When this article as published way back in 1955, breast-feeding was a lost art.  Most babies were bottle-fed and I knew of no woman  who nursed her baby.   Breastfeeding was at that time counter-cultural.  The first La Leche League group was formed in l958 and their The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding was written to fill a very real need.   Is is not amazing that a normal, natural, motherly action could be so supplanted by a contrived, bothersome, inferior method of baby feeding?   It makes one wonder about the common sense of womankind.

The swing is back to normal mothering but individual mothers still need encouragement to persevere, especially when they know there is a workable alternative if they run into problems.   If you, like me, have no friend, relative, or mother to cheer you on, I think the following should be helpful. Reading it over some fifty years later, there are some sentences that I might want to tweak a bit, but human nature and human physiology do not change significantly in a mere half-century. Much is written nowadays about the importance of finding time for one-on-one relationships. Much is said about the need for busy mothers to find a little time to relax so that they don’t get so overwhelmed.  Just settle down, with a baby at the breast, and  let the oxytocin flow — it’s like a little oasis!

YOU CAN NURSE YOUR BABY

I once heard of a woman who filled up so much after her baby was born that she couldn’t buy a bra big enough to fit her.  But she couldn’t nurse her baby.   She had “that blue milk, you know.”  And every time I think of her I grieve a little for the baby that would have thrived on that abundance of blue milk — for it cannot be disputed that human milk is the best baby food.  True, it is bluer than cow’s milk — and for good reason.  It has less protein, less fat, and more sugar than cow’s milk.  Its composition is different because it is intended for a baby, not a calf.  By the time cow’s milk is properly doctored up with a formula (water and some form of sugar are added to cow’s milk for no other reason than to make it more like breast milk) it, too, has a bluish-white color. Read the rest of this entry »