Food that flows. Sustenance that comes to you in response to your hungry cry. Nurture that touches, that cradles, that fills you with a spreading warmth, inside and out. Surely a mother's milk is the gentlest form of nourishment.
The Promised Land is called "The Land Flowing With Milk and Honey," and I have felt myself to be a part of that promise.
First, consider the matter from the point of view of the land: I'm speaking of Biblical Canaan, Eretz Israel itself. What would you expect to find? I should think a flowery, meadowy expanse, well-watered, a lush spot for flocks and herds; with sweet-blossomed orchards as well, supporting those myriads of fat bees.
And from the point of view of a woman: I remember thinking, when I was pregnant, that whereas my husband was only a person, I was a person and a place: a place where yet another person dwelt. And my sense of being a place did not diminish after childbirth; in fact, it intensified. If, gravid, I was burgeoning within, afterwards I was like a headland after rain, flowing with springs.
"Milk and honey": together with fruits, those are the only foods which are actually given by Nature as food. Meat has to be killed. Fattening a piglet for slaughter seems treacherous when we explain it to our little children; the little girl Fern in Charlotte's Web isn't the only one who thinks so. Eggs: were these intended to be food for our young? They are the young: snatched from the mother birds; eaten by thieves. Even vegetables are torn from their stalks or uprooted from the earth.
I don't count this as moral violence, of course, yet there is force and struggle here, a wresting of food.
But milk and honey come down graciously. Bees make so much of their sweet syrup in a good season, that the surplus seems a fair bounty to the harvester. A cow actually appreciates being milked; dairying is a reciprocal work, a fair and friendly thing.
Milk and honey: they were made to be food, the best of food, and nothing else. They are given gladly.
Is a nursing mother, then, just a milk animal after all?
No. Emphatically not. "Mother Nature" may be a matter of soil and water, of vegetative and insect and animal life; but the nursing mother is much more: a person. Everything she does has the multidimensions of the God-icon, the thoughtful and deliberate, the enfleshed and inspirited being.
That's why I recoil inwardly even from an innocent term like "breastfeeding." It sounds crude to my ears, like the repellent term "having sex," which is used--- in some circles--- in speaking about the self-donating acts proper to marriage. As if married intimacy were some "thing" you could "have" or "get"; or as if nurturing a baby were just a physical "input" between a mammary gland and an alimentary canal.
But what's called "breastfeeding" is actually more like making love: it's a relationship between a whole person and a whole person.
And what a revelation this was to a person like me!
This admission would surprise some of my friends, but for years I thought I had no mothering in me. Okay, I was a certified prolifer: a full-time writer-lecturer-organizer-agitator, with eleven arrests on my rescue rap sheet. But as for personal maternal passion: well, it wasn't there.
Looking back, I suppose it was mostly a matter of inexperience. I had no younger brothers, sisters, or cousins. I didn't play with baby dolls. I never babysat. I had never even touched a newborn. I didn't know how to hold an infant. I felt as I suppose many men feel: out of place in the presence of the little wiggly space aliens.
Out of place. But when God blessed me with a dear husband and we conceived, I became a place. And when I gave milk, I became the headland after rain. And that was the spring of mothering for me.
There's the hormones, if you want to know. The effects of prolactin and oxytocin in supporting tender mellow feelings is well-known. A suckling infant brings on more milk (a classic case of demand creating supply)--- but he brings on more than milk: he brings on changes within the woman which unfurl every tightly-closed bud of mother-instinct, mother-passion and mother-empathy.
Yes, you can give your little ones rubber nipples to suck and bottles of synthetic formula to ingest, and still be a good mother. Neither my husband nor myself were breast-fed babies, and we're not too weird. (Huh. Well, on the other hand, maybe that explains a lot
) But anyway, we were both well-cherished and bottle-fed by good mothers who were not notably short on instinct, passion, and empathy.
But both they, and we, feel that something was missing.
Our mothers, we've since found out, had both wanted to give us Mama-milk; but they were of the generation of women which was actively discouraged from doing so by ignorant gynecologists, clueless pediatricians, and aggressive manufacturers of milk-substitutes who touted the formula, the sterilizer, and the schedule, and who made natural mothering seem hillbilly, backward, and bovine.
And what a tragedy that was. Calculating the deficits, the heart-losses, you don't know where to start.
I suppose it was the abandonment of breastfeeding which paved the way, at least in part, for that sick, sad, and depressing phenomenon known as the sexual revolution. In several ways.
