I'm sitting in a restaurant with my boyfriend, Logan and our 5-month-old son, Bryson. We're having a nice meal while being interrupted here and there with nice comments from people about how adorable our son is. Suddenly he starts crying and at this age you have to basically make guesses of what could be wrong. He can’t yet communicate why he is crying but first I immediately assume all he wants is to get out of that car seat that he has been sitting in for an hour and just be held. I pick him up and cuddle him but the crying doesn’t stop. My second guess is, maybe his diaper needs to be changed. I take a quick peek inside but it’s completely clean – but still, the crying goes on. My third guess is that he’s hungry so now I go through another three options of what I should do.

My son is exclusively breastfed which some think is amazing, while others wonder why I would do such a thing. One option is to go out to the car and nurse him there, but this is Florida and it’s one hundred degrees with eighty percent humidity and I would rather he didn’t overheat. Another option is to go into the bathroom, pick one of the many dirty and cramped stalls, sit on a toilet and nurse him – but no one should have to eat in a dirty bathroom. The last option is to stay right there in my seat at the table, pull down my shirt a tiny bit, and latch my son to my breast. The last option seems like the easiest, doesn’t it? Except it’s not. Honestly, the last option is the hardest for me because of all the judgmental stares I receive. I read stories on the internet all the time of women feeding their child from their breast and people coming up to them harassing them for doing so in public. No women should have to worry about some lady coming up to her out of nowhere and screaming at her, “That should be done at home! That is so inappropriate! You’re disgusting!” No women should be told to stop feeding her child by another woman all because “her husband is getting distracted.” No woman should have to sit there and watch some guy screaming for a refund at a store because she’s nursing her child a few feet away from him. It’s not illegal in the states for a mother to nurse her child in public. Katy opened up to me about how once she was called a “prostitute” and an “attention seeking whore” by an older man. The man also told her that she wasn’t doing it to feed her baby, but to lure other women’s partners. For those who mind so much, it’s not hard to look the other way.

These people that seem to care so much about a mother nursing her child in public just don’t understand. They either don’t have kids or they never breastfed. They clearly don’t understand all the struggles that breastfeeding mothers go through. A lot of mothers aren’t able to produce enough breast milk and either have to mix what they can produce with formula or just quit trying all together. Ashley is a mother who unfortunately had to stop breastfeeding her son at six weeks because he wasn’t getting all the milk he needed. “I felt like I was going to lose that connection when I stopped breastfeeding,” she had told me. Her sons doctor had told her that she needed to strictly feed her son formula to help him gain weight, and in the first week of doing so, he gained more weight than he had in his whole six weeks of life. Another mother, Trisha, works ten hour days and worries that she isn’t pumping enough breast milk and says, “It’s a constant battle to make sure she gets enough.” Other mothers say it’s exhausting, when you breastfeed, your child is at the breast about every two hours. Some mothers, like Madi, deal with Mastitis, which causes fatigue, chills and a fever. These are only a few examples of the struggles that breastfeeding mothers go through.

With all the struggles though, there are quite a bit of benefits as well. Breast milk contains antibodies that help your baby fight off viruses and those babies tend to have fewer infections and respiratory illnesses. “I love that she relies on my completely for her nutrition and growth, and that it’s free.” Says Ashlee. A lot of mothers, including myself stated that they love the bonding and cuddling time it allows. Another Ashley says that she gets a high off seeing the scale go up when her son gets on because all that weight is gained strictly from what her body is producing and he loves that there is no preparation.

I don’t understand how people can see breastfeeding as “wrong” and “disgusting”. It is a beautiful thing, and allows precious moments that you’ll never get back. In my opinion, you have to be a little sick in the head to think of breastfeeding as sexual, or to think that a mother chose it just to get the attention of men. People should be less judgmental and more open-minded. There are bigger things to worry about in the world than a lady showing a little boob to feed her child.