Before I became a parent, I thought, I want to do it like the hunter-gatherers did. I want to live in community, a tribe, I want to give birth naturally with as little intervention as possible, I want to carry my baby on my body as opposed to in a stroller when we walk around the city.
And of course, I want to breastfeed.
And I have. But from the beginning on, when I realized how much energy and time and freedom this would take from me, I had my doubts about how long I could seriously keep doing it.
In general, I’m starting to realize those expectations I had of myself to “do things naturally” as our hunter-gatherer ancestors did, just don’t make much sense anymore.
Why? Well, we no longer live in the world our ancestors evolved in.
Take carrying your baby around on your person, for example, in a sling or carrier as opposed to in a stroller. I have been doing that, especially at the beginning when Avi was tiny and immediately fell asleep when we tied him against our chests and wasn’t used to NOT being encapsulated by the warmth of an adult body and a heartbeat. We carried him around pretty much all the time when we left the house in those first two months of life.
But at some point, you walk somewhere, and you get to where you’re going and you’re like, This shit is heavy. Can I just not be wearing a 15-pound weight right now? You want to put him down next to you while you drink the coffee you just ordered. In that case, it’s nice to have a stroller around.
Sure, Kinderwagon (German for stroller, which literally means “child car”) didn’t make so much sense when we were walking around on uneven terrain and gathering berries. They didn’t make sense when we were constantly around our fellow tribespeople and there was always another family member around to hold the baby when it got too hot or heavy for us.
But we don’t live in that world anymore.
Needing to be with your baby all the time wouldn’t isolate from your friends and loved ones as it does today.
We live in the world of paved roads and coffee shops and nuclear families (at least, I do). So yes, strollers. Despite the benefits of baby-wearing, that’s why parents use strollers in the world we live in today.
And now I feel similarly about breastfeeding.
Back when we were in tribes, I see how it made sense to be totally chained to your baby, needing to feed him every two hours with your body.
Because in a tribe, everyone’s hanging out together all day anyway.
Needing to be with your baby all the time wouldn’t isolate from your friends and loved ones as it does today. Today, if you don’t live with all of your close friends and loved ones around you, which most of us don’t, at some point, you have to go out to see your friends. You have to text them, and make a date, and bring all the baby stuff with you, and worry about whether the place you meet has a changing table and hope that no one around is smoking cigarettes.
Because you likely only live with one other adult, seeing others is a mission. So you end up being alone much more than you would like to be. Which is hard if you and your partner are huge extroverts.
Oh and by the way, up until now, I’ve only referred to those of us privileged enough to have time off or a flexible work schedule throughout this all. Most women need to go back to working soon — if not immediately — after giving birth, which, if that’s the case, if you expect these women to ALSO find a way to fully breastfeed their child, you can go f*ck yourself, literally.
I’m not implying it was all easy, no problem, living in the tribe, but I’m quite sure these specific dynamics were not at play.
My point here is that, for most of us, fully breastfeeding your child just doesn’t make a lot of sense given how the modern world is set up.
I’m ashamed, to be honest, that I ever felt even an ounce of judgement seeing moms pushing around their little babies in their strollers or feeding from a bottle.
All of this to say, even though the official recommendation is one or two years to breastfeed, I want to slowly phase this out.
At least I’m considering it.
It seems that it’s actually not so important that I continue doing it in terms of his health. Especially living in a developed country like Germany with clean water and good sanitation.
And the freedom, oh the freedom! The freedom it will give me for him no longer to be dependent on eating from me all the time anymore! To have my body again all to myself.
I question why I chain myself to this process when I don’t need to?
It’s just clear now that I can only give my baby the joy that I’m capable of experiencing myself. It’s the best for both of us for me to do what’s best for my own mental health if it’s not clearly hurting him to do so do.
But it’s not so simple either…
Yet now that I’ve actually given myself the permission to consider weaning, I’m realizing it’s not so easy, either. Because I can’t deny that despite all the downsides, how precious nursing is.
Yesterday, I held Avi close to me as he fed from my body and just stared at him, closed my eyes, and felt the cushy lovey hormones flood my system.
And I couldn’t help but start to sob.
Looking at him, so tiny, on his five-months-old birthday and thinking about NOT doing this with him anymore was heartbreaking.
I wrote this down before going to sleep later that night.
How beautiful it is
How powerful
How intimate
How precious
How totally extraordinaryIn the backdrop of this modern hustle bustle world
It is to give nourishment thru my body to this tiny innocent soul
No longer a metropolitan woman but a mammal, a mammal just like any other
I’m afraid to give that up. I don’t know that I want to.
Yet talking to other mothers, a few have confided that they wished they had weaned sooner than they had, that they wish they hadn’t waited so long.
I saw a mom holding hands with her young son the other day as they walked past my building. She spoke gently to him and he listened, looking so safe, content. The love was potent.
I know nursing isn’t everything.
I know he’ll be my little boy regardless of whether he dines off of my body.
I’m not sure what exactly I’ll do next and when.
But I know that whatever I chose, the best parent is not the “perfect” parent. It’s a parent who knows how to take care of themselves first. And in this world, that probably means acting in ways that are different from what our hunter gatherers did or in many cases, what society expects from you.
So hippies, naturalists, former self, just be supportive, and whatever you do, hold your judgement.
<3
Sarah
What else?
The advice column will be out this weekend <3
No Wednesday email next week as I’ll be off in Switzerland.
Have you heard of inversion table polyamory? I thought this glossary of different types of polyamory (really just different levels of intimacy and support a polycule can give one another) was funny and kind of sweet.
The rise above your jealousy course is almost fully recorded and ah! I’m really excited about getting all this knowledge (all the most important info I wish I had known before I started CNM) out into the world. More on that in the next few weeks <3