Literature

A working woman who looked like a Kirghiz, her head bent, was feeding Karl-Yankel. He was a chubby little fellow of five months old, in knitted bootees and with a white tuft on his head…

“The fuss he’s making!” said the Kirghiz woman. “Not everyone would be willing to give him suck”…The Kirghiz woman, pulling gently, drew her nipple from Karl-Yankel’s mouth. The child started growling and in despair jerked back his head with its white tuft. The woman uncovered her other breast and presented it to the little boy. He looked at the nipple with dull little eyes, and something gleamed in them.

Isaac Babel. Karl-Yankel (short story)

“Here’s a child lying and yelling its little guts out enough to make you weep, and you, you great fat thing, sit like a boulder in a forest and can't ease him with the breast.”

“You ease him with the breast,” retorted Pesya-Mindl, not raising her eyes from the book, “provided he'll take it from you, you old twister - the breast, I mean. For see, he’s a big boy now, as big as a Rooski-boy, and all he wants is his mother’s milk…”

Isaac Babel. Lyubka the Cossack (short story)

The baby started fussing on the sofa, and without any pause in the conversation, Sophie opened her blouse and nursed him, first on one breast and then on the other.

Paul Auster. The Locked Room. (Volume 3 of the New York Trilogy)

Gentlemen, we are all cruel, we are all monsters, we all make people weep, mothers and nursing babies…

Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov. Mitya is taken away. 3.9.9

…and in her arms a baby is crying, and her breasts must be all dried up, not a drop of milk in them. And the baby is crying, crying, reaching out its bare little arms, its little fists somehow all blue from the cold.

Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov. The Evidence of Witnesses 3.9.8. Dimitri’s dream

Grigory took the infant, brought him into the house, sat his wife down, and put him in her lap near her breast: “God’s orphan child is everyone’s kin, all the more so for you and me. Our little dead one sent us this one, who was born of the devil’s son and a righteous woman. Nurse him and weep no more.”

Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov

“…And I must run to Mitya. As ill-luck would have it, I haven't fed him since tea. He’s awake now, and sure to be screaming.” And feeling a rush of milk, she hurried to the nursery. This was not a mere guess; her connection with the child was still so close, that she could gauge by the flow of her milk his need of food, and knew for certain he was hungry.

“Why didn't you let me nurse her, when I begged to? I begged to nurse her, I wasn't allowed to and now I’m blamed for it.”

“…They gave the baby medicine and it turned out that the baby was simply hungry: the nurse had no milk, sir.”

…The baby was lying with its head thrown back, stiffening itself in the nurse’s arms, and would not take the breast offered it;

…The smartly dressed and healthy-looking nurse, frightened at the idea of losing her place, muttered something to herself, and covering her bosom, smiled contemptuously at the idea of doubts being cast on her abundance of milk.

“Yes, but a man can't nurse a baby,” said Pestsov, “while a woman…”

“No, there was an Englishman who did suckle his baby on board ship,” said the old prince…

“And have you any children?”

“I’ve had four; I’ve two living - a boy and a girl. I weaned her last carnival.”

“How old is she?”

“Why, two years old.”

“Why did you nurse her so long?”

“It’s our custom; for three fasts…”

…the care of her large family was a constant worry to her: first, the nursing of her young baby did not go well, then the nurse had gone away, now one of the children had fallen ill.

Tolstoy. Anna Karenina

She pictured a child, her own - like the baby she had seen the day before in the arms of her old nurse’s daughter - at her own breast, with her husband standing by and gazing fondly at her and the child.

Tolstoy. War and Peace. Book I, part 3, chapter 3.

Thus in the anxious time, which Pierre would never forget, after the birth of their first child, when they tried three different wetnurses for the delicate baby and Natasha fell ill with worry, Pierre one day told her of Rousseau’s views (with which he was in complete agreement) of how unnatural and deleterious it was to have wetnurses at all. When the next baby was born, in spite of vigorous opposition from her mother, the doctors and even from her husband himself - who were all against her nursing the baby, which to them was something unheard of and pernicious - she insisted on having her own way, and after that nursed all her children herself.

Tolstoy. War and Peace. Epilogue. Part I. Chapter 10

No one could give her such soothing and sensible consolation as this little three-month-old creature when he lay at her breast and she felt the movement of his lips and the snuffling of his tiny nose.

During those two weeks of restlessness Natasha resorted to the infant for comfort so often, and fussed over him so much, that she overfed him and he fell ill.

