It’s World Breastfeeding Week again! I almost let it pass by without writing about it. Although the focus of this blog is breastpumping, I think those of us pumping should still be given credit during this week of awareness. The big news this week was about actress Olivia Wilde posing for photographs for the September issue of Glamour magazine while breastfeeding her son, Otis. If you haven’t seen this yet, here is a link to an article about it.
I’m not sure that most celebrities are like her when they have a baby, my skeptical opinion is that they probably hire a nanny, chef and personal trainer so that they can drop all their baby weight in 2 months. They also probably go right to formula because if they decrease their calorie intake they won’t make much milk anyway. They are able to spend all day every day being fed wonderful food and working out so that they can go on the Ellen show and talk about how they “have no idea how they lost the weight so fast!” While the rest of us spend about 18 months slowly losing our baby weight, and if you’re reading this then I assume you are also still making breast milk so you are still eating the necessary calories to get the amount needed for baby. Am I way off on this?
What I liked about what Wilde did, is that she made it “ok” for all of us “normal moms” to talk about what it’s really like to be a new mom. Breastfeeding or pumping every 2-3 hours, no matter where you are, and needing that to be acceptable to the rest of the people around us. Granted, we aren’t all wearing couture dresses in full makeup, but she acknowledged that as well. The message I took away from that is to be proud of being a mom and being able to feed your baby – no matter how that has to happen. In my time spent pumping and breastfeeding my two daughters, I have had many experiences of needing to do one or the other at a time or place that is not exactly conducive to it. Breastfeeding at the Costco food court, pumping in the car on my commute home and hoping that no one can see into the windows at what is going on. The reality is that I’m not the only one, and no matter how uncomfortable it might make someone else to see, it has to happen because my kid needs to eat. I’m not saying that I want to be out in public pumping or feeding all the time, because it is still a special time between us and our baby. But I’d like to be able to talk about it without people turning red in the face or without getting strange looks from people. So I will stay positive and although this is most likely the last time I will be breastfeeding and pumping, I am hopeful it will get better and better for all the new moms every year.
If you’re on Twitter you may have seen the hashtag #worldbreastfeedingweek and if you follow it there are a TON of celebrities tweeting about it, articles being shared, and positive messages being sent into the world all about what we’re doing every day for our babies. I am loving the attention it’s all getting and hoping that with each year breastfeeding/breastpumping can become less of an awkward topic for the general public.
To learn more about World Breastfeeding Week which is from August 1-7 every year, visit their website WorldBreastfeedingWeek.org.
i love my breastpump 