I know that I was breastfed until I was two and my younger sister Kate was breastfed until she was three.
We lived in Switzerland and we went to the creche on the property of the psychiatric hospital our mother worked at. Our mother would pop down every few hours to breastfeed us. I remember her coming down to the creche to do that for my sister.
I know that when my sister turned three, our mother had had enough and she left us with our dad while she went with a friend to France and my sister was left to go breastfeeding cold turkey.
I remember our mother telling us about how when she woke up with rock hard breasts, she massaged and squeezed them until milk squirted all over the walls.
When I was eight, we moved to South Africa and when I was nine, Gypsy was born. Jasmin’s birth followed 16 months later. Gypsy had to stop feeding while our mother was pregnant because the milk had dried up but as soon as the milk flowed again, both babies were back on the breast suckling away.
Even whilst driving!
That image has got to be one of my most prominent breastfeeding memories; our mother driving the bakkie (pick-up truck) on the bumpy dirt road in the Bokkeveld near Ceres with a baby straddling each leg and suckling away at a breast. Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of this wonderful scene but I do have this one which is the two of them asleep post feed so you get the idea.
My mother driving with my two younger sisters post a feed
Growing up, breastfeeding was normal.
Like giving birth.
If you had a baby, that is what you did to feed it until they were old enough to eat other things. The women who lived and worked on the farm also popped out their breasts to feed their children, most of them until their children were two or three, and one woman until her child was seven.
When I was eight I saw a white woman cover her baby while breastfeeding. It’s funny because up to that point I had never stared at anyone while they were feeding their baby but this drew my attention. I thought it was an odd ritual and I wondered if the baby wasn’t hot in there?
I got a fright the first time my baby suckled away at my nipple after giving birth – Ouch! I thought the hard part was over, no had told me that breastfeeding could hurt. It took me about three weeks of engorgement, tears, frustration, mastitis, pain, irritation, beauty, bliss and bonding to get the hang of the whole breastfeeding thing.
But I have to admit, that for me, breastfeeding was like learning to ride a bicycle – I had to fall off a few times before I got it and I got some scrapes and bruises along the way.
And it wasn’t just the first time I struggled with breastfeeding, it was a struggle every time I gave birth.
Four times I struggled.
That was my reality. Labour and birth were hard but give me pushing out a baby any time over the first three weeks of breastfeeding. I would feel that little jaw working away at my nipple and I would inwardly groan as I thought,
“Oh no…not this again!”.
I am well aware that there are all sorts of techniques to make all of this much easier. And I tried them. And sometimes they worked. And sometimes they didn’t. There is nothing like exhaustion and engorged breasts in the middle of the night to get the latch all wrong, your nipples become chewed to pieces and, before you know it, a fever and a sore breast have erupted.
Such fun.
(And there is nothing worse than someone telling you must be doing it wrong…breastfeeding shouldn’t hurt.)
On day three I would inevitably burst into tears and cry as the milk flowed and the reality of motherhood and the beauty of my baby overwhelmed me. Milk fever and engorgement were a reality I learned to work with, with warm baths, hot water bottles, pumps and homoeopathy. My breasts squirted and ached and dripped and leaked and wet more t-shirts than my babies wet nappies. My nipples felt like how chewing gum must feel and I even dreamt one night that my baby had stretched my nipple as though it were a pink piece of chewing gum.
ouch!
Boobs hung free as I ran out of t-shirts, or a forgotten breast would hang from my top because I forgot to pop it back in after a feed.
And then one day, we’d get it and we would rejoice and we would venture forth and feed anywhere and any time and any place we wanted to…looking as though it had always been easy.
But I was never harassed nor had any issues whilst feeding in public. I popped out my breast whenever my baby was hungry.
In restaurants, on the train, when visiting, in parks, in shopping centres.
What’s happened? Why are there so many stories now of women in South Africa being harassed while breastfeeding? I breastfed four children over a period of ten years and was never made to feel like what I was doing was strange, unusual, shameful.
I was once politely offered a Woolworths changing room to feed my baby in but I declined saying that I preferred to sit somewhere where I could watch people going by. That was about it.
Was I just too formidable to approach? Or has our mentality changed?
Happy World Breastfeeding Week everyone!
