Chichi #1: mamaluna on breastfeeding
I grew up watching a chichi or two hanging about, waiting to be feasted on. Chichi is the most common word for breasts in Mexico. No this is not an x-rated post, only one where I share a bit of what it was like to grow up in an embracing breastfeeding community. San Cristobal de las Casas was then (in the early 80’s) still a pueblito, the mornings and evenings filled with greetings from neighbors or strangers passing by created the atmosphere of a delicately woven web of humanity characteristic of a pueblito. This misty cold valley scented with firewood and fireworks was the setting for brown chichis nursing everywhere, at the markets, at the hospitals, at the tortilleria lines, on the minibuses, on the corner mango stands. To see a child nursing while attached to her mama in a chal/rebozo was a sign of the town’s health and prosperity.
My daily encounters with Tzeltal, Tzotzil and mestizo women breastfeeding their children was a reminder of my own sense of well being. As child who was born at home and breastfed for a couple of years, I felt an automatic joy at the sight of other children nestled in their mother’s bosoms. An automatic ticket to the feeling of home. A home defined by the selfless gift of a well nourished life. I was living a communal understanding of nursing as natural and normal, chichis were meant to hang out with a child’s hand, mouth or both attached to them.
As I became a teenager, formula was introduced rampantly throughout Chiapas, and Mexico, poor and working class mothers began to leave their homes and infants to go to work, new infant care centers began to open up. The vicious cycle of corporate interest began to create a pattern, a clear example: women found jobs making formula at the new Nestle factory so that they could afford to buy formula for their children who where now at day care centers. Higher class mestizo and Coleto families of San Cristobal, who had access to the latest bottles and formula, began to shrug at the sight of bare breasts. By the early 90’s I remember only seeing indigenous women breastfeeding in public, more and more i began to see children being bottle fed, including the times that I fed my own nephews their formula bottles. In recent times, though these massive influences and corporate effects on our culture still exist, indigenous children are most often breastfed. As a matter of fact, while talking to a junior high school friend of mine who is now a Doctor in Tzeltal an Tzotzil clinics, I learned that doctors are required to encourage mothers to breastfeed for a minimum of 6 months, however they would push formula before nursing claiming that indigenous mothers suffer from poor nutrition. Instead of supporting, “re-educating” or backing off, physicians recommend formula! (I won’t get into the sickness/details of the historically socio-political and psycological effect of colonization on indigenous peoples and how they relate to nursing mothers on this post, but do keep an eye out).
As a Tzeltal woman myself, I never thought twice about breastfeeding. We are talking about Natural Law here. When we had our first child, I was absolutely sure that breastfeeding had been a skill my ancestors had taught me. Not that I knew how to do it, but I believed (and still do) that I had a genealogical sense that would help me learn as my infant was in my arms. I know I am not the only woman who feels this way either. Living in New York City during the first few months of our daughter’s life, I was witness to an array of women from all walks of life, culture, ethnicity who where claiming breastfeeding as a natural process in human procreation and in turn making that choice for their own families. I also learned a lot about the history of breastfeeding in the United States and the drastic decline of breastfed children, and about places like La Leche Legue and their effort in creating a resurgent breastfeeding movement. Even then, I was not prepared for the utter shock of being a breastfeeding mother in America.
When I began breastfeeding in the thick of NYC I felt that my chichi worlds were beginning to collide. I came from this rich tradition of breastfeeding and chichis hanging about, to the judgmental and shocked gazes in NYC buses and subways, not to mention the one dude trying to get a good look at it for his own satisfaction. I often felt that I had to protect my breastfeeding space, and cover my exposed body to retain the sacredness of my relationships with my daughter. I chose to hold on to Natural Law, while my close sistah-friends and I photographed those NYC years of breastfeeding. My daughter will be able to look back and see herself nursing on subways, parks, buses, streets, stoops and realize the normality of such relationship even in an urban setting. It was so empowering to have felt that genealogical right, irregardless of the negative setting, it nourished my soul and I am sure that of our first daughter.
I’ve come a long way from breastfeeding on the rush hours of NYC subways. With our second, our son Caoba, I have been able to give myself fully to the relaxing chichi time while gazing at the tall Cedar and Douglas Fir forests of British Columbia, while being supported by the community I live in. It truly is a relaxing experience not only to my son or to me, but even to our first born daughter who is now five years old and cuddles by our side, or uses it as down time for herself. It is in this setting, as well as the setting of my mind, that I can give myself fully to the experience of nursing and benefit from the love that is part of our bonds. When I bring all of these experiences together, it makes me be that much more determined to work towards a world that can provide nurturing and empowering environments to all nursing mothers, irregardless of how long they choose to nurse for. STRESS FREE is key to a beautiful healthy relaxing nursing relationship. And a beautiful healthy relaxing nursing experience leads families and children toward well nourished selves. This is why my genes were strong! We are talking about hundreds, thousands, a millenia of years of women nursing children. So much so, that our ancestors, and here I mean our women ancestors, yours too, figured out that if they followed Natural Law and maintained a natural relationship to nursing children, that in the long run it would have an effect into the coding of our genes! By that I mean that an environment was tested, created, practiced, upheld so that such gene coding could manifest itself to its full potential, the evolution of each child and each family. I end this by asking you my sistah, and you my brother, to change our world one nursing at a time. Help each nursing mother and child you come across by ensuring a Stress Free environment, let go of your judgments, offer a pillow, smile, relax yourself, support in any way you can! And to nursing mothers, you are not alone!