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.
3 comments:
it makes me a little sad to realize that even breastfeeding has become a site of struggle for many women. i remember my own feeling of having an alien parasite attached to my body (seriously, those were my exact thoughts); and then, even after breastfeeding three children and finding that it wasn't so bad after all, feeling relieved to finally be done with it (forever!), to have breasts back to normal size and all my own again.
i am appalled though that there are hospitals that encourage the use of electronic breast pumps (they do look evil) to help new moms produce more milk, and to actually make you measure your supply in milliliters! i was only just encouraged to let the baby suckle and was told that it was okay if hardly anything comes out for the first few days, no pressure. (i guess i was lucky in that department at least, because my gosh i don't even want to get started on all the despicable things hospitals and doctors are wont to do with regard women's health and bodies.)
then i also wonder why this difficulty breastfeeding seems to have become more and more common, at least among the women that i know. which leads me to wonder if it is class-related? (the way the frequency of c-sections is also class-related.) that despite all this encouragement about breastmilk being the best for babies, there is a certain primitiveness (and thus shamefulness) to the act of breastfeeding that middle-class women are made queasy by (albeit subconsciously)? and thus the need for medical/technological intervention and validation?
what adrienne rich said about motherhood as experience vs motherhood as institution makes so much sense to me in this light. i don't think that there is anything in the act of breastfeeding that is inherently oppressive -- just that it has turned so because the experience of it has been taken away from women and then defined for us by the patriarchal institutions of medicine and science and government and even the manufacture and marketing of infant formula. so much so that this "to breastfeed or not to breastfeed or to breastfeed with or without implements" has become, it seems to me, false choices (if "choice" is meant to imply "empowerment" or "liberation"). thus, these feelings of shame and guilt, no matter what it is that we choose.
you're right, ins, about how this choice must be an informed one, and perhaps our reflections on it must include the questions: where did these choices come from anyway? why am i even being made to choose between this one thing and the other? because perhaps once we're able to dismantle and get to the bottom of the idea of "breastfeeding = enslavement vs. no breastfeeding = freedom," or even "breastfeeding = good mother vs. no breastfeeding = bad mother," then maybe what Joester says about breastfeeding one's children as being able to give freely of one's own body becomes possible, becomes more than just a romantic notion attached to this very personal and yet very political experience of motherhood.
more than class, i think too, it is race, and the kind of woman empowerment that we have been able to truly achieve, you know? because i figure it's easy for a woman like her, in the first world, to romanticize in this manner, having succeeded in many ways that we have yet to even dream of.
and you know, in that hospital it was the women in that breastfeeding room that just made things more difficult. the nurses (the gods bless them!) were the kindest people. oh but my co-mothers! shameful in their display of anti-woman sentiments (little milk = bad mother).
but then again, it was also proof that we are farthest from succeeding, lalo na when it comes to the mother's body, in this country.
oh, your co-mothers :( i guess i'm not so surprised. still, how sad. you're right, we have a very long way to go.
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