Jessie James Decker’s honest breastfeeding story shows the reality of #momlife

Jessie James Decker may roll with a glam squad, but she also rolls with a 2-month-old, so during a recent road trip, things took an unglamorous turn that so many mamas can relate to.

Decker was driving back from a photoshoot with her mom, hair and makeup, and baby Forrest when the little guy got hungry. With about an hour to go in their road trip, Decker was stressed out, trying to keep her eyes on the road during less-than-ideal weather while her baby went into meltdown mode in the backseat.

“It start[ed] raining like crazy and Forrest was screaming his head off the entire way to the point of crocodile tears and losing his voice from screaming,” Decker wrote on Instagram.

“As soon as we got off the highway and were in a very low-speed limit, mama and I switched seats at a red light in the rain so she could drive and I hopped in the back seat with Forrest and fed him with boob out leaned awkwardly over the car seat to calm him down,” she wrote, noting that when babies are hungry, you’ve got to feed them no matter what you’re doing.

Decker does not recommend trying to breastfeed a child who in a car seat, as she wasn’t able to wear her own seatbelt while leaning over Forrest (many jurisdictions have seat belt safety laws that could see a mama get a hefty ticket if a police officer caught such a feeding session in action), but says she’s sharing the story to show that behind the scenes of glamorous photoshoots, real mom life happens, and it isn’t always as pretty as the pictures.

“On the way home I cried, I got stressed and anxiety, and I was just a mom trying to do my best just like we all are no matter the situation,” she explains.

In the comments of Decker’s post, many other mothers shared stories of similar stressful times they had to take their seatbelts off to feed their baby in a moving vehicle.

Those mamas may want to check out a soon-to-be-released invention by a fellow mom, Katherine Hornbostel, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering. She’s created the Pump2Baby bottle, which allows moms to keep their seatbelts on while feeding a hungry, car seat-bound baby. Traveling moms use a pump, and their milk travels across the backseat through a tube to a nipple in the baby’s mouth. It’s set to retail for $15 and might save you the cost of a seatbelt violation ticket (provided your baby will take a bottle).

Now, taking off her seatbelt in a moving vehicle wasn’t ideal, Decker admits that, but we totally understand why she did what she did to feed her son. As she says, “when baby is hungry ya gotta feed ’em no matter what you’re doing.”

Motherhood is made up of many little moments like this, moments where you have to make tough calls, improvise, and do things that aren’t perfect. It’s great that Decker is so open about that. Behind the perfect pictures, life with babies and kids can be stressful. It may not have been the most glamorous moment, but there is something really beautiful about Decker’s honesty here.

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