Why People Are Against Nursing In Public & Plastic Surgery

Say what? How are these two topics even related? I was with a bunch of pregnant moms on a cruise Sunday (lots of fun, and it made me nostalgic for being pregnant -- man, I am a sucker for babies!) and we started talking about nursing. I was telling them that, until I had my first baby, I had only seen one person breastfeed. We were in a restaurant and this woman whipped out the largest single breast I'd ever seen in real life, and spent a good five minutes maneuvering it into her infant's teensy mouth while my girlfriend and I watched in horror.

Now, of course, I know that the baby was pretty close to newborn and probably needed a little help with his latch. Do I think that we all needed to see her entire boob? No -- I'm a big proponent of Mohammed going to the mountain, and not hauling out the mountain for Mohammed, and all, to see. But I realize something else, as well. I noticed her precisely because she was so indiscreet -- and, if I remember correctly, the poor baby was crying. I never noticed all the mothers I may have encountered nursing quietly.

Which brings me to plastic surgery. I rail against the likes of Jocelyn Wildenstein, the premier example of bad plastic surgery on the face, and various strippers and A/M/W* types with pneumatic breasts that look ready to explode on contact, but as my husband pointed out the other day, there are lots of people who've had facelifts and breast augmentations that I don't notice. When we only see the bad examples, we tend to be scared of the whole, but the truth is that have pretty much spent ten years nursing, and the only person who ever caught a glimpse of my aereola (for some reason, the body part that separates good cleavage from indecent exposure), was a zealous admirer who leaned right into the sling where my baby was nuzzled to say, "let me see her sleep!" only to be met by said infant nursing away.

What to do if you're pregnant and trying to figure out how to nurse in public, or if you have a newborn, how do you find good examples to emulate? Head to a local La Leche League meeting -- yeah, you're sure to find people showing it all (it's a roomful of women, after all) but if you watch carefully, you can catch quite a few moms who are really good at the subtle latch. Even without nursing clothes. But those help, too.

Let's hope, as I age, that I'm as discreet with my plastic surgery as I was with my nursing! :)

*A/M/W = Actress/Model/Whatever, a major proportion of the female population of Los Angeles between the ages of 21 and 35