This is the letter I sent to one of my good friends, the naked redhead. It’s an update to the ‘nursing at church’ post I wrote about a month and a half ago.
Dear Red,
So, I don’t know if I told you the (semi) latest.
About a month and a half ago, I was confronted by the Presbyterian Church’s resident pot stirrer/backstabber/gossiper. She said that some parents were upset by the fact that I breastfeed Baboo in front of the youth group kids. At first she was like “watch out.” I asked her what I was supposed to be watching out for. I told her that anyone who had an issue could speak to me directly but that I wasn’t going to change the way I feed my baby. (Did I mention that this was just a month and a half ago? Baboo was 8 MONTHS OLD. This wasn’t a new thing. I had been nursing him the entire 8 months before with no fanfare. Meh.)
Later in our conversation, she changed her tune from “watch out” to a “you go, girl!” type of attitude. It was weird.
Turns out, she was the one who had the problem with me nursing in front of the kids.
Want to hear the best part? She’s a nursing mom herself! She has a 7-month-old she’s breastfeeding now and 4 older kids she breastfeed (most of them until around 2 years of age).
So, the pastor at the church talked to the husband about it. He was (the pastor) pretty supportive of me, but at one point asked Grumpy if we could compromise. You know.. have me go into another room while I fed Baboo. I’m not sure what hubby said… maybe that he would talk to me about it. When he did talk to me about it, I told him I would gladly go into another room to feed Baboo, as long as the youth group kids were all separated from one another as well. Didn’t you hear? It’s obscene to eat in front of other people nowadays. Needless to say, I didn’t change the way I fed Baboo. (As an aside, hubby supports me completely. I don’t think I got that point across in this paragraph.)
So, two nights ago was the church’s Session meeting (governing board for the church). The one guy (maybe in his 60s…) who had been recruited to check out the situation and do some investigating into the “breastfeeding issue” brought up the fact that some parents were upset by the fact that I feed Baboo in front of the kids. Apparently there was silence when he stopped speaking. Then a few older gentlemen spoke up (in their 80s, or so I’ve been told) saying that they didn’t think it was appropriate. Silence.
Then, one of the mom of two of hubby’s youth group girls opened a can of whoop ass. I mean, just cracked that sucker open. She pretty much said all of the things that I had been saying to Grumpy whenever we discussed it… It’s natural, it’s best for baby, there’s nothing shameful or obscene about it. Then she states, “I know the mother who has been complaining about this. She’s a nursing mother herself! And she might make a big deal of pulling out her designer cover when she feeds her kid, but that hasn’t always been the case… and she didn’t use one at all when she was younger.”
Then the session moved to tell my husband that the issue had been laid to rest and that neither he nor I needed to worry about anything.
/update
~yogamommy
