What's The Big Deal? Asks Mom Who Breastfeeds from the Potty

The potty: good for peeing, pooping, propping one’s foot while shaving one’s legs, occasionally acting as a receptacle for mishandled iPhones—and in the case of one Instagrammin’ mom, a place to get the breastfeeding done, which, naturally, has caused a social media shitstorm (ha, see what I did there?).

Reports Women’s Health:

An Instagram photo of a mom breastfeeding while going to the bathroom is receiving Emoji applause from one half of the Internet and a giant “no thanks” from the other.

Elisha Wilson Beach posted the photo featuring her multitasking moment to the social media site where it was picked up by the parenting blog, Life of Dad. Now, Facebook commenters are split on the cleanliness of feeding your baby in the bathroom.

Ah, yes: the elusive Facebook commenter, a supreme being who decides what is Good and Not Good on the Internet.

Alas, science decided to weigh in, and the verdict is that, attention grabbing aside (cough), breastfeeding in el baño is not as raunchy as you might think.

“The act of going to the bathroom while feeding your baby isn’t unhealthy for him [or her] because the germs from your bodily fluids aren’t jumping out of the toilet,” says Mary Jane Minkin, M.D., a clinical professor of ob-gyn at Yale School of Medicine.

Jumping germs: scary. But as long as you wash your hands in between peeing/pooping/wiping/handling the babe, you’re good to go.

However, the concept of languidly breastfeeding a kid while parked atop a porcelain throne still leaves people, including Minkin, scratching their heads.

“I don’t understand why the person taking the picture couldn’t have held the baby, but sometimes these situations happen,” she says.

For reference, here’s the ‘gram:

Nothing too crazy; just a bemused-looking mother amidst a pile of toiletries likely pulled out of the cabinet by the suckling wee one wedged between her knees. How much of this was staged (did the kid actually follow her into the bathroom or was she invited in? who stocked the wire bin dedicated entirely to tampons?), I don’t know.

And for comparison, Salt-n-Pepa’s iconic hit, “Let’s Talk About Sex,” whose main message is not necessarily sex, but an attitude of, what’s the big deal about everyday things everyday people do? Because for every Instagramming mom who shows off the weird things she does in the name of childrearing, there are at least a dozen others doing weird things and not sharing them publicly (I’m guessing; don’t quote me on that).