For me, breastfeeding was a mixed experience. I had grown up in a very pro-breastfeeding environment and I believe the capacity of the body to make such exquisitely attuned nourishment for a newborn is borderline miraculous.
As a non-binary person I also experienced body dysphoria during pregnancy, and breastfeeding felt like a continuation of that. As a person who experiences themselves more in a neutral gender space, and as a sexual being, having that part of my body maternalized felt odd. As a personality, sharing my body with someone else and subsuming my needs to theirs was hard for me. This balancing of ones own needs with one’s child’s, this grappling what it means to be interdependent in this kind of relationship of parent and child, is, of course, a central issue of parenting.
In both of my experiences of breastfeeding, it was extremely painful at first, and then my tissues adapted. I wish I had known more clearly at the time to expect the pain and that it wasn’t abnormal!
My first baby stopped nursing on his own, spontaneously, at age 2, which I thought was really quite cool. I smoked a joint the very next day. 🙃
I decided to stop nursing my second child at around 11 months. It seemed like a difficult decision because many people I knew breastfed much longer than that, and I know how beneficial it can be. It was a relief, though, and I felt I had made the right decision for my body and my autonomy. I would say in these matters that should be one of the highest considerations. It’s a cliche, I know, but claiming our own autonomy is how we teach our children to do that for themselves.
My youngest child is now three. Every once in a while, we talk about how he used to drink milk from mama’s body. I think we both find it a kind of strange, almost magical idea. ❤️”