PRECAUCIONS DURANT LES OBRES

Even now when I see a new-born baby with its mother and s/he is being bottle fed, I find myself feeling superior - even though I have no idea whether the milk in that bottle is expressed milk, or whether that particular mother has had a problem breastfeeding, or any personal history of the duo. What strikes me is the normative way in which I have accepted breastfeeding as the ‘right’ thing to do. This has the power to make mothers who, for whatever reason cannot fulfil this social obligation, feel immense guilt. The dominant invocation that ‘breast is best’ is bewitching - seductive in its magnetism. Indeed, Li et al. (2007:122) have stated that there is a need to educate the wider public that ‘breastfeeding is the best method of feeding and nurturing infants. Paediatricians and other health professionals should recommend human milk for all infants for whom breastfeeding is not specifically contraindicated’. Breastfeeding is also widely considered by a vast proportion of health professionals to be the best way of securing an emotional bond between mother and child. Moreover, the failure of ‘bonding’, wherein it is reputed to be essential that the infant and mother form and maintain an intimate alliance from birth onwards, is according to Lee (2008:470) deemed to be responsible for a host of social ills;

Problems in the early mother-child relationship are considered from this perspective not only damaging for individuals, but causal in the origin of social problems such as criminality and violence since criminal and violent people are deemed to have suffered impaired emotional development in the early years of life.

This statement makes me feel incredibly guilty, particularly with reference to my narrative in Chapter 7, and yet I am well aware of the political and economic motives behind this drive.

196 Part of my brain still retains a critical view around this notion and the way in which it pathologises mothers, but the lure to believe this nonsense is scarily compelling.

However, a report by Boyer (2012:552) indicates that, although nursing is widely accepted and promoted in the UK, breastfeeding mothers are routinely ostracised and made to feel unwelcome in public places. Boyer argues that,

...despite being promoted by policy, breastfeeding women are marked and marginalised in the public sphere in the UK through a process of intersubjective affective practice...I propose that breastfeeding women are expected to act so as to maintain public comfort (i.e., the comfort of others) or risk censure; and that this schema is further sustained in the way that breastfeeding is ‘provisioned for’ in the built environment in the form of lactation rooms. I suggest that these spaces, practices, and affects can serve to constrain women in the UK from breastfeeding in public.

Moreover, a damning report in the 2016 edition of Journal of Lactation entitled ‘UK views towards breastfeeding in public: an analysis of the public's response to the Claridge’s incident’ (Morris et al., 2016) describes, in my view, bigoted and parochial attitudes towards breastfeeding mothers. The report describes an incident in 2014 where a mother was trying to breastfeed her infant in the coffee shop of the prestigious hotel, and she was asked by a member of staff to cover herself with a napkin. The article recounts some of the petty justifications for overtly rejecting women’s right to breastfeed in public stated on various websites in response to reports of the incident: ‘…breastfeeding is natural…going to the toilet is natural, do you just pee into a bucket next to you or do you get up and go to the bloody toilet?…’, and ‘Why do women feel it [is] their right to get their breasts out in public to feed babies?’ (Morris et al., 2016:12). This ignores the conflicting ‘right’ of men to display pictures of breasts flaunted seductively on the walls of workplaces and such.

However, according to The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (1991), there have been very few conclusive studies carried out as to the possible negative maternal effects of breastfeeding, particularly extended breastfeeding (beyond the first year of the infant’s life). The potential reasons for this omission may be that the current cultural imperative is to promote breastfeeding practices, but the very real possible consequences - such as the increased risk of osteoporosis - are worthy of investigation. I will argue throughout this project that we are in an era of ‘intensive motherhood’ (Hays, 1996) and the cultural tropes around feeding and nurturing babies does not escape this bioethical minefield. Indeed, as Lee

197 (2008:468) states: ‘How mothers feed their babies is experienced as a ‘measure of motherhood’ (Kukla 2005)’. I recently saw a report (delivered on my Facebook feed) by BBC Mundo (October 2017) about the microbes and the sugars contained in breast milk that babies cannot digest. This study suggests that the sugars are not designed to feed the baby, but to provide nutrition for the essential bacteria that help to prevent certain infections that are common in newborns, especially preterm babies. This report uses a number of scientific terms, perhaps to overwhelm the general public into believing what the ‘experts’ say. This, and many other such reports, serves to exert increasing pressure on mothers to breastfeed, painting those who choose not to as selfish, contemptible, and causing unnecessary risk to their babies.

