Short Breastfeeding Quotes

Readers acquainted with the recent literature on human sexuality will be familiar with what we call the standard narrative of human sexual evolution, hereafter shortened to the standard narrative. It goes something like this: 1. Boy Meets girl, 2. Boy and girl assess one and others mate value, from perspectives based upon their differing reproductive agendas/capacities. He looks for signs of youth, fertility, health, absence of previous sexual experience and likelihood of future sexual fidelity. In other words, his assessment is skewed toward finding a fertile, healthy young mate with many childbearing years ahead and no current children to drain his resources. She looks for signs of wealth (or at least prospects of future wealth), social status, physical health and likelihood that he will stick around to protect and provide for their children. Her guy must be willing and able to provide materially for her (especially during pregnancy and breastfeeding) and their children, known as "male parental investment". 3. Boy gets girl. Assuming they meet one and others criteria, they mate, forming a long term pair bond, "the fundamental condition of the human species" as famed author Desmond Morris put it. Once the pair bond is formed, she will be sensitive to indications that he is considering leaving, vigilant towards signs of infidelity involving intimacy with other women that would threaten her access to his resources and protection while keeping an eye out (around ovulation especially) for a quick fling with a man genetically superior to her husband. He will be sensitive to signs of her sexual infidelities which would reduce his all important paternity certainty while taking advantage of short term sexual opportunities with other women as his sperm are easily produced and plentiful. Researchers claim to have confirmed these basic patterns in studies conducted around the world over several decades. Their results seem to support the standard narrative of human sexual evolution, which appears to make a lot of sense, but they don't, and it doesn't.

In Florida we got to hang out with some of America’s finest at Eglin Air Force Base. The army Rangers there had been clearing a section of bush for doing operations and had encountered a huge eastern diamondback rattlesnake. Diamondbacks grow to be the largest rattlers anyway, but this one was big for another reason: She was pregnant. Not long after the Rangers’ reptile handlers had transported her back to a holding facility, she gave birth. We watched as the newborn rattlers worked their way out, lay still for a short moment, and then immediately began striking at everything and anything nearby. Although it was a great defense mechanism, in case a predator was about to eat them, it appeared pretty comical. Bite, bite, bite, strike, strike, strike. Then they would curl up and hide for a while. Soon enough it was back on the offensive: bite, strike, bite. They were all fang, and trying to look tough. An interesting way to greet the world. Steve and I scooped up the baby rattlesnakes and held them until they went through their strike phase. We made sure to set them down before they went back to their frenzied biting. “What happens if you’re bitten by a venomous snake while you are breastfeeding?” Steve asked. “I don’t know,” I answered. “I’d probably have to stop breastfeeding, right?” “Just be sure not to get bitten,” Steve said. “Deal,” I said. I scooped up a little wet rattler, talked to the camera, then set the snake back down. Boing, boing, boing went the baby rattler, jumping madly around, trying to bite everything. Even the Rangers laughed. Once the Rangers had completed their training mission, all the dangerous wildlife they collected (including the rattlers) would go right back where they came from. We were very proud to have worked with some of America’s heroes.

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.

Unsurprisingly, given the eagerness of professors and students of identity studies to claim as many labels for themselves as possible, some individuals have sought to expand the definition of disability to include … well, themselves. At the "Wrong/ed Bodies" session at the Cultural Studies conference, Angela Lea Nemecek complained that when she breastfed in her office at the University of Virginia, she was made to feel as if she had a disability. In short, her breastfeeding was "constructed in the workplace" as a disability. Therefore, she reasoned, breastfeeding is a disability and should be protected under the Americans with Disability Act.

We have organised our own lives to fit in with machines, much against our own biorhythms (the short night and siesta schedule is better for our bodies) and we expect our newborns to conform with our own industrialised oppression.

In societies where there is no shame about breastfeeding, the ordinary man is not driven into a frenzy by the sight of a female breast, but he may be embarrassed or aroused by a woman wearing shorts, as Victorian Englishmen supposedly were by female ankles.

The Greek GDP spiked 25% when statisticians dove into the country’s black market in 2006, for instance, thereby enabling the government to take out several hefty loans shortly before the European debt crisis broke out. Italy started including its black market back in 1987, which swelled its economy by 20% overnight. “A wave of euphoria swept over Italians,” reported the New York Times, “after economists recalibrated their statistics taking into account for the first time the country’s formidable underground economy of tax evaders and illegal workers.”4 And that’s to say nothing of all the unpaid labor that doesn’t even qualify as part of the black market, from volunteering to childcare to cooking, which together represents more than half of all our work. Of course, we can hire cleaners or nannies to do some of these chores, in which case they count toward the GDP, but we still do most ourselves. Adding all this unpaid work would expand the economy by anywhere from 37% (in Hungary) to 74% (in the UK).5 However, as the economist Diane Coyle notes, “generally official statistical agencies have never bothered – perhaps because it has been carried out mainly by women.”6 While we’re on the subject, only Denmark has ever attempted to quantify the value of breastfeeding in its GDP. And it’s no paltry sum: In the U.S., the potential contribution of breast milk has been estimated at an incredible $110 billion a year7 – about the size of China’s military budget.

The minute your baby makes a sound, go in quickly. You’ll find him in a sleepy, just-about-to-wake-up state. Use whatever technique helps him fall back to sleep—breastfeeding, rocking, or offering a bottle or pacifier. If you’ve caught him quickly enough, he will fall back to sleep. After a week or so of this intervention, your short napper should be taking a much longer snooze without any help from you.

According to the news, when you boiled water its concentration of radioactive particles increased. Starting tomorrow, I’d stop breastfeeding and give the baby formula made with tap water.