Breastfeeding Quotes

“Breasts are a scandal because they shatter the border between motherhood and sexuality.”
― Iris Marion Young

“Imagine that the world had created a new 'dream product' to feed and immunize everyone born on earth. Imagine also that it was available everywhere, required no storage or delivery, and helped mothers plan their families and reduce the risk of cancer. Then imagine that the world refused to use it.”
― Frank Oski

“When you hold a child to your breast to nurse, the curve of the little head echoes exactly the curve of the breast it suckles, as though this new person truly mirrors the flesh from which it sprang.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber

“Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day that I was born, 13 April 1949, nineteen senior Nazi officials were convicted at Nuremberg, including Hitler's former envoy to the Vatican, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, who was found guilty of planning aggression against Czechoslovakia and committing atrocities against the Jewish people. On the same day, the State of Israel celebrated its first Passover seder and the United Nations, still meeting in those days at Flushing Meadow in Queens, voted to consider the Jewish state's application for membership. In Damascus, eleven newspapers were closed by the regime of General Hosni Zayim. In America, the National Committee on Alcoholism announced an upcoming 'A-Day' under the non-uplifting slogan: 'You can drink—help the alcoholic who can't.' ('Can't'?) The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled in favor of Britain in the Corfu Channel dispute with Albania. At the UN, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko denounced the newly formed NATO alliance as a tool for aggression against the USSR. The rising Chinese Communists, under a man then known to Western readership as Mao Tze-Tung, announced a limited willingness to bargain with the still-existing Chinese government in a city then known to the outside world as 'Peiping.'

All this was unknown to me as I nuzzled my mother's breast for the first time, and would certainly have happened in just the same way if I had not been born at all, or even conceived. One of the newspaper astrologists for that day addressed those whose birthday it was:

There are powerful rays from the planet Mars, the war god, in your horoscope for your coming year, and this always means a chance to battle if you want to take it up. Try to avoid such disturbances where women relatives or friends are concerned, because the outlook for victory upon your part in such circumstances is rather dark. If you must fight, pick a man!

Sage counsel no doubt, which I wish I had imbibed with that same maternal lactation, but impartially offered also to the many people born on that day who were also destined to die on it.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“New mothers are often told that once they've fed, burped, and changed their baby they should leave their baby alone to self-soothe if they cry because all of their needs have been met. One day I hope all new mothers will smile confidently and say, "I gave birth to a baby, not just a digestive system. My baby as a brain that needs to learn trust and a heart that needs love. I will meet all of my baby's needs, emotional, mental, and physical, and I'll respond to every cry because crying is communication, not manipulation.”
― L.R. Knost, Two Thousand Kisses a Day: Gentle Parenting Through the Ages and Stages

“They convinced our mothers that if a food item came in a bottle -- or a can or a box or a cellophane bag -- then it was somehow better for you than when it came to you free of charge via Mother Nature....An entire generation of us were introduced in our very first week to the concept that phony was better than real, that something manufactured was better than something that was right there in the room. (Later in life, this explained the popularity of the fast food breakfast burrito, neocons, Kardashians, and why we think reading this book on a tiny screen with only three minutes of battery life left is enjoyable.”
― Michael Francis Moore, Here Comes Trouble

“But the overwhelming number of mothers who think they have too little milk have babies who are taking plenty of milk and are gaining weight well. These mothers have based their conclusions on misinformation or a misinterpretation of their babies' behavior.”
― Kathleen Huggins, The Nursing Mother's Guide to Weaning

“The moon was full. It looked like a breast engorged with milk because of all the babies crying in the night.”
― Heather O'Neill, When We Lost Our Heads

“Breastfeeding does not have to be hard. Breastfeeding is natural. With rare exceptions, it becomes hard only because of all the interference caused by the medicalization of birth and unsupportive culture. Animals breastfeed instinctively with no need for supplementation, classes, or support. We as humans also have these instincts. We have become so disconnected. Breastfeeding my children has been one of my greatest joys in life, and I am filled with sorrow when I imagine how many mothers and infants haven’t been able to experience this because of misinformation.”
― Adrienne Carmack, Reclaiming My Birth Rights

“A world that is safe for mothers is safe for all.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society

“The whole human world is born from the womb of mothers, and if we can't make the motherly act of breastfeeding free from stigma in such a world, then it's an insult to our very existence as a species.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Constitution of The United Peoples of Earth

“It is true that breasts can induce sexual tension in men, but truer than that is the fact, that breasts are the primary and healthiest source of nutrition for the infant, so, if men can't use their higher mental faculty of self-restraint at the sight of breastfeeding at public places, then it's not the women who need to change their breastfeeding place, it's the men who need to work on their character.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Constitution of The United Peoples of Earth

