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The invisible mother | page 1, 2, 3
Breast-feeding is the most overwhelming job I've ever had, and I am no slouch in the work department. I've always leapt to the top of my class or the top of my job, eager to be proficient. As a mother, the rewards aren't so obvious. I don't get paychecks or report cards, and I can count the number of times I've been told I'm doing a good job on two fingers of one hand. As a nursing mother, I have an ever-growing baby to prove that I'm constantly working, but Franny's growth isn't inherently satisfying. Maybe my problems in valuing motherhood are my very own, but I'll argue with anyone until dawn about how strange it is to nurse, even though it is one of the most natural things in the world. The same is said of sex, and how many people can report a fulfilling first experience in the sack? Just as no one could have described sex to me before I had it -- or could have talked me out of the curiosity that led to my average but unique experience of it -- I never could have envisioned what it was like to be a parent, no matter how many kids I babysat or books I read. Nor did I know what I meant when I said I was committed to breast-feeding. I didn't consider the stigma or even the simple practicalities of the experience, but I was religiously devoted to the idea for the baby's health. Throughout my life I've had eczema that ranges from irksome to aching. At one point my skin was so bad that I did not want to pass on my genes and risk making someone else suffer as much or more than I did. When I heard that breast-feeding would help build a baby's immune system and possibly keep kids from developing eczema and other allergies, I decided to obey my ovaries and have a child. I was not going to bottle-feed my baby, unless the bottle was filled with milk I made. My mother didn't breast-feed my sisters or me. We were born in the '60s before nursing hit one of its cyclical vogues. "Those titties aren't good for anything," the nurse told my mother when my older sister Pegeen was born. "Yes, Eve," the doctor agreed, "you might as well take the shot." The shot was a drug to inhibit lactation. He offered it to my mother because she had inverted nipples. This condition makes breast-feeding difficult but not impossible, as later proved by La Leche League. Formed in 1956, when only an estimated 20 percent of mothers in America nursed, La Leche League was regularly storming maternity wards by 1974, when my brother was born. A member of the army helped my mother nurse Nate. My mother was thrilled to be able to breast-feed. She wishes she could have done it for all of us, she tells me, especially my little sister, who was very colicky as an infant, allergic to every formula she was fed. La Leche League wanted my mother to join their nurse-ins. The local leader would call and tell her where a group of women would be meeting to breast-feed in public, which didn't interest my mother at all. She wasn't ready to be La Leche League's poster case. To my mother, the personal is personal. My mother breast-fed my little brother for 10 months, until he punched her in the breast one morning, announcing an end to the arrangement. | ||
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