Protest Erupts After New Hampshire Pub Tells Breastfeeding Woman to Holster Her Boobs [Breastfeeding]

Since New Hampshire protects public breastfeeding, it probably came as something of a shock to Hillsborough resident Jane Healy when the wait staff at Tooky Mills Pub (yet more proof that New Hampshire is the land of hobbits at heart) told her to cover up the exposed breast she was using to placate her hungry 10-month-old baby. The request offended Healy so much that she left the pub, and, Wednesday night, participated in a protest outside Tooky Mills meant, she says, "to just raise awareness" about the fact that publicly breastfeeding in New Hampshire is allowed and no awkwardly mumbling waiter can prevent an infant from enjoying a nice meal out of the house.

Healy was pretty offended when the Tooky Mills staff asked her to sheath her breast, so she left because only someone with a reptile hide could enjoy a meal after such a confrontation. Sean Burt, the owner of Tooky Mills, says that, while his staff certainly didn't mean "to upset or embarrass" Healy, it's the pub's responsibility to ensure that none of the Puritan ghosts roaming throughout New Hampshire accidentally see a boob in Tooky Mills and decide to haunt the pub forever.

Breastfeeding in public is protected by law in New Hampshire. Though Healy insists she isn't using the protest as a means of getting even with Tooky Mills for ruining her night out, she hopes to inform women that the state completely protects their right to breastfeed wherever their nursing infants start bawling for milk.

Protest sparked over breastfeeding in restaurant [WMUR New Hampshire]

Image via MitarArt/Shutterstock.

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Woman Films a Breastfeeding Tutorial and It Ends Up on Porn Sites, Of Course [Video]

Sometimes we might forget that the internet is just a seedy back alley that smells like river trash, a place where shadowy, unidentifiable mammals sort through old milk cartons and hiss at each other. Then we read a story about a credulous woman whose breastfeeding tutorial ended up being edited to look like porn and then posted on porn sites, and we all remember how pleasant it is when our modems shut down and we have to gather quaintly around the old cable television.

In 2010, MaryAnn Sahoury of Fair Lawn, NJ agreed to participate in an instructional breastfeeding video. She was really excited about the experience, she says, because she'd just had a baby and all the wonderful postpartum hormones that keep new mothers from devouring their screaming, shitblasting infants evidently hadn't worn off yet (Caitlin Moran just recently talked about motherhood on NPR, I got this). The video was made by Meredith Video Studios, part of the Meredith Corporation, and everything seemed above board — the producer assured Sahoury that video would only be used for educating people about breastfeeding's sundry benefits and techniques.

Then, as cheaply produced, misguided videos tend to do, Sahoury's tutorial found its way to the video arcade that is YouTube, where it started eating candy cigarettes and hanging out with teenagers who wear matching patches on their leather jackets and stick their arms up the claw machine. Before she knew it, the video had been edited by a third party to make it look less like a breastfeeding tutorial and more like porn, and summarily posted on porn sharing sites like XTube and YouPorn. In an even creepier twist, Sahoury discovered that the video revealed not only her first name, but her last name and her daughter's name. "For a mom," she said, "it's really hard to see that. You don't want your kids exposed to that world."

Sahoury is quite obviously suing Meredith for misusing the video, though a spokesperson for the corporation said that Meredith was just as shocked and chagrined as Sahoury that her video ended up floating intrepidly through the internet's sewers like a boat made out of newspaper.

Breastfeeding NJ mother sues after educational-video footage winds up in online porn [NBC 10]

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The Pressure to Breastfeed Is Getting Out of Hand [Breastfeeding]

Aug 7, 2012 2:35 PM  

If you don't breastfeed your child (exclusively, and for a very long time) then you are an uneducated, selfish piece of shit who sucks at being a mother and doesn't love her baby enough to not bottle-feed it the equivalent of rat poison. Or at least, that's the way all this pro-breastfeeding sentiment is beginning to feel. As advocates groups are laying it on thick and public policy is being created, new mothers are being shamed into turning to prescription drugs—a drastic, dangerous measure—to produce more milk.

Women who have difficulty with breastfeeding often turn to lactation consultants, who, by the nature of their job, are so dedicated to the philosophy of "breast is best" that they're encouragement can sometimes border on browbeating. Your baby isn't latching on? Keep at it. Your nipples are bleeding? Keep at it. You're frustrated and losing your mind? Keep at it. Because anything is better than formula. (Despite recent studies that find that formula isn't the boogieman we've been told it is.)

One common problem for new moms is poor milk production, meaning that her body is unable to provide enough breast milk to adequately nourish her child. According to The Daily Beast, lactation consultants are recommending prescription medication actually meant for gastrointestinal distress that they say increases prolactin, the hormone responsible for breast-milk production. But they have serious health risks.

The two most popular drugs, according to medical and lactation experts, are Reglan, which has been found in rare cases to cause an irreversible facial muscle-spasm condition, and Domperidone, which is not FDA-approved and mostly found via Canadian online pharmacies. One of Reglan's side effects, according to the FDA, is depression-a condition some new mothers are already at risk of.

The drugs, and the risks they carry, are just another example of the extreme lengths to which nursing moms are willing to go. Some pump their breasts every few hours, setting their alarms for the middle of the night. Some buy breast milk from strangers on an unregulated black market. Others sacrifice their careers or their sanity. It's all part of this new mindset that has elevated breastfeeding from "an ideal option for new mothers to a mandatory prerequisite for ‘good' parenthood," as The Atlantic's Gayle Tzemach Lemmon says. And it's stressing new moms out.

The irony is that much of this pressure is coming from progressives and feminists. The excuse is that they want to educate women on the benefits of breastfeeding. But assuming that women who bottle-feed are just ignorant and don't know any better is pedantic and undermines not only their intelligence, but the choice that they made for their own bodies.

Women's bodies are sacrosanct. Whether it's abortion or promiscuity or rape or fat-shaming, we don't want anyone making decisions or laws or even having opinions on what we choose to do or don't do with them. Why shouldn't those tenets extend to breastfeeding?

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Breastfeeding Pills' Risky Results [The Daily Beast]

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