List of movies with breastfeeding scenes

This list has been gathered from lactation consultants and various other breastfeeding professionals/proponets on the Lactnet email list.

• In the movie "The Blue Lagoon" there is a scene where the couple just have their baby and can't figure out what to feed it. The baby then figures out how to nurse.
• Training Day with Denzel Washingtion. Has a great opening scene with one of the main actors, his wife and baby. The mom and baby are sitting and nursing as they all wake up.
• In a comedy, I think "Me, Myself, and Irene", Jim Carrey plays a man with two personalities. In one scene, shortly after his personality split, he leaves a store and sees a woman nursing a baby on a park bench. He removes the baby, who cries, and the next scene he pops up with a milk mustache, so we know he was nursing.
• On the TV show "My Wife & Kids" the father wears a large white lacy sort of "granny-style" bra with bottle nipples inserted, and pretends to nurse his daughter's baby. He coos at the baby and brags about what a "strong latch he has." At the end of the scene, his teen son congratulates him on being so nurturing. He invites the boy over for a hug, and when he gets close enough, the father uses the other "breast" to spray the boy with milk. It was a rather shameless and humorous way to handle his breast.
• In the movie "Meet the Fockers", Robert DeNiro's character also sports what he describes as an exact replica of his daughter's breast, from a mold, so he can nurse his grandchild and experience the bonding w/o interfering with his daughter's breastfeeding.
• Marlo Thomas in "Jenny". She plays a single expectant mother who marries a guy as a deal so that he can get out of military duty.
• Sherilyn Fenn in "Slave of Dreams" TV movie in 1995, playing Potiphar's wife.
• Nastassja Kinski in "Tess", 1980.
• "Like Water for Chocolate" - a movie and a book. A man is forced by local custom to marry an older sister, but does not love her. Instead, he is madly in love with the younger sister. He and his wife have a very functional sexual relationship, resulting in a baby, but the baby is colicky and the mother doesn't produce enough milk. In one scene, the younger sister finds her breasts fill with milk for her beloved's child. It's a very evocative bond that is portrayed between generosity, passion, and milk.
• A Japanese anime flick by Satoshi Kon called Tokyo Godfathers that has a great scene of a woman wet nursing a homeless baby girl along with her own baby. Really nice and presented sooo normally.
• In the HBO series 'Rome,' there is a scene towards the end of the episode where one of the main characters is shown breastfeeding her baby. The scene is used to illustrate a plot line; one having nothing to do with breastfeeding, but it is still a lovely, natural scene, one that accurately represents the beauty of breastfeeding and the bond between mother and child.
• "Paint Your Wagon" (USA, about 1970-1) has a scene with Jean Seberg BF in the wild wild West.
• There's also a recent Australian TV series McLeod's Daughters (about 4 adult daughters who run a ranch) where there's at least a pumping scene with the Avent pump ().
• The Denzel Washington/Ethan Hawke movie "Training Day" had a nice breastfeeding scene as one of the opening shots of the film. The baby being nursed was a toddler (Ethan's on-screen daughter) not a tiny new baby either.
• ...one of the last shows of China Beach (I'm going back a few years here) and the character with the red hair (who is on a CSI programme now) had given birth and gave the baby a first breastfeed. It was so real and so lovely. The baby was shown seeking, the mum drew the baby into her and fumbled to attach (real breast and nipple showing) then baby and mum got it together..ahhhhhhhhhhhhh................
• There is an excellent Spanish film "Juana La Loca" where queen Joan of = Castilla (Joan the Mad) is shown breastfeeding her child.
• I saw a Spanish/Italian film "La Teta y La Luna" (The Tit and the Moon, I think, would be the translation) directed by Bigas Luna. A small boy fell in love with his *nurse* and she would spray breastmilk over his face. A 9 year old is jealous of his breastfed baby brother and asks the moon for a breast for himself.
• There is also an Australian movie "Better than Sex" with a scene where the woman (who is disappointed in her life) walks into a baby room and all the women are breastfeeding.
• Crossing Delancey, a movie starring Amy Irving, has a beautiful breastfeeding scene.
