Shocking Acts of a Loving Mother

I think I reached a new pinnacle of breastfeeding this past weekend at our local movie theater. The older kids and their nine year old cousin were all excited to see Prince Caspian, and so were Mom and Dad. We tried to plan our outing around which time would give us a chance of Grace falling asleep during the film. That all went out the window because she fell asleep in the car on the way (it took us two hours to end up at the theater twenty minutes from home, but that's another story). We bought our super-expensive tickets (the matinee now costs what the night show used to!) and hoped for the best. That was our first mistake...

Even though we were there thirty minutes before our movie's start time, the seats were packed. The only row that would fit all six of us was all the way at the top. We've sat that high with Grace before, and it was perfect. She could walk back and forth between her Dad at one end and me at the other without disturbing any strangers. With that in mind, I chose the seats that had others in front of them rather than the first two that opened directly onto the steps. That was our second mistake...

I took the two youngest to pee before the movie began. Grace is smart enough to know that if she says she has to pee, we will take her the bathroom whether we believe her or not. The last movie she saw was Horton Hears a Who, which she enjoyed watching. I hoped that the talking animals in Caspian would hold her interest, but they did not. Just before the movie began, a teen aged couple came to sit in those last two seats above the stairs. That's when my error became apparent. Every time Grace asked to use the potty, we had to cross in front of the couple to walk down the stairs. Had we been sitting in those seats, it would have been an easy escape without bothering anyone.

About twenty minutes into the movie, Alexander whispered that he had to pee, even though he went just before it began. Grace had already forced her father to take her out, so I had to tell my son that he had to hold it because I couldn't leave the other kids to take him to the bathroom. I was secretly hoping that my husband had given up and wasn't going to bring Grace back up to our seats, but alas, he showed up a minute later. She immediately began saying, "Uh Pee!" in a loud voice. I grabbed her, crossed in front of the young couple, and headed out of the theater with Alexander in tow. In the bathroom stall, he peed. I then asked Grace if she had to go, to which she said no. I sat down to pee, and Grace said, "Uh oh!" and looked down. Apparently she had had to go because the evidence was dripping out of her Cinderella panties.

I threw away the panties because I had nothing with me in the bathroom to put them in. The little pants that matched her dress were a different story. I couldn't throw them out, so I rinsed them in the sink and dried them with the hot-air dryers. The entire time, Grace stood beside me lifting up her dress to expose herself. I kept muttering to Alexander to help keep his sister covered up, but she was relentless. Once her pants were dry, we started walking back to the theater. Grace was protesting the whole time, so I decided that I wasn't going to bring her back to our seats. I watched Alexander walk to the family to make sure that he was safe, and then I took Grace back out.

We spent the next hour walking up and down the hall of theaters. Hearing twenty movies playing but not getting to watch any of them is a form of torture I'd never considered before. Even the teen aged employees had it better than me because I saw them occasionally ducking in to watch a few minutes of a show. Grace got tired after a while, so we sat on a bench. She seemed calmer, so I thought that maybe I'd be able to stand inside the theater and watch some of the movie. That lasted about a minute before she was calling for her Daddy and squirming, so back to pacing the hall we went.

Eventually, Grace got sleepy and cranky (her car nap had been too short). Where was a nursing mother to sit? Normally, the movies are great for that because the theater is dark. I have always taken babies to the movies without bothering people because they nurse to sleep in my lap. This was the first time that I was stuck on the outside with a sleepy/hungry baby. The toilets had no lids to sit on top of, and I was afraid of causing a commotion by going back into the theater. We ended up on one of the benches lining the hall. Since I'd expected to nurse in the dark, I wasn't wearing a tank under my shirt or anything. I sat sideways on the bench so that my exposed side was towards the wall. Grace's body covered everything else. I was feeling a bit like I was being risky, but the hall was empty. Just when Grace entered that dangerous phase of being mostly asleep but awake enough to freak out if I pulled my breast away, Speed Racer let out...Fifty people, many of them with small, excited boys, trooped past me. I had no bag next to me (why that would have made it more comfortable, I don't know, but it would have), no person with me except for the nursing/sleeping toddler, a spotlight above my head. I didn't make eye contact with the families, but I heard some moms saying nice things or saying how cute Grace was. I know from seeing pictures of myself nursing that they probably had no idea that she was breastfeeding.

I sat on display for about five minutes. I am proud to say that I didn't stop nursing, and that I had started knowing full well that there might be a deluge of people to witness it. It's all very well and good to say that breastfeeding is better, that letting a toddler self-wean is natural, that I have nothing to be ashamed of, etc. but it's another thing entirely to practice what you preach.