Breastfeeding Mother Quotes

The only people who should be allowed to govern countries with nuclear weapons are mothers, those who are still breastfeeding their babies."--Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings.

Imagine that the world had created a new 'dream product' to feed and immunize everyone born on earth. Imagine also that it was available everywhere, required no storage or delivery, and helped mothers plan their families and reduce the risk of cancer. Then imagine that the world refused to use it.

The only people who should be allowed to govern countries with nuclear weapons are mothers, those who are still breast-feeding their babies.

Biblical metaphors for God include a laboring woman, a breastfeeding mother, even a mother hen. And man and woman were both created in God’s image, were they not? Why use Him and not Her? In fact, why even say God instead of Goddess? Both Him and Her are not enough to contain the fullness of God, who is outside the construct of gender, who is so much more than the human mind can conceive.

New mothers are often told that once they've fed, burped, and changed their baby they should leave their baby alone to self-soothe if they cry because all of their needs have been met. One day I hope all new mothers will smile confidently and say, "I gave birth to a baby, not just a digestive system. My baby as a brain that needs to learn trust and a heart that needs love. I will meet all of my baby's needs, emotional, mental, and physical, and I'll respond to every cry because crying is communication, not manipulation.

Breast milk and amniotic fluid carry the flavors of the mother’s foods, and studies consistently show that babies grow up to be more accepting of flavors they’ve sampled while in the womb and while breastfeeding.

One of the main functions of a push-up bra is to lower the number of mothers who seem like mothers.

But the overwhelming number of mothers who think they have too little milk have babies who are taking plenty of milk and are gaining weight well. These mothers have based their conclusions on misinformation or a misinterpretation of their babies' behavior.

Breastfeeding is a beautiful thing, one of the most beautiful things that exist in nature. Think about how a woman can literally feed her baby with her body! In my eyes, this is a certain form of beauty, of divinity! To know that my body can not only form and bring another human being into the world, but that I can actually feed babies with my own milk from my own breasts— that puts me in a state of awe each time I think about it. It is an honour to be a woman.

A world that is safe for mothers is safe for all.

They convinced our mothers that if a food item came in a bottle -- or a can or a box or a cellophane bag -- then it was somehow better for you than when it came to you free of charge via Mother Nature....An entire generation of us were introduced in our very first week to the concept that phony was better than real, that something manufactured was better than something that was right there in the room. (Later in life, this explained the popularity of the fast food breakfast burrito, neocons, Kardashians, and why we think reading this book on a tiny screen with only three minutes of battery life left is enjoyable.

The whole human world is born from the womb of mothers, and if we can't make the motherly act of breastfeeding free from stigma in such a world, then it's an insult to our very existence as a species.

When we trust the makers of baby formula more than we do our own ability to nourish our babies, we lose a chance to claim an aspect of our power as women. Thinking that baby formula is as good as breast milk is believing that thirty years of technology is superior to three million years of nature's evolution. Countless women have regained trust in their bodies through nursing their children, even if they weren't sure at first that they could do it. It is an act of female power, and I think of it as feminism in its purest form.

It is not patriarchal to hold the door for a lady, It is not cowardly to leave your seat to the elderly. But it is barbaric to harass a breastfeeding mother, And prehistoric to force a woman carry a pregnancy.

Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day that I was born, 13 April 1949, nineteen senior Nazi officials were convicted at Nuremberg, including Hitler's former envoy to the Vatican, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, who was found guilty of planning aggression against Czechoslovakia and committing atrocities against the Jewish people. On the same day, the State of Israel celebrated its first Passover seder and the United Nations, still meeting in those days at Flushing Meadow in Queens, voted to consider the Jewish state's application for membership. In Damascus, eleven newspapers were closed by the regime of General Hosni Zayim. In America, the National Committee on Alcoholism announced an upcoming 'A-Day' under the non-uplifting slogan: 'You can drink—help the alcoholic who can't.' ('Can't'?) The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled in favor of Britain in the Corfu Channel dispute with Albania. At the UN, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko denounced the newly formed NATO alliance as a tool for aggression against the USSR. The rising Chinese Communists, under a man then known to Western readership as Mao Tze-Tung, announced a limited willingness to bargain with the still-existing Chinese government in a city then known to the outside world as 'Peiping.' All this was unknown to me as I nuzzled my mother's breast for the first time, and would certainly have happened in just the same way if I had not been born at all, or even conceived. One of the newspaper astrologists for that day addressed those whose birthday it was: There are powerful rays from the planet Mars, the war god, in your horoscope for your coming year, and this always means a chance to battle if you want to take it up. Try to avoid such disturbances where women relatives or friends are concerned, because the outlook for victory upon your part in such circumstances is rather dark. If you must fight, pick a man! Sage counsel no doubt, which I wish I had imbibed with that same maternal lactation, but impartially offered also to the many people born on that day who were also destined to die on it.

