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Booby Juice
By Amber Fraley (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)
For OpEdNews: Amber Fraley - Writer
This makes me want to whip out my jugs in a downtown park while I pretend to breastfeed a baby that I’ve borrowed from one of my mom friends and scream, “Woo-hoo! That’s right! Suck it, baby! And eff you mutha-fuckas who don’t like it! Breastfeeding is my legal right!” And then I’d slam a football into the ground and do a victory dance.
Okay, not really. And I say “borrowed baby” because my child is simply too old to pass as a breastfeeder anymore.
But whenever I do happen to think about the fact that breastfeeding not only protected, but sanctioned by law in my home state, it makes me darn happy. Big shit-eating grin from ear-to-ear happy. In fact, right after the bill passed in the Kansas senate, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) issued business cards explaining the new law that breastfeeding moms could carry with them and give to anyone who might give them a hard time while feeding their hungry child in a public place. And even though I was no longer breastfeeding my own child by that time, I wanted to get a whole stack ‘o’ those cards and hand them out willy-nilly to everyone I met, with said shit-eating-grin plastered all over my goofy, goofy face.
Kansas’ breastfeeding law is due in large part to one brave woman by the name of Amy Swan who hails from my hometown of Lawrence. Amy was yelled at by a man while breastfeeding her baby in 2004 in a local gym. The story goes that he objected to Amy showing her “parts” while his son was in the room. Rather than coming to her aid, the gym’s staff sided with the alleged asshat who yelled at her. Ironically enough, she was breastfeeding in the gym’s NURSERY.
Instead of slinking away and grumbling to her friends, however, which is exactly how I would have handled the situation, Amy fought for two years to make public breastfeeding a protected act in Kansas. When she couldn’t get anywhere with our city government, she didn’t give up; she went over their heads to the state government. By this point, there were many people on the positive side of the public breastfeeding law bandwagon, so Amy ended up having lots of help and support in her quest.
Kansas law now reads that a woman may “breastfeed her baby anywhere she has the right to be.” The bill also amended a previous bill to allow a mother who is breastfeeding her child to postpone jury duty until she’s no longer breastfeeding.
In my book, Amy Swan rocks. She rocks hard.
Interestingly enough, the issue of breastfeeding knocked another one of my heroes down a notch, at least in my mind. Though I almost always agree with comedian and political pundit Bill Maher, his sneering assessment of public breastfeeding is this:
“Look, there's no principle at work here other than being too lazy to plan ahead or cover up. It's not fighting for a right, it's fighting for the spotlight you surely will get when you go all Janet Jackson on everyone and get to drink in the oohs and ahhs from the other customers because ‘You made a baby!’… something a dog could do."
Yowza. Where to start?
First off, since about 96.4 percent of all American women have some sort of fairly serious neurosis about their own bodies, it seems unlikely that after packing on somewhere between 25 and 60 pounds and having had one’s entire torso stretched out like a giant pig’s bladder that said woman would suddenly be thrilled to expose that body to the world.
See, the whole breastfeeding in public dilemma starts waaaay back in the delivery room when you’re spread-eagle in the stirrups for somewhere between nine and 36 hours and no less than eleven people you’ve never seen in your freaking life wander in and out of the room while your vajayjay has become the velvety centerpiece of your lovely, mood-lit birthing suite. It’s in these hours that the deep, shameful embarrassment of your body that you’ve nurtured since the sixth grade, that very American, very Puritan sensibility that certain body parts are to remained covered at all times, is absolutely knocked on its ass.
Then, the baby comes and your body ceases to be your own. The baby has you trapped at the house, 24 hours a day. Friends and family come to visit the new baby, which has a heroin-like affect on many people, especially grandparents. When the baby wants to eat, the friends and family invariably say “Oh, go ahead and feed her here! I don’t mind!” while they grin and gape at your ta-tas-turned dispensers-of-life.
Breastfeeding is the “green” movement of parenting. It’s being so encouraged, so talked-up and so le-leche-leagued at every hospital and birthing center in the country, that to give your baby formula is likened to giving the little bugger cyanide. When I had my kid a few years ago, there was also lots of controversy about “nipple confusion!” which made us all afraid to give our babies a pacifier or a bottle. So the very frightened, very tired, very confused new mom is often scared shitless to give her baby anything but the boob, and if your kid is like mine, she won’t take a bottle, even if you’ve been un-“lazy” enough to pump some breast milk ahead of time and put it in one. (As one smiling nurse said to me, “Why would they take a bottle? A nipple is so soft and warm!)
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