I wholeheartedly agree with Jennifer Tow and Heidi on this. Here in 
Australia, too, breastfeeding cover-up shawls are increasingly being 
marketed here, especially in the South, but they make the breastfeeding 
mother even more obvious. Much more than using an ordinary scarf worn as an 
accessory. Like Jennifer, I am disconcerted by this trend to "special" 
tent-like cover-ups for breastfeeding.

If a baby needs the breast, she or he needs the breast, and no one should 
feel obliged to cover up unless she herself is nervous about it. If some of 
the breast shows, that's how it is. The public will have to get used to it, 
and the more mothers they see out and about, breastfeeding a baby 
matter-of-factly without looking wary, the less they'll notice it. This 
won't happen if they only see mothers wearing these wraps.  If a mother 
herself wants to avoid showing some flesh (probably less than is shown on a 
beach or at social functions every day by non-lactating women), choice of 
clothes can make this easy - a top that can be lifted up for breastfeeding, 
or opening only the lower buttons of a button-through garment. What is 
important is that a mother doesn't feel she can't breastfeed when out and 
about unless she uses one of these tent-like wraps, resulting in either a 
missed feed (and a distressed baby and a mother with over-full breasts) or 
the use of bottles while away from home. Using bottles to avoid 
breastfeeding in public only perpetrates the prejudice, and it also gives 
pregnant women and other future parents the idea that "nobody" in their 
community breastfeeds because all they see in bottles.

Back in the days when breastfeeding rates were at their lowest in living 
memory (second half of the 1960s), mothers were often offered the spare 
bedroom to breastfeed in when visiting. If mothers covered the breast while 
breastfeeding away from home, they used something small, such as a 
handkerchief or nappy (diaper). Yet I breastfed all over Queensland, many, 
many times with several babies and no cover-up, with only one incident of 
being made to leave. That was by a nurse who was offended by my 
breastfeeding in a waiting room, where no one else took any notice. I was 
wearing a sweater that I had lifted up for unobtrusive feeding, but my baby 
had (very slightly) lifted the sweater away from his face. This nurse 
hustled me out of the room and down the corridor to a spare room, shutting 
the door on me and my baby. Yes, this happened only once in several years - 
and this was in the days when breastfeeding was at its lowest ebb. I saw it 
as this angry woman's problem, not mine.

Virginia

Dr Virginia Thorley, OAM, PhD, IBCLC, FILCA
Private practice lactation consultant (cohort of 1985)
Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Jennifer is right: breastfeeding babies need to breastfeed. As she said, 
"There are no qualifiers."

Jennifer Tow wrote:: Subject: Re: Nursing mom asked to stop feeding at 
restaurant

Every time I hear about a mother being harassed for nursing her child in 
some situation or another, I am obviously disturbed by the ongoing assault 
on breastfeeding. However, as much as I find these stories disturbing, I 
find the frequent reference in such situations to the fact that the "mother 
was even covered" even more concerning. Even within the breastfeeding 
community, there has been a slippery slope in the past decade that subtly 
suggests that the covered mother is the *even more" deserving of not being 
harassed.

I have seen far more discussion of and promotion of covers in the last ten 
years than in the fifteen years prior. That breastfeeding organizations and 
websites sell covers with all kinds of demeaning names and childish prints 
on them is no advocacy for breastfeeding. Mothering is not some infantile 
act that involves cutesy devices. It is fierce and organic and makes no 
effort to hide the fact that part of human sexuality is human mothering.

If a mother truly desires to cover herself while nursing, she does not need 
breastfeeding advocates to help her figure it out (and cash in as well)--she 
will figure it out for herself. And if she really wants "discretion", she is 
not going to wear some huge tent over her head with pink bunnies on it like 
a big neon sign anyway. Nothing could be more indiscreet or scream more 
loudly "I am indoctrinated into the cultural idea that bfing mothers need to 
hide their breasts when a baby is attached and make it known to everyone 
that they are in cultural compliance by shoving a huge tent over their 
babies in public".

Any discussion about nursing needs to avoid noting "and the mother was even 
covered". Nursing babies need to nurse. There are no qualifiers. There are 
no more righteous "public" breastfeeders than others. I think we need to 
check our own language on this issue, bc it has become extremely 
contradictory.

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