Myself and the kidlets joined my family for a dinner out last night. We requested a round table near the back, not only for corralling the kids but so that I could feed Boy Child without too much hassle (nursing in a booth is a pain in the ass!) and so that we'd have a bit of privacy.
As luck would it have, we make it through half the meal with Boy Child content with looking around. But then he starts in with the grunting, rustling and first flailing. So I move aside the flap of my sweater, push down part of my tank top, unhook my nursing bra, pull out the necessary bits, and latch Boy Child on. My sweater, my hand and Boy Child's head do a pretty good job of concealing things. If you were to just glance at us you probably wouldn't even know I was nursing him. If you were to look harder you'd notice, but you wouldn't see much aside from his melon head.
As he's nursing, an older couple is seated at a booth directly across from us. Straight from the get-go the woman, who looked to be in her sixties, couldn't take her eyes off of us. Her husband kept batting her with his menu to no avail. You'd think another couple arriving to join them would end her constant staring. Oh no. Instead she nudged them and gestured in my direction. They glanced over, looked away, and that was that. But this woman? She just could not drop it. I heard her whispering to them and saying, “that's so grossâ€, and she kept looking over. Each time I would make eye contact and smile, then go back to eating, talking to my family, talking to my son, etc.
I'm used to people glancing at me, or even looking twice. I've seen the groups, where one person nudges another and whispers for them to look, and so on and so forth. But to spend an entire meal glaring at a breastfeeding mother? Seriously. She was glaring at me. She kept leaning around the woman next to her to see me. When she got out of the booth to go somewhere she walked really slow so she could keep looking.
Whatever happened to, “if you don't like it, don't lookâ€? Why not ask the server to move them to a different table (the restaurant was nearly empty)? Why keep subjecting to something that you don't like or approve of? Move on!
I'm about to start carrying a polaroid camera with me, and instructing whoever is with me to snap a shot of me feeding Boy Child. Then I can hand the photo to the stare-happy person and tell them to go frame it, since it's obviously of such importance.