In my experience nursing is waiting. The mother becomes the background against which the baby lives, becomes time. I used to exist against the continuity of time. Then I became the baby's continuity, a background of ongoing time for him to live against. I was the warmth and milk that was always there for him, the agent of comfort that was always there for him. My body, my life, became the landscape of my son's life. I am no longer merely a thing living in the world; I am a world.

It is true that breasts can induce sexual tension in men, but truer than that is the fact, that breasts are the primary and healthiest source of nutrition for the infant, so, if men can't use their higher mental faculty of self-restraint at the sight of breastfeeding at public places, then it's not the women who need to change their breastfeeding place, it's the men who need to work on their character.

Breastfeeding does not have to be hard. Breastfeeding is natural. With rare exceptions, it becomes hard only because of all the interference caused by the medicalization of birth and unsupportive culture. Animals breastfeed instinctively with no need for supplementation, classes, or support. We as humans also have these instincts. We have become so disconnected. Breastfeeding my children has been one of my greatest joys in life, and I am filled with sorrow when I imagine how many mothers and infants haven’t been able to experience this because of misinformation.

I just caught my fiancé breastfeeding from his mother.

Mother's milk is soul food for babies. The babies of the world need a lot more soul food.

Being a mother is the real beauty, breastfeed your child, not your beauty

According to Hinde, when a baby suckles at its mother's breast, a vacuum is created. Within that vacuum, the infant's saliva is sucked back into the mother's nipple, where receptors in her mammary gland decipher it. This "baby spit backwash," as she delightfully described it, contains signals, information about the baby's immune system-including any infections it might be fighting.

The influence of bottle-feeding makes many people think that ‘nipple sucking’ is breastfeeding. It is not. If the baby sucks his mother’s nipples as he would a bottle teat, it damn well hurts.

And I find myself wondering whether, since the kids, I feel different to Charlie, or whether he fancies me as much now my boobs are not the same boobs they were before breastfeeding, now I have all this strange slack skin on my belly. I know I shouldn't ask, because my body has performed a miracle; two in fact. And yet it is important for a couple to still desire each other, isn't it?

You are not a failure. Your worth as a mother is not measured in ounces. Say it out loud. Write it on the inside of your pump bag. You’re a great mom doing a hard job, and I hope you’re really proud of yourself.

POPPY (on her mother not breastfeeding her during infancy): If you had breastfed me, it might have increased my IQ, and I’d have a lot of pressure to succeed. My average IQ means I can simply coast through life, so thank you.

Breastfeeding reminds us of the universal truth of abundance; the more we give out, the more we are filled up, and that divine nourishment - the source from which we all draw - is, like a mother's breast, ever full and ever flowing.

Almost in their sleep, mothers respond, stroke and suckle their babies throughout the night. All the mothers unconsciously sleep in a special position, arm above their babies’ heads and knees drawn up, which protects their babies from harm.7

David watched Sol finish the can of beans. Sol always ate fast. He overate. Since he was eight. Sol leaned back in the wooden chair against the wall, under the window. Baby brother. Sol could have been anything he wanted to be. Nothing mathematical, nothing quantitative, of course, but anything else. A beautiful boy, a wonderful brother, they got along well. Then when Sol turned eight years old, age of a new beginning, their mother obsessed over him, ignoring David. Obsessed over Sol and his underwear. Over and over, a regeneration, a newness. Changed his clothes constantly, had him on her lap every minute possible. She put him in bed and tucked the covers in every night. She refused to let their father do it, so he always took care of David. But, of course, David needed no help and Sol always needed Ruth to take care of him. Sol was still being breast fed even when he finally went to kindergarten. Then Ruth slowly increased regular, solid food. But before bed, Sol had a nightcap, mother’s milk. Their special time. Their unique closeness took a turn from breastfeeding to something else. By the time Sol was in third grade, he was one of the fattest kids in class. Then the brothers became a real team. Now here he was. David and Sol still together, on a mission given by the Creator. It was perfect.

No amount of advice will prevent the women from carrying on this deadly habit.” This was written in 1917, but the attitude was still around in 1952 when clinic nurses were advising mothers that seven to nine months was the desirable length of time for breastfeeding.

While each of these may be convenient at the time (and easier choices, culturally, than choosing menstrual retreat, natural birth, breastfeeding, mother-baby dependency, and unmedicated menopause), there is a downside. Each time we deny our female functions, each time we deviate from our bodies’ natural path, we move farther away from our feminine roots. This can create distress within our bodies and can set the scene for further problems, physically and emotionally, for ourselves and our families. - this quote is from the Foreword to Wild Feminine; the foreword is by Sarah J. Buckley, MD

What followed was a blissful year. That is the most annoying thing in the world to say, in a world full of mothers who struggle with breast-feeding, high fevers, long days, and late nights. But I can only try to redeem myself by saying that I was completely caught off guard by my outrageous happiness.

