An Interview with the Author

Question:  There seem to be quite a few books about breastfeeding on the market already.  Why did you decide to write another one? 

I had never realized that breastfeeding doesn’t always come easily.  So when my daughter wouldn’t even latch on until she was 5 ½ weeks old, I was blown away.  Getting her to nurse was just so hard!  But with a lot of help we persevered and succeeded. 

As time went by, I was further taken aback my how central nursing became to our relationship.  I was in awe of how much it meant to my daughter and discovered that breastfeeding can be so much more than a feeding method. 

Throughout this time, I wondered why the whole nursing experience was so completely unlike anything I had ever heard.  I had read dozens, if not hundreds of women’s birthing stories, but had never seen a book that placed women’s breastfeeding stories at the center.

I initially wrote The Breastfeeding Café to provide women with a support group of sorts, to validate their experiences, and to offer an inside look of the day-to-day and night-to-night realities of what it means to nurse.  I then realized that it was equally important to understand how our nursing experiences are influenced by larger social and cultural issues.  So while the heart and soul of the book is women’s stories – in their own words – the stories are framed in a particular context, one in which bottle-feeding is still seen as the norm.

My overall perspective is that not all women will choose to breastfeed, but every woman who wants to deserves that right and should be empowered to do so. 

Question.  Part of your goal in writing this book was to help create “a culture in which breastfeeding women are visible, accepted, and valued.”  Is there not much support for breastfeeding? 

The number one image people associate with infancy is bottles.  We seldom see nursing women represented in the media.  Formula companies try to convince women that they will need to supplement.  I could go on.  The bottom line is that even though there is a lot of lip service to breastfeeding, and, of course, some very dedicated, wonderful people who help mothers overcome any challenges they might face in the early days of nursing, women also face a lot of obstacles.  And one of the obstacles they face centers around the myths and misinformation that surround breastfeeding. 

For example, it’s ok for us to use our breasts to “turn-on” a man, but not to latch-on a baby. This can nursing in public an uncomfortable experience.  So...we hear tales like the following:

“When Alvin was about three weeks old, I went to Walmart or Target.  I was nursing him in the baby section and one of the managers came up to me and trying to be as nice as he could, said, “Excuse me, Ma’am, could you go to the bathroom?”  He said there were male customers in the baby section shopping with their wives.  I felt offended but went out to my car.  Now I wouldn’t do that.  I’ll stay right where I am.  There are people who walk around stores half naked and me feeding my baby is nothing different.  If they don’t like it, tough.  I’m sorry.  My baby’s hungry.” 

 “There were a few times when I actually sat in the stall and nursed the baby while sitting on the toilet. I’d just put down a lot of toilet seat covers - a lot of them! -  and sit there and nurse with my clothes on.”

Additionally, because so many people think breastfeeding is just for newborns, it causes many women to become closeted about nursing older babies, toddlers, and preschoolers.  This, in turn, means that breastfeeding becomes even more invisible.  Ultimately, it’s hard to value something – or even understand it – if you don’t know that it’s there.

Question: You talk in your book women nursing in a bottle-feeding culture.  What do you mean by that?

The U.S. still has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates among all industrialized countries and there is a huge discrepancy between current breastfeeding rates and national breastfeeding goals.  So purely from a statistical point of view, bottle-feeding is far more common and visible. 

With bottle-feeding still viewed as the cultural norm, it is easy to then view formula as the biological norm, and, by extension, behaviors associated with bottle-feeding.   Moreover, the language we use and the way people, the media, even health care providers talk about breastfeeding implicitly assume this.

For example, a woman talks about feeding her baby the “normal” way, but she are not referring to breastfeeding.  Even more significant, medical studies conclude and the media then reports, that breastfeeding has “benefits.” Compared to what?  Formula, of course.  But since when do we use the experimental condition as the control group?  If ours were a breastfeeding culture, we would hear, instead, that formula has risks.  And I emphasize this not in an attempt to make anyone feel guilty, but to simply point out what’s going on.

Ultimately, this bottle-feeding culture provides the context in which women not only nurse, but in which they reflect on and interpret their experience.   

Question: But aren’t more women nursing today than ever before? 

