BIP/NIP – breastfeeding in public, nursing in public

Today I gave a speech to my Toastmasters Club.
My job was to persuade my audience about a subject I was passionate about. As a Lactation Consultant, I frequently hear mothers express concern about nursing in public. It is either their own concerns about being discreet or they truly fear being judged by someone else or worse yet, kicked out of a public place.

These fears are not unfounded. Mothers have been asked to leave a store, library, plane or other public place because someone was uneasy at the sight of a breastfeeding baby. When a mother knows her baby is hungry and she is in a public place, she may become anxious about finding a private spot to sit comfortably and feed her baby.
This is particularly true for first time mothers. So, here I am, in front of a very mixed audience of men and women, with ages raging from young 30’s to mid 80’s. I know that when I say the word breast, there might be some level of anxiety in the room. I did my best to have a nice mix of education, information, statistics. Humor helped tremendously in relaxing everyone.

The speech was a hit as I received many written and verbal positive evaluations. Some of the remarks were particularly exciting. One woman wrote that she was now excited for her daughter-in-law to have a baby as she looked forward to being as supportive as possible, given the health benefits that she learned today. Another gentleman who was in his 50’s wrote: “Now I wish I had been breastfed.”