However, many mothers cannot or will not breastfeed - perhaps because of the discriminatory attitudes towards them as we have seen. Paradoxically, the public hostility targeted towards those who, for whatever reason, will not breastfeed is palpable (see especially Lee, 2008), yet it seems to be in direct opposition to the hostility directed by some members of the public towards breastfeeding mothers. It seems that mother’s cannot win, however they chose to feed their babies. They are made to feel guilty whichever choice they make.

Ok, I relent. We’re going to try formula, just at night. I really don’t want to do it, but it’s taking over an hour to breastfeed her at night, and I’m so tired! We’ve been giving her what we call ‘emergency’ bottles; a little pre-made thing if we were out. I didn’t want to even give her those – I wanted to exclusively breastfeed until 6 months, but social pressures kind of necessitated it, as people around me perceived I was having ‘trouble’ with breastfeeding particularly when my arms began to get tired and she still wasn’t satisfied. I feel like I’m not listened to, not respected. But then I also feel guilty at not being able to move fast enough for my daughter. I think that Jasmine and I need to develop our own rhythm, me going slightly faster than I’m comfortable with, and her recognising and allowing for my slower pace. We need to move in our own Crip time. Instead, I feel like I am constantly rushed and made to feel not enough. We need to develop a connection in our own time. Everything would have gotten quicker with practice anyway, but it feels like I’ve been made to feel like that’s not enough.

I ask the reader to allow me to break from the flow of the text in order to insert a note on the notion of, yet again, ‘Crip’ time. This pausing is significant, and I shouldn’t have to feel I need to apologise for it… and yet I do. I feel like I need to apologise for taking up more of the reader’s valuable time, for needing to extend and prolong their attention. This need to apologise is bound up in the capitalist-inspired notions of ‘time=money’. But for me, time moves slower and more intricately. I take more time than (I’m guessing) the average person to do simple everyday tasks like getting dressed or making dinner… and that is ok with me. I have amalgamated this aspect into my life as a person. Feeling rushed makes me anxious, and when

198 I get anxious my hands get jittery and I make more mistakes – a self-perpetuating phenomenon. When I can take my own Crip time, I feel more at ease. Yet the taking of time is considered to be selfish in the dominant narrative of motherhood, as it denotes that the mother is putting her needs before those of her child which – according to the script of motherhood – is unforgivable. Campion (1995:140-141) cites the example of the disabled mother Tiffany Callo being legally challenged on her competency as a mother due to her slowness with changing her baby’s nappy. This is used by the legal team as evidence of her incompetence as a mother, and could result in the baby being taken into care. The normative valuing of time is associated with industrialisation and capitalism, where time is money, but seemingly it has no place in the world of motherhood, where the cultural imperative is that motherhood should absorb all of the mother’s time and energy. An ableist reading here points to the mismatch in cultural expectations.

My narrative shows that I have taken on and absorbed strong cultural associations connected with breastfeeding and the idea of being seen as a ‘good’ mother. I consciously want seek to repair any ‘damage’ done to the supposed symbiotic connection that was, in my mind, somewhat fractured at birth, as my opening narrative reveals. It seems like I, as with many other mothers, have taken on breastfeeding with ‘almost a religious fervour’ (Lee, 2008:12). I feel confident in displaying this act as a symbol of my competence and validity as a mother, and I feel that it somehow makes up for my other incompetencies like struggling to dress her. This very act shows us the complexity of disability’s relationship with the normal, and the

seduction and invisibility disabled mothers get from emulating the norm – despite the damaging effects on self-concept. I readily admit that I perform this act as a symbol of defiance, my way

of saying that even though I am unable to do some things that most people would consider normal for mothers to be able to do, I can still do this. I have the battle scars to prove it. I feel that it is of greater importance now to convey this message (although to whom I’m not sure) to balance the decision to give her formula at night. The imperative to exclusive breastfeeding for at least six months has been communicated widely to women via a plethora of messages, and the guilt associated with alternative ways of feeding is profound. ‘Bottle feeding’, Lee (2008:470) states, ‘has come to be represented as not only without benefits, but as a feeding method that incurs a wide range of risks’. This has intricate links to a wider public discourse of child-centred mothering ideology (Lee, 2008) and can be ascribed to the postulation of psychologists (and the hegemonic cultural approval given to their claims). Arguably the most compelling decree to breastfeed is delivered through the insinuation that this method is the only

199 one that will facilitate adequate bonding for the mother-child dyad. We shall now explore the possible origins and the cultural significance of this ‘bonding’ symbolism.