Sign Asked Mothers To 'Cover Up' When Breastfeeding, So That's Exactly What They Did

Mums' Reaction To 'Cover Up' Breastfeeding Sign Is Just Brilliant
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When a breastfeeding support group in America came across a sign saying they should "cover up" while feeding their babies, they reacted in the best way.

Breastfeeding Mama Talk took to Facebook to share a photo of the sign, which read: "If you need to breastfeed, please cover yourself" alongside a couple of photos of their members.

The mums took the photo literally, putting shirts and blankets over their heads while their babies were being fed.

A member of the support group wrote: "We wanted to do something different and fun with this", and asked their followers to start the hashtag #ThisIsHowWeCoverBFMT.

Many came forward with their own photos showing them finding inventive ways to "cover themselves".

A wellbeing site, The Pregnancy Corner, also joined in and uploaded their own version asking fans to help it go viral.

The post received more than a million likes, 385,000 shares and thousands of comments of support.

One woman said: "What is so wrong about it? When YOU See girls half naked on the street with their boobs and butt out twerking, people cheer. But when a mother is feeding her hungry child it is a bad thing."

This isn't the first time breastfeeding mothers have spoken up after being asked to the "cover up". One woman was told to do the exact same on a flight earlier this year.

Gemma Leung was preparing to breastfeed her eight-month-old daughter Ruby-Bow on an EasyJet flight when a male flight attendant reportedly asked her to "put a blanket over [her] baby" because it "might offend other passengers."

Leung said she "couldn't speak" because she was so angry.

Confrontation over breastfeeding in public frequently comes up in the news, including a recent incident in which a man in a cafe told a woman to stop breastfeeding, before receiving his comeuppance.

Increasingly mums are asking when will breastfeeding become something that people don't feel the need to talk about all the time?

One HuffPost UK blogger, Jo Eden, said people need to stop making a fuss over breastfeeding: "Nobody needs to normalise a normal thing. We need to stop making such a fuss over normal things. Stop abusing people on Facebook. Stop causing a scene in public."

Breastfeeding Photos
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Ashlee Wells Jacksons' "4th Trimester Bodies Project" embraces the changes brought to women’s bodies by motherhood. Above, is a photo of herself and her baby.

Says Jackson: "I see beautiful, inspiring, real women on a daily basis who struggle with their body image because they don’t feel they measure up with who the media tells them to be... So much more needs to be done in our society to embrace body positivity and normalize breastfeeding."
(credit:Ashlee Wells Jackson )
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In the September 2014 issue of Glamour magazine, actress Olivia Wilde said: "Breastfeeding is the most natural thing. I don’t know, now it feels like Otis should always be on my breast."
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Photographer Jade Beall takes portraits, like this one, that celebrate moms' bodies for her project, "A Beautiful Body."
via A Beautiful Body Book Project
(credit:Jade Beall)
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In 2012, singer P!nk shared this gorgeous photo of herself nursing baby Willow Sage on Instagram and Twitter. (credit:Pink/Instagram)
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In 2014, singer Gwen Stefani posted a beautiful Instagram photo of herself feeding her son Apollo in Switzerland. (credit:Gwen Stefani/Instagram)
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Russian model Natalia Vodianova debuted her son Maxim to the world with this stunning breastfeeding photo in June 2014. (credit:Natalia Vodianova/Instagram)
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This photo is from Vanessa Simmons' Normalize Breastfeeding campaign. Says Simmons: "If [women] read other stories, then it becomes more normal like, 'Oh, I'm going through that exact same thing.' Or, 'My baby's screaming their head off at six weeks and I can't figure out why,'... Sharing those stories enables women to be able to connect." Read more about Normalize Breastfeeding here.
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This photo is from Leilani Rogers' Public Breastfeeding Awareness Project. Read more about it here.
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This image is also from Leilani Rogers' Public Breastfeeding Awareness Project. Read more about it here.
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This picture is from HuffPost blogger Jillayna Adamson' "Breastfeeding is Beautiful" series. See more images, and read about it here.
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HuffPost blogger Jamie Davis Smith wrote about her difficulty breastfeeding her first child, and what the experience was like. Read her blog post here.
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In a blog post where this image was featured, author Mama Bean writes, "We are continually sold The Ideal; the picture-perfect, fully-clothed, fully made-up portrait of Motherhood... And yet in the real world, motherhood takes a far more literal shape; a far more physical form. It may well be slim, trim and toned... just as it may be rounded, softened and stretched. And yet, this second and more common reality is hidden and censored by default, as if motherhood is somehow something to shelter from."

Read the full post here.
(credit:Paulina Splechta Photography)