Apparently, only around 1% of British women are still exclusively breastfeeding when their baby is six months old. I can see why: I was keen to breastfeed, but my nipples put up one hell of a fight. They wept, they cracked, they bled, and at every turn there was an insistent midwife pushing my daughter's head back down onto them. “You have to get the whole of the nipple in her mouth!” she would snap, seemingly unaware that my post-pregnancy nipples were the size of tennis balls after being thwacked by Roger Federer. (The tennis balls. As far as I know, Roger Federer has not been near my nipples.)
Swayed by claims that my daughter would be thick or worse if I switched to formula, I persisted with the nipple torture. (Tip for new mothers: when they tell you “If breastfeeding hurts, you're doing it wrong,” they're lying to get you to stick with it. It also hurts when you're doing it right.) Determined to prevail, I bought a breast pump, a painless and weird-looking machine which caused milk to spray from my udders like a human cow, but was a palaver to use; I tried nipple shields, tiny silicone Mexican hats which seemed to get between my baby and the milk. Finally, cursing, I put her back on my bare nipple, and after two weeks the pain ebbed.
Having stumbled over the first hurdle, I then crashed into the second: apparently, the general public don't share midwives' passion for breastfeeding. I haven't yet been ordered to leave a coffee shop for exposing a bare boob, but I have been stared at and frowned at, which is almost worse, as you can't argue back, much less take frowners and starers to court. Even my boyfriend isn't keen on me breastfeeding in public; he has a penchant for draping my décolletage in blankets while hissing mumbled sentences containing the word “discretion”. In the absence of a blanket, he once tried to dress my nursing breast with my hair, causing me to demand, “Would you like hair in your food?”
When meeting a male friend in a cafe a few weeks ago, I began to breastfeed, only for him to blurt, “I don't know where to look!” He then laughed: “The first time I met you, you also took your top off!” I racked my brains for the offending incident, then recalled that on that day in summer 2008, a wasp had been buzzing round me, attracted to my brightly-coloured t-shirt, which I had then decided to jettison. If the only time you disrobe is in the presence of a threatening insect or to feed your child, I'm not sure that fits the dictionary definition of “exhibitionist”.
Still, I was certain that breastfeeding was the easiest way to get a spare seat next to me on the bus. That is, until one day last week, when a middle-aged man decided to sit down in the spare seat and leer down my top, staring as my baby suckled. “He looks like he's enjoying himself!” he cackled creepily. (Subtext: “Not as much as I am”.)
Perhaps blankets do have their place...
[PS Yet another set of scales this week! These read "60kg", which is 9st 6lbs/132lbs exactly.]
