I want to share with you the article "Wild Breastfeeding" that I found on the website of the Argentine psychologist Laura Gutman, author of the book "Motherhood and the encounter with the shadow itself." In this article, Gutman tells us about the nature of breastfeeding, being a woman and the fusion between baby and mother that breastfeeding provides.
"Most of the mothers who consult for difficulties in breastfeeding are worried about knowing how to do things correctly, instead of looking for inner silence, deep roots, vestiges of femininity and support in the male, in the family or in the community that favor the encounter with their personal essence. Genuine breastfeeding is a manifestation of our most earthly, wild, phylogenetic aspects. To breastfeed we should spend almost all the time naked, without leaving our young, immersed in a time out of time, without intellect or elaboration of thoughts, without needing to defend themselves from anything or anyone, but only plunged into an imaginary space and invisible to others.
That is breastfeeding. It is letting out our ancestral forgotten or neglected corners, our animal instincts that arise without imagining that they nested inside us. And get carried away by the surprise of seeing us lick our babies, of smelling the freshness of their blood, of dripping between one body and another, of becoming a body and dancing fluids. Breastfeeding is shedding the lies we have told our whole lives about who we are or who we should be. It is being sloppy, powerful, hungry, like wolves, like lionesses, like tigers, like kangaroos, like cats. Very related to the mammals of other species in their total attachment to the breeding, neglecting the rest of the community, but millimetrically attentive to the needs of the newborn. Delighted with the miracle, trying to recognize that we were the ones who made it possible, and reuniting with what is sublime. It is a mystical experience if we allow it to be so. This is all it takes to be able to breastfeed a child. No methods, no schedules, no tips, no watches, no courses. But yes support, containment and trust of others (husband, women's network, society, social field) to be the same more than ever. Just permission to be what we want, do what we want, and get carried away by the madness of the wild. This is possible if it is understood that female psychology includes this deep-rooted attachment to mother-earth, that being one with nature is intrinsic to the essential being of women, and that if this aspect is not revealed, breastfeeding simply It does not flow. We are not so different from rivers, volcanoes, forests. It is only necessary to preserve them from attacks. Women who want to breastfeed have the challenge of not going too far from our wild instincts. We tend to reason, read childcare books and in this way we lose the axis among so many supposedly "professional" councils. There is an idea that goes through and deactivates the animality of breastfeeding, and it is the insistence that the mother be separated from the baby's body. Contrary to what is supposed, the baby should be carried by the mother all the time, even and especially when she sleeps. The physical separation to which we submit as a dyad hinders the fluidity of breastfeeding. Western babies sleep in the bassinet or in the stroller or in their cribs for too many hours. This behavior simply threatens breastfeeding. Because breastfeeding is a constant body and energy activity. It is like a river that cannot stop flowing: if it is blocked, it diverts its flow. Breastfeeding is having the baby to upa, as long as possible. It is body, it is silence, it is connection with the invisible underworld, it is emotional fusion, it is madness. Yes, you have to go a little crazy to keep up. "
In Babies and more | 50 reasons to breastfeed
