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At a time when breastfeeding in public is already controversial, pictures of two military moms doing so while wearing their uniforms is sparking outrage. The photo is part of a local breastfeeding awareness campaign by Mom2Mom of Fairchild Air Force Base, a support group launched in January by Crystal Scott, a military spouse and mother of three. Among the intimate close-ups of smiling young mothers cuddling their adorable babies, the images of the two airmen stand out. Related: Moms react to the "Time" magazine's "Are You Mom enough?" breastfeeding cover

Jamie Lynn Grumet, the 26-year-old mother featured on the cover of Time magazine breastfeeding her 3-year-old son, has done more this week than become the poster woman for “attachment parenting,” the sometimes laudable movement that advises parents to be physically and emotionally available and responsive to their children. She has shown the limits of such a concept, and the ways in which it can be twisted into a bizarre, contemptible caricature of itself. Grumet is a model, and models have to have at least healthy dose of narcissism (television journalists like me, too, by the way). But I fear Grumet...

It’s safe to say the folks at Time magazine weren’t caught unawares by the controversy already boiling up around their latest cover, which features an attractive 26-year-old mother breastfeeding her almost-four-year-old son. It was a taste of that controversy that convinced Rick Stengel, Time’s managing editor, that the story deserved to be on the cover.

Time magazine is out with its latest cover, one that’s sure to get its fair share of attention. Headlined “Are You Mom Enough?”, it features a blonde, skinny jean-wearing woman — and a preschool-age boy unmistakably latched on to her breast.The cover goes with the magazine’s feature story on “attachment parenting” — a philosophy designed to foster a secure bond to the child. Co-sleeping, or the “family bed,” and breastfeeding well past babyhood are sometimes the hallmarks of attachment parenting. The mother pictured on the cover is Jamie Lynne Grumet of Los Angeles and her 3-year-old son. “I don’t consider...

May 10, 2012 11:24am Time Cover Shows 3-Year-Old Breast-Feeding This week's cover of Time Magazine shows a mother nursing her 3-year-old son. Should a mom continue nursing her child even after he’s too big to be held in her arms? For mothers who practice what’s known as “attachment parenting,” the answer is an emphatic “yes” — and some are more than happy to demonstrate. This week’s cover of Time Magazine shows Los Angeles mother Jamie Lynne Grumet nursing her 3-year-old son, who reaches her breast with the help of a chair. “When you think of breast-feeding, you think of mothers...

Does this cover go too far? (Photo: Time.com)The headline reads, "Are You Mom enough?" But if that wasn't enough to fan the flames of the Mommy Wars, there's the photo that goes with it: A pretty young woman wearing skinny jeans and a tank top, nursing her nearly 4-year-old son. It's meant to illustrate a story about Dr. William Sears and attachment parenting but, given that there's more to that movement than extended breastfeeding, it seems as if Time magazine was going for sensationalism and shock value. It's working. >>Warning: pic at the link<<

Breastfeeding moms gathered around the country today, including about 50 in the Houston area, for “nurse-ins” in support of a Texas woman who says she was harassed last month while nursing her infant son at a Webster Target store. The nursing flash mobs were planned in 35 states after women heard about the case of Michelle Hickman, who says employees made her feel uncomfortable when she fed her son at the store while Christmas shopping last month. “I’ve gotten way more support than I imagined,” Hickman said today outside the Webster store. The beauty of the protest, she added, was...

WASHINGTON – Millions of women stand to gain free access to a broad menu of birth control methods, thanks to a recommendation issued Tuesday by health experts advising the government. An Institute of Medicine panel recommended that the government require health insurance companies to cover birth control for women as preventive care, without copayments. Contraception — along with such care as diabetes tests during pregnancy and screening for the virus that causes cervical cancer — was one of eight recommended preventive services for women. "Unintended pregnancies carry health consequences for the mother — psychological, emotional and physical — and also...

