>I have tasted my milk, and on occasion, even drank amounts of it instead
>of letting it go to waste.  My husband has also drunk it on occasion,
>though he thinks it would be better refrigerated.  ;-)  Maybe I should
>wear ice packs.  ;-)
You should probably check with your child first, maybe he/she and
your husband can reach concensus on that one. :)

>However, I think perhaps the point was that this is milk she's bringing
>home for her baby.  If she spent a lot of time pumping it, she might not
>want to let any of it "go to waste" so to speak by drinking it herself.

I can't speak for any individual Mom, but I suspect that the objection
people have has more to do with the thought of drinking breastmilk
which is thought of as a bodily fluid (why else would we find pumping
in a bathroom acceptable) and less with losing precious drops of
breastmilk.

>I think that might be the part that made her angry...and as for
>embarrassing, it's embarressing to be made a spectacle of because of
>things like pumping one's milk etc.  :-(
We are embarrassed to be made a spectacle of over breastmilk, espcially
in front of our colleagues, because breasts are sexual. We work very hard
to separate personal (and certainly sexual) from professional. In our
cultural minds, pumped breast milk gets these things all confused in
our minds and the minds of our colleagues.

It doesn't have to be this way, breast milk is not like other bodily
fluids and breasts are not only about sex, but that's the way we
think about it in this culture and so we assume that our colleagues
and airport security guard are thinking that, too.

Like bf in public, as more women are able just to do it (drink a few
drops at the airport or whatver) it will begin to be normalized.

 Naomi Bar-Yam

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