It would seem, what could be more natural than breastfeeding a baby? However, this view is not shared by the relatives of the single mother who shared her story. The family of the former partner accused the woman of dissolute behavior due to the fact that she met them on the threshold of the house at the time of feeding the newborn.
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A single mother was humiliated by her ex-mother-in-law, who came to visit her uninvited and found her bare-chested while feeding her child.
A woman under the nickname aitabrreadtboob said on the reddit resource that she is raising two children: one is a year and a half, and the other is three weeks old. Once, when she was feeding the baby, the doorbell rang. She was very tired that day, as the second child was sick. She did not look into the peephole and interrupt the feeding, as she was waiting for her friend, and simply opened it.
On the threshold stood the former mother-in-law and sister-in-law. Seeing that the woman met them with a child at her breast, the sister of the former partner gasped and turned away, and the mother-in-law looked accusingly at the narrator. At this moment, the one and a half year old child began to cry, because of which the newborn came off the chest, and the guests saw the woman’s nipple.
“Anyone could ring the doorbell, and you go out to meet with a bare chest”
The heroine of the story did not pay attention to the reaction of those who came – she needed to calm the children. Her friend came up, the woman handed her the eldest child and continued to breastfeed the youngest at a party. According to her, usually she tries not to feed the children in front of strangers, but this time she had no choice.
All this time, the sister-in-law demonstrated how unpleasant it was for her to be near a nursing mother. And the mother-in-law was condemningly silent and said goodbye: “You are behaving like a slutty girl! No wonder my son left you. Anyone could ring the doorbell, and you go out to meet with a bare chest.
The woman burst into tears because of such an accusation, but a friend came to her aid, who escorted the guests out. “I thought it was all over. A friend put the kids to bed, we watched movies and ate ice cream. But at some point, my phone started to burst with notifications.”
It turned out that the mother-in-law told other relatives about this situation, who began to write angry messages. “Basically, they shamed me for feeding the kids. They wrote that anyone could see my breasts, for example, the children of the neighbors. They got to the point that I allegedly could distract drivers on the road and cause an accident, ”she was indignant.
Nevertheless, massive condemnation from relatives forced the woman to doubt her innocence. A friend convinced her to share this story to get support. “If you take my side, I will show your comments to the ex and his family. So, did I really do something terrible by not finishing my feeding before opening the door?” asked the author of the post.
The aitabreadtboob story garnered over two thousand comments, most of which were supportive. “How dare they condemn you for breastfeeding your children in your house, especially if they showed up unannounced?”, “Feeding children is definitely a very lecherous activity!”, “They came uninvited, so the responsibility for what they saw lies entirely on them, ”users wrote.
They should have offered to help with childcare instead of blaming the mother for feeding the babies.
Another woman shared her experience of breastfeeding two children. “I have twins. For 12 hours a day, I went naked to the waist, because I was either breastfeeding them or expressing milk, ”she said. According to commentators, her ex-partner’s relatives should have been offered to help care for the children instead of shaming the mother for simply feeding the babies.
Discussions about whether it is appropriate to breastfeed children in a public place have been going on for years. Mothers fall into social isolation, spending the first months of a child’s life at home. But even if a woman feeds a child on her territory, there will still be dissatisfied. But it is very strange to meet condemnation from relatives, especially women who themselves went through this difficult period.