We are seeing an increase in the number of women who set out with the intention to nurse, but those numbers drop off quickly, particularly if we look at the rates of exclusive breastfeeding, that is, women who don’t use any formula or other milk substitutes.   And when we compare health outcomes between breastfed and formula fed babies, we’re often measuring them against exclusive breastfeeding.

There are also huge socio-demographic differences in who breastfeeds and who doesn’t.  Race, class, age and education of the mother, and even what part of the country she lives in, all come into play.  Not all women have access to good information and support and this partly accounts for these different rates. 

Question:  Why is your book especially relevant now?

Many women hear the message loud and clear that they ought to be breastfeeding.  But this isn’t going to happen for the majority of women until we look at the reality of women’s lives and make it possible for them to do so.  Unless we remove the barriers, we’re just going to create another unachievable standard that many women won’t be able to meet. 

The stories in The Breastfeeding Café reveal how these barriers continue to thrive, prosper, and in too many cases, sabotage women’s efforts to develop and maintain a nursing relationship:  childbirth practices, hospital-based policies after the birth, marketing efforts designed to convince women that they won’t have enough milk and will need to supplement with formula, to a host of other factors, and the necessity of going back to work shortly after giving birth, are a few of the most obvious examples.  But the more we understand them, the more likely we are to overcome them.

I  also think there is a broader reason why The Breastfeeding Café is especially relevant now.  In the 1970s, the women’s movement worked hard to prove that women could be “just like” men.  Now, a generation later, with Superwoman dead from exhaustion, the challenge is find new models, new ways to support women’s role in the work force and their desire to mother.   Breastfeeding is built around a unique, embodied relationship between a mother and her child.  We need to find ways to honor this, without expecting women to sacrifice her family’s economic well-being.  The issue is not whether or not women can work out of the home and breastfeed.   The issue is how do we, as a society, facilitate that.

 Question:  You interviewed women from all over the country.  Did anything surprise you?

Yes!  I was repeatedly struck by how grateful women were to talk with me.  They were not merely willing to share their stories, they were eager to.  This surprised me at the time, but in retrospect, I think it speaks to the degree to which nursing women don’t feel listened to and valued.

I was also surprised at how many women described breastfeeding as empowering, even healing, given that these are themes we seldom see conveyed in breastfeeding information.  One woman told me, for example, “If I could carry a baby for nine months and then nourish him from the milk that my body was creating, I could do anything!” Others relayed messages like the following:  

“I’ve had endometriosis, laser surgery and infertility work-ups, so I associated menses and everything else as being painful and inconvenient.  I viewed the biological rhythms of being female as problems to be overcome. Then I had a C-section.  Breastfeeding my son was the first part of the reproductive process that went the way it was supposed to…It has given me faith in the strength and capability of my body and I discovered how strong and capable I truly am.”

“Breastfeeding has taught me that I can make this incredible fluid that makes my babies grow at an incredible rate for the first few months.  This is soooo amazing to me and I am still in awe when I see the milk drip out of my breasts.  I think, ‘I made that!  I did it without really trying in the “masculine” sense.  I simply was and my milk simply was and because of this, my baby thrives.”

Other women talked about how they gained self-esteem and learned how to speak up for themselves and their families.  Some found that nursing helped them heal from traumatizing birth experiences, childhood abuse and other painful issues.  The impact of all this is huge.

Finally, I was repeatedly struck by the extent to which myths about breastfeeding are still so common and the prevalence of misinformation, particularly in the stories women told about their interactions with various health care providers and institutions. Here are a couple of examples:

 “I had wanted to breastfeed exclusively, but my pediatrician had told me that it was no problem to supplement through the night or when I felt I needed a break. I feel that a lot of my breastfeeding experience and the problems I had were directly related to her advice -  I had no idea what supplementing would do to my supply.” 

“When my first son was born I was young, naïve, and totally uneducated on motherhood.  Many nights I cried, trying to get him to nurse, but to no avail.  I tried to pump but had no idea that battery operated, store pumps hurt so much.  It felt like my nipple was being ripped off. 

"When I look back now, I can’t believe that the hospital didn’t provide lactation consultants because had there been somebody to follow-up with me, to help me with the problems that I was experiencing, my attempt at nursing could have been so different.”

