Breastfeeding - What's a Girl to Do?

Being in a room recently with two breastfeeding women - two gorgeous, glowing, healthy, happy moms - brought back memories of breastfeeding my own children. Not all warm and fuzzy. Cracked nipples (remedy: lanolin). Leaky boobs (remedy: get that babe sucking). Fear of falling asleep and crushing nursing baby (remedy: try to get more sleep?). At what age to stop (remedy: lots of people staring in disbelief). So it wasn't all milk and honey, although it was cheaper than canned formula, did seem to calm the colic, and aided in weight loss (mine). Didn't seem to affect the all-important breast shape much, either.

Some of the talk in that room was about the "normalcy" of breastfeeding. According to historians of the practice, it fluctuates, like the stock market - sometimes there's lots of women doing it, sometimes not. It's related to socioeconomic status, too - sometimes better off women favor it, sometimes poorer women do. Go figure.

A real shocker for me was a feminist friend who just had a baby - I asked if she was breastfeeding and she replied, "Do I look like a cow?" I thought for a feminist, breastfeeding would be natural. It's not. For this lady, who is devoted to her children, it's an imposition on her body and perhaps her life.

Breastfeeding has benefits. I fervently believe it contributes to lifelong health. I don't care what science says - or if it says anything at all (I have no idea.) It's nice to cuddle the baby, at least it was for me. I didn't have to hold up a bottle or prop one up (which I didn't like doing). I could doze off without fear. Less gas and burping than with a bottle. I didn't change my diet (although I didn't have a spicy diet to begin with). I never had to run out to buy more formula. I didn't have to buy anything - the milk was free (and how cool is that). I had two hands free (a bottle required using one hand).

Apparently contemporary disadvantages to breastfeeding (my children range from 25-36) include that many women are at work and can't spend so much time with their babies and that women want to have a life besides baby. For me, having a baby pretty much was a life. Breast pumps of course keep the whole breastfeeding enterprise flowing - or to be more accurate, they enable babies to have breast milk and mothers to have a job and a life.

And this was where the conversation in that room got interesting. Is it breast milk or breastfeeding that is important to baby and mom? I maintain you shouldn't separate them - except during the work day as necessary and occasional outings. But I'm out of step with the times, it seems. More young women consider the pump to be part of their breast - not an occasional respite or work-related necessity.

So many things are mechanized. Women's lives changed radically when automatic washers and driers became available - so, too, with frozen food and other labor-saving devices. And so, too, I guess, with the breast pump. Simpler - and removed from the human touch.

I prefer the old way, and I'm glad I did it and fortunate I could. I don't think it made me less of a feminist or disempowered me. I felt connected to something primal and universal - kind of earth mother-y. Feminine and a feminist. I think breastfeeding can make you happy.

(Note - One of the worst things that can be done to any woman is to make her feel guilty or unnatural or unfit because of her choices about how to give birth, whether to breastfeed, etc.)