Carrie:  You mentioned that if you we are going to come to a place where breastfeeding is normal then the entire community has to be involved.  What does that look like?

Amy Spangler:   Oh Gosh!  I have a perfect image in my mind.  Number one and I think this is at the top of my wish list, if we are going to create a breastfeeding community it would be a community in which breastfeeding education is part of the kindergarten through twelfth grade curriculum.  That does not mean for all of those people who might be listening to this that I think we should have mothers coming in and breastfeeding their babies in a third grade class. 

It means that in kindergarten we should talk about mammals and we should discuss what is a mammal and what makes it a mammal because it provides its own milk to its young.  There are dogs with puppies, there are cats with kittens, and there are human beings with human babies.  It sets that foundation and then we build on it. When my boys were in high school, they are now approaching 30, they had a health assignment, an issue paper that they needed to write. 

Five young boys came to my home who were sophomores in high school at the age of 16.  Among the topics that they could choose was the topic "The Benefits of Breastfeeding."  Now, they did not come to my house because they thought "oh gosh, this is a wonderful topic."  They came to my house because they knew I would have everything they needed to write this paper in the smallest amount of time, but that is okay because as a result of that these boys will be very different fathers and very different husbands.  That is what has to happen. 

We need to see it there and then we need to see a worksite where when mothers return to work at a reasonable period in time, not at six weeks post partum, but closer to three months or 12 or six months post partum.  Ideally, yes, would a year be wonderful, but is six months reasonable to ask for?  Yes, it is.  Even at three months it is far more negotiable and will interface better with breastfeeding than at six weeks but when those mothers return, they have co-workers that say, "Oh gosh!  I'll answer your phone for the next few minutes.  I know you need to go and pump." 

Or better yet, onsite childcare where you could go and breastfeed your baby and come back to the worksite.  There are so many things at the worksite that need to happen and in my mind a breastfeeding community would provide that kind of support.  When you went to church on Sunday, you would have a place where if you wanted to breastfeed privately, a little room attached like we do at out church, it is the family room and you can sit in there with a noisy toddler, but there is a glass window that you can see the surface and that is piped in through a sound system so you can hear what the minister or the priest is saying.  So those are just a few examples.

I used to say that a breastfeeding community would have -- every state would have a law to protect the mother's right to breastfeed and yet the reality is in a breastfeeding community you do not need a law to protect the mother's right to breastfeed.  Laws are something we put in place as we try and move along in this continuum.  I used to say that it would a place where when mothers came in for their prenatal visits, you would not ask them are you planning to breastfeed or bottle feed.  You would simply say to them please tell me what you know about breastfeeding.  You would make that assumption that breastfeeding is something every mother does and so this is the time to begin to learn more about it and for us to know what you do and do not know so we can fill in around it.  So those are the things that I think probably highlight -- you look at all the service centers, you look at the national parks, we say, "Oh gosh!  We want all of these public places to have a room where a mother can go."  Breastfeeding is the norm. 

A mother should be able to breastfeed wherever she is.  We should not have to put her in a room behind a closed door even if it is not a toilet stall, even if it is a comfortable room with a chair and a footstool.  We are still isolating her and suggesting that what she is doing is something that should not be seen or heard and I find that unfortunate.  That is why I encourage young women, if they have a comfort level doing so to please breastfeed their babies wherever they are because until we get that critical mass of women doing just that, we are not going to change the attitudes of the general public.  It is going to take repeated exposures to help people along that comfort level continuum.

Carrie:  That is true.  Well, you mentioned education in schools.  I was just talking with a couple of teenagers yesterday.  One of them had been home-schooled for years and was about to enter high school, public school, and the other one had not been home‑schooled.  They were just talking about some of the things that they learned in school and how useless they feel as it is and they wish that they could learn some of the useful things like how to balance a checkbook.  I thought that was interesting.  How to be a good parent?  Why do not we have parenting in classes in high school?  How to be in relationships?  How to fight fair?  How to be emotionally intelligent? 

Well, we have sex education in school, what is wrong with breastfeeding education?  I do not know if -- I know that sex education is pretty uncomfortable for kids in school so I do not think adding a breastfeeding mother would be that much worse.

Amy Spangler:      You know the fact that sex education is uncomfortable says something to us.  Maybe it goes back again to if your premise is true that women have a discomfort with their bodies, that is a discomfort that they learn at a very young age.  They learn it in the schools or at least if they learn it at home, the schools could play a role in helping them have a different attitude toward their bodies and body parts and why you have arms and legs, breast and teeth, and all of the other pieces.

Carrie: Women who embrace breastfeeding and do not have kind of a block with it, they find it pleasurable, not in a sexual way at all, but pleasurable the way that me hugging my 5-year-old is pleasurable or holding my 8‑year‑old's hand in the store is pleasurable.  Perhaps it does go back to that being comfortable with our bodies.  I am sure that is part of it.  

Amy Spangler:   In response to the comfort issue, I remember when I first breastfed my first child and I was not that young girl that was comfortable with her body.  I was a young girl where I grew up in an era where sex education in the home was you were given a small little booklet on menstruation and so forth and how mothers become pregnant and where babies come from and I remember being handed that book by my mother with directions "if you have any questions ask me." 

Well, after I read the book I was shocked.  I was appalled.  I thought, "Oh, my gosh!" and I was so embarrassed I said I will never ask my mother a question.  First of all, I cannot believe that my mother and father would even do this.  So here you are this young adolescent and then there was no reinforcement.  Rather than it being that mother saying, "I want you to read chapter one and then I'm gonna ask you some questions and we're gonna sit down and talk about this." 

Again, that was just my mother probably if I could clone her I would because she was the most wonderful mother and grandmother, but she brought with her her own attitude toward sexuality.  She passed those on to her children and then we, as we grow up, try real hard to pass on the good things and not the things that were not so good to our children. 

So when I breastfed my child for the first time, it was not because I was necessarily comfortable with my body.  It was because as an educated nurse I knew this was what was best for my child, but then as you said the joy and the pleasure that it gave me and not at all from a sexual standpoint, but when I teach classes still I say to parents I never make the assumption that a mother who is pregnant has made the decision to breastfeed.  I always make the assumption that they are thinking about it and then I say to them of all of my parenting experiences, it is the one that I would most like to do again because I loved every minute of it.  There is not many things in parenting that we can say that about.

 
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