Replies

If it’s a problem, maybe mom ought to stay home with her child until it ISN’T a problem.

Of course, mothers now days wouldn’t DREAM of staying home to care for their children... they’re all over the place... I have even seen young moms out shopping with what look to be newborns babies... What ? You can’t stay home even a couple weeks?

Wow. The horrors you must have to dealt with in seeing newborns in public. Does it (seeing a newborn baby) give you nightmares? Do you suffer from PTSD from seeing a newborn in public?

Are you also of the opinion that pregnant women should confine themselves at home and out of the public once they start showing as used to be the norm way back when? And how old should a baby be before he or she should be taken out of the home for the first time? 4 weeks? Six months? A year? Not before they are eating solid foods and or potty trained, not before they are able to engage adults in polite conversation?

People used to believe that newborns were so fragile and so prone to exposure to picking up diseases that they were confined at home along with their moms for several months after birth. I remember a time when even family members and family friends were discouraged from coming to visit the new parents in those first few weeks and even from holding the newborn except in very “sterile conditions”.

But newborns, excepting for those who have certain medical conditions at birth or those who are preemies, in or just coming out of a NICU, actually have a very strong immune system, especially if their mother breastfeeds. And we used to think that keeping a newborn in an overly warm, dark, quiet room and, overly bundled up and away from all noise and all unnecessary stimulus and contact with anyone other than mom and dad for those first few weeks was a good thing. But stimulus and contact with other family members, even exposure to fresh air, even cold and heat, and sunshine has been proven to be good for newborn babies. There is no reason, excepting for those babies with compromised immune systems, that they should not be taken on shopping trips with mom. Personally I love seeing those amazing and beautiful newborns with their moms out in public. It does my heart good to see a stay at home mom going out in public while she is caring for her baby rather than giving her baby’s care over to strangers in a day care center while she goes to work.

I would also ask you if you think that menstruating women also confine themselves for 7 days and away from all men, not sit in places that men might sit until they are “clean” again and on the 8th day make a sacrifice of “two turtles, or two young pigeons, and bring them unto the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And the priest shall offer the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for her before the LORD for the issue of her uncleanness.” (Leviticus 15:19-30)? Of course back in the days of Leviticus, there probably weren’t any such thing as sanitary napkins and tampons so there were some very good reasons for those rules back when, except for the idea that a woman’s menstruation is sinful…..

Breastfeeding is not a “problem” that needs to be solved or dealt with like some sort of disease or as some sort of immoral act just because it involves “boobs” that others need to be shielded from just because some men only see boobs as a sexual organ. It is a perfectly natural and IMO a beautiful thing for a mother to breastfeed her baby. It is good for the baby and good for the mother, both emotionally and physically.

But I do agree that women who are breast feeding in public can and should be discrete about it.

Women who breastfeed their babies, even in public are doing nothing wrong IMO as long as they are not whipping out their bare boobs for all and everyone to see, without any sense of discretion and decorum or common decency and not trying to make a spectacle of themselves and their babies as some sort of political or feminist statement. But most of the breastfeeding mom’s I’ve known don’t fall into that category.