How do you handle a hungry baby while getting married? Why you feed her, of course.
Christina Torino-Benton knew that particular cry only too well. And she knew there was only one way to make it stop.
It didn’t matter that she was in the middle of getting married, sitting before a priest in a church in Montreal. Nine-month-old Gemma was hungry. Really hungry.
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Luckily for Torino-Benton, her flowing white wedding gown was strapless.
So her mom handed over her crying daughter and Torino-Benton loosened the top of her gown and fed Gemma. And the wedding went right on.
Photographer Lana Nimmons captured the moment, which the bride later posted to a breastfeeding support group page, where it went viral in a matter of days.
“It went nuts,” Nimmons told InsideEdition.com on Monday. The photo drew tons of posts, nearly all of them supportive.
“It’s super cool. This is so cool and positive.” There were a few dissenters, but “it’s not a bad thing that it opened a dialogue,” Nimmons said.
The Roman Catholic wedding was held June 18 at the Resurrection of Our Lord Church in Lachine, Quebec. It was sweltering hot, Nimmons said, and babies need more nourishment when temperatures are high.
Gemma refuses to take a bottle, so getting food from the source is the only option when she’s hungry.
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Nimmons said no one blinked an eye when Torino-Benton put her baby to her breast. “We were all facing front, so no one could see anything,” Nimmons said. “And the priest was looking down and praying, so he didn’t see anything.”
She and the newly married mom are incredulous at all the attention the photo has received, as well as all the interview requests from media outlets that have poured in.
“We’re both in shock. It’s surreal. But we both keep saying ‘This is so cool!’’’
The few negative breastfeeding comments don’t really bother Torino-Benton, her photographer said.
“She told me, ‘How do they think Jesus was fed? They didn’t have bottles and Similac then.’’’
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