When you’re pregnant (at least noticeably), people will engage you in small talk about your due date, what you are having, what you are naming it, etc.  After you actually have the baby, strangers will flock to you with even more gusto.  This is not something I had anticipated as I am not one of those people who randomly engages strangers in conversation.  We can’t go ANYWHERE without people talking to us about Holden.  Or worse yet, trying to touch him.  Last week, we went to the hospital to get Holden’s bilirubin levels checked again.  As we sat in the waiting room, two middle-aged women asked me about Holden.  

“What is his name?” MA-woman #1 asks

“Holden Sterling” I reply, hoping the questioning would end there.

“Oh, what an official-sounding name.  He should be an attorney.” MA-woman #1 posits.

“Or a governor,” MA-woman #2 adds, in an effort to one-up MA-woman #1.

“He should be someone important,” MA-woman #1 asserts.

Luckily, we were called to the back to get the bloodwork done at that point, ending this exchange more abruptly than MA-woman #1 and 2 had hoped.  At the Farmer’s Market on Saturday, we were exposed to even more unexpected commentary.  A black woman with dreadlocks came up to us on her bike as we sat at a bench in the middle of the market.  

“She is just the sweetest, she dark y’know, I know y’all white people don’t like to be told ya’lls baby look black, but that kind of thing skips a generation, y’know.  Let me see her fingernails, oh yeah, she definitely gonna stay dark.”

Rob and I just laughed because—well, it’s funny.  In less than a week, strangers have remarked that my baby is a black, female, future governor (or attorney).  Yet, when I look at Holden, I see a sweet baby who needs assistance eating, bathing, getting dressed, and cleaning himself up.  If he were in his 80s or 90s, he would qualify for assisted living with that sort of behavioral repertoire, but nobody says “Gee, your baby should really be in a nursing home,” which at this point, would be a far more accurate commentary on his abilities and characteristics.  

What I have discovered is that people will completely and TOTALLY ignore both you and your baby if you simply breastfeed in public.  Once I started feeding Holden on that bench, I achieved an invisibility that was not only welcome, but was required for my continued sanity.  Our relationship with boobs as a culture is kind of weird that way:  Scantily clad woman with cleavage- and midriff-baring top = unlimited attention.  Discreetly breastfeeding momma = worse than leprosy.  I prefer to be the leper—it affords a sort of annonymity that I find refreshing.