A new doll hitting stores in the U.S. is causing some controversy with parents. It’s called The Breast Milk Baby and it claims it teaches young girls how to breast feed. The doll is made by Berjuan Toys, a company out of Spain. It comes with a special halter top that has two flowers where nipples would be. When a little girl puts on the top and holds the baby doll up the flowers, it makes suckling sounds.

Council says it has no obligation to provide facilities but then makes embarrassing U-turn A mother was ordered not to breastfeed her baby in public because she was in a ‘multicultural building’. Emma Mitchell, 32, was about to feed 19-week-old son Aaron when a receptionist at a town hall warned her to stop. Last night Mrs Mitchell condemned council staff, saying it was time people recognised the law which allows nursing mothers to breastfeed in public. ‘It was just awful. I felt humiliated, intimidated and guilty through the whole thing,’ she said. ‘What I was doing was one of the...

I'm not always very nice. I might as well clear that up right now. Case in point: When I found out I was expecting Mary (pregnancy #6 and child #8, for those of you who have lost count), I had reached the saturation point with snarky comments. I mean...yes, we knew what caused that; no, evidently we weren't done; not really working on our own baseball team; blah, blah, blah...never heard that one before! At best, I got a lot of blank stares, along with a side-order of whispered "Seriously?" whenever I would announce that I was pregnant. Again. So...

It's a quote we've used many times over the years when people ask us how we can juggle so many kids: Any more than three is no big deal, because you have already learned how to make the switch from a man-to-man to a zone defense! (I don't know who first said this, but I thank him...and I figure if my basketball star brother ever finds himself reading this post, he might enjoy the metaphor!) Regardless of who deserves--but, alas, will never receive--the royalties for all the times we've said it, that little witticism bears more than a grain of...

Good news girls, Michelle Obama wants to subsidize your boobs! Or at least the lactose producing parts of them. As part of her “Let’s Move” initiative, she wants to give you a tax break for breastfeeding your infant. Even better, she wants to force your employer to make sure you can!

Breast feeding for at least six months has been associated with enhanced immunity and other benefits for children -- but a prospective study from Australia suggests breast feeding may also yield academic benefits later in a child's life, at least for boys. The study, which followed almost 3,000 children from birth onward, found those who were predominantly breast fed for six months or longer had significantly higher scores on standardized tests of reading, math, and spelling at age 10 compared with kids breast fed for shorter periods, according to Wendy Oddy, PhD, of Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in...

Cup of Serenity would like to apologize to TraidMommies, and to all breastfeeding mothers for the incident in our store yesterday. We are in full support of the planned nurse-in and will also support a "Breastfeeding Friday," and breastfeeding at anytime. We hope to turn our mistake into a way to help mothers everywhe...

ORANGE – A challenge to a woman's right to breastfeed in a local store has prompted mothers to stage a "Nurse-In" on Saturday. Rose Homme said she was shopping in Cost Plus World Market in The Village at Orange on Aug. 20 and about to leave when her 10-month-old son, Oliver, began to get fussy. "As I began walking out, I started to feed him," Homme said. An employee approached her and asked that she cover up or feed Oliver in the bathroom or outside the store. "I told her that it's California state law that I can feed my...

Controversy in Saudi Arabia over Fatwa Permitting Breastfeeding of Adults By: Y. Admon* Introduction Sheikh 'Abd Al-Muhsin Al-'Obikan, an advisor at the Saudi Justice Ministry, recently issued a fatwa allowing the breastfeeding of adults. The fatwa is aimed at enabling an unrelated man and woman to be secluded in the same room, a situation which Islam considers forbidden gender mixing. The rationale behind the fatwa is that breastfeeding creates a bond of kinship between the man and woman, rendering the man her mahram,[1] thus making it acceptable for them to be together in seclusion. The fatwa created a stir...

