A comment thread to my post: Breastfeeding Relationship Status Update: It’s Complicated made me reflect upon these very points.   Breastmilk technically is a food. The natural delivery system is breastfeeding.  In modern times, the relationship inherent in breastfeeding has taken a backseat to it as a nutritional commodity.  An integrative nutrition view blends these two, the  relationship to mother and spirit with the quintessential food for human babies.

Ms. Roth speaks of  “Looking at food as a way of exploring the health and happiness of our entire lives.”  This is my view of Conscious Breastfeeding.  It is feeding with intention and attention; being fully in the moment and as a consequence developing a very powerful. intimate relationship with your baby that informs every aspect of his/her developing life.

Breastmilk  is the conduit for this energy exchange.  Thus, even when apart from the baby, the expressed milk maintains the connection literally and figuratively.  It is quite understandable that food is often equated with love, especially in breastfeeding circles.

Both integrative nutrition and conscious breastfeeding take a holistic view of  mind, body and spirit in relationship to the experience of eating.  Balancing the sum of these parts can help us to set the tone for health and well-being in our lives.

What do you think?

This was the first breastfeeding photo sent to me after I began my private lactation consulting practice.   It has hung in my office throughout these past two decades.

We do not see baby Austin’s mother in this shot, but can sense from his calm and  tender embrace of  her bountiful breast, that they are sharing a sublime moment of love.   The focus here is on the experience of breastfeeding.  It was an amazing thank you to receive for helping them to establish this amazing connection.

Fast forward to today…

I  googled Austin and found him.  He’s a college student with an interesting facebook profile who is sharing his life with the world.  Unbeknownst to him, this photograph which was taken when he was one month old will now be entering cyberspace, virtually tagged by his mother’s breastfeeding love.

Have you started your own breastfeeding photo collection?  Is it on or off the Wall?

I wore it on my lab coat while I was the first lactation consultant at a major NYC hospital.  It was a conversation starter.  People were intrigued and wondered what it meant.  The nurses thought it was a great button for me to wear as the representative of breastfeeding on our maternity unit.

I have to laugh as its message was unclear to anyone who was unfamiliar with my passion for breastfeeding promotion and support.  One day on the elevator a man asked me, “Are you a vegetarian?” His companion chimed in, “Are you Hindu?”   My Irish eyes were smiling as I explained to them the meaning of my button.  “Human babies should not drink cow’s milk which is for cow’s.  They should be breastfed by their mothers.”

Believe it or not, not long after that comical incident, I was called into the office of the Director of Maternal Child Health.  She told me that I was offending formula feeding families with my FLCA pin and demanded that I should remove it from my lapel.  I explained  its purpose in detail, but my protests fell upon deaf ears.

It should be of no great surprise that I resigned soon after that encounter to go into a full time private lactation consulting practice.  I figured I would be better able to help new moms and breastfeeding families on the “outside”.

To still keep a foot in the system, I  moved to another hospital to teach all their prenatal breastfeeding classes.   I felt that empowering mothers with information before birth, one of the Ten Steps, would be the best way to set them up for success.

What continues to distress me after all these years is that there still seems to be a need. here in NYC, to temper the endorsement of breastfeeding when dealing with the consumers of maternity hospital services.

You’ve come a long way baby or NOT?

Is this an only in New York phenomena?  Or have you also received  mixed messages about breastfeeding in the hospital or from members of your health care team?

Can you share what approaches helped or hindered you as you began your journey as a breastfeeding mother?

You would have to be under a rock to miss that the long awaited movie rendition of Elizabeth Gilbert’s moving memoir Eat, Pray, Love opens today in theaters throughout the States.  Her yearlong journey of healing and self-discovery has touched the heart strings of millions of readers the world over.

Some will call it a “chick flick”, but it is really a love story that invites us all to live our lives with authenticity.  Elizabeth’s narrative spoke to the fundamentals of what binds us all together as human beings: food, connection with spirit and love.  Now the vicarious and passion-filled travelogue that was so transformational for her is about to come to life on the big screen.

Although different in form, this is quite similar in substance to the symbolic journey taken by a new mother.  Buffeted by a flood of hormones, her body and psyche will expand while she eats for two and contemplates the new life growing within her body.  During that first year of pregnancy and breastfeeding she will navigate tremendous changes in her self-image and identity.  She moves from morning sickness through the energized passionate appetite for life of the second trimester.  Finally toward the end of the 9′th month, this morphs into a cocooning phase which will extend through early breastfeeding.  She has prepared throughout this entire period to be fully present for meeting and embracing her new love…her beautiful baby.

In the zen stillness of a breastfeeding moment, a baby is nurtured and much love is shared.

Breastfeeding is Eat, Pray, Love.

Every breastfeeding mother has a story.  What is yours?