Milk

No, not the movie... I figure it will be 2018 before I can regularly see movies at the theater again.

I recently came across the most interesting and fascinating New Yorker article about breastfeeding. Not its day-to-day mundane mechanics or practices, but rather its historical, legal, and political aspects.

Beer and breastfeeding... Cheers to that! Actual early 20th century French ad

For the past two years, it's always struck me as strange that the previous generations of women around me did not breastfeed... When my nephew was born recently, my sister had trouble with breastfeeding at first, and my mom jumped to me to give her tips, techniques, encouragement and support. There she was, a mother of three, but that (millennium-old, universal, extremely instinctive) knowledge was completely foreign to her. Even further, before she reconciled with it through my experience, she had always perceived breastfeeding very negatively, like many women that age. In no way is this a blame: this is how things were at the time. But how did it happen that a whole society, including medical professionals, came to think that something so natural, so practical, so economical, and so clearly beneficial, was wrong?

The article provides several answers (social factors played a big part, as did a certain pretense towards "evolution") and tidbits (for instance, in Boston in 1910, 90% of poor mothers nursed, while only 17% of wealthy ones did. Even more interesting is the fact that the exact opposite is true today). It also outlines the public health aspect of it all: for instance, the long, paid mat leaves we have in Canada directly support prolonged breastfeeding, which in turn, supposedly means healthier children. The cold reality for many mothers in the US for example, is going back to work within weeks of giving birth, which means either stopping breastfeeding early or subjecting themselves to a rigid and difficult pumping schedule. I never really had to do that, and I take the opportunity to express my utmost admiration and respect for the women who do.

I nursed LP for one year, by the way, including 7 months full-time. It wasn't easy in the first months and I couldn't find support anywhere, because no one had ever heard of a baby who refused to nurse. Now that he's grown into a little person, I know he simply doesn't care for milk very much and quickly tires of being confined into one place, that there was nothing wrong with him or me. Before he was born, I didn't really want to breastfeed. It freaked me out a little bit. In fact, I never thought I would become such an advocate for it (without being an extremist -I hate extremists of any kind). But having persevered is now one of the things I feel the proudest about in my whole life.