I have to laugh about this. On a ride home from visiting the parents my daughter announced she was hungry. NOW! So we pull off the highway and pull into an empty parking lot. My wife and daughter got down to business, and up drives the local cop.
He had me out of the car, Into his back seat while he spoke to my wife to make sure everything was ok. Of course, my daughter is screaming. It took about ten minutes for the cop to fully get what was going on.
Then we were “allowed” to carry on.
I would take someone quietly feeding their daughter with a blanket over them over getting hassled by Barney Fife in Harvard Mass.
That’s just weird! What did the officer think was going on with a man, a woman, and a nursing infant?
On the other hand, it’s Massachusetts ... maybe I don’t want to know what he expected!
We’ve had lots of stops on the road to feed a baby. It’s much better than the stops because someone has thrown up or had a disastrous digestive event. I stopped to change a diaper recently in a grass parking lot of a Baptist church just off the US highway. There was a Mexican roofing crew on their lunch break from working on the building, and they all cracked up as kids piled out of the van and I dropped Frank on the grass ... “Cambiar el panal ... un desastre, senores!”
I actually had someone pulll up and stop when I’d pulled off on a side road to feed my baby. With door locked, I cracked the window just enough to say, “I’m just fine. Just feeding my baby.”. They looked confused for a bit and then went on their way. It was dark.
I’ve actually witnessed a woman sit down Indian style in the middle of Toys R Us, pull her shirt completely down, and start feeding her kid. Never mind the fact that the store has a mother’s room complete with a rocking chairs and couch, TV, and changing table.
Something similar happened to me when I was driving from MA to DC many years ago. I was with my then 9 month old daughter, and two sons, 6 and 9. We were driving along the NJ Turnpike, and she got hungry. I pulled over, got her up in the driver’s seat with me, and started nursing her, and a Smokie pulled up behind me. He walked up and asked if we were OK. I told him we were fine, I just had to stop and feed my daughter. He just laughed and said OK, take your time, and walked back to his car.