But because we went through this phase where nobody breastfed or got down into single digits,
now today people are weird about breastfeeding.
They're squeamish about it.
They get real awkward about it.
Instead of realizing that it's a very normal activity that people have been doing for
thousands of years and that it's normal for women to breastfeed in public.
Now I know there are people who disagree with me on this.
I'm sure there are probably people even here tonight that disagree.
I know that some of my fellow preacher friends disagree with me.
But you know what?
I don't care.
What I'm saying is the truth.
Breastfeeding is normal and I allow my wife to breastfeed in public uncovered.
And people freak out about this, but this is what people did for thousands of years.
I mean I know people who are so squeamish about this that they literally, even in their
own home, put a blanket over themselves to breastfeed, even in their own home.
Now here's the problem with that.
Try eating your next meal under a blanket.
I challenge you to go home tonight, put a blanket over your head, and eat dinner.
And then when you wake up in the morning, put a blanket over your head, and eat a
bowl of cereal, and go bring a blanket with you to work, and at your lunch break, get
out a blanket, put it over your head.
And especially in the summertime, this is going to be difficult.
Now let's say you had to eat with a blanket over your head.
You know what you're going to do?
You're going to finish that meal as fast as you can to get that blanket off your
head.
I mean if I had to eat every meal under a blanket, here's what I'd do.
I'd put the blanket over my head, I'd eat as quickly as possible, and get the blanket
off my head.
Well here's what happens.
When women are constantly breastfeeding their child under a blanket because they have
this kind of overly over-the-top, prudish, overly modest, where even a normal thing
like breastfeeding has to be hidden and covered, then what happens is the baby just
eats for a couple minutes and then it's done.
It just pretty much gets in there, eats it, gets out.
Well the thing that releases the bonding hormones and the thing that releases the don't
get pregnant again too soon hormones is the constant suckling.
See a baby who's not feeding under a blanket will sometimes just nurse because it feels
like it.
It's not even hungry.
It just sort of chills out on the breast and just enjoys it just for the comfort.
It loves its mother.
So it'll drag that meal out for a long period of time.
So here's the thing.
People are breastfeeding their kid hours apart, couple minutes under a blanket, boom,
move on, get back about my busy life.
That's the problem.
That's why it's not working.
In order to be healthy and have a good relationship with your child and to be able
to give birth to lots of children and not too close together, you have to make breastfeeding
a little more priority and make it comfortable for you and the child.
People are sometimes nervous too that someone's going to confront them because there's always
horror stories about women on an airplane getting confronted for breastfeeding or women
getting thrown out of a restaurant.
First of all, all across the United States, it's illegal for anyone to ban breastfeeding.
Breastfeeding is not a crime.
They can't throw you out of a plane or a restaurant.
It's not legal.
They have to allow you to breastfeed and you don't have to be under a blanket.
That's what the law says.
You don't have to worry about that.
Here's the thing.
My wife has been doing this now for the last 15 years.
She's been breastfeeding nonstop for the last 15 years.
There's never been a time virtually, hardly at all, that she wasn't breastfeeding during
that time.
She's breastfeeding most of the time for the last ... Breastfeeding or pregnant for
the last 15 years.
She's never ... Have you ever been confronted in public?
Has anyone ever said, how dare you draw out the breast and give suck to your young
one in Costco?
No one has ever said that to her.
No one has ever confronted her about that.
Listen, when my wife and I go to Costco, she walks through Costco with the baby on
the breast right here and walks around Costco like that.
It's totally normal.
It's as natural as rain.
Usually, every once in a while, you get dirty looks from old ladies because they pumped
so much birth control and bottle fed their kid.
They're all bitter because their one grandchild has green hair and a nose ring or whatever.
They're jealous of the fact that she's breastfeeding and has all these nice clean cut kids.
Where you're from in Botswana, is breastfeeding publicly pretty normal or is it squeamish?
Very normal?
All right.
That's what I thought.
Anyway, I'm just saying it's normal.
We need to bring back a culture where being a mother and breastfeeding and staying home
with your kid is not only normal but it's actually looked upon as being a good thing,
as being a blessing, as being a righteous thing.
Not something to be ashamed of.
We took a couple of families from our church to a preaching service at another church in
this area.
We went to the church and they were pulled out of the service for breastfeeding which
isn't legal but they didn't want to stage a nurse in or do a civil disobedience.
When the usher came and pulled them out for breastfeeding and they said, okay, where
can we go to breastfeed?
They put them in a literal closet.
They put them in a room that was like, I think it was like six foot by seven foot or
something or maybe even smaller than that.
It was like a closet with no furnishings, no windows.
It was just like a couple of chairs and they could barely even fit in there, these
mothers with their children breastfeeding.
It was just like lock them away in some dungeon.
I've seen churches where the breastfeeding room, it's like a stall in the toilets.
Yeah, you really want to breastfeed your kid on a toilet but isn't that just so disrespectful
and demeaning like, oh, well, I guess if you must breastfeed your child because you
don't have it on a four-hour schedule yet, here, go sit on the toilet.
Go sit in this janitor closet.
Here, sit in this mop bucket and do it.
These churches are filled with people who are using birth control and having one or
two kids and then they don't understand people who actually do it normal and just have as
many kids as God give them.
They don't even understand that mentality.