Moments of Intimacy: Breastfeeding

When breastfeeding our baby for the first time, a lot of channels of communication open; knowing how to take advantage of these to the full requires at first predisposition and practice.

Simply because, feeding your baby is not only giving the baby an amount of food that his or her organism needs; it is mainly:

• An emotional experience because of the sensation of unity and intimacy that you share with your baby.
• A psychological experience, because a lot of fears are overcome.
• A visual experience, because you have eye contact with your baby.
• A tactile experience, because due to the temperature of the milk, the suction of the nipple, and the closeness of your bodies.
• A tasting experience, because of the flavor of the milk.
• An olfactory experience, because your baby can smell the milk and your body (do not use perfumes when breastfeeding).
• And finally it is a hearing experience, because you can sing to your baby or tell him or her a story while you are breastfeeding.

However, the way in which you relate to your baby in those moments will be directly related with the idea you have of your son or daughter and the type of link you have achieved or wish to establish with him or her.

When the mothers are in the breastfeeding room in the hospital, commonly the mothers are more worried about comparing the evolution of their baby’s weight with those of other babies and are not exactly involved completely in the experience of breastfeeding, since all they are doing is feeding their own fantasies, that seem to be more related to the ideal baby than with the reality.

This type of attitude, for example, is manifested when the mother has her baby away from her body and avoids skin-to-skin contact. Since the emotional attitude toward her baby is in a certain way distant, it is possible the baby will react by sucking only halfway, crying or showing he or she is uncomfortable.

In the same way, when a mother does not identify the signs her son or daughter shows, she might act impatiently when the baby stops sucking because the baby may be tired, sleeps or does not want to eat. All of this invariably, has an effect not only in the way the baby is eating, but also in the whole experience itself.

This does not mean though that the mother does not love her child or lacks willingness, but that she is probably more worried to remaining more attentive to the perceptions of the internal world rather than the real signs her baby transmits to the exterior world and this will cause breastfeeding to be a problem rather than a satisfying experience on both ends.

Because of this, you will need to keep in mind that the irritability or inexperience of the baby to suck is not always the cause for things to go wrong. In many occasions it can be the mother’s fears that unconsciously make her react in an incoherent way such as: 

• Suddenly changing without any apparent reason the position of the baby.
• Moving your child quickly from one breast to another because you think the baby is not eating as he or she should.
• Pulling away if the sucks quickly because you think he can choke. Or taking him off the breast without doing this progressively when you want to continue on with bottle-feeding.

In similar circumstances, these same activities can cause you to avoid visual contact, transmitting in this way an attitude of being annoyed and rejecting, without this being the actual intention or will of the mother.

To sum it up the needs of your baby will only be satisfied if during feeding times you keep an attitude based on love, contact and feeding.