We are so, so proud of you for being a working mom and for giving this breastfeeding and working thing a shot. . . . Now get out there, attach a machine to one of the most sensitive and private parts of your body, and make the magic happen. You’re a warrior. You’re a badass. You’re a working mother, and that’s an amazing thing.

If they [the mothers] use different vocabularies, they may share a postmodern feminist "body politics" - in this instance an awareness that maternal breastfeeding carries no inherent, "natural" meaning, that it is always located where historically specific, culturally articulated interests and power relations collide with the recalcitrance of the body.

People like what they eat, rather than eat what they like.” The phenomenon starts early. Breast milk and amniotic fluid carry the flavors of the mother’s foods, and studies consistently show that babies grow up to be more accepting of flavors they’ve sampled while in the womb and while breastfeeding. (Babies swallow several ounces of amniotic fluid a day.)

Sonnet of Norms It is not patriarchal to hold the door for a lady, It is not cowardly to leave your seat to the elderly. But it is barbaric to harass a breastfeeding mother, And prehistoric to force a woman carry a pregnancy. There are norms that nourish the societal fabric, Then there are norms out of touch with age and times. Beyond both freedom and obedience as a whole being, You ought to realize where and how to draw the lines. The problem is that most do not know when to rebel, They rebel out of boredom to seek adventure not justice. They commit reckless vandalism in the name of activism, And feel proud while committing the most heinous deeds. Norms require careful scrutiny, not headless rebellion. Hence, quite often rebels become the new face of oppression.

Paid parental leave is associated with fewer newborn and infant deaths, higher rates of breastfeeding, less postpartum depression, and a more active, hands-on role for new fathers. Mothers are much more likely to stay in the workforce and earn higher wages if they can take paid leave when they have a baby. And when men take leave, the redistribution of household labor and caretaking lasts after they return to work.

The three conditions without which healthy growth does not take place can be taken for granted in the matrix of the womb: nutrition, a physically secure environment and the unbroken relationship with a safe, ever-present maternal organism. The word matrix is derived from the Latin for “womb,” itself derived from the word for “mother.” The womb is mother, and in many respects the mother remains the womb, even following birth. In the womb environment, no action or reaction on the developing infant’s part is required for the provision of any of his needs. Life in the womb is surely the prototype of life in the Garden of Eden where nothing can possibly be lacking, nothing has to be worked for. If there is no consciousness — we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Knowledge — there is also no deprivation or anxiety. Except in conditions of extreme poverty unusual in the industrialized world, although not unknown, the nutritional needs and shelter requirements of infants are more or less satisfied. The third prime requirement, a secure, safe and not overly stressed emotional atmosphere, is the one most likely to be disrupted in Western societies. The human infant lacks the capacity to follow or cling to the parent soon after being born, and is neurologically and biochemically underdeveloped in many other ways. The first nine months or so of extrauterine life seem to have been intended by nature as the second part of gestation. The anthropologist Ashley Montagu has called this phase exterogestation, gestation outside the maternal body. During this period, the security of the womb must be provided by the parenting environment. To allow for the maturation of the brain and nervous system that in other species occurs in the uterus, the attachment that was until birth directly physical now needs to be continued on both physical and emotional levels. Physically and psychologically, the parenting environment must contain and hold the infant as securely as she was held in the womb. For the second nine months of gestation, nature does provide a near-substitute for the direct umbilical connection: breast-feeding. Apart from its irreplaceable nutritional value and the immune protection it gives the infant, breast-feeding serves as a transitional stage from unbroken physical attachment to complete separation from the mother’s body. Now outside the matrix of the womb, the infant is nevertheless held close to the warmth of the maternal body from which nourishment continues to flow. Breast-feeding also deepens the mother’s feeling of connectedness to the baby, enhancing the emotionally symbiotic bonding relationship. No doubt the decline of breast-feeding, particularly accelerated in North America, has contributed to the emotional insecurities so prevalent in industrialized countries. Even more than breast-feeding, healthy brain development requires emotional security and warmth in the infant’s environment. This security is more than the love and best possible intentions of the parents. It depends also on a less controllable variable: their freedom from stresses that can undermine their psychological equilibrium. A calm and consistent emotional milieu throughout infancy is an essential requirement for the wiring of the neurophysiological circuits of self-regulation. When interfered with, as it often is in our society, brain development is adversely affected.

In the eighteenth century, the mother's imagination became the default explanation for unwanted traits. Her uncanny influence extended to breastfeeding, by which she infused the child with "her ideas, beliefs, intelligence, intellect, diet and speech," along with "her other physical and emotional qualities." This mystical conception of maternity made the mother an easy target for perceived defects in the baby. It was also a reason to be suspicious of her curiosity and passions and to curtail her exposure to the world.

Breast milk is so beneficial that a more or less well-nourished mother need not do any more than suckle her baby to ensure it is receiving a healthy diet. When it comes to the nutrients it contains, breast milk provides everything that dietary scientists believe children need in order to thrive - it is the best dietary supplement ever. It contains everything, knows everything, and can do everything necessary for a child's well-being. And, as if that weren't enough, it has the added advantage of passing on a bit of Mom's immune system to her offspring.