• "The hand that rocks the cradle". It's from the early nineties - the story goes like this: the doctor kills himself for being charged with molesting his patients. His wife was pregnant at the time and lost her baby due to stress, so she hires herself out as a nanny to one of his patients that started the whole lawsuit that made him kill himself. She keeps her supply up through a breastpump and feeds the family's baby at night to sabotage the other moms milk supply(the baby is then full and won't nurse off of it's mother).
• An older movie called "Angie", from maybe the late 80's or so, stars Geena Davis. A young woman who was abandoned by her own mother as a child has a baby, and when she tries to nurse him he refuses. The woman sees this as a rejection, and claims that even the baby knows she's not fit to be a mother. She ends up running away , but in the end does come back to her baby, and in the final scene the baby does finally latch on and all is well! Makes one think about the emotional impact that breastfeeding struggles may have on a new momma!
• The Snapper, an Irish film, has a lovely BF scene of a newborn, after a terrible birth scene (epidural, foreceps, mom on back).
• The Last Emperor, shows approx 2-3 yr old little emperor being carried to the palace in a litter with his wet nurse...in a later scene he takes milk from her around age 7 or so...before the advisors send her away so he can grow up...boo, hiss...
• There is a breastfeeding scene (positive) in the movie "Ride With The Devil" directed by Ang Lee (1999.)
• "Snowbound: The Jim and Jennifer Stolpa Story", a 1994 made-for-TV movie. It is based on a real story - but some things were changed in the movie versus reality.
  The plot: The couple gets lost in a storm for 8 days with a baby who is in the process of being weaned "because he was six months old." In the movie she proudly mentions how well he was starting to take bottles. She tries breastfeeding him but says "I don't have any more milk" without trying much, and he (and the mom) are admitted to hospital for dehydration/exposure after they are rescued and the first thing the dad promises the baby is the "biggest bottle he's ever seen". :-(
  The movie fails to mention that breastfeeding saved her baby's life! She didn't seem to have a good understanding of how lactation works. When she ran out of formula she presumed she'd run out of milk too, but her baby was perfectly healthy. (The mother and baby had spent 2 or 3 days in a tiny cave in the rocks while her husband walked about 80 miles to get help.)
  Jennifer Stolpa said emphatically in news reports that she credited breastfeeding with saving her baby. She was worried about loosing her milk supply because she was dehydrating but she sucked on ice and the baby was the only one without trauma from the odreal because she WAS breastfeeding.
  When the made-for-TV movie came out, she was depicted as losing her milk and Dad promising a bottle - that was not consistent with the reality of the situation. I also remember seeing several formula ads during the movie... You don't think that might have made a difference, do you???
• There is a nice breastfeeding scene in Cold Mountain in which Natalie Portman breastfeeds an older baby to calm him. It was a short scene, but I was happy to see it.
• Another movie that comes to mind is Sweet Home Alabama. Reese Witherspoon's character runs into an old friend in a bar in her hometown. She's offended to see her friend has brought the baby to the bar, but she explains that she's still "on the tit"
• There was also a touching scene in the sitcom "Friends", where Rachelle is nursing her new baby, and the father asks her what it feels like, to which she says "strange", and he says "good or bad strange", and she replys "wonderful strange"
• The Sweet Hereafter, an Atom Egoyan film based on a novel by Russell Banks, depicts a couple co-sleeping with and three-year-old and then the mother breastfeeding her. I think Banks and Egoyan use that image as a symbol innocence and perfect love. The film is tragic, but that does not diminish the beauty of the co-sleeping triad, whose sleeping arrangement and breastfeeding are regarded by all the characters as completely normal.
• In "Don Juan de Marco" starring Johnny Depp, he plays a man who believes himself to be Don Juan, only he lives in New York City in modern times. Committed to a psychiatric hospital for treatment, he describes himself as "the world's greatest lover" and goes on to describe to extent to which he loves women. In one scene, he says, "Have you ever loved a woman so much that milk leaked from her as if she had given birth to love itself, and now much feed it or burst?"
