Stranger Stares at Breastfeeding Mom
What 1 Mom — and the Stranger Who Gawked — Saw While Breastfeeding in Public
Kate Bee has a message for the woman who sat next to her as she was breastfeeding her baby and proceeded to stare — the entire time.
The new mom explained that she purposefully sat behind the coffee shop, under the stairs, because she thought that it was a "perfectly discreet spot" to nurse a baby without offending anyone. And yet 20 minutes into her little one's feeding, this stranger approached and sat next to her. "I smiled at you and you continued to mean mug me as I fed my son," she shared on Instagram.
Kate explained that she didn't entirely cover up because her baby, Jack, doesn't like to eat in the dark with a blanket over his head and that the disorientation makes it difficult for him to latch. However, she wants this woman to know that even if she caught a glimpse of bare skin, that isn't a reason to gawk. "While you may have seen the curve of a bare breast I saw the big blue eyes of a healthy boy staring up at me as I nourished him despite your obvious disgust," she wrote.
Later that afternoon, she stopped to breastfeed Jack again, but this time, male strangers in the park had an entirely different reaction — which made the first woman's actions even more upsetting. "The three older men drinking nearby had the common decency to simply smile and nod before going about their business without staring," she wrote. "It's too bad more people don't react to nursing in public like the low-income men in the park."
