Birthworks
Birth is an experience that demonstrates that life is not merely function and utility, but form and beauty. – Christopher LargenArchive for Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding Basics
A great Breastfeeding site………………..
How does breastfeeding work?
Milk Production tips
Medicalising Breastfeeding
MEDICAL AND EXPERT MENTALITY
With the rise of industrialization, countries moved towards the nuclear family, away from the traditional home based family businesses/ farms to the big cities. Along with the shift came the erosion of the family structure, and traditional forms of support.
It left a wide and gaping wound which the growing medical profession filled with ease. No longer did the “masses” have their opinions shaped by pooled ignorance, but could be shaped and groomed by the new era of medical knowledge in the “age of the expert”. It made it’s mark on breastfeeding.
“This new gap in knowledge among young women was gradually filled by scientists and physicians who developed a knowledge of breastfeeding based on the medical model. The shift of birth and postpartum care from the home to the hospital helped to complete the medicalisation of breastfeeding” (Wagner 1994 p241)
Breastfeeding was no longer an precious art, a loving form of mothering passed down from one generation to another, it became part of an organized, scheduled and busy hospital. The love, the spontaneity and the joy were washed away with the tide of clocks, pain and separation. Breastfeeding became medical and clinical.
Patience
“Mother’s Milk and Mother’s arms have always been available, patiently waiting for the passing of man’s foolhardy arrogance, which tried to convince us that his inventions were superior to nature” ~The Family Bed , Tine Thevenin
Breastfeeding and Mentoring
EROSION OF THE MOTHERING ROLE AND MENTORING IN BREASTFEEDING
Along with the many physical changes industrialization must make, it also brings great social change. One of the most significant social adjustment families had to make is the erosion of the mentoring role that took place with the extended family. No longer did mother live with daughter, aunty with niece, this environment of mentoring was changed utterly with serious and generational consequences in mothering (and fathering) we are still reaping today.
Women were around women, men were around men, they learnt to mother, they learnt to father……and what they learnt was not all bad. Girls and boys learnt how to birth babies, how to care for them, nurture them and bond with them. Mothers had babies for many years and the siblings got to be little mums and dads, boys and girls saw babies breastfed, burped and soothed…they got ideas, they remembered, they tried them out, they were mentored! They learnt how to be mothers, and they learnt how to be fathers.
They saw, they tried, therefore they were!
“In Grandma’s day, many sisters acted as little mothers to younger children, so babies were much more a part of everyday life…It’s easier to breastfeed if BREASTFEEDING IS TAKEN FOR GRANTED as a natural part of life, rather than being a rare sight which affronts some people: it is easier too, if handling and carrying babies has become second nature, rather than it being a source of great awkwardness and unease. This means that as our children grow, we should give them opportunities to care for other women’s babies and see them being breastfed” (Minchin 1985 p81)
Let us become a society where the breast is for nourishment not purely for ravishment…..let mentoing and modelling breastfeeding and natural birth be a part of our everyday experience.
I am not ashamed to tell you I have been breastfeeding almost continually for 16 years…..that is a long time. I am glad my young boys, especially my 16 year old son and 14 year old daughter have seen me naturally breastfeeding and it has been a normal part of our lifestyle over the years. That can only make for more balenced, supportive and open minded people…..but we need more of them!
Blessings Cathy
