Fest promotes breast-feeding

CARRBORO -- Nobody glared Sunday when Meghan Rosensweet bared her breast in a public park, offering it to her 3-month-old daughter.

If people even noticed, they likely just smiled or whispered bravo.

More than 100 people filled Weaver Street Market to help kick off World Breastfeeding Week and to recognize Rosensweet's chocolate shop and about a dozen other businesses for their friendliness to nursing mothers.

"My little daughter comes to work with me," said Rosensweet, owner of The Chocolate Door in Chapel Hill, holding tiny Jordan. "She eats every two hours, and I work eight or nine hours."

Started 20 years ago by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action, the annual event now includes 170 countries and aims to celebrate and promote natural nourishment. About 75 percent of children nationwide were breast-fed in early postpartum months, though only about 13 percent were breast-fed exclusively, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Attitudes toward open breast-feeding are softening, but doing it publicly remains a taboo to many, said Emily Taylor, senior programs director for the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute.

"It is the healthiest and sweetest thing a mother and baby can do," she said, but "I went into a business here a couple of days ago and was told, 'I thought only ugly women worked on breast-feeding.' There are still these barriers."

The park outside Weaver Street Market was cluttered with strollers, and families danced to the Magnolia Klezmer Band as Taylor passed out plaques for breast-feeding friendliness.

Pamphlets offered information on prenatal yoga, fertility massage and the role of midwives.

Among the crowd, it was hard to find anyone who had ever drawn a dirty look by feeding an infant. But there were a few unhappy stories.

"I was in a retail establishment, and I didn't have a place to sit, and I sat in the corner," said Donna Hedgepeth, a Raleigh chiropractor whose business Keystone Chiropractic also received an award. "I got lots of mean looks, and someone said, 'Can you do that somewhere else?' I said, 'Can you provide me someplace else?'"

She plans to print cards explaining the state statute on breast-feeding, which allows public breast-feeding without violating indecent exposure laws.

But on a cool first day of August, even at a breast-feeding gathering, you couldn't spot many mothers actively nursing. In an hour, Jordan Rosensweet was the only infant to take a meal.

As the klezmer band's clarinet wailed and the trombone blared, Taylor explained: "Babies are not going to be breast-feeding around this crazy music."