"If there’s a world here in a hundred years, it’s going to be saved by tens of millions of little things. The powers-that-be can break up any big thing they want. They can corrupt it or co-opt it from the inside, or they can attack it from the outside. But what are they going to do about 10 million little things? They break up two of them, and three more like them spring up!"
- Pete Seeger, in YES! Magazine

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Moral Support

It looked like Baby & Toddler Day at L.A. Zoo today. Strollers and mommies, grannies and grampies and babies everywhere. While wandering the zoo with our girls and a granny of our own, I saw a young woman breastfeeding in a corner, clearly a bit uncomfortable and trying to keep the baby hidden.

The project:
Help a breastfeeding mom feel good about the great, natural care she was providing her baby.

Time:
60 seconds

Why bother?
We're mammals. That means we are among those animals that wander Earth with mammary glands, those meant to provide our young with their earliest nourishment. In these days of heavily marketed alternative food choices it can be tough for a new mom to decide whether to go with the flow, the norm, the crowd or use the natural food her body can usually provide. Then there's the whole shame associated with public breastfeeding, while private feeding areas are, most often, not provided. But a baby's got to eat when a baby's hungry, wherever that may be.

Worth it?
If my comments supporting her choice to breastfeed keep her at it a little longer, if they help her feel more secure in her decision, if they cause her to become supportive of another mother's choice, then these few seconds were absolutely well spent.

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