Milkshake: The Breastfeeding Narrative, and "Eats on Feets"

Milk is a really big deal. After all, the fact that we are born to suckle is the defining aspect of our animal class (yup, we're mammals). And despite the ubiquity of the arguments for, against, and all around breastfeeding, I remain essentially befuddled by the dialogue.

My mother was, and is, a feminist, and I grew up immersed in the following narrative: Women are designed to breastfeed their babies. Babies need breastmilk for proper physical development, and they need the physical act of suckling from a breast, for emotional development. There is no alternative. Most women who say they can't breastfeed really mean they don't want to. Women "don't want to" because they live in a capitalist society that marginalizes females, hates the body, and which manufactures lack and promotes false consciousness. Breastfeeding is normal, natural and easy. The kid comes out, you hold her close to your breast, she noses around, you stick the nipple into her mouth, wiggle it around a bit, and lo and behold! Breastfeeding! Sure, your nipples will be sore for the first few days, and they might crack and bleed a bit, and you might have a little bout of mastitis or inflammation maybe after week two... The answer? Take a nap. Keep nursing. Deal with it. This is life, sister. Congratulations, you're a mom.

The above is, of course, not the politically correct view, even among "lactivists". And please, I understand that there are exceptions, and that a very tiny, minuscule percentage of women are actually physically unable to breastfeed. But on the whole, I agree with my mother's views, who breastfed my siblings and me, until we were all about a year and a half.

The fact is that the only reason we're here today, is because women since the beginning of time have been figuring out how to nurse their babies. Nursing one's baby is a basic survival thing. Nonetheless, it seems that in contemporary society, in order to be duly sensitive to the new mum, we are supposed to speak of breastfeeding as a skill to be learned--by both mother and child. Writers of breastfeeding manuals and breastfeeding counsellors, and nursing advocates go out of their way to assure women that the task ahead of them is arduous indeed, but that if they keep working at the angle of the baby's latch, and the positioning of their scientifically designed nursing pillows, that they too, will one day become skilled at this monumental--but important--activity. At the same time, the supposedly inherent difficulties of breastfeeding are among the most common reasons that women decide to feed their children the putrid mess that is formula. Which seriously blows my mind. In the case of every one of my four babies, breastfeeding hurt like hell for the first three days, my nipples cracked, and bled, and I have had serious mastitis several times...but the general and overall ease of breastfeeding easily trumps all of that. And I'm not even going into the very real ecstasy of the connection I have had, and continue to have, with my children through nursing.

Due to my rhesus negative blood type, I have to take each of my babies into the hospital after they are born, to play a fun little game with the nurses and doctors (see, the exception to my no-hospital, no-doctor rule). After the birth of Treva, my fourth baby, I was sitting in the hospital for my hour-long visit on day 2 of little Tree's life, and she was nursing away happily. A nurse came up to me with a concerned look on her face, and informed me that I was nursing the baby "wrong", and that she didn't want to see me become yet another statistic--a mother who ends up switching to formula because she just can't get it right. I smiled and nodded and played along, and allowed the nurse to give her nonsensical little lesson on the degree of contact between my nipple and the palate of my baby's mouth...because I long ago learned my lesson about making nurses wrong (they don't like that). But it did cross my mind that if I were a poorly educated new mother with a family history of formula feeding, a weak support network, and few examples of women who breastfeed openly in the culture (as is the case, overwhelmingly, for women in New Brunswick where I live), I could see the whole experience that I had just had with this overbearing nurse, being a major turnoff for my nursing career. Instead, I found it funny, and sad. And of course, I will be breastfeeding Treva until, like her three older siblings, she is about two years old.