Tolstoy. War and Peace. Epilogue. Part I. Chapter 11

The moment she had laid the child to the breast both became perfectly calm.

…Lispeth had got two children beside the baby which she had left in order to give her warm bosom and heart to the little Prince…

Isak Dinesen. Ehrengard

He saw a girl working about the stove, saw that she carried a baby on her crooked arm, and that the baby was nursing, its head up under the girl’s shirtwaist. And the girl moved about, poking the fire, shifting the rusty stove lids to make a better draft, opening the oven door; and all the time the baby sucked, and the mother shifted it deftly from arm to arm. The baby didn't interfere with her work or with the quick gracefulness of her movements.

John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath. Chapter 21

…nobody wants to think about breastfeeding, not the professor and certainly not the girls. Over coffee they shiver: they themselves are fastidious, they will bottle feed, which is anyway more sanitary.

Margaret Atwood. Cat’s Eye

With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him and hid from sight of others his swaddlingbands.

James Joyce. Ulysses, chapter 2, line 176

… the inessential houses seemed to melt away until I was aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes--a fresh green breast of the new world.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (quoted in The Hermit of 69th Street by Jerzy Kosinski)

The erotically excited kiss as well as the inward feeling of physical well-being, which is so difficult to describe, of a mother nursing her child at her breast, feeds on fare that is both coarse and infinitely fine and becoming finer; but all this in the sense of the primeval evolutionary fact that in the beginning the whole skin was the seat of sensual pleasure.

Wilhelm Bölsche (quoted in the Hermit of 69th Street by Jerzy Kosinski)

Only seldom was a whimper heard from one of the four children, all of whom, from the six-month-old infant to the six-year-old Amanda, were fed from Lovise’s breast. Never again, never in the future that dawned later on, were we so sated. We were suckled and suckled. Always superabundance was flowing into us. Never any question of enough is enough or let’s not overdo it. Never were we given a pacifier and told to be reasonable. It was always suckling time.

There must be reasons why we men are so hipped on breasts as if we’d all been weaned too soon.

Günter Grass. The Flounder

When she first felt her son’s groping mouth attach itself to her breast, a wave of sweet vibration thrilled deep inside and radiated to all parts of her body; it was similar to love, but it went beyond a lover’s caress, it brought a great calm happiness, a great happy calm.

Milan Kundera. Life is Elsewhere

Ah, the joy of suckling! She lovingly watched the fishlike motions of the toothless mouth and she imagined that with her milk there flowed into her little son her deepest thoughts, concepts, and dreams.

Milan Kundera, Life is Elsewhere

And since Giovanni knew how important it is to rear infants, not with the milk of nurses, but with that of their own mothers, no sooner was Raphael born, to whom with happy augury he gave that name at baptism, than he insisted that this his only child - and he had no more afterwards - should be suckled by his own mother… (page 233)

Michelangelo was put out to nurse by Lodovico in that village with the wife of a stonecutter: wherefore the same Michelangelo, discoursing once with Vasari, said to him jestingly, “Giorgio, if I have anything of the good in my brain, it has come from my being born in the pure air of your country of Arezzo, even as I also sucked in with my nurse’s milk the chisels and hammer with which I make my figures.” (page 308)

Giorgio Vasari. Lives of the most eminent painters, sculptors and architects. Random House 1959.
(Original Italian version first published in 1550)

SOLNESS: The fright had shaken Aline so dreadfully. The alarm - getting out of the house - the hurry and rush - and the freezing night air into the bargain. For they had to be carried out just as they were. Both she and the children.

HILDE: Couldn't they stand it?

SOLNESS: O yes, they stood it all right. But it turned to a fever with Aline. And that affected her milk. She insisted on feeding them herself. Because it was her duty, she said. And both our little boys, they [Clenching his hands.] they - ah!

Ibsen. The Master Builder. Act 2.

There is comfort in a mother’s breast, but there has to be a weaning. The attainment of independence, the severing of ties, is, at best, a bleak process for both sides; but it is necessary, even though each may grudge it and hold it against the other.

John Wyndham. The Chrysalids

“You exist, and you alone!” I cried in my innermost self. “O Earth! I am your last-born, I am sucking at your breast and will not let go. You do not let me live for more than one minute, but that minute turns into a breast and I suck.”

Nikos Kazantzakis. Zorba the Greek. Chapter 15

Tired at last, I came out of the water, let the night wind dry me, and set out again with long easy strides, feeling I had escaped a great danger and that I had a still tighter grip on the Great Mother’s breast.