It was no shock to me that my parents, like so many others, emerged out of a kind of fog. My father, an unrepentant chatterbox, claimed that his father had gone to dig for gold in Paramaribo, Dutch Guyana, anbodoning his mother, who was breast-feeding her baby on the Morne à Cayes. Other times he claimed his father was a merchant seaman, shipwrecked off the coast of Sumatra. Where did the truth lie? I think he re-created it at will, taking pleasure in enunciating the syllables that made him dream: Paramaribo, Sumatra. Thanks to him, from a very early age I understood that you forge an identity.

It was no shock to me that my parents, like so many others, emerged out of a kind of fog. My father, an unrepentant chatterbox, claimed that his father his father had gone to dig for gold in Paramaribo, Dutch Guyana, anbodoning his mother, who was breast-feeding her baby on the Morne à Cayes. Other times he claimed his father was a merchant seaman, shipwrecked off the coast of Sumatra. Where did the truth lie? I think he re-created it at will, taking pleasure in enunciating the syllables that made him dream: Paramaribo, Sumatra. Thanks to him, from a very early age I understood that you forge an identity.

We think we value mothers in America, but we don’t. We may revere motherhood, the hazy abstraction, the cream-of-wheat-with-a-halo ideal, but a mother is just a kind of woman, after all, and women are trouble and not so valuable. Low-income mothers drag down the country—why’d they have kids if they couldn’t support them? Middle-class mothers are boring frumps. Elite ones are obsessed sanctimommies: Don’t they know how annoying they are, with their yoga, their catfights over diapers and breastfeeding, their designer strollers that take up half the sidewalk so that people with important places to go have to take several extra steps?

Pfeffernus flavored aspirin was found to be hideously dangerous, and babies the size of strawberries were being born to women who were known poppers, and these babies had enormous heads the size of spoiling watermelons, and they whispered obscene remarks in sibilant Levantine waterfront pigeon, and they had lidless eyes and leering flaccid mouths, and they were born with pierced ears, and some were even born with garish metallic paper carnival hats. Their mothers felt repugnance at the lewd comments they uttered at breastfeeding time, and their limbs were unsightly thin and curling tendrils, like withered asparagus bottoms, which were covered with the fine prickly hairs, and they coiled and uncoiled continuously like tendrils under the sea, and when these tendrils were fragile, and when they were pinched off they grew right back, clutching insulting greeting cards.

Although formulas have greatly improved over the years, no formula can fully replicate the immunological benefits of mother’s milk. In the summer of 2018, the administration of President Donald Trump provoked dismay among many health authorities by opposing an international resolution to encourage breast-feeding and reportedly threatened Ecuador, the sponsor of the initiative, with trade sanctions if it didn’t change its position. Cynics pointed out that the infant formula industry, which is worth $70 billion a year, might have had a hand in determining the U.S. position. A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson denied that that was the case and said that America was merely “fighting to protect women’s abilities to make the best choices for the nutrition of their babies” and to make sure that they were not denied access to formula—something the resolution wouldn’t have done anyway.

Although mothers are rarely told this, there is no question that some of the medication used in epidurals does get to the baby. One study measured the levels of epidural medication in newborns’ umbilical cords after birth; the longer the mother had had the epidural in place, the higher the level of medication in the cord (and therefore the baby). A study looking at the effects of epidural using Fentanyl (a narcotic) on the baby showed definite negative effects on his ability to breastfeed, especially at higher doses. Those women who had the higher doses were much more likely to have stopped breastfeeding by six weeks after birth, even though all the mothers in the study had successfully breastfed a previous baby for at least six weeks. Studies that evaluated the way the baby breastfed have found that, after being exposed to the epidural medications during the labour, the baby was less able to latch on well and suckle effectively. Some studies have seen subtle effects of epidurals that lasted up to a month.

What if, rather than asking women to bear the burden of responsibility for our nation’s health and intelligence, governments invested money in research for better formulas that can improve health? If what we feed our babies in the first year really has that much of an impact on lifelong health, this should be a priority. Because in reality, not all babies are going to be able to be breastfed, as long as we want to live in a world where women have the freedom to decide how to use their bodies; whether to work or stay home; whether to be a primary caregiver or not. In reality, there are going to be children raised by single dads; there are going to be children raised by grandparents; there are going to be children who are adopted by parents who aren’t able to induce lactation; there are going to be children whose mothers don’t produce enough milk, or who are on drugs not compatible with breastfeeding. Rather than demanding that every mother should be able to—should want to—breastfeed, we should be demanding better research, better resources, better options. We should be demanding better.

