Breastfeeding is NOT offensive!

Do you find this image offensive? If so, I'd like to ask you, would you take offence to someone sitting in the food court eating their lunch?

IF THIS OFFENDS YOU, YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY STARING TOO HARD!

This is a photo I took when I was breast feeding Lucas. One of two that I uploaded to Facebook, after the first one was removed BY Facebook for being offensive. This was an issue almost 2 years ago, and is still current today. You would think the world would have come to terms with the natural way of feeding children in that time, but sadly that hasn't happened. The only word I can possibly think of that comes to mind when I think of these people making a fuss about public breast feeding is immature. They have no problem with magazines that have covers with half naked women on them, they don't take offence to sex scenes and naked women in movies, but somehow, they think feeding a child should be done behind closed doors.

I printed pictures of us breast feeding and put them in Lucas' album and remember a friend looking through them and commenting that I was "dirty" for displaying them. It really took me by surprise because I had never imagined someone thinking that of such a natural process, but unfortunately there are too many people like this in the world. While they still exist with their stupid small mindedness on feeding, things will never change. If we weren't meant to breast feed, why were we given breasts?

I chose breastfeeding for a number of reasons, but the main one being that I wanted to give my son the best start in life. I had my heart set on breast feeding for at least a year, but our journey ended at 4 months, after a whole month of fighting with Lucas to get him to feed from me. It was emotionally exhausting because I wanted nothing more than to feed him and I hadn't accepted the fact that we wouldn't reach our goal of a year. I beat myself up about having to give him formula and felt like a failure for only feeding for 4 months. I have done some extra preparation for a successful breast feeding journey with our new addition and hope that we can make it to the one year goal.

Look out world, I will be coming your way in 7 weeks with a hungry child who I WILL be feeding in public and I can assure you, I will NOT take your criticism!! If you stare at me, I will stare right back. If you tell me to go somewhere else to feed my child, I will tell you to eat shit.

We cop slack for not breast feeding and we cop slack for breastfeeding in public and being proud of what we are doing. Either way, we can't win! A mother has enough stresses in life without having to worry about being judged by the rest of society for feeding her child. Give us a break!