First of all women's breasts lost their sweet connection to children and family and were reduced to the status of sexy ornamentation. Seductive, somewhat smutty (think of the 50's!): something tight-sweatered, lifted, separated, padded, and pointed for the attraction and satisfaction of men.
Women's bodies were alienated from the power of motherhood by "contra-lactation" decades before contraception finished the job.
Second--- and I am convinced of this--- contra-lactation, bottle-feeding, directly paved the way for contraception by suppressing the natural child-spacing effect of the mothering hormones, thus making all those perverted drugs and devices seem necessary and reasonable.
As most people (I hope!) now know, total breastfeeding causes a woman's procreative cycle to go into a "waiting" mode. Fertility can be held back for months or years; a new baby is unlikely to get started while the first baby is still tiny and totally dependent on the mother.
Unfortunately, many American women who do breastfeed, do so in a strange way that takes its pattern from bottle-feeding: getting the baby "on schedule," nursing him every four hours; training him to sleep through the night in his own adorable little crib, perhaps even further isolated in his own adorable little nursery. (Hm. "Nursery." What a misnomer.)
I don't know what benefit this confers on a tiny infant for whom loneliness and hunger are the same miserable thing: a desperate need for Mama-right-now. But for Mama herself it entails this significant disadvantage: as she enjoys her six to eight hours uninterrupted night's sleep, her circadian (day/night cycle) kicks in, and she's likely to return to fertility just as prematurely-- just as abnormally--- as a woman who bottle-feeds her infant.
Dedicated nursing is a whole different way of life. Mom'n'babe are intimate like Siamese twins, bonded like crazy glue. It's feeding on demand ("rock around the clock.") It's keeping the kid plastered up against you all the time ("marsupial mothering" !) It's tucking the baby in to sleep with you at night, or keeping him conveniently sideboard where you can grab him without getting up, as we did when our Ben was small enough to fit neatly into a Smithfield ham basket.
This inseparability--- the "fourth trimester of pregnancy"--- is what sets up the synergy that puts further fertility on hold. Most moms who take the plunge into "attachment mothering" average 2 to 3 years between babies. In my case (industrial- strength lactation hormones, apparently) I did not ovulate for three years while I was nursing Ben; we finally felt obliged to wean him to try to get my fertility back on line.
The generations of women who have relied on the baby-bottle have all experienced the return of dangerously premature fertility. Exhausted new moms were getting (are getting) pregnant again six to twelve weeks after every childbirth, having annual babies (remember those stair-step family Christmas portraits in the 50's?)
It was hard for some of them. Very hard.
I don't say it's shameful to have seven kids in eight years. But ask yourself: who would be more likely to be tempted by a tubal ligation: a woman who has seven kids in eight years, or a woman who has seven kids in eighteen years? Obviously, our Designer had something intelligent in mind when He built child-spacing into natural nurturant motherhood.
But you don't give your baby milk because of child-spacing. You give because it's so deep-down good.
What could be more pleasing than the sweet fragrance of a nursling! I was astonished by it, myself. I used to associate babies with a stink of strong urine and sour milk. That's what the baby-ful households of the populous poor smelled like when I was a young girl. But little ones raised on Mama-milk have a light, meadowy fragrance. Even their poop doesn't stink. I kid you not.
This counts for something, for a parent. You're contented, breathing in this honeyed atmosphere with your little one.
I would imagine it counts for much more, from the baby's point of view. An infant's whole body is a sense organ. How dreadful it would be for an infant to perceive himself as a foul and stinking little thing. But if he sees that his mother and father smile to breathe him in, he knows he is precious and worthy.
Worthy he is to be pressed to his mothers' breast, and held there long and long. This sensitive silky-skinned nursling who is all sense-organ, who hungers for touch as well as for taste: doesn't he need, want, deserve this intimacy?
I met a woman once who said she'd never want her child to have that kind of contact, that total access to her body. I'm afraid I stared at her bug-eyed. I was thinking, How the heck did you conceive that kid, lady? Would you say to your husband, "I love you, dearie, but please: nothing skin-to-skin"?
The great Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar marvels at the nursing mother and child as a miracle of unity: this is a sacred unitive embrace, as much for sacrament as for sustenance. My goodness, the kissing of hands and feet that goes on! The gazing at faces! The rituals of devotion! And the baby gazes long and long. He contemplates the Icon of his mother's face. He sees his Universe in a face: he feels the Cosmos is a face. Your face.
