Well, as someone who started her breasts lactating at 42, I couldn't
agree more about how they can do it. Nearly 3 years later, a strapping
toddler still makes his home there for about 70% of his nutrition. And
we're back in the "Judith Waterford who could still produce milk in her
80s..." conversation.
I can't see how it's not _obvious_ to everyone that working breasts stay
working for a long time, and this is vital in the survival of the human
species. As a race, we excell at getting past amazingly bad droughts
and famines and surviving on practically nowt for a couple of
generations (hence formula manages to raise so many kids). Mothers do,
and did, die at birth, and they also fall prey to illness and accident
along the way. Breasts sometimes malfunction too, as we see today.
Online, I see a lot of the 2% mothers, who just simply can't make enough
milk (just had one last week, in fact.) As I've gone along, it's become
clear to me, that the vast history of the human race has had lactating
_communities_, not lactating mothers, per se. If a babe gets to be born
healthy, milk will be there, somewhere, whether it be family or tribe.
It's when we've broken off from tribal roots, and put ourselves into
small units, and put the pressure on one mother to feed and raise her
children... that's when it all gets a wee bit problematic! Even today,
mothers in some areas who are struggling to transition from gold milk to
white milk, will have a cup passed round and a cup filled with a few
drops of white from every mother in the ward. In a world where women in
a community will synchronise their menstrual cycles, it makes perfect
sense to me that in a community of lactating mothes and suckling babies,
all working breasts will stay primed.... surely synchronised
menstruation is all about having babies born at roughly the same time in
the community? So many here have reported milk springing up when babies
do - it's just basic survival sense!
In fact, I've been wondering about the status of some mothers, versus
others, in ancient tribal cultures, in terms of milk making. If you
managed to gestate, but couldn't fully lactate, did someone else raise
the child as their own? If you made more milk, did you get to suckle
more babies? Did the women who wanted to go out and hunt, just hand
over the baby to the tribe to feed whilst she was off, or did it have to
be a nominated person? Did you ever get jealous scenarios breaking out
about other people getting too fond of yourn? Did any communities ever
die off, as they took in a new wife/partner with a new disease, and she
tracked it through all the babies? At what point did male rules over
female ownership start to imprint on lactation behaviour, as it did on
sexual behaviour and worship? Did only nursing your own partner's
children, come in before or after the desire to make sure your partner
ONLY had YOUR child? Did you prefer for your own mother to nurse your
child, as it was more controllable in that sense? Was lactation, power,
in the earliest communites, and was that challanged as men worked out
that babies only happened with their sperm? I want a time machine!
(But will settle for someone doing an awesome Phd. - are there any stone
age tribes left, that haven't moved down the male ownership of the
female's sexuality root?) And yes, I do have that weird a mind... I do
think about this sort of stuff All The Time.
Many many years ago, I knew a male nurse who would patiently explain
that all males could produce some milk, if the mother died and there
were no other women available. All it took was a baby strong enough to
keep suckling for something to happen.... and it's just impossible to
me, to envision a world whereby babies in need were not just simply put
to the breast of any woman who happened to be around, when disaster
struck. Few communites kill off the babies first in real extremis -
it's the old who go first, in order to keep the babies alive. And I'm
sure that any breast, whether older and now no longer suckling, or too
young to have started their own journey, would be handed a baby When All
Else Failed.
In the tribal context Robin, some grandmas are well younger than either
you or me! :-) In fact, I know a mother of nine, still breastfeeding
her youngest two, with her oldest well old enough to have produced
children. Some of these tribal grandmothers could have been nursing
their own children AND their grandchildren- no need for spontaneous
relactation. One mother in the Channel 4 "Extreme Breastfeeding" video,
on knowing she had a birth issue for her second born, flew her own
breastfeeding mother to the UK and asked her to suckle the baby at
birth, whilst she was in theatre. The grandmother did so, and called it
her extreme privalege to the be able to do so. She only suckled the
newborn for a few hours, but I'm sure milk would have been there if that
had continued. And surely in China, grandmothers raised the babies
whilst the mothers went into the fields? Is this a post formula
phenomenon? What about the AIDS orphans being raised by their
grandmothers in Africa right now?
So many questions....
Morgan Gallagher
Robin Roots,RN, IBCLC wrote:
> To make a long story short, I agree, someone should do a research
> paper on this. I feel I could have started nursing a baby. Still do
> at times. That would be a hoot being in my 40 something and sending
> my first born to college now.
> What a powerful drive our bodies have. I had no idea, I was one of so
> many.
> I wonder, would a Grandma be able to nurse her grandchild, if her
> daughter could not. Maybe this happened long ago in our hunter
> gathering society. I find it facinating.
>
>
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