The Islamic population in the Middle East has been caught up in a new war, but it is its own enemy in the fight over a "fatwa" that authorizes the breastfeeding of adult men. "The fatwa-issuing thugs give orders, pass judgment, and make decisions: love is forbidden; looking [at a man] is a sin; expressions of love are contemptible – [but] as for breastfeeding, that is permissible, permissible, permissible," wrote Nadine Al-Budair, a presenter for the U.S. Arabic-language television station Al-Hurra. The dispute has been monitored by the Middle East Media Research Institute, which has compiled a history of it...

A large part of human milk cannot be digested by babies and seems to have a purpose quite different from infant nutrition — that of influencing the composition of the bacteria in the infant’s gut. The details of this three-way relationship between mother, child and gut microbes are being worked out by three researchers at the University of California, Davis — Bruce German, Carlito Lebrilla and David Mills. They and colleagues have found that a particular strain of bacterium, a subspecies of Bifidobacterium longum, possesses a special suite of genes that enable it to thrive on the indigestible component of...

In honor of Tom Brady [stats]’s 33rd birthday today, we give you more bon mots from his bride, supermodel/supermommy Gisele Bundchen who doesn’t have, unlike her Patriots [team stats] QB/QT hubby, a Belichickian filter. This week’s dispatch from Planet Gi is that she proposes a “worldwide law” that new mothers “breastfeed their babies for six months.”

Several moms are planning a protest at an Orange County park after they say a park employee tried to stop them from nursing their infants in public. Two of the mothers say a lifeguard at Kelly Park at Rock Springs in Apopka blew a whistle and told them that they were exposing themselves and breaking the law as they nursed their infants last month. Shawna Mitchell and Celena Chavez said a manager at the park did not know whether it was legal for the women to breastfeed publicly. A mother can breastfeed her child anywhere the mother is authorized to...

New research published in the FASEB Journal suggests that Lactobacillus reuteri immediately affects nerves in the gut, explaining how probiotics workHere's another reason to breast feed your baby: Canadian researchers have discovered how a probiotic found in breastmilk reduces or eliminates painful cramping in the gut. In a new research report published online in the FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), these scientists use mice to show that a specific strain of Lactobacillus reuteri decreases the force of muscle contractions in the gut within minutes of exposure. This bacterium naturally occurs in the gut of many mammals and can be found in human...

Saudi scholar's fatwa wades into controversy Saudi scholar gets into trouble for saying that women could give their milk to men for maternal relations Manama: A Saudi scholar has waded into controversy after he said that women could give their milk to men to establish a degree of maternal relations and get around a strict religious ban on mixing between unrelated men and women. According to Shaikh Abdul Mohsin Al Abaican, a consultant at Saudi Arabia's royal court, a man who often entered a house and came in contact with the womenfolk there should be made symbolically related to the...

CHICAGO – The lives of nearly 900 babies would be saved each year, along with billions of dollars, if 90 percent of U.S. women fed their babies breast milk only for the first six months of life, a cost analysis says. Those startling results, published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics, are only an estimate. But several experts who reviewed the analysis said the methods and conclusions seem sound. "The health care system has got to be aware that breast-feeding makes a profound difference," said Dr. Ruth Lawrence, who heads the American Academy of Pediatrics' breast-feeding section. The findings suggest...

The day after her son was born, Jennifer Spiegel was awakened about 4 a.m. in her Evanston Hospital room and told by a staffer, "Your baby wants you." A patient-care technician then wheeled a newborn in and handed him to Spiegel, who breast-fed him. But it wasn't her son, according to a lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court. A surprised nurse walked in while Spiegel was breast-feeding the boy and realized the mix-up, the Spiegels told the Chicago Sun-Times.

LONDON -- A breast-feeding mother accidentally smothered her four-week old child aboard a United Airlines flight from Washington, D.C., to Kuwait, a British tabloid reported Tuesday. The Sun newspaper said that the mother, who it said was a 29-year-old Egyptian-born woman, fell asleep as she breast-fed on the jet and awoke to find that the child had been smothered. The paper said the plane was diverted to London's Heathrow in an attempt to save the baby's life. The paper cited an unnamed police source in its reporting. Scotland Yard confirmed that a United Airlines plane had been diverted to Heathrow...

