By Jennifer Smith 
It’s 9:30 am Sunday morning and I have already had to defend my boobies twice today already. Ugh. I am seething with rage. I can’t seem to get through to people, most of all my own family.
If you do not or did not breastfeed your children, you won’t get this. I am not saying you chose the wrong method of feeding your child, I am simply saying, until you whip your boobies out every single day to feed a screaming child- you won’t get this.
There is a stigma still attached to breastfeeding. People still try to make us feel ashamed even though we chose this way to feed our child. My breasts were put on my body to feed my children. That’s it, nothing more. Trust me when I say, a few months of breastfeeding and you don’t think they are sexy any more (unless sexy to you is the same as me: calming a screaming child with my magical lady powers).
Breastfeeding mamas sat through the sometimes agonizing months trying to learn to latch our babies. We have dealt with tongue ties, thrush, blocked ducts and mastitis. We have dealt with our own personal boundaries and fear to feed in public for the first time. Sometimes scary things are easier if you see other people doing it too. Like breastfeeding.
We share our photos with the hashtag #normalizebreastfeeding because that’s what we’re trying to do. We are not sharing our photos to disgust you or make you feel uncomfortable. Quite the opposite really, we are trying to bring awareness!
Some women give up breastfeeding because that do not have any support. They are shamed and embarrassed to feed their children and give into bottles because ‘it’s easer.’ That is heartbreaking. So perhaps the next time you see a photo of a woman breastfeeding her child, give her some mad props! The textbook wrong response would be, “well I liked all your photos except the breastfeeding ones. That shouldn’t be on social media.”
I know that people come from a different generation; a generation that made breastfeeding taboo and not okay to do in public. But that is wrong. Those generations made something that was perfectly normal and beautiful and made it something people think is not okay to be proud of it. Seriously, nothing kills a mood faster than making a comment like that. I am hurt and upset that such narrow minded views still exist in the world. Especially in my own family. The people that should be supportive! The people who saw my cleavage ever since I got it! You think using my boobies for good instead of evil would be okay now?
Facebook and social media is a double edged sword. Yes private moments aren’t private any more. But! We also have an amazing tool and it’s never been so easy to connect with people. Feel free to exercise the right to click away or scroll past my boobies at any time. Please try imagining how maddening it is for people to use boobs to sell products everywhere but we can’t feed our children? And if we do, it’s a private, unseen moment. If I were using a bottle to feed my child in a photo- that’s okay? How skewed is that?! You see where I am coming from here? I gotta go milk myself.
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