The emotions that fly around the question of breastfeeding
have always interested me since the days when I was of an age to bear children,
and observed the problems people had with feeding their babies which I found I
did not, and wondered why I did not and they did. Now that I understand better the qualities of
the element, Earth, which controls how we feed ourselves , and how we respond
to being fed or not being fed, I have been able to find a wider context within
which to place this very complex issue.
For it goes to the very root of our being, our ability to obtain for
ourselves that which we need, at the simplest level merely to survive and not
starve to death, and at the much profounder level to nurture ourselves by
feeling ourselves cherished, enfolded by love and concern.
The food which is in mother’s milk can do both or neither of
these. In those who are starving, it may
be insufficient to sustain life, though still providing love, and in the rich,
it may sustain physical life but be insufficient to cherish. In the society in which I live and for which
I write, I do not, fortunately, deal with the physically starving, but I do
meet, surprisingly often, the emotionally starving, and my dealings with these
have helped me understand at a much deeper level the needs within all of us
which the Earth element is there to satisfy, and which are touched upon at a
physical level each time we feel ourselves to be hungry.
We all have our personal, often idiosyncratic, relationship
to food. From an acupuncturist’s point
of view this relationship is understood to be determined by that most primary
relationship of all, that to our mother.
The element we are dealing with here, the Earth element, is the one
which can truly be called the mother of all elements. As we know, this most primary relationship,
that to our mother, also makes it the most complex of all, for it sets the tone
for our ability to nurture ourselves and others for the remainder of our life. This prime relationship scores deeply into
all that we do, and affects all our interactions which concern the nurturing of
others, above all that of infants. This
issue is made even more complex because that part of the mother created for
feeding, the breast, has acquired, in the human, additional sexual functions
which equivalent nourishing organs do not appear to have for other
species. We do not, for example, see
bulls nuzzling at cows’ udders.
Much has been written about how or why human sexuality has
developed as it has, but its effect upon attitudes towards the feeding of
babies has been overwhelming, and differs from country to country. The breast does not now simply offer the
possibility of food, but much more complex pleasures as well, which are
usually, although increasingly less in more open societies, supposed to be
carried out in private, to the point where the breast as fountain of baby food
has become entangled emotionally with more furtive, often hidden pleasures,
confusing the simplicity of the breast’s original function, and often subtly
downgrading it.
The picture is complicated further by the complexities of
each of the individual relationships with our mothers that we bring with us
into everything we do, not least, and above all, to the feeding of our infants
or of those infants for whom we take professional care. The often confused picture adds further
layers to all the professional advice surrounding mothers in relation to how
they should feed their babies, this advice, too, being inevitably coloured by
an individual adviser’s own relationship to their mother, but rarely
acknowledged as playing any part in the advice given. Such age-old comments, such as, “You mustn’t
spoil a child by feeding it when it cries”, often stem from the fact that those
giving or accepting such advice are keen to deny the baby something they
themselves have not experienced, the unconditional offer of food (and thus
love) whenever they wanted it. We are
often disturbed by seeing others getting what we cannot have or have never had,
and this is never truer than in the case of those watching a baby demand with
all its being the unrestricted outpouring of breast milk, and being granted its
wish. Watch how people often look away
from the sight of a baby’s uninhibited joy in receiving this boundless
sustenance, and the mother’s joy, too when this sustenance is accepted
unconditionally. Do we have within us,
unacknowledged, some jealousy of such a demonstration of perfect satisfaction,
made no longer possible as we grow up, when our pleasures have to be tempered
by more realistic expectations, and our mothers are no longer there to satisfy
our needs? And, if so, is that why there
are so many books which appear to want, however subtly this is done, to deny babies
such pleasures, apparently in the interests of babies’ health?
And then, too, there are all the issues surrounding our need
to have our offers of sustenance accepted every time we offer something. Mothers often feel rejected when a baby
struggles to get away from breast or bottle, and continue to try to force milk
upon the baby even when it indicates it is satisfied. This is the flipside of the approach which
advocates withholding food from the baby, but stems from an equal level of
imbalance. It also lies at the heart of
many of the problems of obesity in babies and children, for mother (and it is
still predominantly the female in a family rather than the male) can easily
overfeed, particularly with artificial milk which flows much too quickly and
much too uniformly richly from the bottle compared with the breast which has
its own in-built filtering mechanisms, allowing it to become ever thinner as
the baby’s suckling slackens. I have
watched mothers force the bottle on to a baby who is lying quite contentedly
there and continue to try and coax it to drink more even when the baby turns
its face away. And on the face of the
mother appears satisfaction as soon as the baby starts sucking again and dismay
when the baby indicates it has enough but there is still milk left in the
bottle, as though what she regards as her offerings of mother love have been
rejected, rather than understanding that the baby’s stomach is full.
Different cultures have different attitudes to the feeding
of babies, to do with very complex social and economic attitudes. These include a culture’s approach to the
natural functions of the body, to a mother’s place in society and obviously,
too, the availability and promotion of powdered milk as a satisfactory, and
apparently recommended, alternative.
Some countries, such as Sweden or Norway, for example, where
breastfeeding is taken as absolutely the norm, cannot understand what they see
as British mothers’ reluctance to breastfeed, having an almost 100% record of
breastfeeding. It is a pity that we in
this country and in other countries, such as the United States
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