Reviewed by Louise Chang, MDThere is more evidence that breastfeeding benefits moms as well as their babies.Breastfeeding was shown to significantly lower a woman's risk for developing metabolic syndrome in a study reported today by researchers with Kaiser Permanente.The longer the women in the study breastfed, the more protection they seemed to derive. Is Your Type 2 Diabetes Under Control? Get Your Health Score Insulin Resistance, Belly Fat Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of risk factors linked to both diabetes and heart disease, including elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance, and belly fat.The new study is one of the most rigorously...

A New Mexico woman kicked off an airplane at the Burlington International Airport three years ago for breast feeding her baby is suing Delta Air Lines. The Burlington Free Press says negotiations failed to reach a settlement between the Atlanta-based airline and Emily Gillette. On Wednesday Gillette filed suit in U.S. District Court in Burlington. Gillette was ordered off a Delta Connections plane by a flight attendant after twice refusing an order to cover up while she breast fed her baby prior to takeoff. Gillette's lawsuit says she felt "shame and embarrassed" after being ordered off the plane. Delta refused...

Yesterday, Emily Gillette filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Burlington, Vermont, setting the stage for a legal battle, according to the Burlington Free Press. Three years ago, Gillette, her husband, Brad, and their then 22-month-old daughter, River, were ordered to leave a plane at Vermont's Burlington International Airport. It was a New York-bound Delta Connections flight operated by Freedom Airlines. Gillette was nursing River when a flight attendant asked her to cover up. Gillette refused. The flight attendant asked again, offering a blanket. The then 27-year-old mother continued to refuse. The flight attendant "pointed to the exit...

FURIOUS debate has erupted in Sweden about a former beauty queen’s attack on the country’s drive for a genderless society, which she claims has turned men into “nappy-changing” sissies and women into frumps who “neglect their husbands’ needs”. Comments posted on the internet by Anna Anka, a former Miss Sweden living in California with her husband Paul Anka, the singer and songwriter, provoked howls of outrage from women. There were also cheers from men who agreed that the Scandinavian push for gender equality had gone too far with the recent emergence of males wishing to breastfeed their babies. Paul Anka...

When mom is away, most dads offer a crying newborn a bottle of milk, a pacifier, a pinkie finger. But a Swedish dad is embarking on an experiment that he hopes will allow him to soothe a baby with his own milk-filled breasts. Ragnar Bengtsson, a 26-year-old student at Stockholm University, is regularly breaking out a breast pump to induce lactation. Bengtsson is the father of a 2-year-old child, but he has no plans to nurse his toddler. Rather he wants to breast-feed future children and inspire other dads to offer their breasts as a way to bond with their...

Sculpture of Angelina Jolie Breastfeeding to Be Shown in Oklahoma Next Month Controversial celebrity sculptor Daniel Edwards has unveiled his latest work: a park-bench-sized statue of Angelina Jolie in the nude, double breastfeeding her twins. This artistic work of public indecency (she's not wearing pants!) is called "Landmark for Breastfeeding" and was inspired by Jolie's cover photograph on W magazine last year. Edwards decided that, in order to encourage more women to breastfeed and to raise global awareness of public nursing, he would depict one twin as African-American and the other as not, since that could totally happen in the...

A controversial new doll is leaving some parents wishing for the good old Cabbage Patch days. A Spanish toymaker known as Berjuan has developed a breast-feeding doll that comes with a special halter top its young "mothers" wear as they pretend to breast-feed their "babies." The halter top has daisies that cover the little girls’ nipples and come undone just as easily as the flaps of a nursing bra would. The doll — called Bebe Gloton, which translates as “gluttonous baby” — makes sucking noises as it "feeds."

