by Brian Cleary
The moment I knew that breast feeding had changed me - a guy
- was when my wife and I were on an airplane with our 15 month old. My
wife brought our baby girl in close to nurse. When she uncovered her
breast it seemed like an eternity of exposure for the body part I had
once had to try so hard in courtship to uncover myself. Yet, exposed
as it was, I simply glanced back to the sports section of the New
York Times I was engrossed in.
I had become, relatively speaking, oblivious to the surging alarm in
most males' heads that cries out, "breast, breast, breast,"
any time actually naked, unadorned breasts are spotted. The breast, at
least when our child was clamoring for it, was now a purposeful,
functional device to nurture and feed our baby.
This moment proved to me how quickly men can evolve. When Saturday
Night Live revealed a skit in which the females from a certain planet
had evolved to grow eyes in their breasts - better to meet the gaze of
men the world over - there was a certain truth to it. Men stare. In
fact, until the birth of their own child, if a woman was nursing her
child it wouldn't stop most guys from seeing the breast as primarily a
sexual object.
Then the guy becomes a father of a baby who insists on nursing 15
times a day. Nursing through the night. Nursing at meal times. Most
significantly, nursing at bars, restaurants, planes and trains. At
first, your wife is struggling to get the hang of getting the baby
latched on quickly and securely. During this stage, when breastfeeding
in public, this causes long moments - at least they feel long to you -
when the breast and nipple are exposed. This is an important time
because while your wife gets the hang of breastfeeding, guys have to
get used to their wives breastfeeding in public.
There's no such thing as a baby latching on every time so quickly that
no exposure of the breast is possible. Or always getting that corner
table at the restaurant with the ample camouflage. No, through the
months, as the breast is popped out time and time again, in a myriad
of places and in front of every conceivable form of relative, friend
and stranger, you just start accepting this idiosyncrasy of
breastfeeding. And you expect everyone else does as well.
Yes, you realize, even a guy can slowly but surely begin to see the
breast of a breastfeeding mother, even his own wife's, as primarily a
means of giving baby the best nutrition. This stage is accelerated on
the days, early on, when your wife goes out for walks without the baby
and the newborn wakes up demanding nothing but breast milk and
screaming bloody murder until she gets it. When the wife returns is
when you first start to appreciate the breast for "saving you.''
Which brings me to my big moment, 15 months after our child had first
breastfed. The exposed breast appeared. While I was pretty sure no one
in the adjoining isle was glancing our way at the time - in fact,
truth be told, people are exceedingly polite about not staring most of
the time - if there had been three men, even three members of some
high school football team in the adjacent seats and they happened to
look our way, I'd have to have accepted the possibility of titillating
exposure. And, although I might have felt a bit odd and stared back,
despite it all and I believe testament to the modern man, I'd still
definitely found a way to continue, relatively unabated, getting
through that day's sport section.
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Breastfeeding
Reading
Room
