According to several lactnetters, the word for "a dog ____ing her puppies"
is just plain *feeding*.  I wonder...

I think "formula" is a word we can't change because using another word
instantly throws up barriers.  But what if we referred to breastfeeding as
just "feeding", as opposed to "bottle-feeding"?  Lots of times people
wouldn't get it.  We'd say something about feeding a baby and they'd picture
bottles.  But it *would* normalize the behavior.  It's not that I'm
squeamish about "breast"feeding, but it does seem to put the behavior in a
class "udderly" different from other mammals (who neither udderfeed nor
teatfeed).

Since having my own babies, I've thought one of the reasons there's so much
pain medication in labor is that we simply don't have enough words for the
sensations involved.  Our Lamaze instructor passed around a picture of a
woman's face near birth, and the whole class went quiet.  Then she passed
around a picture of Bruce Jenner's face as he was on the brink of winning
the Olympic decathlon.  "Oh," we thought, "Same face!  So this labor thing
we're seeing isn't agony; it's concentrated, determined work.  *This* we can
do!"  Call it pain and it hurts, fail to call it pain and you're making too
little of it.  But there's no good word for what an athlete - or laboring
woman - feels, so we're stuck.

Maybe we're not stuck with breastfeeding.  What do you think?  Would we
*dare* just talk about "feeding"?
--
Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY
www.wiessinger.baka.com

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