Breastfeeding Meets Dr. Seuss in 'The Places You'll Feed!'
Author Lauren Hirshfield Belden’s new book, The Places You’ll Feed!, takes a humorous look at breastfeeding. (Photo: Lauren Hirshfield Belden)
For all the mothers who’ve ever marveled at the strange reality of pumping breast milk in the car or the chaos of trying to nurse while also folding laundry — and all the moms who’ve ever asked, “Why didn’t somebody warn me?” — the new book The Places You’ll Feed! is for you.
Author Lauren Hirshfield Belden, mom to a 3-year-old girl and an 18-month-old boy, says she was never adequately prepared for the journey of breastfeeding her kids. “I had a really hard time breastfeeding, and I was so frustrated that nobody had warned me about how tricky it could be and how your baby wouldn’t necessarily just latch,” she tells Yahoo Parenting. “I was unprepared for dragging my pump to and from work, pumping on airport floors and the post office. Because my kids had a hard time nursing, I was pumping eight times a day. I got mastitis multiple times. I just thought, ‘Why hasn’t anyone written about this? Why doesn’t anyone talk about it?’”
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The title, The Places You’ll Feed!, is a play on Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go! (Photo: Lauren Hirshfield Belden)
One afternoon in 2012, after putting her then-infant daughter down for a nap, Belden picked up a pen and got to work. “I locked myself in my office, and the words just fell onto the page. It was so cathartic,” she says. The book, a play on Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go, addresses nursing positions (“Grab your baby! Your pillow! And choose a position. Try football or cradle — just use intuition”), the highs and lows and feeding (“The bonding! The fussing! The cuddling! The cussing!”), and of course, the various places you might nurse or pump (“At a club! In the tub! While you’re cooking up grub!”)
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The Places You’ll Feed was published in July, after Belden, who majored in creative writing at Dartmouth, teamed up with an illustrator and a book adviser. “It took two hours to write and two-and-a-half years to bring to life,” she says. Now, it’s striking a chord with mothers everywhere, and Belden says they are often buying copies in bulk for things like shower gifts. “This is the first time there’s been a book that humorously tells the journey of feeding your baby — and it celebrates women,” she says. “It’s a topic that is not talked about enough, and when it is, it’s discussed in this really serious way. I thought the topic needed a little dose of reality, and humor. The laughter element is what people can relate to.”
The Places You’ll Feed! celebrates the joys and stresses of nursing and pumping. (Photo: Lauren Hirshfield Belden)
Like Go the F**k to Sleep and You Have to F**king Eat, the humorous books by Adam Mansbach about those two trials of parenting, The Places You’ll Feed addresses a topic that most parents — dads included — can relate to, in the format of a children’s book. And even mothers who didn’t nurse will find some comfort in Belden’s words. One of the final pages reads: “And when you decide you don’t want to keep going, your honkers have had it, they’re done with their flowing. Let go of the guilt with this life-changing thought: Thank the Lord that good milk can be easily bought! And your baby will grow drinking milk from the store, and sleep like a champ (or more than before).”
The book takes a look at some of the crazy places a mom might pump — like an office storage closet. (Photo: Lauren Hirshfield Belden)
Belden, who pumped exclusively for 10 months with one child and six with the other, says she wants mothers to know that they have to do what is best for themselves and their baby. “My message is, if you’re at crisis zone with feeding and it’s preventing you from bonding with your baby, it’s OK to go to formula. That can be frowned upon, and I think women need to take the pressure off themselves.”
The book has become a big hit with moms looking for a laugh. (Photo: Lauren Hirshfield Belden)
The truth is, Belden says, everyone has a different experience with nursing, and all are totally valid. Her goal was simply to create a “lighthearted warning that this is going to be work.”
Or, as her narrator so aptly puts it: “You’ll love it and hate it, as you already know. You’ll hate it and love it — this making milk flow.”
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