Breastfeeding

BREAST. There I said it, not nursing and not just feeding. I am actually becoming a little more comfortable with people knowing that I do in fact have breasts and I do use them to nurture my baby. I remember meeting some friends at a restaurant as a first time mom and when we got there I told my husband "I need to feed the baby, but you go on ahead. If they ask where I am tell them I am nursing. DON'T say breastfeeding!" It actually came up in conversation with the group later and ended up being a funny topic that we could all laugh about.

I wondered how my son would handle the whole thing with me breastfeeding his baby sister. He is a very observant little two year old and I almost feared what kind of questions he would come up with. It's been three months now and he has adapted to the whole process quite well. A lot better than his mother who has possibly become jaded by a culture that looks at the female anatomy as a strictly sexual commodity. The funny thing is he gets the words "eat" and "feed" mixed up so he always says "Oh No mama! She's cwying. You need to eat her." or "are you eating my sister?" One time he actually tried to nurse a baby doll. He said that the baby was hungry and then lifted up his shirt, but after wrestling with the position he dropped the baby and said "he's too heavy". Thankfully I don't ever have to worry about him taking on that responsibility in real life!

I have a friend that has 8 kids and one day she was in the nursery and when doing a head count asked one of her children "where is Seth" and the child responded "mom your feeding him". Yeah, true story. I am not THAT comfortable with the whole process yet. I don't want to give off the impression that I go around pulling out my boob everywhere, and yes I still say nursing when I feel it's more appropriate. In the end though it's nothing to be ashamed of. Here I am thinking it's some bazaar behavior that will freak out my son and he just looks at it as a part of life, like it's natural, and he's right.