Years ago, my 8-year-old daughter volunteered her father, who was spending
the year as a stay-at-home dad while he finished his PhD dissertation, to be
the leader of a new Girl Scout troop. ("Oh, my dad doesn't go to work and he
has lots of time!") After struggling through a year of weekly meetings,
George handed the troop over to two mothers who agreed to co-lead, and he
and I trained as 'camp-crafters' so we could take the girls and the leaders
camping twice a year. I must have done the required training while pregnant
with my second child---I don't recall exact details---but I know that Toby
(who nursed until he was four) came along on all our camping trips until our
troop's first backpacking trip when he was five, and no one ever complained.
I have a vivid memory of bathing a toddler in a galvanized tin bucket on a
sunny fall afternoon in the Pennsylvania woods.

Years later I saw one of our scouts, now grown up, married to a Frenchman,
and living in Paris. She was home for a visit and happily breastfeeding her
son.  She had emailed me from Paris with some questions when he was new. She
told me she remembered watching me feed Toby on our scout trips. She was
amazed to find that her French friends were scandalized she was "still"
nursing a baby of 8 or 9 months old. I felt very good about having shown our
scouts the part that breastfeeding could play in mothering through the
challenges of outdoor life.

Both of the mothers who took on the leader job from George had breastfed
their own children, so this may account for the acceptance I found. The four
of us passed many happy hours around the campfire after sending the girls to
bed, just talking grown-up talk and sharing the burden of responsibility for
getting 12 or 15 girls successfully through a weekend in the woods. These
are happy memories!

Chris Mulford, RN, IBCLC
LLL Leader Reserve
working for WIC in South Jersey (Eastern USA)
Co-coordinator, Women & Work Task Force, WABA

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