World Breastfeeding Week | Mum-to-be Neha Dhupia: I’m glad I started the conversation two years ago

Talking about why it is high time we normalise breastfeeding and make it easier for new mothers, actor Neha Dhupia shares her experience after the birth of her daughter Mehr in 2018.

Neha Dhupia, after the birth of her first child in 2018, has been someone who has actively spread awareness about breastfeeding and how it needs to be normalised. The actor, who’s pregnant with her second child, is happy to have started the conversation, which she feels will also benefit her this time around.

Neha Dhupia talks about normalising breastfeeding.

“Just by having this conversations, I feel so much more empowered now. I know I’ll get on that journey and even try my best to be on that journey again, and be treated with the most normal manner with my real experiences. I’m glad I started that conversation two years ago because I feel that the second time around, it’ll be even better for me,” says,” shares Dhupia, adding that she’s looking forward to it.

The actor had also started an initiative a couple of years ago, called Freedom to Feed. “It’s a growing community, we’ve come very far. I just think that we need to normalise breastfeeding, the more we talk about it, the more we actually make people aware,” she adds.

“I heard a very lovely saying around the time I gave birth to Mehr — “Everybody looks after the baby but who looks after the mother?’. We’ve to look for nooks and crannies to breastfeed our child. I remember once I had to go inside a toilet of an aircraft because I didn’t want to get other people uncomfortable as I could sense that they were getting uncomfortable. My point is why that should happen. We should normalise it and stop sexualising it or making a big deal out of it. After all, it’s my child’s nutrition and I should be able to provide it in a most comfortable space,” she explains.

There are also cases where young mothers are trolled on social media for sharing pictures of them breastfeeding their child. For them Dhupia has just one answer.

“People just need to get their heads out of the gutter,” she rues, adding, “They’ve been through the same process in their own home, so how dare you do this to another woman. The eventual goal is to talk about how breast milk can help and reach out to young mothers. We need to pull up such people.”

On how her second pregnancy is going for her, Dhupia admits that it does get a little overwhelming, sometimes.

“It gets a bit much you know because I choose not to stop working. Plus it’s s different this time because Mehr also is here and when I was carrying her, it was just me and my time and stuff. Now it’s her and I have such little time left for anything else. Just trying to get my head around,” she concludes.