In this essay, I share a bit about my story of grief and breastfeeding. I also share some thoughts about the cultural grief some people are carrying about the lack of support afforded to lactating families whose goal it is to feed their baby from their body. I use some gendered language throughout this essay (ie. breastfeeding, mother/mom, etc.) because it is the language I use to describe myself and my experience. There are other great gender-neutral terms out there, some of which I have incorporated into this essay.
I was born shortly before my maternal grandmother died. My mother tried to breastfeed me but struggled to during her grief and switched me to formula soon after I was born. I don’t know much more than that because she’s dead now too. When my first son was born, I remember wishing I could ask my mother a million things about her experience of mothering, including breastfeeding. More grief. Similar grief to what I imagine she felt. I coped by leaning into breastfeeding and accrediting as a La Leche League Leader. Part of me wanted to give back to a community of Leaders who had stepped in to support me, and part of me wanted to provide support to new moms that my mom hadn’t gotten.
I breastfed my first son for just shy of four years. I reached my goal of letting him choose when to wean and it happened about halfway through my pregnancy with my second son. I grieved our breastfeeding relationship as I shifted from occasional-preschooler-self-serve nursing to the intensive early days of establishing supply all over again.
When I am supporting nursing families, the most common concern I hear from new parents is that they aren’t producing enough milk to meet their baby’s needs. These parents usually present as quite certain that this is the truth, having had their fears validated by well-intentioned healthcare professionals who haven’t had much (or any) lactation training. Their fears have been even further confirmed by Facebook groups that encourage new moms to pump, consume cookies, and misinform one another about normal infant behaviour. They show up scared that they are starving their baby by trying to feed them from their body.
They show up grieving.
Grieving the goal they had set for them and their family because they have been bombarded by messages that their body isn’t doing what they’re working so hard to do. Grieving because they just don’t have the support to be able to nurse their baby, well latched directly to the breast, on demand- the path of least resistance when it comes to establishing and maintaining supply. Parents have a million things on their plate when a new baby joins their family, from caring for older kids to running a home, to working outside the home to financially meet everyone’s basic needs. But the hustle isn’t conducive to nursing a baby on demand or getting support from other breastfeeding moms and lactation professionals.
When I dig a little deeper by asking things like, “what has you thinking your baby isn’t getting enough?”, I usually learn that breastfeeding is going much better than they think and they’ve been gaslit. Or that they have received information that has genuinely impacted supply, like feeding on a schedule rather than on demand. I don’t believe for a second that healthcare professionals or moms in Facebook groups mean to sabotage the breastfeeding relationship. I believe everyone is doing the best they can in a world that demands we engage in the hustle and disconnect from our babies and our goals for our families.
Breastfeeding is intrinsically linked to anti-capitalism. And it is inherently linked to grief care.
When the hustle dictates that we must disconnect from our babies by sabotaging bodyfeeding, we impact the attachment relationship. This attachment relationship plays a life-long role in the ways we connect with other people and the ways we grieve relationships when they are lost. There is lots of good science about attachment and mental health, but far before this became a topic of conversation within psychology, Indigenous Peoples have shared knowledge about the importance of nursing. In Nishnaabeg culture, treaties are about relationships rather than the treaties imposed by a colonialist legal system. In her book, Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back, Leanne Simpson talks about Edna Manitowabi’s teachings about breastfeeding as the first treaty, not just between mother and child, but between nations.
Community and social relationships are a key factor in mental health. When we actively, even before a baby is born, insist on sabotaging the feeding of human milk from a birthing person’s body to their baby, we are impacting their mental health. Both the birthing parent and the baby lose out on the many benefits of secure attachment- which is built when babies and children have their needs responded to. This is an example of a normalized site of gender-based violence that impacts human health at the most core level. The good news is that we can repair these attachment wounds. We can integrate and heal. It just takes a huge amount of work with a huge amount of support.
This summer, I camped with three other families. My friends and their older children held my baby and gave him back to me when he started showing hunger cues. When it was time to eat, my friend, Yoshi, whose amazing kids have long weaned, ensured nursing moms ate first. No one argued. They made us plates and held the babies while we ate. This kind of community support is what nursing families need and it’s also what grievers need. Healing is possible through active care.
Alyssa Warmland is an interdisciplinary artist and activist. Her work utilizes elements of radical vulnerability, restorative justice, mindfulness, compassion, performance, and direct action.
She is a mother, La Leche League Leader, Board member of La Leche League Canada, writer, podcaster, producer, director, performer, content creator, not-for-profit administrator, and abstract visual artist. Lyss is a strong advocate for fumbling towards an ethic of care, especially when it comes to the topics of birth, matresence, and grief. Most of all, she’s interested in the way people choose to tell their stories and how that keeps them well.