2:10

We had a busy morning here! We got up and got ready and were out the door at 9:30; I know that's not really early or anything, but considering we don't leave the house all together on a regular basis, I was proud of us.

I got dropped off at the Capitol to attend a Committee Hearing on the Right to Breastfeed Act that should be hitting the Senate floor later this week. I wasn't planning on speaking, just showing up to support it, but when I first got there, the room wasn't very full, so when I filled out the registration card I chose "in favor (speaking)" instead of not speaking, since I was worried the turn out was going to be smaller than expected. Well, of course I forgot that my watch is set like 10 minutes fast, so at 'real' 10 o'clock their were plenty of people (and lots of cute babies) there.

This is the bill:
A mother may breast−feed her child in any public or private location where the mother and her child are otherwise authorized to be. In such a location, no person may prohibit a mother from breast−feeding her child, request or direct a mother to move to a different location to breast−feed her child, request or direct a mother to cover her child or breast while breast−feeding, or otherwise restrict a mother from breast−feeding her child as provided in this section

There were a few other agenda items before the Breastfeeding, so then I was glad that I hadn't brought Sera, because she would not have been happy about trying to sit in one place that long. Most of the babies there were probably under 8 months, you know when they're still lap-happy. Ahh, those were great days...

One of the Representatives (Pasch) who helped start the bill spoke first, she highlighted some of the big breastfeeding benefits, and gave information on how laws like the one being proposed already exist in most states, several of which have as strong a wording as this one is proposing. I knew through the grapevine that there was some concern of the wording being weakened and/or changed to include a modesty clause, and Rep. Pasch stressed the importance of leaving the wording alone.

After she spoke, they had to skip ahead to a different agenda item, which only took about 5 minutes. Then they announced that they'd call up the people who wanted to speak and lucky me, I was first! I had done a little preparing in my head, but I was still pretty nervous. I think I did okay, the point I was trying to get across was how important it was that the bill text remain as-is. That a modesty clause would be detrimental, how the more people were seen nursing in public, the more normal it would be in society, which would help raise the number of breastfeeding mothers. Somewhere in there I said how I'm sure in addition to what Rep. Pasch had already said, they had certainly heard of the many benefits of breastfeeding over bottle feeding.

I hope what I actually said had some coherency to it...

A local doula spoke after I did, and then a woman from the Wisconsin Women's Council had some organized notes... I had to leave while she was speaking, because Dan was picking me up at 11. So I'm not sure how many more people spoke or if anything happened at the end. I think the bill goes to the Senate floor tomorrow, so I'll keep you posted!

Here's some pics of the boys playing pirates in the bathroom sink - it's a favorite after-lunch/Sera's napping activity.

I love how they share the stool and watch themselves in the mirror

From January 2010

From January 2010

From January 2010