BREASTFEEDING A DIVERSE AND SACRED GIFT

"In the time of the sacred sites and the crashing of ecosytems and worlds, it may be worth not making a commodity out of all that is revered."
                                                            --Winona LaDuke

"I saw some women had written that the cloning of Dolly* was wonderful since it showed that women could have children without men.  They didn't even understand that this was the ultimate ownership of women, of embryos, of eggs, of bodies by a few men with capital and control techniques; that it wasn't freedom from men but control by men."--Vandana Shiva

The Earth, Mother of us all, sends her message in hurricanes of wind and rain, flooding and devastation.  We are just like the ants floating in the flood waters, surviving by sheer will power or dying from exhaustion.  We are circling the storm drains of life, believing that somehow we will be rescued.  Passive to the storms created by mankind, we believe that someone or some government will rescue us.  But it appears that we are just ants to a government of ghosts from the past.  Their incompetence and ignorance means that the life boats are reserved for them and you are on your own.  

Survival?  How does one survive when the life boat you are on is filled with a flickering screen of constant entertainment.  The struggles in life muted or distorted by a Hollywood version of life or a social media version of community.  And then there is the constant background drone of trump, trump, trump.  A day without Trump and his trumpets would be heaven on earth.  Every day becomes a schizophrenic nightmare of media messages of idiocy.  At what point will the people say let's get off this train of incompetence, nastiness, and lunacy?  

I went to a library, to sooth my soul.  Escaping into the stacks of books, of quiet reflection and peace.  I found a book I wanted to read, Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and a Potawatomi woman.  And I lost myself in reading about the sacred and medicinal plants, indigenous knowledge of life on earth, and the principle of reciprocity in nature.

She writes in the chapter called, The Consolation of Water Lilies:

"I remember my babies at the breast, the first feeding, the long deep suck that drew up from my innermost well, which was filled and filled again, by the look that passed between us, the reciprocity of mother and child."

and

"We are showered every day with gifts, but they are not meant for us to keep.  Their life is in their movement, the inhale and the exhale of our shared breath.  Our work and our joy is to pass along the gift and to trust that what we put out into the universe will always come back."

Kimmerer's book, her observations danced around in my head and reminded me of my own observations of breastfeeding mothers and babies. Seeing the struggles of mothers to breastfeed in our society, reminded me of how isolated women are from nature and how artificial our world has become.  

Human being learn by imitation, what we see and hear becomes our reality
Modern observations of life are in many cases governed by the media.  In TV and Movie lands, life is seen through a mostly white male-dominated, corporate viewpoint. Solutions to problems involve buying certain products.  Breastfeeding problems?  Buy this or that breast pump, infant formula, pacifiers, bottles that mimic breastfeeding.  Solutions in our fast-paced world must be resolved quickly or else we go onto a newer better product to resolve a problem.  Having a baby in our consumer-driven world, means buying lots of things.  The problem with all these things is that these things don't necessarily make breastfeeding easier and often make things worse.  

Time spent using and/or cleaning breast pumps, bottles, and pacifiers is time and attention given to things.  Time taken away from the baby.  Time taken away from breastfeeding.  How did we learn to walk, when we were babies?  Babies are totally focused on learning that skill, so simple once you learn it but an investment in time measured in days and hours.  The baby never gives up, that drive and intensity is amazing to watch.  Babies are fearless in learning to get up, balance their body, push off, and reach out into space.  They watch you do it and they absolutely know they can do it, too.  As they wobble and fall down numerous times, they are comforted by their families, cheered on to continue to learn to do what comes so natural to all of us.  Many of us have forgotten that energy, that drive, that runs through our bodies as we learn a new physical skill.  Breastfeeding often requires that intensity of physical learning.  But moms often trade that learning time with baby for taking care of things.

What causes some adults to feel defeated quickly and others to continue forward despite the obstacles?  What is the reason why some women do not believe in themselves and their ability to breastfeed?  What is the thought process of mothers who seem helpless, when faced with breastfeeding difficulties?  As a lactation consultant, I met some mothers who were defeated, depressed by life and learning to breastfeed was just one more impossible task.  I also met some mothers who overcame difficulties that would defeat most people.  And some mothers who breastfed with ease.

Babies learn to walk at various ages, some are early and some are late bloomers.  But the interest and intensity in learning to walk is very much present.  They don't harbor doubt or helplessness but neither do babies have years of so-called experts telling them what and how to think.  They just see what they want to do because everyone around them is doing it.  And they don't depend on the Baby Walking Consultant or their doctor for a diagram of how their legs work, parts and function of legs, and crutches to rent to help them walk.  Babies usually have their families, who cheer-lead their efforts to walk, who pick them up when they fall. The breastfeeding mother may have few people or family members who delight in her learning to breastfeed. 

Breastfeeding is natural.  But we don't live in the natural world.  Most of us live in buildings that are temperature controlled.  We have cool air when its hot outside and warm air when its cold outside.  If we go outside, we must adjust to a vastly different temperature than our indoor temperature.  We wear clothes on our bodies, babies have to adjust to having diapers and clothes.  The skin is our largest sense organ.  In artificial environments such as ours, we have comfort without the challenge and sensation of temperature, wind, rain, and snow.  Women cover their breasts with bras and shirts, and men can go bare-chested at the beach or outdoors.  But women rarely do so without public complaint.  Breastfeeding in public, where skin-to-skin contact is required, creates unease among many people.  That discomfort at the idea or actual breastfeeding by mothers in public, creates an obstacle for some mothers that they cannot overcome.

It is no surprise that our society is becoming more and more trapped by its artificial facade.  If one is born into a world of artificial things that never challenge our bodies or our thinking, then breastfeeding appears to be this rather antiquated and unnecessary behavior.  Some women and men believe that female liberation is to have women behave more like men.  Therefore breastfeeding is unnecessary because anyone can feed a baby--even men.  Chestfeeding is the newest lingo.  Tinker with a few hormones and men can now breastfeed.  I read that the only problem is that men's boobs may get larger. 

Nature and nurture is being challenged by scientific-industrial interests.  Human milk is being standardized to fit a male-dominated society in which the belief is that some women can't or won't breastfeed.  No one questions why some women won't breastfeed.  Yet some men seem to be eager to take over that female biology by chestfeeding.  No one asks how many women can't breastfeed.  

Instead of considering breastfeeding to be a sacred gift of mothers to their children, social marketing is telling us to embrace the idea that anyone can be a mother.  Is this really what feminism is all about?  Isn't this rejection of the female and a furthering of human survival based on corporate science?  Standardize how humans are fed, instead of embracing the diversity of the gift of breastfeeding by a mother to her child serves what purpose?  The purpose appears to be so that people have to buy more products.   Will buying more products satisfy people emotionally and spiritually?  Or is this just another form of enslavement to a corporate world that uses science to hold on to their power?

*Dolly, the sheep, was cloned  using electrical pulses fusing a mammary gland cell and an unfertilized egg cell.  She was born in 1996. The mammary cell's ability to act like male sperm in fertilizing the egg is rather astounding.  
 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dolly-cloned-sheep
Although we shouldn't be surprised by how mammary tissue (breastfeeding) is amazingly unique and life-promoting.  We now know that human mammary cells have stem cells that have great potential to treat disease.

Copyright 2018  Valerie W. McClain