Vicki Glembocki just wrote a piece for Babble called "Bad Parent: Driven To It. I breastfed in a moving car." In it, she describes being stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic with a screaming baby in the back seat. While her mother drives in stop-and-go traffic, Vicki takes the baby from the car seat and nurses her, all the while convinced that she's going to jail. When it's all over, she does some research and discovers:
If a cop pulls us over, I probably won't get arrested, just slapped with a $100 fine. Though the punishment in each state varies, this is the max for the offense here in Pennsylvania. (Of course, there was that Ohio women who was sentenced in 2003 to three months of house arrest and a $300 fine when a trucker saw her breastfeeding in her car. But she was driving.) If we get in an accident and, God forbid, the baby dies, I could be charged with involuntary manslaughter (if a prosecutor doesn't think that losing a child is punishment enough) for "the doing of an unlawful act in a reckless or grossly negligent manner . . . [that] causes the death of another person," which, in Pennsylvania, could mean up to ten years in prison.
The feedback on the article (44 comments so far) has been mostly angry with the author for putting her baby's life at risk. But there's also a contingent of mothers who say they contorted themselves so they could breastfeed their babies without taking them out of the carseat, or pumped a bottle or used various other strategies when it was impossible to pull over. Some said they'd totally done the same thing the author had:
In our poll on the subject, 59% said of breastfeeding in a moving car, "you gotta do what you gotta do," and 25% said it was a "disgrace and a crime."I have done it dozens of times. I know its unsafe, yaddah yaddah yaddah but I have been in very similar situations to those described above where there is just no other alternative & what are you going to do? It's not like there are public breast-feeding stations along every major road. It's not like you have any alternative feed source when they are that young... Thank God for tinted windows.
What do you think? Was the mother just doing what she needed to do for her own and her baby's sanity? Or would you call C.P.S. if you saw a baby being nursed in the backseat while the car was in motion?
Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 1)
1. All it takes is one second, one car out of control, and you could lose the life that you care so much for that you will put him in harms way rather than hear him cry in hunger. For those of us who have been in car wrecks where lives could have been lost if not for car seats, it's a risk not worth taking. Pull over, contort your body, or beg your baby's forgiveness for making him wait. There are some very careless drivers out there, and if your car is hit with enough force, you cannot hold on to the baby...his weight will be like a flying missle. Please don't...not worth it.
flutterbyabby at 12:04PM on Apr 29th 2008
2. I'm guessing, no shoulder to pull over on. This would have been dangerous I agree but I'm sure the mother took the best (tongue and cheek) route. By contorting the mothers body she would be out of the seat belt, by seat belting the mother and hopefully she jumped into the back seat to feed then the risk was at least a little more in the mother's favor. Stop and go or standing traffic usually doesn't incur fatal traffic accidents.
Sophia at 12:32PM on Apr 29th 2008
3. Stop and go traffic? What the heck!? Screaming baby - been there, I've never breast fed in the car, but that's only cause I'm usually the one driving - that I wouldn't do. But really, give the mom a break - if the car was moving at a good clip, I'm sure she wouldn't have even thought about it.
TJ at 3:36PM on Apr 29th 2008
4. I must confess, I have suckled at a womans breast in an automobile.
Breast feeding? No I don't think that's what they call what I was doing.
mac at 4:14PM on Apr 29th 2008
5. I can only guess that the 25% of those polled never breast fed thinking breastfeeding in and of itself is a disgrace (without interjecting driving) and do not hold any respect for the creation of women, miracle of birth and normal aftercare given by God to all mammals.
D Fletcher at 4:10PM on May 5th 2008