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I didn't work out too well brestfeeding. About starved my first child (-: But, I think it's great when it works out. I have no probs with women feeding their kids with a little cloth cover etc. Just a normal part of life in my book.

CyndiA
http://www.gardenandhearth.com/BarbequeMaster.htm

I remember being asked not to attend any events (homeschooling) if I knew I'd have to breastfeed my baby. I was the type that no one would know was breastfeeding though, but she overheard me talking about breastfeeding with one of the other homeschoolers. She told me she had a teen son that she didn't want to have to explain it to him. I was floored, she and he had never seen it because I would just scrunch my top a little so my little girl could latch on and then drop the shirt over the top so no one would notice.

I couldn't breastfeed my second daughter much because she was a reflux baby and always getting sick from it.

I think more people need to remember that breasts are actually intended for the feeding of children. At the basic survival level, they serve no purpose whatsoever other than this. Modern day has given them much more pomp and circumstance (not to mention sexual power) than they really need. A woman breastfeeding is not a woman exposing herself, like a random public striptease. It's a woman using her breasts exactly as they were intended to be used, and, one could argue, only as they were intended to be used. We go the movies to see actress' take their tops off, but when a woman breastfeeds...how can people be suddenly so offended?

Writingdreams, I can't believe you were asked not to breastfeed your child around her and her son! That she didn't want to explain it to her son! God sake! I feed my daughter in quite a discreet way too: top ruffled up a bit but not showing anything. If I ever got a comment like that I would probably tell them not to look if they don't like it. I heard about a documentary recently on a UK TV program about breastfeeding where couples were asked, once they passed a breastfeeding mother in a shopping centre, whether they were offended by it or not. Surprisingly, the men weren't but the women were! The men were the ones that glanced briefly then carried on about their business but the women would either stare or ignore it completely. You would have thought it would be the other way around! I reckon the women who were offended were probably pissed off that their man had 'glanced' at another woman's breasts!

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Not every state in the US has specific laws to protect the rights of women to breastfeed their children in public, but it IS legal to breastfeed in public and illegal to deny a child sustenance in every state. I've never been asked to leave or to stop nursing, but then, we are so discreet that I've had people walk up and ask to see the baby and only realize she was nursing when I told them they'd have to wait until she finished eating! The woman told to stop feeding at a YMCA has probably already sought legal counsel and been advised to sue, or at least to make a big enough hullaballoo about it that people in her area become acquainted with the rights of breastfeeding mothers and their children.