Nursing bras

giving in to giving

I was a little shy about nursing in public when Marie was a newborn, and since she spent those first couple months nursing almost constantly, I rarely ventured outside for more than a short walk with the dog. But I couldn't stay cooped up for long, and since the alternative to nursing in public was for Marie to cry and fuss, I got over my shyness and decided to go for it. Once I got comfortable with it, I was anything but modest. I was too impatient to deal with covers, and I hated the idea of retreating to some obscure corner, so a lot of strangers got to see my nipples. Big deal. It really didn't bother me at all, and I enjoyed nursing my baby in public almost as much as I did so in privacy.

But now that Marie is older, I don't really enjoy nursing her in public anymore. She squirms, she's distracted, she laughs and points at things around us, and she likes to switch from one breast to the other several times within a short nursing session. Combine that with the fact that people look at me more anyway since Marie is a toddler now, and we attract a lot of attention. So I try to avoid going out when I know Marie is likely to want to nurse soon, and when she won't settle for anything less, we find a way to head home ASAP. This almost always works.

Yesterday was one of those days where it didn't work. Marie had slept badly the night before and had gotten up at 6:20 that morning, which is about an hour earlier than usual. When I picked her up from daycare, her caregiver informed me that she had only napped for half an hour. So she had at least a 2-hour sleep deficit. Nonetheless, she was in a great mood and had been for pretty much the whole day. I grabbed her stuff, she waved bye-bye to her caregiver and off we went. Except then I had to set her down so I could rearrange the stuff I was holding so that I could go get our stroller from the center's "stroller garage." Marie did not like this. Not one bit. As I set her down she arched her back and screamed,...

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