It's interesting to look at the stats on sexual abuse
and look again at breastfeeding rates, duration, &
attitudes.

Sometimes women contact me to discuss their mixed
feelings due to a past history of abuse.  Sometimes
the feelings don't surface until the child is "a
certain age" -- which can be surprisingly young.

When my daughter was newborn, a visiting friend
watched us nursing and casually remarked it was
wonderful I was nursing but that she would not nurse a
child herself due to adolescent abuse involving her
breasts.  She said she would pump if she had a child,
she knew her milk was important even if she could not
put an infant to her breast.

This was the first time I had heard anyone make the
connection.  Sadly, I've heard it many times since,
sometimes in the silence.

One woman I worked with had "failed" to nurse her
first child, but went on to nurse her second into
toddlerhood and briefly tandem nursed when her older
child (age 3) asked to nurse as well.  The mother
reported that the experience was a healing one, both
in terms of the prior abuse and in terms of what she
felt was a premature weaning with her first child.

Susan Johnson  MFA, IBCLC
Salt Lake City, USA

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