A few years ago I had the serendipitous opportunity to nurse while
presenting at a statewide WIC meeting.  I agreed to the presentation before
doing the math to realize my child would be less than 1 month old at the
time of the meeting.  It turned out he was 2 weeks old, and the timing
turned out great - my husband and daughter tagged along and got a 3 day
hotel vacation while my son and I attended the meeting.

The funniest part of him attending my sessions was that practically no one
even noticed him in the first session, during which he nursed the entire
time.  In the second session about 10 minutes into it someone raised her
hand and said "is that a baby in there?!" and the whole room gasped when I
laughed and said yes.  We had to take a little break to introduce him and
let everyone coo and smile, then he started nursing so we got back to the
topic.

I was thrilled to be able to offer WIC staff an example of accommodating a
baby into the rest of one's life.  On the evaluation forms a handful of
people said "It was so nice to have a tiny baby there, if only he had been
breastfeeding, that would have been great!"  Another comment I got
throughout the rest of the day was people asking where they could get a
beautiful shawl like the one I was wearing.  I explained it was a sling for
a baby and they looked so perplexed.  I then realized maybe I was
inadvertently *too* discreet in nursing him!

I consider these little opportunities a form of stealth advocacy - its
almost a kind of reverse advocacy (though that's not how I mean to say it)
in that the advocacy itself is the fact that bf is not unusual, and just
blends in to the rest of life as utterly normal.  A grand version of it was
watching the transformation of the hotel staff over the many days of the
LLLI conference in SF - on day one I noticed a very 'deer in the headlights'
overwhelmed look on their faces, which by the time I left on Monday had
morphed into smiles and ease. (of course by Monday there were also about 100
people left too!)

Katherine Shealy



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