Breastfeeding with Grace: Nursing Tricks for Modest Moms

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With your first child it is easy enough. You work around the baby's schedule, planning errands and other outings between nursing times. With each subsequent child, however, nursing at home becomes drastically harder. Suddenly, you find yourself breastfeeding while supervising your older kids at the park, while waiting for school to let out, and while watching those long soccer games.

Add to that the current medical recommendation to breastfeed your baby for at least six months before introducing solid foods, and it becomes even more important to feel comfortable meeting a baby's nutritional needs while outside of the home.

As a pediatric nurse and a mother who has been nursing one child or another for over four years, I've breastfed gracefully and discreetly just about everywhere, even while walking around Walt Disney World. All it takes are the proper accessories.

Be Discreet

Get rid of those cues that just scream, "Mother breastfeeding baby!" These include those silly looking nursing bibs, long pieces of fabric that cover your baby while including a wide peephole to allow mom to check on the proceedings, and nursing blankets, in part because I can't imagine that any baby actually likes to be deprived of air while nursing.

Once, a friend and I stopped to nurse our four-month-olds at a highway rest stop. She threw her winter parka over her children and instantly became an object of curiosity to the other patrons, while I sat in my nursing shirt and fed my baby without a single glance.