Perhaps this is just another example of a culture that pathologizes absolutely everything, and that in this, as in most issues to do with bodies, babies, birthing and health, I am among a small minority. (After all, my kids are born at home, I have never taken them to a doctor's or to the hospital--and I can't really imagine heading there, barring some kind of maiming, goddess forbid--and I simply don't go myself. I don't take antibiotics, I don't take painkillers. I can't remember the last time I had a cold. My health, and the health of my children, is my responsibility.) But it strikes me that this funny combination of pushy, but intensely cautious and delicate approach to the most basic act of motherhood does women a disservice. And unlike what seems to be the grand majority of all women--and many birth attendants and doulas that I love and respect--I am NOT a fan of Dr. Jack Newman's. How the hell did a middle-aged man become the grand authority on breastfeeding? He's not entirely wrong, but I do find him incredibly pompous and arrogant. I went to one of his lectures once, and unbelievably, after his talk, the women were crowding around him like star-struck groupies. Totally bizarre. I am my own breastfeeding expert, thank you very much, and if in doubt, I'll ask my mum, or my traditional birth attendant.

I guess I believe in radical traditionalism: Breastfeeding is, and should be, the purview of women. If men want to help, they can help by supporting the kind of conditions that allow women to birth their babies in peace, and spend the first few years of their children's lives in close physical contact with them.

As I have mentioned many times before, breastfeeding is not an issue of simple nourishment. The physical connection that happens while a baby nurses is essential for that baby's psychological and emotional development. So I tend to find it rather depressing when I see or hear of an earnest mother who diligently spends hours in the bathroom pumping her breasts with a plastic suction device, watching the thin strands of milk stream sadly into the bottle so that she can go out into the world and be freed from the shackles of her baby, while still managing to feel morally righteous that at least the little one is benefiting from human milk. Yes, it is something. But yes, you're kind of missing the point. I tried "pumping" once, when my first baby was a few months old. I don't remember what for, but I do remember immediately abandoning the foolish practice, and cancelling whatever appointment I was trying to make. Mothers: it can wait a few months. Also, it felt wrong, disgusting, and servile, to put my breast, my body, into the sterile plastic cone of the milking machine. A nursing baby's touch is infinitely and innately tender and adoring (isn't it incredible that we all start out with an instinctive respect and love for the female body?). Breast-pumps are entirely the opposite.

One of the newer initiatives in the lactivist world, is the "Eats on Feets" movement, a human-milk sharing network, which connects women who need human breastmilk, with women who produce an excess of breastmilk. Despite it's unfortunate name, (a take-off on "meals-on-wheels"? ugh) I think the motivation behind this project is very noble. And the fact that it was put together in part as a protest and alternative to the corporate marketing of formula, is something that I absolutely support. But I just can't get behind it all the way. Yes, sharing milk among mothers is biologically normal...in the form of walking over to one's neighbour's house and putting the child on the breast. Is it just me, or does it seem that wet-nursing is the elephant in the virtual eats-on-feets facebook room? I get the feeling that it is somehow considered to be more acceptable, and less "icky", to enrol heaps of women into pumping their breasts on milking machines like industrial cattle, packaging the outcome, and sending it off by mail...or whatever...than to have women actually nursing their sisters' or friend's babies. I get the feeling that eats-on-feets is in part, missing the point, and that this is not necessarily (or purely) an example of further enlightenment... In my own life, I have overheard many women exclaim that the idea of nursing another woman's baby is positively disgusting, or that they could never imagine their babies suckling another woman's breast. Really!? But you can imagine your precious infant suckling on a fake plastic nipple??? I find this far more distasteful. I think we need to unpack these feelings, collective and personal. Breastfeeding is connected to sexuality; ours, and that of our growing babies. So what is really going on here?

Most recently, I have caught wind of a virtual (facebook) controversy over warnings certain governments have made in reference to the "Eats on Feets" movement, about the "sharing of body fluids", contaminants in breastmilk, the passing of viruses through breastmilk (AIDS, for one), and the issue of whether or not to pasteurize breastmilk (a process that may people believe actually renders milk--human and animal--indigestible, and toxic to the body).

These are complex issues, and I'm not really sure how I feel about it all, on the whole. I want babies to have access to breastmilk and breastfeeding. But I know that if I were one of the very few women who were actually unable to nurse my baby, receiving breastmilk through the mail from a donor would fall well below on my options list had I any opportunities to give my child to a woman friend or family member to actually hold, cuddle, snuggle, and nurse. Why aren't we encouraging women to get together in order to share their milk *and* the nurturance of their bodies with the children of this world? Maybe "Eats on Feets" is really good idea, but perhaps should be promoted as a last resort.

What do you think?