Here's the best I've come up with so far. It still doesn't say it "right"
for me, but it's kind of like trying to describe color to a blind man.
Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC Ithaca, NY
www.wiessinger.baka.com
Itıs Not Really About The Milk
You wonıt "get it" at first. At first itıs all about technique, and
position, and time, and swallowing, and soreness, and feeling as if your
whole world has narrowed to Feeding The Baby. Those of us who have enjoyed
nursing our children are on the other side of a great emotional gulf from
you. We canıt explain it, we can only try to help you across the bridge, to
where you can see for yourself. If you stay caught up in this as a feeding
method, you may never get all the way across the bridge. But oh, the view
from the other side! At the least, you need to know itıs there.
Those of us who "got it" wouldnıt feel guilty if we were prevented from
nursing our next child. Weıd feel anguished. "Guilt" means you didnıt do
something for someone else that you "should" have done whether or not you
enjoyed it yourself. "Anguish" means great pain and grief, as if youıve had
a piece of yourself torn away.
Imagine having to move by shifting your weight left, then moving your right
leg forward, knee slightly bent at first but gradually straightening, right
heel landing as you rise on the ball of your left foot, swinging your left
arm forward in reverse synchrony with your right as it moves back, then
performing a mirror image of the whole process for the next step. Not fun,
not easy, not graceful, not something you want to keep working at. But
imagine the ease and pleasure of simply walking. Now imagine someone
telling you that you have to give it up. Guilt? Or anguish?
I wish I could convey to you the simple, thought-less, vast, delicious
pleasure of nursing my children. Once I "got it," I didnıt "feed" them,
didnıt worry about intervals, didnıt hold back. We nursed when they wanted
and when I wanted even just to keep them quiet while I was on the phone.
At night, nursing was a quiet mending of the dayıs disorders. Oh, not
always, but as someone said, "Of course thereıs an inconvenience to nursing.
But thereıs an inconvenience to being a mother." Breastfeeding was a
fundamental, essential connection for us, and made everything else from
newborn diapers to two-year-old tantrums far, far simpler. Then thereıs
the ego-building experience of being the perfect center of another personıs
universe.
Can you achieve the same bond through bottle-feeding? No. Remember that a
breastfeeding mother is in a specific hormonal state. Her whole body
responds to her baby in a way that a bottle-feeding motherıs or a
baby-sitterıs or a fatherıs cannot. Her infant receives all his calories in
a full-bodied, full-mouthed, skin-on-skin embrace, always from his beloved
mother. Her older child comes to her to have growing pains of all kinds
soothed simply in a way unique to breastfeeding.
Breastfeeding is a newbornıs first relationship, designed to continue
throughout a childıs early years. As a culture, we tell ourselves - without
evidence - that the absence of this fundamental human relationship has no
longterm implications for mother or child or family or society.
I have enjoyed our children at every stage so far and they are now young
adults. Their father and I felt as if we did no real parenting after the
first ten years or so; we sat back and enjoyed them. This is unusual in
America today. Is it partly related to our start in a long, luxurious
breastfeeding relationship? I think so. And like every woman who has
reached the other side of the bridge, I hope I can extend a hand back to
help you across. The view is irreplaceable!
Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC 136 Ellis Hollow Creek Road Ithaca, NY 14850
www.wiessinger.baka.com
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