The arguments put forth in attempt to discount
the neuroendocrine effects of breastfeeding
remind me of the arguments put forth in attempt
to discount the effects of breastmilk on infant
health...
Is the earth flat or is it round?
Well that depends on perspective...
It is very hard for individuals to see
the powerful role neurotransmitters and hormones
play in their lives because they can't clone themselves
and serve as their own controls...
Just as we can't clone our babies
and feed one ABM and breastfeed the other
to see the different outcomes...we can't clone
ourselves and see what we would have done
differently if we were and weren't breastfeeding
in a given situation...
The way to see these differences is over large
populations...
But without giving some credence the intuition
and anecdontal evidence, the numerous, rigorous
scientific studies that are needed to decide the question
conclusively will never be conducted...
What if the founders of LLL had not acted on their intuition
and the *anecdotal evidence* of their own lives?
You and I would not have IBCLC or LLLL behind our names...
We can't always wait for the science to catch up with
our experience...
As the mother of six breastfed children the first of whom
I did not nurse anywhere near a normal course of nursing,
I would say that nursing multiple children through to a natural weaning
is helpful in seeing the neuroendocrine adavantages of breastfeeding...
It is also helpful if you have the experience of having mothered
both ways -with and without breastfeeding,
because with more experience you can see the change in
yourself when you are lactating and when you are not lactating,
everything else being more or less equal...
My children and my husband can tell when the youngest is weaning,
because mom is less patient among other things...
I remember my own mother encouraging me to breastfeed
for the bonding...this had no effect on me whatsoever...
bonding...smonding...
My interest in breastfeeding was purely immunological
as this was what I concentrated on when getting my biology degree-
the molecular genetics of immunology...
And even having nursed my first child nine months
I would not have said that it did much for *me* in terms of bonding...
Although I would probably have said at the time
it made my son *overly bonded* to me...
But looking back I can see breastfeeding did profoundly affect
my behavior. I tried to return to college when he was just 2 weeks
old. I remember going to campus and being so agitated that I could
not sit in class...I just walked around for 2 hours conflicted...then
I went home and let the babysitter go...
On a concious level I wanted to return to school
as soon as possible after giving birth-
this made *sense* for a variety of *reasons*...
My intellect and will tried to over power my maternal instincts,
while I roamed around campus aimlessly,
but because I was breastfeeding
maternal instinct won out.
My intellect wanted so much to continue with my studies
that I left a prestigious school for a community college
near my mother so I could solve my *problem* of what to
do with my baby.
I rationalized that my difficulty revolved
around *who* was babysitting my child...
My son was 3 months old when I tried to return to classes
for the second time...
I made it to more classes this time but
ultimately I quit half way through the semester....
I was still breastfeeding so my maternal
instincts again conquered my intellect and will,
and my *solution* of having my mother be the babysitter
turned out to be no solution at all...
As I was making plans to move back to my original college,
my mother told me, "You are never going to be able to leave this
baby until you wean him."
I don't think I even gave her a response.
I'm sure I thought she was silly. I have a brain! I have an intellect!
I have a will! You can't possibly think the reason I've dropped out
school twice has ANYTHING to do with the fact that I am breastfeeding!!!!
Maybe subconciously, to be on the safe side, I weaned him-
but I rationalized that this was because I was taking a full course
load and pumping was going to be impractical.
When I registered the registrar offered to arrange my classes so
that it would allow me maintain breastfeeding, if I was breastfeeding...
(Was his wife an LLLL I have often wondered?)
I turned him down. Now why on earth did I do that?
After all, I had told myself that I was only weaning my
child because it would be too impractical to continue breastfeeding...
Now here was someone offering me a practical way of preserving
breastfeeding and I was turning him down?!?!
Now after weaning my baby I still found leaving my child
the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life,
but as a non-lactating woman I WAS ABLE TO DO IT...
I was able to squash my feelings enough to leave him...
I was not consciously aware that scales tipped in favor
of mother-baby separation BECAUSE I had stopped breastfeeding...
It was only through the course of nursing other children
that I realized I was right when I thought my problem was
*who* was caring for my son, but I still came up with the wrong
solution because the part of my brain that was pulling me to care
for my own child did not have the gift of speech.
The part of my brain that had *good reasons*
for wanting me to go back school
did have the gift of speech and so it won out.
But the other part of my brain could not bear it
so breastfeeding had to go...
The speech centers of my brain came up
with perfectly rationale rationalizations for weaning,
which was really a decision made by another part of
my brain...
We do things that we can't articulate even to ourselves because
those decisions are being made by regions of the brain that are
not well connected to the language centers.
You can honestly believe that a lot of parenting decisions
you are making have nothing whatever to do with the way
you are feeding your baby and still be completely
wrong about that...
Have you ever seen the films of experiments involoving
people who had the neuronal connections of the two hemispheres
of their brains severed as a treatment for severe epilepsy?
The subjects are shown two pictures...
a bird is shown to their left eye only and an orange is shown
to their right eye only (the optic nerve runs directly back to the
vision center of the brain without crossing over)
They are then asked to draw what they saw...
They begin drawing an orange because the right hemisphere
is dominant in activities like drawing...
But when the observer starts asking the subject
about what they are drawing the subject begins
to add wings and limbs and a head to the orange
because the left hemisphere is dominant in language
and their left hemisphere saw a bird...
When the observer points out to the subject that at first
the drawing looked like an orange, and he asks the subject
"Did you see an orange?...the subject says "No"...
The observer presses the subject "Are you sure? That drawing looked
like an orange.."
The subject's left side of the brain is in conflict with
the right side of the brain but since left side is dominant in language
only the left side can *speak* to the concious mind of the subject.
The concious mind of the subject *rationalizes* his actions by saying
the bird only looked like an orange at first because he is not very good
at drawing birds.
What I am trying to say ( in a long winded way...sorry)
is there isn't some vast disconnect between your body,
your mind, your intellect, your will, your chemical being,
YOURSELF...you are all of those things and what you do or
don't do with your body, like breastfeeding or not breastfeeding,
has profound effects that you may not be aware of conciously
but that doesn't make them any less real...
And it does no one any good for us to stick our heads in the sand and
say just because we can make this or that intellectual rationalization
for actions and behaviors, we don't even want to look into the mind
body connection of breastfeeding...
Ok sorry for my rant I resolve to be quiet on Lacnet for a good while...
Jen O'Quinn
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