On
Sacred Cows
On Sacred Cows
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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