This Photo of a Mom “Breastercising” Has Been Met With a Collective Internet Eye Roll
"I caught Sharny multitasking today in public. #breastercising," her husband, Julius Kieser, an Australian personal trainer, wrote on Facebook.
In the pic, Sharny Kieser, who is also a trainer, is nursing their two-week-old son, Magnus.
"I don't get the whole breastfeeding in public problem. It's not disgusting at all," her husband writes in the caption.
Despite his comment, it's not where Sharny is breastfeeding that their Facebook followers are taking issue with. It's the fact that she's not living in the moment. Or YOLOing, so to speak.
"Cut the multitasking crap for 10 [minutes] and enjoy the one on one time with your child," one commenter wrote. "We are/were all busy moms but I think our children deserve us to be completely in the moment with them."
Another added, "I honestly don't understand why it's necessary to exercise whilst breastfeeding? Is it even comfortable? Can you concentrate on doing the exercise properly?" The last time I checked, doing lunges didn't require a great deal of thinking, but then again, I can't recall the last time I did a lunge.
Sharny, 35, replied, "A lot of people think it's gross or strange or that I should be bonding with Magnus, but I feed six times a day, I'm not exercising every time and when I do I'm also watching the kids ride around on their scooters and play outside," Sharny told the Daily Mail.
"It's not like I'm running or leg pressing or doing weights. I'm doing squats and lunges as they are the easiest things to do while feeding," she added. "Then at night we sit quietly and feed."
The self-proclaimed "fit mom" (though we're not arguing with her descriptor), wrote the Healthy Junk cookbook after she lost the nearly 70 pounds she gained after having her first three kids.
"I felt like a terrible mother, and that it was just going to be this way forever until something externally changed for me," Sharny wrote on her website, describing her (very natural) weight gain.
"After the previous four pregnancies I was overweight and I had this 'enough is enough' moment," she told Daily Mail.
"I looked at myself in the mirror and was like oh my God who has eaten Sharny? I felt like this fat old woman and that's how I saw myself… it was all in my head but I just felt miserable."
After she gave birth to her fourth child, she says something snapped. She was ready to get in shape.
"Walking, squatting and doing things makes me feel better and feel good...with Hugo, my fifth child, I waited a few months before exercising again and it was much harder," she said.
"If I wait less time I bounce back faster and it also helps with post natal depression."
"With my other babies, I think I stopped exercising because I was scared that I'd hurt the baby or myself or miscarriage, so I just stopped completely," she said. "By the time I'd fallen pregnant with my fifth baby I realized I'd be fine, so I just went for it to see what I was capable of."
Now she says, she absolutely loves working out, so, haters be damned, if this is how she finds the time to get a squat in, then leave this woman be.