• There's a nice mention that I remember reading when I was a girl – in the book by Laura Ingalls Wilders' daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, "Young Pioneers" where her character mentions feeling overcome with love for her baby while nursing.
• The 1994 movie Angie with Geena Davis starring in it. There are several scenes with her breastfeeding. The first is when the baby is born and she can't get the baby latched on and the nurse then takes the crying baby away. Then after she leaves the hospital and is home with her parents house and Angie (Geena Davis) is taking a bath and hears the baby crying and says something like "will she have to feed the baby all night long". She then comes to get the baby and discovers who step mom nursing the baby to which the stepmom says the baby just latched on---yeah right step mom had to unbutton her shirt. This makes sets Angie off who then very quickly bags her bag and runs away for what seems to be several days. Though no mention of her getting engorged or leaking. She then comes back when she hears the baby is sick in the hospital. The movie ends with the baby getting well and Angie nursing the baby in the hospital nursery and talking to the baby about how he needs to eat and latch on. Great way to end the movie.
• A movie called "Millions" has a scene that does not actually show breastfeeding, but still speaks volumes. Two brothers were looking at pictures of women in lingerie online. The older one zoomed in on a model's nipple and the little one asked what it was. The older one replied it was a nipple. He then asked what was its use. Here is the part where I lean forward and cross my fingers, hoping that my nephews can learn a little during this movie...Well, the older brother says it is used to feed babies and he knows because he remembers their mother feeding the younger one that way and he is pretty sure he liked it! It was a cute scene!
• "Losing Isaiah" (stars Halle Berry)--I saw this one on TV, so I'm not sure if it's "made for tv" or not.
• "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" (1998 A & E production, stars Justine Waddell)
• In 'The Constant Gardener' the female protagonist, a British diplomat's wife, is in a Kenyan hospital having just given birth to a stillborn son, and she is shown breastfeeding the newborn baby of a Kenyan woman who died in childbirth in the next bed. There is no comment or explanation in the film, but from the story we know that she is aware of the need for human milk for newborns, and that she is extremely committed to promoting real health services to the local populace.
  It is based on a John LeCarre novel about the pharmaceutical industry's use of poor countries to test new drugs. Everything about it was fabulous - story, casting, acting, music, photography - all of it.
• I just watched the movie Precious and in it the main character breastfeeds her newborn and they actually show it without obscuring with a blanket or anything stupid. It is a very touching scene that made me cry happy tears (pretty much one of the only happy points of the whole movie!)
  
  Jasmine
  
  Not only do we see the touching scene where Precious breastfeeds in a pool, we also learn that Precious continued breastfeeding much longer. ::SPOILERS:: She mention at one point how the baby is nearly 9 months old now and almost ready to walk. Later in the movie (so presumably at least a few months after the baby being 9 months), when Precious tells her classmates that she has discovered she has HIV, her friends ask her if the baby is okay. She says he'll be fine but that she has to stop breastfeeding him.
  
  Becky
• Another movie with a breastfeeding scene is Titanic of 1997. Jack drew a sketch of a mother bf-ing her infant.
  
  ash
• Having another breast feed seen from an Indian movie "RAM TERI GANGA MAILY" by an Indian actress Mandakini, some years before and is very nice to see.
• In "The Color Purple" there is a nursing scene. If memory serves, Oprah Winfrey shows face and breast at the same time. It's been a long time, but there *may* be a cutaway to show lactation.
  
  Chloe
• You could add to this list the movie Totsi (2005). Here's a link to the info about the movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468565/
• In the movie Angie (1994) with Geena Davis there is a scene after she has run away when she's in a diner and leaks, then you see her coming out of a bathroom stall, after having pumped and she dumps the milk in the sink.
  
  mary