How to Successfully Nurse in Public

STEP ONE: Attempt to find an inconspicuous place to nurse. No matter where you are, there won't be one and you will end up looking like a total creeper sitting in the corner of a room with your back turned toward everyone or on a random bench so that literally every person in the place will be forced to pass you. At least 50% of them will do the "aw, is there a baby sleeping under the blanket?? Oh wait, all I can see are the feet! She must be breastfeeding. Oh crap, I've made eye contact. Quick, force a curteous smile, look away, and walk faster!" Bonus points if you have older kids you are watching and you have to be within yelling distance so you can continue parenting from afar as they break every rule you've ever set because they know there's no way on earth you will get up to follow through with any of your verbal threats.

STEP TWO: Get out your nursing cover. In keeping with the trend of trying to be inconspicuous, pretend it is just a random floral scarf, although it doesn't match any of the shirts that you have managed to squeeze your post-partum body/boobs into. It will never cover everything that it needs to. Just know this. Now hope that somehow your love handles are tanner than you remember them being because they will be showing. Trust me. 

STEP THREE: The next step of this magic act is to blindly shove a fussy, squirming baby in between your lovely cover and your shirt, simultaneously pulling your bra down and landing said baby in exactly the right spot as their mouth happens to open (I like to wait for them to take a breath in between blood-curdling screams. The sudden silence as they start to eat usually garners further attention on you as you are huddled in your little corner). 

STEP FOUR: After several attempts, you may think you have a semi-comfortable latch and be ready to relax and feed but you will be wrong. Just when you think you can coast, baby pops off and starts rooting and grunting and causing a rukus. Thats when you must somehow look down into the nursing cover to manually put your baby on the boob. The trick is to be able to get your head under the cover without using either of your hands because both arms are occupied making sure you don't drop your wriggling newborn on the ground (because that will really cause a scene). So, after you have gotten the baby latched for reals, you pop your sweaty, disheveled head out of the cover. Your make up is running, your hair is sticking straight up, but you dont care because you are reveling in your success!

Ten to twenty minutes later, shove your head back down into the cover to check and make sure that your baby has stopped eating due to falling asleep and not from a heat stroke/lack of oxygen. Once you’ve pulled the baby out from under the cover like you are giving birth again (and it will really feel like it because they will be a slippery/sweaty mess), you realize that you must repeat steps 1-4 so baby can nurse on the other side, and you will spend that time wondering why you ever bothered to leave the house.

And months down the road, when you feel like you finally have this thing conquered, your baby will undoubtedly enter the "distracted" phase. All it takes is a mouse to sneeze miles away and your sweet offspring will pull that nursing cover off of them exposing all of your glory and pop off so much that your nursing session sounds like a raquet ball match.

You may not feel like it now, but these are the sweet days. The days where you can calm a crying baby with just your boob. So use a cover or don't use a cover, nurse in public or nurse in your car, breastfeed for 2 months or 2 years, but know that you are doing a great job. It only took me 4 babies and several wardrobe malfunctions to get to the point where I could even semi-comfortably nurse in public so hang in there, ignore the stares, and feed your baby!