SISTEMA DE EVACUACION DE AGUAS LLUVIAS

Physical wellbeing, whilst important for the women, frequently did not manifest as the primary aspiration for the continuation of breastfeeding. One woman

emphasised this by saying that “even if” the nutritional benefits of breastfeeding

stopped at a relatively young age, there continues to be “enormous emotional benefit” for the child in continuing to breastfeed (Joanne). Breastfeeding was configured as a way of not only providing emotional support for a child in the present, but of at least partially laying the foundations for the development of an emotionally competent and confident adult. In the words of Allanah:

… I actually firmly believe that of every single thing that I decide for [name of youngest child] breastfeeding is the

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most important thing that I do for her … for her long-term health and emotional well-being.

Elsewhere in the interview Allanah elaborated upon her sense of breastfeeding

as supporting “emotional well-being”. Rather than drawing specifically upon attachment theory as some sustained breastfeeding literature does (see Chapter One), she made connections between breastfeeding and current work

on “sensory modulation”.

Ayres (1979) defined “[s]ensory integration” as “the organization of sensation for use” (p.5). In this context neurological processes are seen to facilitate

arrangement of information gathered through the senses in order that a person is able to function in the world (Ayres, 1979, pp. 5-7). Successful sensory

integration enables “adaptive responses” to the environment (p.6), supporting

an individual to embark upon purposeful action, to interact effectively with others and to achieve emotional health. Current work on Sensory Modulation focuses upon the use of sensory environments and sensory approaches to therapeutic work in the mental health services (Te Pou o te Whakaaro Nui, 2000). “Weighted blankets” (Te Pou o te Whakaaro Nui, 2000, p.14), rocking

chairs, and what the interviewee describes as “sucking lollies”, can be used to

encourage improvements in sensory processing. The sensations involved in such therapeutic interventions are, suggests Allanah, “exactly what you’re doing

to a baby when you’re breastfeeding it”: “squashing” (or holding tightly, swaddling), “rocking” and ”sucking”.

Allanah: So it's like the building blocks, and you wonder if people miss out on this breastfeeding, which is very tactile, proprioceptive, it's all the senses, yeah, whether erm what goes on for people when they're older. Mmm.

Allanah: Do we all have these sorts of same emotional disregulation type mental health difficulties as cultures who breastfeed for two years, carry their babies, rock them, don't have all this thing about independence and not

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having that mother-child relationship as valued and - ? Do, do you know? Like I, yeah, I think it's so interesting.

Allanah also spoke in the interview of how she would like to undertake research in this area, research that considers “the connection between were you breastfed; and for how long; and were you rocked and, you know, soothed; and

then what's happening at this other end of your life.” In this sense Allanah’s

postulations are highly speculative. She’s aware that she doesn’t know the extent to which sustained breastfeeding might facilitate improved emotional well-being into the future. However, she nurtures a strong sense that breastfeeding is about more than physical nutrition, and in so doing expresses hope that breastfeeding might be influential in the creation of new possibilities around mental health.

Another interviewee spoke differently about the potential for sustained breastfeeding to impact positively upon an individual’s future emotional health. She talked specifically of weaning. Joanne described the instigation of weaning from the breast by the mother as entailing a process of “grief” for the child. Her words can be read as echoing Freud’s in so far as he too talked of a “pain” in weaning (1971, p.586). Freud also spoke of a general “reproach against the

mother” related to weaning that he saw as closely linked to the idea that the

mother had a “lack of love” for the child (1971, p.586). He went on to add: “there is some justification for this reproach in our families” not least because

many mothers are, he says, “content to suckle them [children] for a few months, for half or three-quarters of a year” (1977, p.586).

Joanne speaks of the “grief” of being weaned as undermining a child’s “own

sense of trust and lovability.” She refers to other contemporary parenting practices such as babies sleeping “in their own room on their own” in similar

terms.

Joanne: And like, well, what I imagine it is, what I think happens in terms of the kind of the neurological development of the person is it just kind of stays as a deep

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subconscious, because a lot of it, especially like weaning for a lot of children is pre-verbal if you know what I mean, it's before the child is capable of even holding a decent rational conversation -

Anna: Yep.

Joanne: - and so it's kind of at the level of feeling but before words -

Anna: Yep.

Joanne: - and so I think what, how that kind of manifests in terms of a person's life later is insatiable hunger or needing to be drunk to just kind of get rid of that feeling of loneliness and pain.

To put a linguistic slant on Joanne’s words, the painful experience of being

weaned from the breast cannot be easily integrated into a person’s symbolic

understanding of the world (if it is possible at all). This is seen to be particularly the case as weaning takes place for many children prior to them fully, or even

partially, entering language. Weaning therefore occurs “at the level of feeling but before words” (Joanne). Such experiences, around which it is not possible to

put words as they occur, are seen to constitute ongoing sites of trauma even after the individual is linguistically competent. For Joanne such an experience

therefore lurks into the future (“I don’t think it goes away…”) where it continues to escape symbolisation. She elaborates:

I think it actually sits there as a, you know, an everlasting pain inside people, which then influences, you know that kind of gnawing something's-not-quite-right-within-me feeling which I actually think is incredibly widespread in society.

Contra Freud’s assumptions regarding the apparent ubiquity of “pain” in weaning (1971, p.586),1 Joanne suggests a scenario that she considers might

1_{Freud (1971) said, for example, “It seems … that the child’s avidity for}

its earliest nourishment

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help to avoid such difficulties. It is one of “child-led weaning” in which the child

decides when s/he is “big enough” to “not need this anymore.” In this context

child-led weaning from the breast, along with other related parenting practices, is articulated by Joanne as a means of avoiding grief for the child: as a process by which pain of separation from the mother might be avoided and therefore subsequent feelings of loss and “insatiable hunger” mitigated. Joanne also spoke of the possibility, if her child had not weaned by the time that her first teeth fell out and her permanent teeth began to grow, that such might be a physiologically appropriate time for her as a mother to begin to gently encourage weaning. To frame this in slightly different terms, Joanne’s breastfeeding practice is inspired by a desire for her child to experience a level of happiness and satisfaction (freedom from psychological pain) that may evade many people in contemporary society.