Today was a beautiful, hot, sunny day. It felt more like summer than spring, and all that was missing was a pool and a BBQ. We went out after lunch and took the girls to the park where Hayley and I played on everything and George watched over a sleeping Breanna in the stroller. From there we walked through the woods to Grandma’s house (no, really, we went to visit his parents for a bit and cut through the woods). Once we got home, he had an errand to run and Breanna was asleep in her seat so I left her in the bedroom while Hayley and I took the baby monitor out on the balcony to enjoy some more sunshine.

When Breanna woke up, I brought her out too, covered her noggin with a sun hat, and noting that she was hungry, I fed her. Up on the fourth floor balcony. Overlooking the street. From the FOURTH floor. Way up here.

Two women in their 40s or 50s were walking by and they looked up, saw us, did a double take and then a triple take. I actually glanced down to see if I had forgotten to put on pants, but no, I was fully dressed and although it was quite obvious as to what I was doing based on the way I was holding Breanna’s body, I wasn’t even remotely close to flashing anyone. And in case you missed it, like I said, we were up on the FOURTH FLOOR balcony.

I thought I was being paranoid until one woman loudly said to the other that I should “cover up to do that”.

Oh no you didn’t. NO YOU DIDN’T.

I responded like so:

“This is my baby. She is hungry. If you were hungry right this second, you could reach into your purse and pull out a sandwich and eat it right down there on the sidewalk, and you would be perfectly within your rights to do so. Even if happened to be, say, a sardine sandwich, which friggin’ disgusts me, you would still be legally allowed to eat it and if it was bothersome to me, it would be expected that I should simply look away so as to not offend my poor eyes with your sandwich.

“Likewise, my daughter is hungry and in the province of Quebec, both she and I are legally protected and thus allowed to partake in breastfeeding. It is not against the law for me to feed my daughter while sitting on my own damn balcony. In fact, I could go sit on the sidewalk directly in front of you and feed her right there if I wished. I may also feed her in a park, a mall, a parked car, the front steps of a building, and a restaurant.

“Also, there is nothing obscene or immoral with this act. I am feeding my child in a way that is completely natural. I am neither required by law nor social etiquette to pump my breastmilk into a bottle in order to feed my daughter in public. I am not required to cover her with a blanket, hide inside my living room, or hide out in a bathroom when she is hungry.

“If you are so delicate that you are shocked and bothered by the thought that I am using a breast to feed my baby and the fact that although you can’t even see anything from way down there that you are nonetheless aware of what I am doing, all I can do is suggest that you look away.

“After all, I’m way up here, four stories higher than you are. It’s for your own good, really; if you keep looking up here, not only are you going to continue to be horrified, but keeping your stuck-up snooty nose so high in the air is certainly going to cause you to trip over something. I wouldn’t want you to fall on your ass because I might be so distracted by a need to laugh at you that I just might accidentally unlatch my daughter and I’ll end up spraying you with breastmilk.

“Have a fantabulous day! Bitch!”

And the best part is that since I didn’t have a lot of time to say what I wanted to say, I managed to convey all of that in one single gesture, courtesy of my middle finger.