“According to Hinde, when a baby suckles at its mother's breast, a vacuum is created. Within that vacuum, the infant's saliva is sucked back into the mother's nipple, where receptors in her mammary gland decipher it. This "baby spit backwash," as she delightfully described it, contains signals, information about the baby's immune system-including any infections it might be fighting.”
― Angela Garbes, Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy

“The influence of bottle-feeding makes many people think that ‘nipple sucking’ is breastfeeding. It is not. If the baby sucks his mother’s nipples as he would a bottle teat, it damn well hurts.”
― Gabrielle Palmer, The Politics of Breastfeeding: When Breasts are Bad for Business

“Accomplish one small thing a day. Maybe it’s cleaning that counter, maybe it’s writing one thank-you note. Don’t make the task too difficult. For the rest, you’re healing a uterus; adding millions of cells to your baby’s brain (though it might sometimes feel as if they are being siphoned off from your own); developing his liver, heart, and lungs; boosting his immune system; and maintaining the integrity of his intestines … you’re a busy lady! All while sprawled comfortably on the couch. Multi-tasking raised to an art form!”
― La Leche League International, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding

“Mother's milk is soul food for babies. The babies of the world need a lot more soul food.”
― Ina May Gaskin, Ina May's Guide to Breastfeeding: From the Nation's Leading Midwife

“• Many of the women were breastfeeding, as they wanted to make sure the children were silent while Mary was talking.”
― Heather O'Neill, When We Lost Our Heads

“It is not patriarchal to hold the door for a lady, It is not cowardly to leave your seat to the elderly. But it is barbaric to harass a breastfeeding mother, And prehistoric to force a woman carry a pregnancy.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Esperanza Impossible: 100 Sonnets of Ethics, Engineering & Existence

“Another gypsy girl — two gold upper teeth shone in the void of her harelip — lifted her right breast slightly and placed her nipple in the mouth of her child, whose eyelids were sealed shut with pus.”
― Josef Winkler, Natura morta

“Being a mother is the real beauty, breastfeed your child, not your beauty”
― Sir P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“When a woman is breastfeeding, the first and only thought that should appear in your mind is that the purpose of those breasts is to nourish a life, but if your mind gets either contemptuous or sexual instead, then go home and try to figure out if you are a human.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“O mundo humano nasce do ventre das mães e, se não podemos tornar o ato materno da amamentação livre de estigmas, é um insulto à nossa própria existência como espécie.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“Humans weren't designed to consume milk from animals.”
― James Thomas Kesterson Jr

“Sonnet of Breastfeeding

From the breasts a world is fed,
With their warmth society is raised.
Yet we ignore their sacred place,
Without breasts we'll all be erased.
Woman's breasts are not objects,
With or without a baby clinging.
We may hail them means of pleasure,
Only when the person is asking.
Way more than triggers of romance,
Breasts are symbolic of motherhood.
A society that doesn't respect mothers,
Will never ever attain humanhood.
A world that is safe for mothers,
Is safe for all beyond age and genders.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society

“Milk is food for the beginning eater. A gulpable essence distilled by the mother from her own more variable and challenging diet.

(from "On Food and Cooking")”
― Howard McGee

“Being a part of another parent’s journey to give their baby the best start possible offers me hope for the future.”
― Jessica Marie Baumgartner

“My second child was a picky eater and donating milk helped me deal with feelings of rejection.”
― Jessica Marie Baumgartner

“Oh well, at least I'll get a 90 minute break until the next feed. That's when my lactation consultant delivered the real tit-punch. The every-90-minute stopwatch does not start from the end of one feeding. It starts from: the beginning. I've never been great at math but if you're supposed to feed a baby every 90 minutes from the moment they start eating, and the feeding takes 90 minutes, then you are feeding a baby every minute of every hour of every 24 hour day. If I could've fainted when I heard this news I would have, but since I was already dead, I couldn't. I was in a very real sense being eaten alive.”
― Jessi Klein, I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

“Naskaristan, The Sonnet

Where no one cries of hunger,
For neighbor comes before netflix,
No one needs bulletproof backpacks,
For children come before profits,

Where women can pursue their dreams,
Without being castrated by masculinity,
Where a mother can feed her child,
Without attracting prehistoric insecurity,

Where love isn't chained to archaic texts,
For reform triumphs over rigidity,
Where all colors make the rainbow of life,
For life isn't chained to no ideology,

Where reason outshines all superstition,
Heartland beyond hateland is Naskaristan.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect

“Any man who discourages a mom from breastfeeding their newborn baby is probably abusive to the said woman and would later channel that abuse to the kid too.”
― Mitta Xinindlu