On Tuesday I got a copy of Faith & Family in the mail because my Petely's picture is in this issue. I was flipping through it, thinking idly about subscribing, when I saw this sentence in an article on taking kids to Mass:
No one will deny an infant his bottle, and some moms -- appropriately draped of course -- discreetly nurse their babies in a tucked-away space.
If you ever want to push my buttons with a nuclear-powered cattle prod, you can just call me up and read that sentence to me. It is wrong in so many ways I can't even count them, though I'm certainly going to give it a try. Before the counting commences, a quick note for anyone new to this blog: I recognize that women make all kinds of decisions for their families, for reasons that are pretty much never my business. I make no assumptions about why women use bottles, so no need to get your knickers in a twist. Three years ago I posted an essay on the web about breastfeeding Catholic mothers, and craziness ensued. I am too sick and too busy to deal with internet crazies this week. Please be crazy somewhere else.
So let's review: human milk is the food designed for human babies. Babies who do not receive human milk will be more vulnerable to a wide array of pathologies, including but not limited to enuresis, schizophrenia, alcohol-related hospitalizations, and death from SIDS. A nursing mother is conferring long-lasting protection against illness. She is shaping her child's brain, providing the right fats in the right ratio for building the retinas and the cortex with which he will learn about creation. She is shielding him from the subtle damage caused by in utero toxin exposure, and she is cutting his odds of developmental delay.
And it is crucial to note two more things: first, many of these effects are dose-related. A little human milk is great, in other words, and more is better. Second, humans are "carry mammals," meaning that their milk is designed for frequent consumption. God could have made us like bunnies, nursing every twelve hours (much easier to work around the Mass schedule that way). He could have made us like deer, but I have yet to spot any hooves or antlers on the children of my acquaintance. Human babies get hungry often. God has designed them, from top to bottom, to receive milk from their mothers' breasts.
Why then, why oh why oh why, would a magazine aimed primarily at Catholic mothers suggest that bottles should be the default for babies at Mass?
I don't really need an answer to that question. People get tetchy about the fact that human milk is made by humans. No other body fluids are foods, let alone foods with superpowers, and in general we avoid body fluids -- sensibly so. People get tetchy about the fact that breastmilk comes from breasts, when we're used to thinking about breasts as decorative or seductive.
But do you know what? It is not the normal behavior for the species that needs to change. It is the thinking that needs to change, because it is costing us all. Even if you have no children, you are paying for the higher healthcare costs of formula-fed infants (and, to a lesser extent, formula-feeding mothers). It may well be costing you in the workplace, because breastfeeding-unfriendly policies make for higher absenteeism among employed mothers. And I find it preposterous -- painfully absurd, in fact -- that Catholics are buying into the madness of a culture that equates nursing a baby with acts either sexual or excretory, things polite people would never do in public.
"Just pump," some will say. "Just pump" assumes that every woman has the money to buy a pump, and the time and willingness to use it -- a false assumption. "Just pump" is a tacit admission that the speaker thinks misplaced squeamishness trumps a baby's right to be breastfed -- a point of view with which, as you will have guessed by now, I disagree vigorously.
When a Christian woman gestates and births the baby God has given her, she says with our Lord, "This is my body, given for you." When she feeds her baby at the breast, giving him food synthesized from her own blood, she says, "This is my blood, poured out for you." (Those of us with overactive letdown modify it to "...spraying out for you rather like Old Faithful in an especially emphatic moment.") The Victorians hid away their heavily pregnant women, because those burgeoning bellies spelled s-e-x. I submit that we fall into the same error when we tell nursing mothers they need to drape or leave. "ATTENTION, PLEASE!" calls the drape. "Uncomfortable nursing mother, right here in this very spot!" And isn't it more distracting for me to be walking up and down the aisle, as I go back and forth from my private corner, than to be meeting my baby's needs quietly in the pew? (Say, did the Blessed Mother not get the memo about how modest Christian women are supposed to be using bottles or else draping? Maybe she needed Hooter Hiders, you think?)
Believe me, I don't want random parishioners catching sight of my bare breasts, any more than I want them to see my bare pregnant belly. That's why I dress for the occasion when I'm taking a small baby to church, and why I learned when my oldest was tiny how to nurse him without giving anybody an eyeful. It's not hard, especially when you can learn from other mothers around you who are also nursing their babies. Hint: this is more likely if they are sitting across from you at coffee and doughnuts, not hiding in the bathroom hoping there will be a Boston creme left by the time the baby's finished.
Here's the bottom line: we nurse our babies in obedience to God's call. We give them the food Jesus chose to receive himself -- living food that is an echo of the Eucharist in the way it nurtures and protects those who receive it frequently. And that, in my view, is cause for celebration, not something to hide.