You sing. There's nothing else to do. (Suckling takes a long time: longer, by the way, than feeding with a bottle.) Old campfire tunes. Beatles. Bob Dylan. Doc Watson. Best of Broadway. I found that, after 25 years, I still remembered a fairly elaborate Kyrie and Gloria, two verses of Veni Creator Spiritus, and half the Credo. Then I conscientiously looked up and memorized the other half --- and all the verses of "I'm Being Eaten By a Boa Constrictor." Yes, always upgrading those parenting skills
And what does the baby hear? What does he see? What does he feel, even humming through flesh on flesh and vibrating the bones of his little sensitive head? He hears the Universe singing.
Boy, did I make up songs. To the tune of Shady Grove:
Benjamin, my little love,
Benjamin, my dear,
Benjamin, my little love,
I'm glad that you are here.
To the tune of Shortnin Bread:
Ears like Daddy, nose like me,
You're funny-lookin! One-two-three!
Mouth like a rosebud, skin like silk,
Give that baby some Mama-milk!
Mama's little baby loves Mama, Mama,
Mama's little baby loves Mama-milk.
To the tune of Reuben, Reuben:
Stop your crying, little baby
Please be quiet now, I say
Stop your crying now or maybe
Molly Yard will come this way.
She's as mean as the meanest sinner,
Big and tall as a big church steeple,
And she eats each night for dinner
All the crying little people.
I'm told the Irish sang this, centuries back, using the name of Oliver Cromwell. You could substitute "Janet Reno" or some nightmare figure from your own childhood. Using the same tune, you can always sing the Mother's Sanity Song: "I am slowly going crazy/ 1-2-3-4-5-6-SWITCH/ Crazy going slowly am I, / 6-5-4-3-2-1 SWITCH."
And then there was a take-off on the old Nestlé's jingle:
M - O - T - H - E - R - S---
Mothers make the very best---
M - I - I - I - L - K!
It was a nice time to rummage around in my memory for Eucharistic hymns. I only had one year of Latin in school, but phrases now seemed to breathe a new poignancy. Qui vitam sine termino/ Nobis donet in patria. Bring us to our true homeland, Lord! Give us life without end!
"The mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with Himself, and does, most courteously and most tenderly, with the blessed Sacrament." So says my namesake, Julian of Norwich.
Christ permitted himself to be slaughtered, in order to feed us with Himself; and feeding a baby at the breast, too, can entail great sacrifice.
I remember when my friend Elizabeth had just given birth via a rather horrific emergency cesarean. There had been problems with the placenta and a terrible loss of blood; she'd nearly died; and there she lay, white as the hospital linens, propped up on pillows as she had insisted; so she could nurse her tiny newborn. "Take and eat: this is my body, broken for you."
Or another hero-friend, Cheryl, whose premature infant was born sick and far too frail to suck milk from her breast. Cheryl, though exhausted, herself, from the birth ordeal, stayed close to her baby in the Neonatal ICU almost around the clock. With fortitude and determination she pumped and pumped to get an ounce of two of precious milk from herself at a time, feeding it to her baby through the isolette from a tiny bottle. Ignoring and sometimes defying standard ICU procedures, she touched and stroked her wee fragile daughter as much as she was able despite the ghastly monitors and tubes and wires.
The baby thrived. The doctors were astounded. It was a miracle, sure enough. A miracle of intelligent, splendid, dedicated mothering.
What makes great mothering? Well, there are a number of interlocking factors involved, but as a general rule I'd say that great mothering is made by great fathering.
Or I might say, great husbanding. Blessed is the man who knows that "husband" and "father" must be verbs-- active, transitive verbs--- before they are allowed the privilege of being taken as personal nouns.
Take Cheryl as an example. She could stay at the hospital doing "the sacrificial mother thing" because her husband Miguel moved heaven and hearth to reorganize the household and make sure their other three kids were taken care of.
Without complaint. Beatus vir.
Blessed the man who who pays the rent for Heaven's sake, as so many millions of husbands do; who puts up with supporting a family on just one salary (his); who gets up early and goes to work while his wife is still in bed feeding the baby; who accepts a little austerity for a lot of tranquility; whose income is smaller, whose house is shabbier, whose babies are happier, whose life is richer. And whose wife is still smiling.
My own ability to become the kind of mother I wanted to be, wouldn't have amounted to a hill of beans without my husband: pregnancy manager, labor coach, advocate, confidante, collaborator and friend.
I got a notion of what "husband as head of the family" means when I was a new nursing mom. It means I can say, "Sweetie, head for the kitchen and defrost us something for supper, OK?" And "Head for the pharmacy," and "Head off the well-wishing visitors when I'm too zonked to get out of my bathrobe."
