I thought about what I wanted to share for world breastfeeding week, my children are older now. 10 and 6, and it still stands that I have spent half their childhood breastfeeding. This part I fondly call "learning how to mother without it".
What an initiation into feminine power, to be your child's entire nourishment. What a revelation, that your breasts aren't for ogling on the top shelf of newsagents but for FEEDING THE WORLD. When the gaslighting of it dawns on you. So angry, so happy.
I still dream of it. The few quick suckles and the long glug glug glugs and the calm that washes over you, better than any drug. Your sleepy babe wakes in the night and you draw them closer and you feel the tug tug tug as the wave falls over both of you and sends you to dreamland.
When you hear a baby cry, does the instinct to take out your breasts ever go away?
It hasn't for me.
The beautiful, grounding, limiting, expansive tethering of it. The way you measure time in feeds and you become incredibly productive in the between time. "If you want something done, ask a busy woman" so the saying goes. How to explain how your breasts fill up right before your baby cries even when you are miles apart?
Anytime I think maybe I can't do something, I remember I'm the woman who breastfed a tongue tied baby in a domestic violence refuge, a baby who would only feed while I was stood up. And I'm in awe of that woman.
Breastfeeding is hard because until you observe, how can you know? I nearly didn't breastfeed my son because I had no idea what I was doing. It was only when a kind midwife helped me to cup feed my sleepy baby was he roused enough to latch.
Breastfeeding is hard because the delicate interplay of hormones required are often sabotaged by the medicalisation of birth. It's hard because it's time consuming and it goes against all the modern ideas of how a baby "should" be.
I used to joke you weren't my friend unless you'd seen my breasts. Whenever I see breastfeeding I am thrilled and I want to say - I see you, I've been you. Together we have fed the world.
Sending my love out to all women who were sabotaged and carry their breastfeeding grief.
