The last time I breastfed my daughter was about 6.25 pm on 3 December 2011.
She was twelve and a half months old, and she fed for a mere five minutes without much enthusiasm. ‘This’, I thought to myself, hardly daring to believe it, ‘is it.’ After a year of breastfeeding, she had more or less decided for herself that she no longer needed it. And so I decided to dispense with this evening feed the next day, and see how she coped.
She didn’t seem to miss it at all.
And, to be honest, neither did I.
While I was glad that I was able to breastfeed her, and in the blurry days following her birth there was some concern that I might not be able to, there’s no denying it can be a chore. As my midwife told me while I was still pregnant, the main thing to know about breastfeeding is that you will be doing it A LOT.
She wasn’t kidding.
In order to try and give ourselves the best shot at successful breastfeeding, my husband and I had gone to classes (it could be our motto: when in doubt, go back to school!). Donning a pair of giant rubber breasts, one of the lactation consultants at the local hospital ran two morning sessions to teach expectant mothers how to perform this ‘natural’ process. Presumably, these were lessons that were once passed on by midwives or other female kin, but are now having to be re-learned.
In any case, there was much useful information amongst the knitted breasts, scary baby dolls and cringeworthy ice-breaker games (sample: the group was split into men and women and each group had to come up with as many synonyms for ‘breast’ as possible. I did not contribute). We learned that babies’ feeding cycles vary, and they can feed anywhere between every two and four hours (my baby, however, sometimes went as long as five or six hours, prompting us to be concerned that she might lose weight again); that babies can feed for between 5 and 45 minutes a side (my baby fed for forty minutes in total - at a short session - and up to an hour and a half - at a long one); and babies have a range of non-verbal cues that they use to tell their mother that they need to feed before they resort to crying (suckling motions with their mouth, head-butting and so on). Using a newly-purchased soft bear - I refused to buy a scary baby doll - we practised how to latch on and tried not to feel ridiculous.
Of course, all this useful information went out the window as my anaesthetic wore off, and I woke up in a haze of powerful painkillers with a small red and bruised bundle to feed. Hospital midwives turned me over and put her to my breast, and even had to position her to latch on. Fortunately, she seemed to know what to do when she was pointed in the right direction. Once I had recovered my senses somewhat, I found the helpful breastfeeding chart that was monitoring our progress: we were rated by letter as to our performance: she was doing well in the ‘time spent feeding’ category; I was scoring abysmally for independent latching on. ‘Must do better,’ I thought to myself, strangely feeling neither humiliated or angry. It must’ve been the drugs.
Once I was released back into the wild and we took the baby home, my days, as my midwife promised, were filled with breastfeeding. Aside from a couple of minor blocked ducts, I was fortunately spared some of the more gruesome side-effects of breastfeeding: mastitis, cracked nipples, painful breasts. Some mothers I know went through considerable personal trial and discomfort to successfully breastfeed their babies. It maybe be natural, but it often doesn’t come naturally.
Rachel Cusk pithily summarises her breastfeeding attempts:
The word ‘natural’ appears in a sort of cartoon bubble in my head. I do not, it is true, feel entirely natural. I feel as though someone is sucking my breast in public. (A Life’s Work, p 95)
And Naomi Wolf describes the sheer physicality of breastfeeding:
When our daughter nursed it was as rough-and-tumble, as purely animal an experience as a human being can have. Some unfathomable instinct hardwired into her sent her into a rapid panting, her small heart racing, when her face with its buttery skin came near the nipple. Guided - who can say? by the scent of milk, or perhaps the sight of the darker areola at the outer field of her primitive vision, she would suddenly go into a small frenzy, shaking her head back and forth, quickly, desperately, searching with her whole face for the nipple brushing against her mouth. when the nipple came in contact with her lips, she would lunge onto it for all the world like a cat pouncing on a mouse. her concentration - no, let’s face it, her savagery - was so acute that she leapt with the force of her whole small body, emitting a soft guttural growl. (Misconceptions, p 227)
It is most definitely an odd experience to get used to, particularly if you like your personal space. Cusk describes these early moments of motherhood as creating a new unit of being called the ‘motherbaby’:
In this moment, I now realise that a person exists who is me, but who is not confined to my body. ... What she needs and wants will vie with, and often take priority over, what I need and want for the forseeable future. (A Life’s Work, p 95)
This formulation reminded me of psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva’s account of the abject. Breast milk, like blood, comes from within the body, transgressing the boundary between inside and outside. It nourishes a new body, that was once part of the mother too, but is now outside it. The relay of exchanges of what is internal and external between a new, nursing mother and her baby is a process of abjection, initiating the process of separation that will eventually enable a child to become a discrete subject of his or her own.
I’m not sure how formula-feeding fits in with a psychoanalytic account, however.
Certainly, formula-feeding offers more flexibility in childcare than exclusive breastfeeding does (unless you get the hang of expressing, which I never did). Some, such as Elizabeth Badinter, argue that this flexibility is crucial for women’s advancement. Others argue that breastfeeding is the best possible start that you can give your baby, and, even if you only breastfeed for a short time, there will be benefits.
I’m glad I did my time as a ‘motherbaby’, but I am equally glad it is over. I’m enjoying my baby more and more as she becomes a discrete and separate person - with a fondness for cow’s milk - all of her own.
