because here i am, the woman who was ready to feed baby with formula the rest of her life, just because she wouldn't feed on me, and technically never did in the traditional way -- what with a nipple shield attached to my breast every feeding to take the place of the bottle's nipple which the baby had gotten used to -- and i wonder if Joester would point a finger at my motherly pride and say that this was wrong. Joester made me ashamed of having fed the baby infant formula at all, early in her life, when it was absolutely impossible for me to feed her. Joester also made me remember.
all those women in the breastfeeding room of the hospital's nursery. who just couldn't get enough milk to feed their babies. i had begun with barely 10ml of milk, when the baby was to be fed 30ml every two hours. i learned to take the pain of the electronic breast pump (which is evil, i tell you!) and after sitting to pump for two hours, three days after delivery, i was still only at 30ml. i was told i had to keep doing it, even with the pain and horror, because the more i did it, the more milk my breasts would generate. but it took forever for the milk to be enough.
it even LOOKS evil!and so i understood this big filipino-american girl who sat across from me at the breastpumps. and she kept looking up from her breast, lost and frustrated. the other ladies in the room were breastfeeding quite well, and as she caught my eye, she asked if i was getting any milk. and i was. and i thought of boasting about it, as many other women had done in the face of a very insecure breastpumping me.
but the look on her face told me she didn't deserve that. so i told her i wasn't getting much milk. but that i was pretty sure i would, she would, soon enough, even if i didn't know that for sure, for both of us. i told her formula would be fine for now, and for ever, if she really did have a hard time.
because in truth, at that time, i thanked the gods for formula, just because it might have been the only thing that allowed for the baby to survive, or at least live long enough to finally feed from me. and even when i had begun to feed everyday, and let for a whole can of formula to go to waste (you know it smells horrible? you can't believe they imagine that to be "like" breastmilk!), i remained unsure about breastfeeding. and the enemy wasn't formula milk at all.
the enemy was my feminist activist self.
because i have been taught to own my body, and do only what i deemed liberating and democratic to/with it. and breastfeeding was literally having someone feed off of it. i was kept from romanticizing about breastfeeding the way Joester does, when she says:
After 28 years in a culture where women’s bodies belong to pretty much anyone but them, it was only my children that showed me that my body, even mine, belongs to me to give.
because you know, there was nothing at all romantic about owning my body then, but having it battered by what my biology required me to do. to a certain extent, in this country that is conservative Philippines, having one's psyche interpellated into believing that we must breastfeed is as oppressive as being told by the existence of infant formula that we can't breastfeed at all. breastfeeding because it was biologically set-up for us, doesn't quite allow us to own our body and decide to give it away. it pretty much leaves us with no choice.
in this sense, maybe the women who have no milk (because i know those women exist, with no milk, for whatever reason, even psychological ones) or the ones who refuse to breastfeed altogether, just might be more liberated and free. and it has less to do with infant milk manufacturers, as it does with bodies that are less painful, less battered, less somebody else's. and while these women can be seen as proof of the infant milk's success, maybe it should be seen as the success of choice.
because breastfeeding, as with many other things, has become a site of struggle among and for women. and weather we do it or not must be a matter of informed choice. and a sense of our bodies as ours.