But,” he added, “don’t have any illusions that by marrying me you will be happy. After we’re married, I’ll wander off as I please, visit whomever I like, attend parties, and travel around the world. But you will have to wait for me, shut up at home. Before I leave, I will glue strips of paper around the windows and doors and write my signature on them to assure myself when I return that not only did you stay inside, but you didn’t even look out the window. In our house, we shall only employ female servants, and if for some reason I must hire male servants, I will choose men who are so monstrously ugly that if you happen to look at them you will turn away in horror. I also don’t want you to remain beautiful because your beauty will then be my cross to bear. A wife shouldn’t be beautiful. She should be a saint and nothing else. Until you are old, you will continuously be pregnant or breastfeeding, and after only a few years you’ll become fat, shapeless, and exhausted, no longer able to arouse the temptation of any man. I, on the other hand, will remain slim, the same weight as I am now, six months shy of nineteen years old, and I shall roam and soar about the world secure that you’re waiting for me at home. I will have lovers, but my one true love will be you. Do not think that when you are fat and old that I will love you less. On the contrary, I will love you more because every time I look at you I will know that it was I who made you, the girl who was beauty itself, so ugly. That ugliness will be more mine than your beauty could ever be, and for this reason I will remain madly in love with you. The scar on your cheek pleases me more than your hair, more than your eyes, because those things were given to you by your mother, and the scar, instead, was given to you by me.

Everyone needs to be stroked and touched and the benefits of skin contact do not just affect mothers and babies.

Some babies are less secure in the presence of strangers and that is when they need the breast most, yet in industrialised society this is the time mothers are most discouraged from giving it.

Observation of animals revealed the fact that infants were rejected if the mother could not nuzzle them within a certain time.

Researchers who separated primate mothers and infants experimentally, observed that the loss of contact was devastating and the ill effects could last through generations.

The goal of independence starts at birth and mothers who want to stay with their infants most of the time are viewed as ‘possessive’ or eccentric.

In industrialised societies, the advertising of baby milks and bottles and the doubts of health workers and families provide the modern curses and spells. ‘When breastmilk fails . . .’ is the perfect spell to destroy an anxious new mother’s confidence.

A mother who wants to hold her baby most of the time is judged eccentric and often accused of ‘spoiling’ him. The separation of a mother and her baby reduces the chances of establishing a harmony between their physiological rhythms.

When mothers are allowed and encouraged to be intuitive and responsive to their babies’ cues, the pair adapt to each other rapidly and the synergy of two lives can be established happily.

A millionaire’s baby who is not breastfed is less healthy than an exclusively breastfed baby whose mother is in the poorest social group.

Artificial feeding is risky. This basic fact upsets people who feel insulted if they or their mothers did not breastfeed but most women do not ‘choose’ how they feed their babies: they do what their culture and society expects.

There is more prolactin in a woman’s bloodstream at night, indicating that over the millennia babies have taken more milk from their mothers at night than during the day.

The stress of rapid change, the absence of supportive female relatives and the attempt to adjust to an alien way of life disturbed the cultural practices which protected mothers and babies.

In spite of continual railing against those unworthy mothers who did not suckle their babies, there was little interest or research into the causes of breastfeeding difficulties.

Full-term healthy babies are extremely adept at organising their meals to suit themselves and their mothers’ bodies – if only other people will let them do it.

In the USA mothers on ‘welfare’ are compelled to return to work six weeks after birth or they do not get their social security cheques.38

Breastfeeding mothers, sleeping by their babies in three-sided cribs with the open side joined to the adult bed, respond quite differently from mothers whose babies are in four-sided cribs.

The knowledge of dairy cows has exceeded that of human lactation and has had a misleading influence on the understanding of human mothers and babies.

Without special interventions such as a policy overhaul or staff training, breastfeeding help is not a priority. Staff might be reprimanded if they are late with form-filling, but not if they fail to sit with a mother to help her breastfeed in a calm, supportive way.

The assumption that fertility control should be manipulated by authorities without respect for the wishes and dignity of individuals still exists. We see this in societies where political and religious ideologies, demographic concerns and class prejudice influence the supply or withdrawal of contraceptive provision and support for mothering.

In the 1980s the Singapore government gave preferential school admission to the children of mothers with university degrees, while offering less-educated women S$10,000 grants to be sterilised after the birth of their second child.

Breastfeeding mothers’ diet to escape allergies and colic. No babies in my closest family had allergies, gases or colic. I think that is to the result of a mother’s diet we recommend from generation to generation. We do not eat any gas-forming foods like broccoli or cabbage, and we avoid allergens like red fruits. I did, however, drink a lot of milk, which can cause gases. In addition, and contradicting advice on how to stay fit after birth, I ate tons of butter. It was an obsession during that time, for I do not usually consume dairy that much. It did not cause digestion problems for my baby, but it made my milk really thick. She got nice cheeks. I think my body knew more about needs of the baby than my brain. In general, I ate meat and neutral vegetables–no sweets, no soda, and not much shell fish. It may seem difficult to limit yourself to certain kinds of food, but it is not at all. Eat steaks with sweet potato, spring beans, or salad. It is tasty, balanced and quite habitual for many Americans. Sometimes mothers do have to give up some food preferences for several months to help their babies grow healthy and feel good. My cousin, a Korean girl, continued to eat spicy food during breastfeeding. It was not good for my newborn niece, who had an allergic reaction all over her face and body and was scratching herself badly. She had red spots all over.

