I made a conscious decision yesterday that I wanted to nurse more in public. It seemed silly to be rushing home with a screaming baby. I know the law: it is not obscenity, anywhere it is legal for the baby to be it is legal to nurse. And honestly, if people have a problem with it, that's their issue not mine. They have a right to be uncomfortable but my baby girl can't feed herself so this is a necessity. No one would blink an eye if you ate a snack anywhere in public and I really see no difference. I had played around with it the previous day out of necessity. We had gone to the baby storytime at the Cambrian library and she was doing great so I decided to stop at Le Bou so I could get a sandwich and she melted down between the car and the restaurant. So I found a fairly secluded patio seat to nurse her in. Nothing terribly happened. No weird looks of people walking by (that I noticed anyway) and in fact a couple of women came up to me to tell me what a beautiful baby I had. So, I decided to try again the next day.
So I purposely didn't bring any pumped breastmilk with me on our very busy day yesterday. We left the house around 10 so I could stop by babies r us and target. I needed to get some disposable diapers for our trip to San Diego next month, so not going to mess with lugging around cloth diapers for a week! I had originally decided to go to BRUs because I had a coupon for a 2 packages of diapers for $35, not noticing that they were packages of 150 diapers! Obviously it makes sense for people that are just using disposables, but that's not us, so I opted for the earth friendlier ones that have no chlorine, dyes or fragrances. Also bought a baby pool so Grandma Tere can teach Callie to swim:) She certainly already has the kicking thing down! She was doing great so we went over to Target so I could pick up a gift card for a friend's baby shower on Saturday. I thought I could push it and find a card too, but no...it was eating time! So I paid for my gift card and spotted some comfy looking chairs outside target in the foodcourt area and given it was early morning there weren't many people around. So we settled in and nursed. No problems. Then I popped home to pick up my workout pants for yoga and met a mom friend for lunch. And of course my little miss got hungry in the restaurant. She started yelling and I tried to calm her down to no avail. There was a group of men eating lunch across the way and a couple of them made a point of turning around very slowly to look at what was making the noise. I'm not sure what they expected to find, but it was a baby! Shocking! So I nursed at the table. Again no real problems. We went to yoga and had to nurse again. Baby girl was snacking now! By the end of class she was dead asleep so I decided to go meet some other moms and do the stroller hike at Rancho. Of course she was great until I went to get her out of the car. There was only one other mom there with a 3 week old and her toddler so I nursed Callie in the car a bit and then we stopped a bit into the hike too, since little Holly got hungry too. After our hike we headed home. A successful day! I think the key to nursing in public is a healthy dose of apathy about other people's drama. When I get right down to it, my baby needs to eat and I will take care of my baby waaay before I get upset about other people's hangups.
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