by Adrienne Uphoff
There are many subjects popular with writers and poets, but
the role of the breastfeeding mother is not one of these. There are,
for example, many words for the subtly different types of love, and
the names of God are said to be innumerable. But we have only the
motherly "to nurse" and the more technical "to
breastfeed" with which to describe an immensely significant act
which certainly employs love and arguably brings us closer than ever
to God. I once tried to articulate to my husband the immeasurable joy
that nursing our daughter brings me.
On this occasion, she was feeding in much the same way as a dog might
murder a rubber squeak toy (but fortunately without the squeak). Soon,
the nipple snapped back and squirted milk all over her face and head.
I turned to my husband, fixed him in a long gaze, and uttered one
word:
"Moo."
Succinct though it was, it did not do much to convey the joys of
breastfeeding. It also did not do my daughter's nursing ability
justice - it takes talent for a baby to decorate both the inside of
her eye and the top of her head with milk and still manage to gain two
ounces a day.
The wonder a breastfeeding mother experiences goes far beyond the
obvious ("I wonder if I'll get a shower today"). It is a
pity nursing is not typically discussed socially: the topic is often
met with uncomfortable foot-shuffling and gaze-dropping. I now
understand why my middle-school health teacher often said that
"we don't generally sit down to tea and talk about our
breasts." Perhaps we should. But they appear to rank higher on
the "unmentionables" list than did the hemorroids I suffered
during pregnancy.
At a recent dinner party, to which my daughter and I were invited and
during which she nursed many times, one guest stated, in a fit of
parenting wisdom only a childless person could have (in between the
cloth diapering symposium and the lecture on Piaget's developmental
stages), that we shouldn't feed our children things we would not eat
ourselves. The man hosting the party remarked haughtily, while
averting his eyes from the gregarious breastfeeding display in his
living room, that there was one exception to that rule. Why do so many
of us find breastmilk to be the aesthetic equivalent of drool? Or
worse? Not that I notice drool anymore.
I wish that there were more poems and novels about breastfeeding in
the English canon. I wish fewer theatre companies were so gutless as
to omit the beautiful ending to The Grapes of Wrath in the name of
"good taste" or "family entertainment" - no irony
intended! I wish that images of the Blessed Virgin nursing the infant
Jesus, which she must have done, adorned our churches. I wish the
Statue of Liberty were a nursing mother. I wish that everyone could
appreciate the miraculous communion of life and love that flows so
easily from something as common as a breast to a child's mouth.
Oh, well. I can't have everything. It turns out, I don't even have the
breastfeeding bond to share with my own mother. I can't help but
wonder, as I'm sure she must, if this is why we have never been close.
But, for the sake of preserving both the humor in our marriages and
the health of our children - and of our souls - we would all do well
to follow her nursing advice:
"Don't give up."
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Breastfeeding
Reading
Room