And "remind me that what I'm doing is worth the pain." Because a pain it often is, at the beginning anyhow. The first few weeks of nursing a baby sometimes provide proof positive that natural things don't necessarily come naturally.
Before you get into the settled nursing relationship of coos and giggles and bliss, you as like as not will have to go through soreness and exhaustion and bleeding and crying and thrush infection and cystitis. And the miserable feeling that you're probably starving this poor baby to death!
A husband who says he's proud of you for what you're doing; who will run-not-walk to get you a tube of lanolin ointment and a glass of beer (hey, malt is a milk-friendly nutrient); who will tell you the baby looks splendid, growing like a little yeast-bun on the rise: such a husband is the heaven-sent patron of the nursing mother.
The other crucial factor, for me, was La Leche League.
In traditional societies, young women learn nurturant mothering from seeing other women give the breast to their little ones: easily, casually, comfortably, frequently. Your mother shows you how to help the baby "latch on"; your sister demonstrates the "football hold"; your grandma has a remedy for thrush.
In today's society--- even here in upper east Tennessee--- practically nobody has a mother or grandmother who knows anything about it. And your sister, if you have one, lives, say, 1500 miles away. And so natural mothering comes to seem unnatural to us; the ways and wisdom of intimacy are lost: potentially (and this chills me) lost forever.
But not lost irretrievably, thanks to La Leche League.
Named for the Mother of God under the title of Nuestra Senora de la Leche y Buen Parto (Our Lady of Milk and Good Childbirth), the League has been a lifesaver to many; literally a lifesaver in cases where mother's milk was essential to a child's survival. La Leche women are jolly friends, bosom buddies who know (or can find out for you) how to handle the various obstacles that can frustrate the nursing relationship.
The local La Leche ladies can steer you away from the contra-lactation medicos, and toward the good ones; they can give you catalog for nice nursing dresses or show you how to manage modestly with a T-shirt. They're full of tits-for-tots stories, tricks for nursing toddlers and twins (how would you manage triplets, I wonder?) and all-around promoters and morale-boosters.
What kid of society will not love, will not honor, will not sustain the unity of a mother with a baby at the breast?
A bad one, I say. A sad one. Ours.
The denial, the drying-up, the forced separation, the refusal, the chilling and killing of mothering is all around us. It's everywhere.
I've only to think of my neighbors Roberta and Mike, who, after years of fertility treatment, expense, and frustration, gave birth finally to their precious child Amanda. In less than two months, their nursing relationship was suppressed by their choice that Roberta should go back to work.
It almost seems heartless to use the word "choice" for a young couple who felt they had no choice. Yet truth be told, they did. They could have chosen one car, not two; old house, not new; less eating out, less vacation travel, more ease, more time: time for love to grow, time for the milk to flow.
Roberta hope she could have both, a second income and a satisfied baby at the breast. But it didn't work. She couldn't be rushed and relaxed at the same time; she couldn't be there and here. Pumping so that the sitter could give Amanda bottles of Roberta's milk made her stressed and depressed.
And her baby didn't take to both her and the bottle. Sucking Mama-milk is strenuous, a salutary effort for a little one (just watch you baby's throat and jaw muscles work as he's guzzling away!) A baby who gets used to lazily drawing on a rubber nipple in the daytime will likely resist going back to Mother's breast at night. So Roberta went dry.
Sad? Sure she was. Something precious was lost.
One day recently when I was on the bus, my giggly four-year-old son decided to stand up and lean over the back of the seat in front of us. Without thinking about it much, I reached up and stroked his cheek. He turned and looked at me. I said, "Snuggle up here beside me, Ben," and he sat down happily with his arms around me. We started babbling some nonsense (Yup-a-doop-a-deedle-oop, his word for the general affirmative) until we were interrupted by the lady sitting in front of us.
"How did you do that?"
"Do what?"
"How did you get him to listen to you?"
"I just--- I don't know. I touched his cheek."
"I've got a boy about that big, and he hasn't looked me in the eyes like that since--- I don't know when."
I felt embarrassed for her. Ben hasn't sucked Mama-milk for a year now, but he still looks into my eyes a hundred times a day. Yes, he gets rambunctious, and we have anger and (I'm sorry to say) yelling too -- but he looks into my eyes. And he fits easily and willingly under my arms, always has.
We're just a mother and a little boy. What we have is as common or as uncommon as good bread or a good cabbage or a good glass of home-brew. Fashion us a world, great God, and send your angels to defend and preserve us. I think this is the way it's supposed to be.
