A Post About Boobs

I haven't written about breastfeeding here because I feel like the electronic world has more than addressed this topic. I felt most were already waving the pro-breastfeeding flag with enough gusto that my tiny voice wouldn't add much. 

Today I am all fired up about breastfeeding and want to loudly proclaim my thoughts on the matter. I will not apologize for anything I say in this because boobs, breasts, and nipples are all TOTALLY normal things that we should be able to talk about. It turns out 100% of the population has nipples. I hope that doesn't shock you the way it does some.  

I was grew up associating breasts with sex. When I started to get breasts a bit ahead of my classmates (sixth grade), I began to feel uncomfortable by the attention that was paid them. Cue my life-long habit of slouching to hide the biological indicators that I was a female. I then started to realize how female celebrities seemed to be revered for showing off their boobs instead of shamed. People liked that they gave the world a pretty good peep at their chest. In fact, the more a dress on the red carpet revealed, the more attention they got. Below are two pics I found when I googled "classy celebrity cleavage". 

These dresses would be so incredibly easy to breasted in! 

By high school, I had learned to embrace my good fortune of having a fairly decent pair of breasts. I liked that guys seemed to like them. They were useful and I would be a liar if I denied that I didn't mind their occasional usefulness. 

Flash forward to my current status as a breastfeeding mom. Within seconds of him being born, Rowan latched perfectly and had his first meal outside of the womb. I smiled with relief that obviously breastfeeding wasn't going to be a problem for us. Wrong. I was so wrong! Around six weeks, I developed a horrifically painful tear in my left breast. Every time Rowan would latch, I would curl my toes in pain and the top of Rowan's head would become damp with tears. I began to pump on that side and nurse Row on the other until everything healed up. During this time, Rowan started to prefer the latex texture to the texture of my skin. He began to arch away from me every time I would try and have him latch. He would scream, push, cry and make every effort to avoid breastfeeding. In my desperation, I would quickly cave and give him a bottle of expressed breast milk. This made nursing under a cover in public pretty much impossible. Since I am endowed with a healthy sized chest, I usually had (have) to help Rowan a bit with keeping everything together. Breastfeeding is mostly an all hands on deck experience for us. I would sometimes go in bathrooms at restaurants or stores and bawl my eyes out while trying to get my hungry baby to just eat already! More than once, I had it suggested that I give in to his wishes for a bottle experience. Besides, the health benefits came from the milk itself, not necessarily the instrument for delivering it to the baby. Right? 

Want to know something about pumping? It's a freaking pain. You are immobilized for 20 minute stretches multiple times a day. You then have to clean the flanges after every pumping session. You then have to worry about what temperature the milk is when you finally give it to your baby. Your baby will also have to fend for himself while you are pumping because even though you got the pumping bra that's supposed to allow you freedom to apparently take conference calls while pumping, it won't really work for you. Rowan preferred his bottles to be warmed in hot water for at least 5-10 minutes before eating them. If I took a bottle out and about with us, I had to carry a little cooler thing to keep it from spoiling. I then had to find somewhere in public where the water would get hot enough for me to reach his acceptable eating requirements. It was such a process and one my exhausted, worn new-mom self could hardly handle. I cried a whole bunch during those days. I was constantly anxious about where I was going to be able to hide away to breastfeed my "difficult" eater. 

The happy ending to our breastfeeding story is that we pushed through it. I cut out bottles and pumping and we got back to easy, wonderful breastfeeding. It's a piece of cake now and I love being able to feed Row wherever, whenever. 

Now here are some thoughts on breastfeeding in general. I still feel like I hear the strangest words associated with something so incredibly natural. Gross and weird are probably the most common. I know I certainly used those in my pre-baby days. I also thought it was sick when moms would breastfeed past a year. I mean, ewww. 

Here in lies the problem with our society's ideas on breasts. Breasts are sexual organs to us. If a baby is using them to eat, they are eating off of a sexual organ. With the idea that breasts are sexual organs, it makes breastfeeding seem borderline disturbing. They are taking something that should be saved for the bedroom and using it in public for something as unseemly as food. 

If you check out my pics above of JLo and Gwenth, you essentially see their entire boob except nipple. When Janet Jackson's nipple popped out at the memorable super bowl, we were aghast and appalled. Seeing nipples right now is something that one is only privy to private relationships or while viewing pornography.  If you see a woman breastfeeding in public and accidentally see her nipple, you essentially just saw a bit of pornography. 

Obviously the woman breastfeeding is creating an inappropriate pornographic environment for everyone around her. I mean, it really couldn't be that pornography is the inappropriate thing needing to be eliminated from our society. 

Here you see a celebrity doing something wildly inappropriate. Look at how much of her boobs you can see here! I mean, it's so much more than JLo or Gwenth. Wait, actually, now that you point it out, it might actually be a lot less. That's so wrong though! There is a baby blocking our view of her boobs! Would someone please give this woman a classy plunging neckline so we can see tasteful sideboob?!

In discussing breastfeeding in public with my sister-in-law, she made an extremely valid point. Our society is obsessed right now with the idea of healthy eating. We will spend that extra dollar for something organic from Trader Joe's or Whole Foods. We talk about kale as if it is this holy manna reserved for those who want to become almost immortal through their unbelievably healthy, "clean" eating. 

Yet, there are still some who are grossed or weirded out about breast milk. The most organic, natural food ever created. I didn't even have to set foot in Trader Joe's to get Rowan his "white smoothie" packed full of protein, minerals, and immunity boosting powder.  Also, how are we not grossed out by cow's milk? You are drinking the breast milk of a farm animal and you are a human. It's totally not gross to give our one-year plus babies cows milk, but it's weird to still give them human milk. Makes sense to me (not). 

I am going to close this one up with some final thoughts. If it weren't for those voices of encouragement coming from family, friends or the rallying pro-breastfeeders online, I don't think I would have made it this far nursing Rowan. Hearing other people talk about boobs with a purpose other than turning someone on was regrettably novel to me. There needs to be a greater push to see breasts for the things they are biologically, not just culturally intended for.