After the birth of our first child, my wife and I were having dinner with my parents, my sister and her husband, and my sister's in-laws at a very popular chain restaurant. Let me give you some insight into my marriage. If you were to look up the theory Opposites Attract, you would see a picture of my wife and me. Where I am an extrovert, she is an introvert. Where I have a "laissez-faire" attitude about what people think, she is continually trying to please everyone. Where I love attention, she will go out of her way not to be noticed - which I tell her is impossible because she is so stunning.
But back to my story... if being with my family wasn't stressful enough for my wife, especially since my family still can't understand why she would "subject" herself to the "annoyance" of breastfeeding, my daughter believed the tap was always available. My wife, as discreetly as humanly possible, angled her chair towards the wall behind a plant, covered herself with a blanket, all while wearing a nursing shirt, and began to breastfeed our 2-month-old daughter. A man, seated 2 tables away, made a comment loud enough for the surrounding tables to hear about how disgusting doing "THAT" in public was and she should do "THAT" in the bathroom so other people's dinner wouldn't be disturbed. My wife was mortified.
Of course, being the kind of person I am, I couldn't let that comment go. I not-so-quietly told the man that my wife would be more than happy to feed our daughter in the bathroom where he did his business, if he would eat his dinner with my daughter's dirty diaper sitting on his table. Other women in the restaurant actually started applauding and cheering, which of course mortified my wife even more.
Five years later, I still get annoyed thinking about that night. How anybody could expect a woman to sit on a toilet in a smelly cramped bathroom stall with barely enough room to turn around and feed a baby for 20 minutes is beyond me.
All husbands should encourage their wives to let their kids have dinner OUT!
Craig Hoffman, proud father of 3 breastfeed children
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