Question:  Where do the stories come from?  Who did you interview? 

The women whose stories appear in this book all live in the United States, yet they represent all walks of life: they are married and single, in the work force and out, white and blue collar, wealthy and poor, young and old. They have different ethnic and racial backgrounds, sexual orientations, and religious and philosophical beliefs. They gave birth in hospitals, birth centers, and at home, and had both positive and negative birthing experiences.  Some women nursed for a few weeks; others for a few years. They had wonderful experiences and painful/disappointing ones. They have healthy children and sick children. Together they portray both the unique and universal dimensions of breastfeeding in a modern, contemporary, bottle-feeding culture.

Question:  You talk about breastfeeding as being more than a feeding method.  What do you mean by that?

Breastfeeding is the first and primary relationship a baby knows; it meets his or her need for touch, connection, and intimacy;  and it is how he or she learns to feel safe, respected, and loved.  This simultaneously sets the stage for the relationship women build with their children. So many women talked to me about how they don’t simply feed their children, they nurture them at their breast. Their milk doesn’t simply nourish; it soothes, pacifies, sedates.  Breastfeeding, for many women, is the corner stone of their childrearing. 

Here are a few quotes from women to illustrate what I mean:

“My daughter knows we are planning to have a new baby someday soon. The other day, she bent over, kissed my nipple and said, “I put enough love in here to last for the baby when it nurses.”  Why is it that children instinctively know what nursing is all about?  And how did society get so far removed from the simple idea of nurturing and love?” 

“I really don't think of the decision to breastfeed as a nutritional one.  I'm glad that breastmilk is good for babies, but the actual milk itself has never been my motivation to nurse.  My motivation has always been the intense relationship, the incredible feeling that I have doing it.  I was lucky enough to share that intense relationship with three of my children for an extended period of time.  I love my husband and we are very compatible, but it doesn't come close to what I’ve felt with my babies.”

“Breastfeeding has made me feel more comfortable as a mother.  Nursing my daughter and parenting her differently has made me realize how much harder I’ve had to work to have a relationship with my son.  That’s not to say my son and I aren’t close; just that it was harder to reach that point and it took more effort to know what he was feeling or what he needed.”         

Unfortunately, many of the values so prevalent in our society do not support breastfeeding.  Babies' needs are often subordinated to the needs of adults and women are often given advice that goes against what they inherently want to do.  This can make parenting awfully hard. 

Question: The Breastfeeding Café is written primarily for mothers.  Why are so many health care providers interested in it?

The book is a fabulous resource for anyone who works with pregnant women and new mothers.  Often times, people who help women breastfeeding only see them just after the baby is born.  Their goal is to help that mother with an immediate problem and they may not ever see the longer term impact of their short time together.

The stories in The Breastfeeding Café reinforce just how very important their work is – not just for babies, but for women, too.  They also can help health care professionals become more compassionate, more sensitive to the needs of a new mother, and more able to understand how other factors in a woman’s life may be affecting her ability to nurse.

The book also has quite a few sidebars pointing out resources on various issues and where to go for more information.  And the stories themselves are wonderful resources for sharing with patients and clients.

Question. Tell us a little about yourself.

I live in upstate New York in a beautiful, progressive, and family-friendly town.  I’ve been married since 1990 and have two daughters of elementary and middle-school age – (both of whom were nursed). After earning my Ph.D. from Penn State University when my first born was not quite a year old, I started working as a free-lance writer, exploring how the individual choices parents make are informed and influenced by social and cultural factors.  Today I continue to write and speak nationally about the challenges surrounding breastfeeding and childbirth within U.S. culture.  I also maintain this website as a resource for women, families, and health care providers and sell products that normalize and celebrate breastfeeding.

Question:  If you could leave women with just one message, what would it be?

I think it would be this:  Don’t listen to so many of the messages that pervade our culture telling you what is wrong with your body and what you need to fix and change.   You have an amazing (yet completely normal) ability to grow a baby, birth that baby, and feed it from your own body.  Have faith in yourself and, remember that if you run into problems, it’s ok to seek help.  Breastfeeding, like parenting itself, isn’t always easy, but it doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.

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