As it became usual for the noble baby to be wet nursed, it became more difficult for a mother to defy custom.

These depots were the forerunners of health clinics all over the world where a cheap or free product has been used to lure mothers to submit to the vigilant eyes of those who know best.

Most mothers intended to breastfeed, but the spreading message to restrict feeding made problems more likely.

The blaming of mothers for earning their living and neglecting their duties became a well-established principle. The fact that women had earned their living and supported their families since human life began remained unacknowledged.

a mother’s body warms up if her baby is cool or cools down if he is too hot.

Mothers who share a bed or use a three-sided cot attached to the bed are far more responsive to their babies than those who have a separate cot by the bed.

880,000 babies could be saved simply by not removing them from their mothers, and by supporting early suckling.

Studies from rich countries show that C-Section mothers are less likely to be breastfeeding at two weeks than those who delivered vaginally.25

Health workers, relatives and society as a whole pressure mothers to ‘get back to normal’.

Many of us in industrialized countries often act as if we have nothing to learn from developing nations, yet many of these traditional cultures do something extraordinarily right in the way they care for new mothers.

Many of the routines followed in hospitals today were created during a time when formula feeding was the norm.

PESI conferences. I

Find Hilary Jacobson on Facebook at her Mother Food Page and her group Healing Breastfeeding Grief.

This means that most of the births they have seen were to women on epidurals lying still during labor, waiting for it all to be over. Seeing this kind of birth over and over again causes a subconscious imprint on the mind, and many women develop enough fear of the pains of childbirth that they block the messages their bodies give them about other positions they might take in labor. Others may simply fear diverging from the norm. A woman in the first stage of labor may find it beneficial to try several upright positions: standing, perhaps leaning on a counter or tray table; slow dancing with her partner; sitting while leaning forward or propped up with pillows; squatting; or sitting in a rocking chair. Sometimes one position suffices, but laboring women usually like to change from one position to another as labor progresses. One of the most effective labors I ever witnessed was that of a first-time mother giving birth to a very large baby. She moved through the first part of labor very efficiently by belly-dancing while putting as much of her weight as possible on a long staff she was holding to steady herself. She then pushed her baby out while leaning on the bed in a kneeling position. A woman’s position during labor and birth may affect her ability to breastfeed in a couple of ways. Dr. Roberto Caldeyro-Barcia, an Uruguayan obstetrician, was one of the first to scientifically investigate the effects of maternal position on labor. In 1979 he published a study now regarded as a classic, which demonstrated that mothers in a “vertical” position had thirty-six percent shorter opening stages of labor than “horizontal” women; the “vertical” women also reported less pain than the “horizontals.” Walking helped labor progress as well, because it brought the pressure of the baby’s head against the cervix, helping it to thin and open. And the “vertical” mothers’ babies’ heads were less apt to be extremely molded just after birth, indicating a somewhat smoother passage through the mother’s birth canal. Equally important, the babies of women who gave birth in upright positions had less fetal distress at birth.5 These factors all increase the chances that a woman will have a good early breastfeeding experience. Dr.

TEN WAYS A PARTNER CAN HELP Before the baby’s born, help stock the freezer with meals that can be eaten with one hand. Find a good phone number for help and call it as needed. (La Leche League’s website, llli.org, and U.S.-based phone line, 877–4-LA LECHE (877–452–5324), can both lead you to your closest local group, and that’s a fast route to anything else you might need.) Buy the grocery basics, and keep easy, healthy snacks on hand. Get dinner—any dinner! Nights can be tough at first. Be flexible about where and when everyone sleeps. Going to bed early helps! Do more than your share. You may be what keeps the household running for a while. Everything won’t get done. Talk about what’s most important to her—a clean kitchen? a cleared desk?—and do that first. Get home on time. You’re like a breath of fresh air for mother and baby both. Helping out means helping emotionally, too. Remind her how much you love her, how wonderful she looks, and what a great job she’s doing. There she is, holding your child. She really is beautiful, isn’t she? Remind her that this part is temporary. Most women feel it takes at least six weeks to start to have a handle on this motherhood thing. Life will settle down. But it takes a while.

ISIS Like Osiris, Isis was privy to the mysteries of perpetual birth. We know her image: a mother goddess breastfeeding her son Horus, as the Virgin Mary suckled Jesus much later on. But Isis was never what we might call a virgin. She began making love to Osiris when they were growing together inside their mother’s womb. And she practiced the world’s oldest profession for ten years in the city of Tyre. In the thousands of years that followed, Isis traveled the world resuscitating whores, slaves, and others among the damned. In Rome, she founded temples for the poor alongside bordellos. The temples were razed by imperial order, their priests crucified, but like stubborn mules they came back to life again and again. And when Emperor Justinian’s soldiers demolished the sanctuary of Isis on the island of Philae in the Nile, and built the very Catholic church of Saint Stephen on the ruins, Isis’s pilgrims continued paying homage to their errant goddess at the Christian altar.

