Kelda Roys is running for governor in Wisconsin. She's also a mom, small business owner, and attorney. In the middle of her campaign ad, in which she talks about helping Wisconsin become the first state to ban BPA when she was in the State Assembly, her baby starts to cry. Her husband, who can't help the hungry infant, walks on set and hands his daughter to Roys, who casually starts feeding the baby while continuing her discussion. What an awesome way to normalize breastfeeding in public (not to mention proving how adept she is in the art of multi-tasking!). If you're uncomfortable watching a woman breastfeed, she suggests you "don't watch the video."

According to parenting site Scary Mommy:

She told Capitol Times that feeding her daughter on camera wasn’t planned. “Like most working parents around the state, I juggle a lot of things and responsibilities, and I wear a lot of hats,” she explained. “When we were shooting the video, my family was obviously there, and when the baby needs to eat I just feed her.”

We really loved her response to the question women always get: what if someone is uncomfortable about you breastfeeding your child? “Don’t watch the video,” Roys shared. “This is one way that babies get fed. It’s just a part of life. It’s a part of nature.” She went on to remind folks that women belong in politics just as much as men. “We have every right to have a seat at the table and run for office, even when we have young kids, just like men always have.”

Ad agency Boone Oakley created a provocative campaign in posters and stickers for hospitals to promote breastfeeding to first-time moms. Read the rest

An Omaha, Nebraska policewoman substituted her ignorance of the law with an authoritarian compulsion to shame a mother who was feeding her infant the way mammals have done so for 65 million years. Rosalyn Mizzell, the mother who was breast feeding her child at a school forum meeting, said the officer told her, "Don't do that in front of me. Have more respect for yourself and everybody else here." The officer threatened to cite Mizzell for indecent exposure.

When Mizzell complained, she said the officer's apology "went along the lines of, 'I was offended, other people were offended, if you wanted to breastfeed you could have done it in the bathroom or stayed home.'"

The Omaha Police Department issued a statement that read: "Officers responded to a complaint from a citizen who thought the breast feeding was inappropriate. Officers followed up and did not cite the woman for any offense."

According to Nebraska state law, it is legal for mothers to breastfeed their children in "any public or private location where the mother is otherwise authorized to be." Read the rest

Those Taiwanese Animators are in top form here in their interpretation of the Internet furor surrounding #MilkSiblings hero Jessica Coletti, who committed the unforgivable sin of nursing a baby that didn't come from her womb. The objectors are portrayed as morbidly obese, clumsy toddler-clothes-wearers who bring to mind William Gibson's description of near-future Americans:

[Slitscan's audience] is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.

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If you are breastfeeding your kid and your friend's kid is hungry, why not breastfeed them both? Jessica Anne Colletti of Pennsylvania does just that and it makes sense. Of course some people are freaked out about it for all sorts of reasons, but Colletti defends her decision on Mama Bean: Read the rest

A Federal Circuit Court judge in Sydney, Australia granted an injunction forbidding a 20-year-old woman from breastfeeding her son because she got a tattoo. He said she may have picked up a blood-borne disease when she got the tattoo and could infect her baby through her mother's milk. The mother had negative results on hepatitis and HIV tests, but the judge said the tests were not conclusive.

Dr Karleen Gribble, a breastfeeding advocate from the University of Western Sydney] said she had never seen a case like this before. "I'm only aware of one case where somebody contracted HIV from tattooing and that was somebody who'd got a tattoo in Bali, not somebody who'd gotten it in Australia," she said. "I think when it comes to mothers and breastfeeding, we need to consider that mothers are people, they do things. Sometimes there's a risk associated with what they do, but we generally think that they don't need to protect their children from all risk and it [comes down to] considering, is this a reasonable risk? Most people consider that the risk of contracting HIV or hepatitis from using a tattoo parlour, and particularly if they've been careful about checking it out, is infinitesimally small."

The mother appealed the judge's ruling and a Family Court overturned it.

Image: Shutterstock Read the rest