10 celebrity moms who breast-feed
Gwen Stefani shared a tender moment with her youngest son, Zuma, then 3 months old, on a park bench in Los Angeles in 2008. Credit: Celebrity Baby Scoop
Considering their lack of anonymity with paparazzi lurking at every street corner, CelebrityBabyScoop.com salutes celebrity moms who breast-feed their babies while out and about.
Although it’s still considered taboo in some circles, there’s no shame in nursing your baby in public — or on the cover of a magazine, for that matter. And we’re so glad that celebrity moms such as Gwen Stefani, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kourtney Kardashian and Miranda Kerr are on board. And not to mention Salma Hayek‘s experience with wet nursing a starving infant in Africa.
Here are 10 celebrity moms who have breast-fed in public.
“She said to me, ‘One sister should baby-sit all the kids, so I can go out or vice versa, and whichever sister is baby-sitting should just breast-feed all the kids that are there,’” Kim shared.
While Kim was “disgusted” by the idea, she went on to ask Kourtney, “Does that not freak you out?”
Kourtney responded with, “No, it doesn’t,” adding, ”That’s what they did back in the day.”
“I didn’t want him to [quit],” Gwen said. “It felt like a total rejection. It was really hormonal, and trying to stop in the middle of tour was insane.”
The Academy Award-nominated actress has commented about the pressures of breast-feeding and raising a newborn.
“I’m not a leave-them-in-their-crib-to-cry kind of girl. Fundamentally, I didn’t find that worked. Everyone’s got their own thing, you know? You can’t tell another person when it’s right to stop breast-feeding, or how to put your kid to sleep. Every child is different.”
“It’s like two little liposuction machines on you,” she said. “They suck the fat out of you. They call it the ‘double football hold.’ You hold one here, and here [gesturing to her breasts] like two footballs. They’re doing God’s work right there, helping me return to my birth weight.”
Julie later commented on her feelings about the pressures of breast-feeding.
“I’m a big live and let live,” Julie said. “Seriously [do it], if it works for you, if it’s easy. If it wasn’t easy, I wouldn’t have done it. Some people can’t do it physically -- so don’t do it.”
Having returned to work just months after giving birth, Miranda said her quick post-baby weight loss was partly due to breast-feeding.
“I think if you are really eating the right foods, putting the nutrition into your body and doing yoga and breast-feeding; those things have helped me get back into shape. I remember I was on the elliptical machine when I was pregnant with Flynn.” The Australian beauty added: “I intend to breast-feed for as long as I can,” she said. “My breast milk will give our little Flynn the nutrition he needs for his continued healthy development and to all mums out there I am sure you will make the right choice for you and your baby.”
Just hours after giving birth, Miranda shared a precious picture breast-feeding her newborn. In response to the photo, she said: “The photo was one of the first photos Orlando took. We both loved it and we wanted to share it. The pleasant surprise was that it also had the added benefit of promoting breast-feeding, which to me is the most natural thing in the world and I love it.”
“I had lost my mum, I’d had a baby and I’d been breast-feeding and I was in a very emotional place as a woman. I knew instinctually and talked to Brad about it, that if I could find something that would get me physical again it would be like therapy, because everything was making me cry.”
“The baby was perfectly healthy, but the mother didn’t have milk. He was very hungry. I was weaning Valentina [then 2 years old], but I still had a lot of milk that I was pumping, so I breast-fed the baby,” she says, her voice dropping. “You should have seen his eyes. When he felt the nourishment, he immediately stopped crying.”
Salma says she was hoping to raise awareness that Sierra Leone has the highest infant mortality rate in the world. She went on to say, “I actually think my baby would be very proud to share her milk. And when she grows up I’m going to make sure she continues to be a generous, caring person.”
Years later, Salma continues to answer questions about acting as a wet nurse. If you have milk, you have milk, and if they’re hungry, they’re hungry,” she said. “I think it’s a beautiful thing, because motherhood is a very strong place for women to connect and understand each other.”
Meanwhile, some convenience store chain owners said that if customers complained, they reserved the right to move the cover behind the counter along with risqué men’s magazines like Playboy and Penthouse.
