Follow Your Instinct

By Lindsay Lee

My father calls his parents every Sunday night. If I happen to be visiting at the time I get handed the phone to hear, on the other end, "Eh? What's that? I can't hear" from my grandfather while my chirpy grandmother rattles on from another extension about her prize-winning painting in the fair.

One particular Sunday evening, however, it was different. Grandpa had given up on his hearing aid and it was just my grandmother, so we could actually hear one another. When asked how things were going with my then 10 month old daughter, Lucy, I made mention of the fact that we were still breastfeeding very well. This surprised me: my grandma went quiet, she got sober at the mention of breastfeeding. "Oh, I'm so proud of you," she said softly. With a quiver in her voice, she expressed her regret and feelings of loss over the fact that she did not breastfeed any of her three sons. The doctor told her, as many did at that time, that breastfeeding was unhealthy. Rather, he had her feed her boys Carnation milk spiked with corn syrup.

I wondered, if she had listened to her instincts, whether she would have been spared of breast cancer. I wondered whether my father and his brothers might have had less trouble with their weight. Whenever I am in the company of someone of my grandmother's generation, part of me expects to be persecuted for "doing that" in public, but I have been proven wrong. I wonder how many other great-grandmothers feel the same way. Sometimes those who put young mothers down for natural parenting are only trying to cover their own regrets.