Naskaristan, The Sonnet Where no one cries of hunger, For neighbor comes before netflix, No one needs bulletproof backpacks, For children come before profits, Where women can pursue their dreams, Without being castrated by masculinity, Where a mother can feed her child, Without attracting prehistoric insecurity, Where love isn't chained to archaic texts, For reform triumphs over rigidity, Where all colors make the rainbow of life, For life isn't chained to no ideology, Where reason outshines all superstition, Heartland beyond hateland is Naskaristan.

The propaganda worked, not just on my mother, but across the region. It was, we know now, a global scheme engineered by Nestlé to get mothers hooked on formula and to give up breastfeeding. Mothers were taught the risks of breastfeeding and discharged from hospitals armed with sample boxes of formula and baby bottles, ready to rear their children like their wealthy, wondrous, Western counterparts who had already bought into the marketing. But when my grandfather examined the ingredient list on the back of the Nestlé tin can, he flung it across the room. “What is this nonsense?” Dada Abu raged. This was not milk from a living creature. Not from a goat or cow or buffalo or sheep. It was dead milk, made from dead, fake ingredients. And no way was his granddaughter going to be drinking this trash.

One of the most helpful things a partner can do is to be a buffer between you and other relatives and friends who may be uninformed or even opposed to breastfeeding. If your mother or mother-in-law didn’t breastfeed, or tried to breastfeed for a short time but ended up weaning early, she might feel that your decision to nurse your baby is a subtle way of criticizing her choices and decisions. If breastfeeding was difficult for her, she may want to protect you from the pain and struggles she went through. Or she may feel that a longer breastfeeding relationship than hers is not only long but wrong.

The goals set by Stanton, Truth, and Anthony that were achieved during the twentieth-century long after their deaths were audacious. Because of these pioneers and the activists who followed them, women can now own property; divorce an abusive husband; vote; be elected to public office; be professors, executives, or astronauts; fly planes; and wear clothes that would have shocked everyone who lived in the nineteenth century (when women's ankles weren't supposed to be seen). All of these are solid and necessary gains, but today, even in states whose laws declare that breastfeeding cannot be considered "indecent exposure," the harassment of mothers for breastfeeding their babies when they leave their homes continues to a degree that is simply unacceptable. This rudeness to strangers and their babies can and must be stopped. In the nineteenth century, most U.S. mothers—if their health was good— nursed their babies, and people took it for granted that this elemental, nurturing act would have to take place as women traveled. I think it would have been hard for people in the nineteenth century to anticipate that advertising and marketing campaigns by infant formula companies would become the dominant factor in parents' decisions about infant feeding and that infant formula companies could so easily convince the medical profession to become the first promoters of their products.

As adults, the responsibility of caring for all the cells in our bodies, both human and microbial, falls to us. As mothers, women pass on not only their own genes, but the genes of hundreds of bacteria. The genetic lottery of life has an element of chance, but also one of choice. The more insight we gather into the importance and the consequences of a natural birth, and extended, exclusive breast-feeding, the more empowered we will be to give both ourselves and our children the best chance of lives of health and happiness.

The goals set by Stanton, Truth, and Anthony that were achieved during the twentieth-century long after their deaths were audacious. Because of these pioneers and the activists who followed them, women can now own property; divorce an abusive husband; vote; be elected to public office; be professors, executives, or astronauts; fly planes; and wear clothes that would have shocked everyone who lived in the nineteenth century (when women's ankles weren't supposed to be seen). All of these are solid and necessary gains, but today, even in states whose laws declare that breastfeeding cannot be considered "indecent expo-sure," the harassment of mothers for breastfeeding their babies when they leave their homes continues to a degree that is simply unacceptable. This rudeness to strangers and their babies can and must be stopped. In the nineteenth century, most U.S. mothers—if their health was good— nursed their babies, and people took it for granted that this elemental, nurturing act would have to take place as women traveled. I think it would have been hard for people in the nineteenth century to anticipate that advertising and marketing campaigns by infant-formula companies would become the dominant factor in parents' decisions about infant feeding and that infant-formula companies could so easily convince the medical profession to become the first promoters of their products.

It was impossible for me not to notice that the women's movement in Norway during the 1960s and 1970s took a different, more inclusive course from that taken in the United States during the same period. The main goals of feminist leaders here focused on making it possible (and safer) for women to choose not to be mothers, expanding women's access to higher education and jobs and professions that had previously been closed to them, giving women the means to combat sexual harassment and domestic violence, and creating access to political office. Norway's feminists worked on all of these issues but on another vitally important area as well: They demanded legislation that would significantly benefit Norwegian mothers and babies. Paid maternity leave, onsite nursery care in the workplace, flexible schedules for working women, and parental benefits were all part of the legislative advances made in Norway during the 1960s and 1970s. Architects followed suit by designing shopping malls, airports, and other public areas with comfortable, attractive places for nursing women and their children to use.

