Tips for Nursing Discreetly

Works for Me Wednesday is on hiatus, but I thought I'd post this in honor of - you guessed it - World Breastfeeding Week!

Have you ever nursed in public? If so, are you comfortable with it, or do you wish you weren’t putting quite so much “out there”?! My daughter stays with a friend while I’m at work, so she has taken expressed milk from a bottle since she was five months old. I’m sure that helped her willingness to take a bottle when we were out and about, but there were still times she was very adamant she wanted to nurse, and that was fine with me.

There are some very cute nursing covers available, but I wasn’t interested in spending money on something I wasn’t sure I would use very often, and it was just one more thing to carry around in the diaper bag. Same went for nursing tops, expensive and I would need to buy several of them if I was going to leave the house regularly!

I started out using a blanket to cover my daughter while she nursed. This worked reasonably well when she was very young, but it was still a bit awkward. As she got older, she grew interested in lifting the blanket or snatching it away…a game that was much funnier to her than mommy!

I found my perfect solution in the nursing tank! These tanks offer the access of a nursing bra with the added bonus of covering your belly when you lift your shirt. I find that I’m not really showing any skin when I pull my shirt back down to my daughter’s face, even without a cover. I saw lots of ads for nursing tanks in the back of parenting magazines, and I tried a few but wasn’t overly enthused.

My favorite nursing tank is from Bravado, and can be found here: Bravado Tank

(special thanks to Stephanie and Arianne from for the recommendation!)

The close runner up can be found at Target in the nursing bra section and is made by Gilligan & O’Malley. They are available in stores and online…with this one I would recommend wearing a sleep bra underneath for extra lift if you are well endowed.

Another suggestion if you like babywearing would be to nurse in a sling. Ring slings are particularly well suited for nursing because you can bring the “tail” up over the baby for extra coverage. I have nursed several times in my pouch sling, but for me, I still like the extra coverage of the tank when I’m lifting my shirt—It works for me!

Do you have any tips for nursing in public? I’d love to hear them!!