Clinical
I first began to take a clinical view of my body and its functions when I was twelve. You can probably guess what started then.
Likewise when I was eighteen. Another milestone, so to speak.
But it was when I took my nitty gritty environmental and public health courses in college that I truly adopted a clinical view of the human body and its functions. Not just my own, but everyone else’s too.
I had an anatomy lab in which we divided ourselves into three groups, consuming different quantities of water the day before, and measuring the urine we produced. We took collection containers to the restroom and carried our urine back to the lab area.
I had a human parasitology lab in which we examined and sketched organisms ranging from dust mites to tapeworms. While most people are fortunate enough not to harbor tapeworms, we’ve got dust mites all over our bedding, on our upholstery, in our rugs.
I took multiple courses in microbiology in which we discussed specific symptoms of illness, ranging from cramping to vomiting to diarrhea, and the means by which illness is communicated, ranging from airborne contamination to fecal-oral contamination.
Consequently, by the time I got pregnant, I was more comfortable than most women with the more uncomfortable aspects of pregnancy and childbirth and its aftermath.
If women haven’t already adopted such a clinical view of their bodies before they become pregnant, pregnancy is sure to do it. The common saying is that women lose all modesty while pregnant (or during labor), but I’d take it a step further and assert that we cease to be disgusted or disconcerted by bodily functions or excretions – definitely our own, as well as our children’s.
Most men, those who haven’t earned their MD at least, don’t have that same clinical view. It’s why they’re often reticent to visit the urologist or proctologist, why pregnancy unnerves them, why they make jokes about how women are the only creatures who bleed for a week but don’t die. They realize that the vagina serves as a birth canal (as well as a conduit for menstrual flow), but it seems that the dual role of breasts is still difficult to accept.
The same is true even for some women – those who’ve given birth, and those who haven’t. I worked with female child care providers in the infant room who were unnerved by bottles of breast milk. My own mother, whom I love dearly, is extremely uncomfortable with breastfeeding. I know it bothers her that I nursed my girls (and that I plan to nurse my soon-to-be son).
Like the children’s book says, everyone poops. Everyone passes gas and burps and urinates and sweats and accumulates plaque. Everyone is covered in bacteria and has parasites living inside them. I don’t care how sterile you think you are.
Women menstruate. We carry and give birth to children, and our bodies function accordingly – from leukorrhea to lactation.
Lactation is a bodily function, one that serves an important personal and public health purpose. Other bodily functions are purely personal, and we endeavor to keep them as private as possible. For cultural reasons, we endeavor to keep lactation private too. It’s considered polite to avoid baring our breasts while nursing, and most women are sufficiently publicly modest that they don’t need any reminders.
But in no way should it be considered inappropriate.
——————————
MySpace, Facebook, Bill Maher, and now YouTube. People, get over yourselves.
Want to sound off too? Go here.
November 27th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
but if we wore 8inch spiked heels and french maid uniforms while we breast feed, i’m sure the video would have stayed put with merely an age check
November 27th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Bravo. And the student nurse in me is so proud of you, too.
I’ve never understood people getting bent out of shape over breastfeeding. It’s just feeding a baby, only the food comes out of the breast, not a bottle. It’s the right temperature, the right consistency, and is clean for the baby to eat. Breasts were designed for this, long before we put them in underwire lace, oiled them up, and bounced them around in music videos.
People keep screaming about the need to return to family values. Well, it starts right here, people – feeding the baby with what nature gave you.
November 27th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
If such a well-written and educated post doesn’t work…
…squirt’em from about 10 inches away.
If nothing but for a good laugh.
November 28th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Good for you! I always laugh when someone (always without kids) is like ew… poop. Once a friend said that and I was like dude, you have a dog and you’re worried about baby poop?
November 28th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Here, here!
And what Fidget said. If the ladies in that video were shaking their boobs in lacy bras instead of using them to feed their children YouTube wouldn’t have pulled the video so quickly.
November 28th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
My mom was very uncomfortable with the notion of breastfeeding. I think it had something to do with having come from an extremely poor and Southern background where breastfeeding was something that people “without means” did. Rather than being natural it was viewed as a last resort to feeding one’s child. So..by not feeding us that way (and being able to afford formula) she felt she had come up in the world. Sort of. Crazy…but I really think this was her mindset.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
I love this!
Toni, being the oldest of four, saw me breastfeed a number of small children. I love how she doesn’t even notice when she sees a woman breastfeeding anymore. On the other hand, I have nieces who all but jeer and hiss when a woman’s dares to breastfeed in public. I’m bookmarking this page to show them sometime.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Here here, again!
As I always say, things get really “earthy” really quickly when there are kids involved.
Well written and so very true.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:54 am
My mother in law hated that I nursed my daughter, she tried every way possible to change my mind. I was always descreet when I nursed, but she would leave when I did it. She even offered to buy me formula if I would use it. She got over it and my daughter is a healthy , happy 8 year old now and not scarred for life as she predicted.
November 29th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
This is such a well-written, thoughtful post.
It’s so true. I admit, though, that I have had a hard time coming to terms with nursing in public my own self. And NOT because I think it’s inappropriate.
I think it’s that I have an over-developed sense of modesty. First it was the massive overactive let-down that made my daughter come off and choke while I was a milk-fountain and now we have the ‘I’d rather look around and leave your nipple out for all the world to see.’
But, I have to say, I got tired of going upstairs to one of the bedrooms at the (larger) family functions and so just sat with a smaller group and latched her on and that was that. AND I nursed in front of my Dad over this Thanksgiving. It felt strange but better than ‘hiding’ in my own house.
Now, if I could get my mind around whipping one out at Starbucks, I’d be in business.