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Home › Articles › Essays/Opinion › Magic

Magic

The Difference Between Loving and Tolerating Breastfeeding

By Ann Calandro

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You can sense the difference in the twinkling eyes of the moms who experience magic. When I tell women that I am a lactation consultant, they might say, "I breastfed my baby for a few months." They are matter-of-fact, and their eyes don't light up. They are proud and rightly so. Other moms' eyes (and sometimes grandmothers') smile and enlarge as they say with a smile, "Oh, I breastfed my baby!" These moms loved it. Their eyes tell me so. They want to tell me how much they loved breastfeeding even though it may have been many years ago. They haven't forgotten. I sense that we are sisters under the skin. We have known the magic.

I teach a lot of breastfeeding classes and do a lot of public speaking. I talk to hundreds of mothers each month as inpatients, outpatients and over the phone. I talk to them about how good breastfeeding is for them, for the baby, for the family. I talk about how it keeps Baby healthy and how it saves them money.

They ask me questions about how to pump their milk when they go back to work or how to avoid getting sore nipples. When I am teaching breastfeeding class, I talk to parents for two hours straight. When I teach nurses about breastfeeding in my breastfeeding management classes, I teach them for 10 hours. We talk about helping moms get started, the disadvantages of using formula, having a healthy attitude. In both classes, I don't talk about the magic. I guess I don't bring it up because there really are no words to describe the feelings that breastfeeding can evoke. They might not believe me anyway, not unless they are one of the moms who has already experienced this spark.

I doubt that any woman who has breastfed and didn't experience the magic would ever choose breastfeeding education as a career. Lactation consultants, La Leche League Leaders, nursing mother's counselors, I would dare say have all recognized the magic of breastfeeding. Many of us had difficult beginnings and had to work hard to establish our nursing relationships. We have fallen head over heels in love with our babies while breastfeeding. We so want other mothers to experience the "I don't care if the world collapses I'm nursing my baby" kind of peace. Our greatest disappointment is when mothers don't. They are sometimes terrific moms, loving moms, caring moms, but if they didn't ever discover this special part of breastfeeding, we feel a slight disappointment for them and for their loss of the magic.

Dana, a nursing mother from North Carolina, says, "...I'm having trouble finding words to describe just how complete I felt during those early months when I was so emotionally involved with this darling baby who seemed so sweet and clean and perfect ... I read once that the first four months are the period of 'primary maternal preoccupation' with the baby, and I thought that described it pretty well for me. The relationship was so physically and emotionally satisfying that it was not hard for me to pour myself into it and put the rest of my life on hold to focus on mothering."

Lester Hazell, the author of Commonsense Childbirth

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