Shannon Miller: I breastfed my sister’s baby without telling her and didn’t apologize. It’s the natural thing to do

Full Disclosure: My son was so attached to breastfeeding that eventually I had to tell him “boobies broken” — repeatedly.

He was old enough to understand that logic; he was almost three.

I’d returned to work, to a promotion, when he was 12 months old, and I thought the breastfeeding would have ended with my absence. Nope. He loved breastfeeding and latched on whenever he saw an opportunity. He later tried to negotiate: “What about if I’m bleeding, could I have boobies?” We eventually agreed (because my default mode of parenting is negotiating) that if his head was split open and his brains were showing I would give him the boob.

I get it. It’s hard to see something as both a sexual object and perfunctory feeding tool

If that bothers you, what I’m going to write next isn’t going to get any easier.

A friend sent me the Leah McLaren “removed” Globe and Mail article and I laughed, agreed and kinda understood.

McLaren wrote of how she once tried to breastfeed Conservative MP Michael Chong’s baby at a party, without telling the Chongs. Even though it was removed from online by the Globe and Mail, an archived version of the piece has surfaced and gone viral.

It reminded me of an incident of my own.

My sister has girls. The youngest I affectionately call the demon spawn. I always wanted a girl and my sister super-kindly included my name as part of my niece’s, which meant we were bonded before she even had a chance. My niece is “strong willed” — that’s parent code for a child who won’t do what you want them to do as quickly or easily as other children.

So when she wouldn’t nap one day while I was babysitting, I resorted to my old methods. I gave her my breast. I wasn’t lactating, but my breast still had all the feeding and soothing parts and it worked like a charm. By the time the baby figured out it was all apparatus and no milk, she was asleep.

I didn’t tell my sister.

Related

• Globe spikes Leah McLaren’s column on trying to breastfeed MP Michael Chong’s baby ‘to see what it felt like’
• ‘If they cry because they are hungry, breastfeed them, don’t worry,’ Pope tells mothers at Sistine Chapel
• Now that I’m a mother, it’s getting harder and harder to connect with my childless friends

So here is the thing: Breastfeeding can be a really natural thing. It really does become no big deal, except society seems to have made it one.

I think it’s probably men who’ve mostly made it a big deal. I get it. It’s hard to see something as both a sexual object and perfunctory feeding tool. (And many men really do have talent for seeing the sexual in the perfunctory.)

In order to write this column, I had to tell my sister what I’d done. I wimped out and texted her instead of calling.

I didn’t know that emojis came with such big eyes. That was her response. Oh, and to please keep her name out of it.

And so, apparently it’s not OK to talk about breastfeeding really, and certainly not to write about breastfeeding someone else’s baby. And obviously, it’s never a good idea to breastfeed someone else’s baby without them knowing.

But for the record, I didn’t apologize to my sister. It really was a natural thing to do. Practical, too.

I am sorry that it isn’t something we can be open about.

I am sorry that a lot of things in society continue to be ruled by men’s fears, especially women’s bodies.

But I had a son, and I’m hopeful.

I hope by the time my son is at home on parental leave and his partner is feeding their child and someone tells them to cover up, or to not share so much, it will be OK for him to say “piss off this is the most natural thing.”

And maybe he could add “You know you can have both: boobies and then later breasts.”

They are not mutually exclusive.

Shannon Miller was once a journalist. She continues to write and think and respond to editor’s requests in Vancouver where she lives with her son.