The Four-Month Fussies Your baby’s growing awareness has its temporary downside. At an LLL meeting a while back, a mother arrived with a four-month-old, saying he had begun “nursing funny.” Another mother in the room said, “My baby’s four months old, too, and she’s started nursing funny.” And another mother spoke up with the same age baby and same concern. We dubbed it the “Four-Month Fussies” but didn’t have a perfect solution for them beyond nursing in a quiet room, minimizing distractions, time, and nursing in whatever position the baby seemed to need. The group concluded that by around four months, babies had gained enough intellectual ability to tune in to the room around them but didn’t yet have enough gray matter to tune in and nurse well.

Many pediatricians and other physicians believe that breastmilk causes higher levels of bilirubin in the first few days of life. Not true. But the reason that some breastfed babies are more jaundiced is that they are not breastfeeding well and are not getting enough breastmilk. That means the baby will also not have substantial enough bowel movements to remove the bilirubin in his intestine and prevent it from being absorbed back into the body. The answer is not to give formula, but to help the mother with the latching on of the baby and making sure he is breastfeeding well (see how this is done earlier in the chapter). Then he will poop more (because colostrum is a laxative) and the bilirubin will decrease. In most cases no supplementation is needed; if it does become necessary it should be given by a lactation aid at the breast, in this order of preference: 1. The mother’s own expressed breastmilk. 2. Banked breastmilk. 3. The mother’s own expressed breastmilk with added 5% glucose so that there is enough volume. 4. Formula. This should be used only if we cannot get the baby breastfeeding well and the first choices do not work. There are other causes of higher-than-average bilirubin levels in the first few days, but none require the mother to stop breastfeeding. Phototherapy

Phototherapy is said to increase the baby’s requirements for fluids by about 15%. For this reason, mothers are told they must give the baby a supplement, usually formula. However, many of the babies admitted for jaundice and dehydration are already on intravenous fluids, and IV is a better way to rehydrate the baby than formula. If an IV is not in place, supplementing with 5% glucose water (using a lactation aid at the breast) would be more appropriate to replace fluid loss than formula. But still, the first choice would be the mother’s own milk, and the second choice would be banked breastmilk.

In fact, in Canada, where most mothers with full-time employment have 52 weeks of maternity leave, many never use a bottle.

To summarize the reasons for skin-to-skin contact: • It helps to get breastfeeding started. • It maintains the newborn’s temperature more effectively than an incubator. • It helps the baby adapt to the new environment, especially in terms of sugar levels, acid-base balance, respiratory rate and heart rate. • It provides comfort to the new baby after what has been said to be a stressful experience. • It facilitates bonding. • It causes oxytocin release in the mother, which helps her feel loving and nurturing toward the baby. • It encourages milk ejection as well as uterine contractions (to reduce bleeding). • It improves immediate and long-term breastfeeding success.

Not giving the baby enough time to latch on can also prevent self-attachment. It often takes an hour or more of being skin to skin for the baby to crawl to the breast and latch on. Often he just lies on the mother for 20 minutes or more. But hospitals have other priorities: weighing the baby, putting drops or ointment in his eyes, etc. Would it really matter if the baby was weighed an hour or two later? Ointments and drops in the baby’s eyes may also affect his vision, making it harder for him to find the nipple (does he find it more easily because the areola is a different colour?). And what about the pediatrician’s examination to determine the Apgar? Well, if a baby is alert and pink and breathing, and crawling to the breast, I give him a minimum of 9 out of 10. If necessary, one can put a stethoscope on the baby’s chest while he’s on the mother, skin to skin.

The impact of imprinting varies from tissue to tissue. The placenta is particularly rich in expression of imprinted genes. This is what we would expect from our model of imprinting as a means of balancing out the demand on maternal resources. The brain also appears to be very susceptible to imprinting effects. It’s not so clear why this should be the case. It’s harder to reconcile parent-of-origin control of gene expression in the brain with the battle for nutrients we’ve been considering so far. Professor Gudrun Moore of University College London has made an intriguing suggestion. She has proposed that the high levels of imprinting in the brain represent a post-natal continuation of the war of the sexes. She has speculated that some brain imprints are an attempt by the paternal genome to promote behaviour in young offspring that will stimulate the mother to continue to drain her own resources, for example by prolonged breast-feeding

Mothers talk about the sheer pleasure of being skin to skin with their baby, and of seeing him drift off to sleep at the breast with a trickle of milk running down his chin. As the baby gets older, he’ll begin to play at the breast, letting go to smile, patting the mother’s cheek or investigating her teeth, making happy noises as he nurses. These are all part of the joy of parenting.