Breastfeeding in Public

Should women breastfeed in public? Being a modern woman (or so I would like to think), I’d say why not? After all, if the baby is crying and wants to be fed and mommy is around …. Why not?! That’d be the most natural thing in the world.

A couple of weeks ago, while on a flight to Kota Kinabalu, I was seated next to a woman with her baby. During the entire journey, yes (!) all two hours of it, the woman was trying to breastfeed her baby but the kid refused to be fed. He kept squirming around making it really difficult for the woman to feed him. The woman was wearing a T-shirt, which meant she had to keep the T-shirt rolled up to ensure her breast was exposed so her baby could feed on it.

And my god, that must have been the most uncomfortable flight journey I had in my entire life. From the moment I sat down till the moment I left, I was so distracted by the woman trying to breastfeed her kid. Thinking back, it was quite hilarious indeed. There I was, sitting quietly with a magazine in hand and trying to read. And next to me was this squirming baby with a mom trying desperately to feed him.

Really! None of the words from the magazine registered in my head. All the while, my eyes seemed to be focused on the peripheral vision. I changed my sitting position and decided to face the other angle but that didn’t work either. I changed reading material; brought out a lusty novel but … Nothing could go into my head except perhaps the image of the squirming kid and his mom. I am not exactly sure what made me uncomfortable for I have witnessed my friends breastfeeding before. Perhaps it was the duration of the feeding. All I can remember is wishing that the flight was much shorter.

In any case, I still believe that there is nothing wrong for women to breastfeed in public. All I ask is perhaps for some middle ground. Maybe one need not spend more than half an hour to breastfeed?