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Tuesday, Feb 9, 2010
Friends are baby booming. Nursing moms are suddenly everywhere. Why is the most natural thing in the world so bizarre?
Mar 23, 2004 | "Do you mind if I expose my breast?"
I had seen a few women in various states of undress among the library stacks in college, but never expected this question in the children's section of a Barnes & Noble in the Upper West Side of New York City. I've known Amy, a 40-year-old children's television producer, all my life: she's as close to a surrogate sister as it gets. Still -- or, perhaps, because of this -- it was a little strange for both of us when she undid her blouse. For starters, it was Amy's first foray into public nursing: her daughter Emily was just a few weeks old. The fact that my fiancée was there too only added to the oddness. (Young Emily, however, was unfazed.) I pretended to flip through Lemony Snicket's latest dark tale, but Amy's the type to see an elephant in a room and invite it over for dinner and drinks. "You know, this is really weird," she said, "but I have to say, you're being amazingly cool."
I mumbled something about having two sisters and probably made a moronic comment about seeing tons of boobs in my day. Yet I was totally flustered by the whole thing. Not that I care who nurses her baby where and at what time -- nor, obviously do any of the nursees care for my opinion on the matter. But it suddenly seems like breast-feeding is as ubiquitous as the Gap. More and more, my e-mail in box is filled with we're-new-parents-look-at-our-perfect-baby pics, which always seem to include a two-minutes-old-and-sucking-on-tit shot. And every coffee spot in the New York's East Village seems to be turning into Cafe Pert.
How am I supposed to navigate this breast new world? Should I excuse myself when nature calls my friend's baby to her boob? Or is that rude? Do I stay? And if so, where do I look? Is there anything I can do to help? Am I a sicko just for thinking I can help? And how exactly did that woman at my local cafe learn to undo her bra, prop the baby up, attach him and open the New Yorker in such a way that it perfectly shields her in one seamless swoop -- while still finding time to chuckle at a cartoon? That the body works the way it does -- what a young dad I know calls "God's nutrient-solution taps" -- is amazing enough. That New Yorker trick is a small wonder.
"I think any discomfort involving the sight of the beautiful female breast, doing what it was biologically designed to do, is absurd," says my friend Neal, a 34-year-old writer and musician in Austin and father of Elijah. Right. Then you accidentally see your sister's nipple.
As with most things in life, women are at ease doing what nature intended them to do -- be it breast-feeding, talking about their feelings, or finding a deal on shoes -- while most men squirm like a jellyfish at the Jersey shore. New moms tell me it's typically brothers and dads who have the most trouble making sense of feeding time. After all, we live in a culture in which most fathers haven't seen their daughters naked since they were 4 years old, for fear of getting arrested. Now their little girl has a nipple the size of a Boxster and is whipping it out in the bleachers.
"Having my father see me nurse was a bit strange," says Web marketing manager Candace, 35, who grew up in North Carolina and now lives in Oakland, Calif. "He was uncomfortable, though more due to his hang-ups over exposed flesh than anything else. But he's adapting. He tried not to look directly at what was going on and would hover at the bedroom door when I was nursing. He just couldn't stand to stay away from the baby for long."
"With the first kid my father seemed almost enchanted," says Christine, 37, who works in the film industry and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two small boys. "As my husband has noted with some sarcasm, 'It's so nice to sit around the living room all together while your father sits 12 inches away from you as you nurse the baby.' As my second baby has gotten older (10 months now), Dad has taken to seeing what's on the Golf Channel, instead."
Even for some of my new dad pals, it's tricky territory. "When you have a kid, you go into this alternate universe where there are breasts everywhere," says 33-year-old magazine editor Scott, whose wife recently had their second baby. "You suddenly have all these new friends who have kids, the kind that need to suck on boobies from time to time. All the ladies get very casual about whipping out the titties for some reason -- this is the 'Twilight Zone' moment -- and you have to pretend to be completely cool about it."
"You don't make a show of averting your eyes because breast-feeding is cool, which means you are cool with it," he explains. "This means you are a grown-up, and grown-ups apparently don't get excited by that athletic and pert wife of your casual acquaintance from the playground whose tits didn't use to be that big but are now gorgeous things of beauty."
We try to be cool, we want to be cool, we are theoretically cool -- but we rarely are. Rebecca, mother of Milo, tells the story of her ex-boyfriend popping in on her unexpectedly in the middle of nursing. She told him that she had to finish feeding Milo, and got back to business. The ex looked alarmed and said, "Oh! You meant breast-feeding him. Should I leave?" Naw, she said; if you're cool with it, you don't have to leave. "I'm cool with it," he said. He spent the whole time looking out the window.
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