck on a pacifier…. and one other thing… she never liked to have her head covered up, therefore there was no being "discreet" either. If I tried to cover her up, she would reach up and pull the cover off of her head, so she could look up at me!
So, anyway, we were eating lunch, and it was time to nurse my daughter as well, so I picked her up and began nursing her…. I did however keep my shirt pulled down to her face so that I didn’t actually have any of my breast exposed….
The lady sitting at the table next to me "politely" asked me, "Would you mind taking your baby into the bathroom to do that."
I looked her right in the eye and said, "No, I don’t mind at all….." and I stood up with my daughter still latched on and then, as I walked past this "nice" lady’s table, I "politely" picked up her plate and told her, "C’mon, we can make a party of it." I wasn’t rude about it… it was an honest and sincere invitation….
OMGOODNESS… you’d've thought I had told her the sky was falling or something….
She looked up at me and asked me just what exactly it was I thought I was doing…
I simply explained to her that I was taking her plate with me to the bathroom where she could join us to eat.
She got this major look of disgust on her face and told me how rude and disgusting I was to dare think SHE would go sit on a toilet to eat…..
I then said, "If the toilet isn’t a good enough place for YOU to sit and eat, then WHY pray tell, would you possibly think that it would be good enough for my BABY?"
Feed someone in a TOILET??? I think not. Yet this is no isolated incident. It happens all the time. Is this the sexualisation of the breast as the Lactivists claim? Or is it more that women are reclaiming their breasts for their intended purpose? Is it more that men don’t like to realise that our breasts are not for them. My breasts are small and they fed my children admirably. They are the mammary gland, they make milk for human babies. It’s what they do and they do it so very well in most cases.
I’m not going to go off on a pro-breast feeding rant because that’s not my soap box. Mine is that women should have the CHOICE to breast feed if they want to. A woman should have the support to feed her child as best she can and not be demonised for making the "wrong" choice. Sadly society (and Freedom/Delta airlines) are not supporting that choice.
Did I say speechlessly angry? Well, clearly not completely speechless but not as articulate as I would like.
aaaaarrgh!
Comment by witchy-woo — November 25, 2006 @ 12:42 pm
You “aaaarrgh”ing at the post or the writer there WW?
*grin*
Comment by ethicallyspeaking — November 25, 2006 @ 12:57 pm
Sarmorrow,
Thank you for your consideration by changing the names in my anecdote above… I hope it helps encourage nursing mother’s to stand up for their right to nurse their own babies in public…. and should any mom face a similar situation, they have my permission to use my story to their own advantage….
The right to BF in public IS one of MY soapboxes, and I encourage all BF mom’s to stand up for their right and their baby’s right to nurse when and where ever they choose to do so.
I nursed my son fis entire first year, but had to supplement with formula since I couldn’t produce enough to keep him content…. with my daughter, I nursed her for 22 months…. the first 10 months was exclusive…. 10 months old was when she took her first willing bite of solid food….. it was biscuits and gravy, before that, she always refused EVERYTHING but my milk…. What can I say….. she LOVED nursing every bit as much as I loved it. Even my own mother tried to tell me I was going a bit overboard and spoiling her just a bit much with the nursing…. I simply told Momma, that when she was ready to stop nursing, she would wean herself.
This is not a sexual issue and it should never be allowed to be turned into one, it’s a personal issue, and a personal choice, and if anyone takes issue with seeing breastfeeding mother’s in public, then they can turn around and not watch or they can walk away. I never allowed anyone to shame me for nursing my children when they were hungry, regardless of where we were. I’ve even been known to walk around the Super Walmart, doing my grocery (and other) shopping with my daughter nursing, with my husband and son alongside me.
One time, I was at Sam’s Club by myself with my daughter, and needed a place to sit down to nurse… too difficult to push a cart and shop with one hand, well the bathroom there had separate spaces for the stalls and the sinks, and there was a chair in the bathroom, so I went in there to feed her…. soon a woman and her granddaughter came in and used the facilities, then washed their hands, when the little girl asked her g-ma what I was doing…. the grandma looked at me with disgust and then at her g-daughter and said “She’s being a MOO-COW”…. I was shocked, and had I been able to gather everything up quickly enough, I would have followed them out and taken verbal issue with the woman…. as it was, I just sat back, took a few deep breaths, looked down at my beautiful daughter’s face and saw how happy and content she was, and then simply took pity on the woman and her granddaughter…..
Breastmilk truly is the best food for infants and if the mother is willing and able to breastfeed, then no one has the right to to be condescending toward her for doing so, just as no breastfeeding mother has the right to be condescending toward any mother who chooses, for whatever reason, not to breastfeed. It really is a very personal choice.
Comment by Sprout0912 — November 25, 2006 @ 5:10 pm
We share that soap box Sprout.
What I meant was that I don’t get evangelical about promoting breast feeding as anything other than a viable choice. The point here is that the choice was taken away.
Comment by ethicallyspeaking — November 25, 2006 @ 11:47 pm
many perfectly natural and wholesome things are best done in private this is one of them
Comment by debs — December 5, 2006 @ 2:01 pm
This is feeding a child, plain and simple. What and how we feed our children is up to each of us. Children, babies especially, need feeding regularly regardless of where they are.
Discretion can be used for sure, there’s no need to “flop it all out”. But babies need to be fed.
Do you only eat in private then? You never go out for a meal with friends?
Comment by ethicallyspeaking — December 5, 2006 @ 2:43 pm