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Okay, so I keep talking about getting to bed at a decent hour and taking care of myself but here I am again, up past my bed time.  It’s not my fault!  I got sucked in over at IzzyMom  reading her post about the breastfeeding pic that got kicked off of MySpace and all the comments.  Then I clicked on links for one or two more posts dealing with breastfeeding in public and before I knew it, it was late (lots and LOTS of comments to read)!  Well, late for me.  Late for me is not late for most.  But I get up super-duper-early because The Tot usually wakes up early too.

I gotta say, I will never understand why people have such a problem with breastfeeding.  I just won’t.  It boggles my mind how/why people sexualize this.  I swear that with The Tot, if I didn’t occasionally breastfeed in public, I never would have been able to leave the house!  She was nursing almost constantly at one point and I DIDN’T leave the house for quite a long time.  Being a new first-time mother I was so overwhelmed and needed to get out of the house so badly that I just kind of did whatever I wanted or felt I needed to.  I didn’t really think much about what other people thought.  Granted, I don’t think I ever breastfed in the middle of a mall but I have been known to breastfeed in major discount store parking lots.  And at the doctor’s office.  And at the physical therapist’s office.  And I think once at a restaurant.  I don’t necessarily understand some women’s belligerence about the issue either but I do understand their desire to not be made to feel like a freak just because they are nursing their child.  For me there was a complete change of attitude once I became a mother.  In my younger years I had been known to wear some pretty short skirts and I’ve bared my midriff more times than I can count but was always relatively modest about showing my “naughty bits” (as modest as you can be while wearing a bikini…I grew up in a beach town.  Ha, that’s kinda funny….modest while wearing a bikini!).  My modesty didn’t change but my attitude about my body definitely did.  Of course I didn’t want other people seeing my breasts but I also so overwhelmingly felt like breastfeeding was the most natural thing in the world to do that they almost became like feet to me.  Okay, that sounds really weird.  But, hopefully you understand what I mean!  I was not interested in intentionally showing my breasts just because I was breastfeeding but they were just so “functional” that I didn’t think about them the same way.  Anyway, I’m sure the debates and “nurse-ins” and passionate arguments on both sides will rage on.  But I still won’t understand why there’s an issue in the first place.  Maybe I’m just too naive and simplistic in my thinking.  But it’s keepin’ me outta trouble for now so I’m stickin’ with it!