Can someone … anyone … explain how it is possible for a woman who is breast-feeding while intoxicated to be arrested while a pregnant woman who drinks goes free? I am fed up with society’s hypocrisy when it comes to children, babies, or fetuses. There is no logical argument for there being a difference between a 7, 8, 9 month pregnant woman drinking, and a woman breast-feeding while drunk. This constant struggle to simply try and figure out what is/is not a baby and what is/is not abuse and neglect will have to come to a head sooner or later.

After her father Tim was diagnosed with colon cancer, Georgia Browne went on the Internet to research ways to help save him. That’s where she got a brilliant though a bit unconventional idea to breastfeed her dad: Georgia recalls. ‘I started researching on the internet immediately and found separate studies in America and Scandinavia both supporting the health benefits of breastmilk to cancer sufferers. ‘I watched the documentary and thought it was a really mad idea, if it was true,’ she says. ‘I started looking on the net and found research suggesting breastmilk helps kill cancer cells. ‘Finding out I...

*** “That was my least favorite thing I ever did in my whole life,” Washington writer Hanna Rosin says in a podcast conversation with three pals that accompanies her sure-to-be-controversial new feature, “The Case Against Breast Feeding,” on The Atlantic’s Web site. She’s talking about pumping breast milk – the grotesque ritual carried out behind closed office doors nationwide by beleaguered working mothers who are fully “committed” (as the lactation consultants put it) to the goal of long-term, exclusive breast-feeding. *** “It’s the moment that kind of brings together all the awfulness of being a modern mother,” she says. ***...

As I work with new mothers in the hospital, I often hear comments like, “nursing my baby scares me more than labor.” During pregnancy, you have probably been inundated with unwanted (and usually inaccurate) advice about breastfeeding, so it’s no wonder that you are terrified to nurse. These 20 simple tips will help you to relax, forget about the myths you have heard and enjoy your breastfeeding experience. 1. Get support Good support is imperative for new nursing mothers. The key is to find support from someone who really knows what they are talking about and from someone who is...

KETTERING, Ohio — Police in Ohio say a woman has been charged with child endangering after another motorist reported she was both breast-feeding a youngster and talking on a phone while driving. Police in the Dayton suburb of Kettering say the caller told them he saw the woman Thursday. Officer Michael Burke says authorities used a license plate number to track down 39-year-old Genine Compton. He said the woman told officers she was breast-feeding and wouldn't let her child go hungry. Burke said the legal concern is that Compton had a child in her lap while driving, not that she...

UNICEF spokesperson Salma Hayek nursing a baby in Sierra Leone. Hayek was in the West African country in September as part of her involvement in the fight against tetanus, one reason Sierra Leone has the highest infant and child death rate in the world. But I'm guessing her humanitarian efforts won't draw as much attention as the "Nightline " television footage that showed Hayek breast feeding. Bloggers, as expected, are going crazy. “There is a close enough view that I could count swallows!” exclaimed Tanya on Motherwear’s Breast Feeding Blog, who was “blown away” that the scene was shown on...

I caught a bit of Dennis Prager the other day, and he was talking about breastfeeding mothers alleging Facebook discrimination. Jenna Wortham, at her NY Times Blog reports: Facebook is standing firm on a policy that has led to the removal of some photos posted by women that show breastfeeding. The deletions have spurred Facebook members to stage protests both online and offline.Facebook maintains it is simply enforcing an existing no nudity policy. I didn't realize how widespread the Indignant Lactivist Movement was until I Googled the subject. A nice young blogger posted this on her site, along with some...

Protesting a Facebook ban on photographs of lactating breasts, mothers are staging a "nurse in'' today at the site's headquarters in downtown Palo Alto. A simultaneous "virtual protest" will be held online, when women change their standard Facebook snapshot to a photo of themselves nursing — or, in the spirit of the holidays, an image of Madonna with child. Even an image of any mammal feeding her young will do, say organizers with the group Mothers International Lactation Campaign. Facebook has removed these photos from members' albums and profiles, saying that displays of areola — the dark skin around the...

LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- A New Mexico infant is dead and another is getting treatment at a hospital for a rare illness called enterobacter sakazakii. The New Mexico Department of Health said the illness is sometimes associated with baby formula. A baby boy in Otero County has died from the bloodstream and central nervous system infection. Now the state is advising safe ways to feed infants, including breastfeeding. “We're doing lab tests right now we're working with the Centers for Disease Control, and the Food and Drug Administration to look at every possible avenue. Right now it hasn't been linked...

WASHINGTON -- Sources say Alaska Governor and Republican Vice-Presidential nominee persists in breastfeeding her youngest child, Trig Palin, in spite of the fact the scientists and economists agree that the practice will do nothing to drive down elevated milk prices or alleviate child hunger on a global scale. Palin, who declared October 2007 as Breastfeeding Awareness Month in Alaska, admitted earlier this year that she has been providing an unspecified amount of breast milk to her 4-month-old son. Dr. Michel Fromage, spokesman for Médecins Sans Intégrité, lashed out at the mother of five on Monday. "This woman's do-nothing 'solution' is...

A woman claims her weekend shopping trip was ruined when she decided to breastfeed her two-month-old daughter inside a trendy Vancouver clothing store. Manuela Valle, 34, said, while waiting for her husband Francisco to try on some clothes, clerks at H&M asked her to stop breastfeeding in an aisle, in accordance with store policy, and move to a private room out of other shoppers' sight. "One of the girls working on the shift came to me and told me that I was 'not allowed to do that in public,'" Valle recalled. "The clerk said [that] it was offensive to other...

Vatican plea to uncover Virgin Mary and show her breast-feeding baby Jesus By Simon Caldwell Last updated at 11:09 PM on 23rd June 2008 [...] ...artists later depicted the nursing Mary fully clothed because the Protestant reformers were generally critical of "the carnality and unbecoming nature of many sacred images". But Miss Scaraffia argued that later depictions had also diminished the Madonna’ s human side "that touches the hearts and faith of the devout". Miss Scaraffia said that when the early Christian artists represented the Virgin breast-feeding they had sought to reveal the reality of God's incarnation. [...] Images of...

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Breastfed babies are more intelligent than those weaned on formula milk, according to the most comprehensive study conducted on the issue. Doctors followed nearly 14,000 children over six and a half years and found that those who were breastfed fared significantly better in IQ tests. At the age of six and a half, children who had been exclusively breastfed scored 7.5 points higher in verbal intelligence tests and 5.9 points higher in overall IQ tests. Teachers also rated the breastfed children higher at reading, writing and solving mathematical problems. The finding, which confirms earlier research, raises the question of whether...

Dear Prudie, I am a first-time mother to a beautiful 11-week-old boy. Right after having him, I was visited in my hospital room by a "lactation consultant." This person pulled out my chart without asking me and said, "I see you had a breast reduction done 10 years ago. That was extremely selfish of you."

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power came under fire today for trying to hire a specialist who would be paid to show new and expectant mothers at the utility how to properly breastfeed their children. The plan to issue a DWP-funded "lactation services" contract drew howls from taxpayer advocate Walter Moore, who pointed out that the utility's five-member board voted just last week for a package of new rate hikes. "You couldn't make this up," he said. "This is such a rip off. You've got to wonder if somebody's cousin runs the lactation business." Lactation proposals are due...

Eat Fruits And Veggies While Breastfeeding And Baby Will Probably Like Them ScienceDaily (Dec. 4, 2007) — Moms, want your baby to learn to like fruits and vegetables? Breastfed babies whose mothers eat fruits and vegetables are more inclined to like those foods themselves, a new study has found. (Credit: iStockphoto/Amy Kimball) According to new research from the Monell Center, if you're breast feeding, you can provide baby with a good start by eating them yourself. And, offer your baby plenty of opportunities to taste fruits and vegetables as s/he makes the transition to solid foods by giving repeated feeding...