Nikos Kazantzakis. Zorba the Greek. Chapter 15

When she went by, perfumed and heavily plastered with paint, wearing loud and garish clothes, in the streets of Alexandria, Beirut, Constantinople, and saw women giving the breast to their babies, her own breasts tingled and swelled, her nipples stood out, asking for a tiny childlike mouth as well.

Nikos Kazantzakis. Zorba the Greek. Chapter 19

Greasy-faced children popped-the-whip through the crowd, and babies lunched at their mothers' breasts.

Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird. Chapter 16

Judge Taylor was the only person in the courtroom who laughed. Even the babies were still, and I suddenly wondered if they had been smothered at their mothers' breasts.

Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird. Chapter 18

It is true, a child just dropped from its dam, may be supported by her milk for a solar year, with little other nourishment;

Jonathan Swift. A Modest Proposal

A woman’s life isn't worth a plateful of cabbage if she hasn't felt life stir under her heart. Taking a little one to nurse, watching him grow to manhood, that’s what love is.

Carol Shields. The Stone Diaries

Toward women he feels both a profound reverence and a floating impatience, and from his random reading on the subject, he understands that this impatience stems from a resentment toward a punishing, withholding, enfeebling mother, the mother who gives and then withdraws the breast.

Carol Shields. The Stone Diaries

Then, in a further act of generosity - or was it a mortification of the flesh, a self-inflicted punishment for her instinctual revulsion? Aurora gave me an even greater gift. ’miss Jaya’s bottle was okay for the girls,' she announced. 'But as for my son, I will feed-o him myself.' I wasn't arguing; and clamped myself firmly to her breast.

Salman Rushdie. The Moor’s Last Sigh. Chapter 10.

I was the only child she suckled at her breast. It made a difference: for although I received my share of the sharp end of her tongue,there was something in her attitude towards me that was less destructive than her treatment of my sisters.

She suckled me, and the first ’moor' pictures were done while I nestled at her breast: charcoal sketches, watercolours, pastels and finally a large work in oils. Aurora and I posed, somewhat blasphemously, as a godless madonna and child.

Salman Rushdie. The Moor’s Last Sigh. Chapter 13.

He watched Shams al-Din, ecstatically suckling from his mother’s breast and smiling, oblivious to events around him.

Shams al-Din began to cry. She changed him and thrust her full breast gently into his open mouth…

Shams al-Din at least was content. He crawled around on the sand, sat and played with pebbles, was never bored, and grew in the wind and sun, feeding abundantly on his mother’s milk.

He noticed Ulfat engrossed in the child at her breast,…

Zahira was feeding Galal when Muhammad Anwar suddenly rushed into the room. She thrust her breasts inside her dress, and pulled the veil more tightly around her head and face, full of embarrassment.

Naguib Mahfouz. The Harafish

James arrives home in the middle of that day to find Mrs. Luvovitz in the kitchen feeding his baby with a dropper.

…

James plunked his wife onto the chair and put the screeching baby into her arms. “Now feed her.”

But the mother just blubbered and babbled.

“Speak English, for Christ’s sake.”

“Ma bi’der. Biwajeaal.”

He slapped her. “If she doesn't eat, you don't eat. Understood?”

Materia nodded. He unbuttoned her blouse.

James allowed Mrs. Luvovitz over that evening when Materia hadn't produced a drop and the baby was fit to be tied. The women went upstairs. The howling the mother put up, as Mrs. Luvovitz did the necessary.

…

In a few days the pump was primed and the baby was sucking. But the mother cried through every feeding. One evening in the fourth week of Kathleen’s life, James snatched his child from the breast in horror.

“You’ve hurt her, Jesus Christ, you’ve cut her lip!” - for the baby’s smile was bright with blood.

Materia just sat there, mute as usual, her dress open, her nipples cracked and bleeding, oozing milk.

James took one look and realized that the child would have to be weaned before it was poisoned.

Anne-Marie MacDonald. Fall Down on you Knees. Chapter ”1900”

Frances looks a litle starveling and she’s bald as a post. Materia figures it’s because she conceived too soon after Mercedes, the goodness in her womb hadn't yet been replenished. And her milk isn't as bountiful. All the more reason to love this one too.

The two little ones seem fine, Mercedes breastfeeding a dolly and cooing to Frances.

Anne-Marie MacDonald. Fall Down on you Knees. Chapter “The First Solution”

“She was a good woman. Her name was Mahmoud. Many years ago, when your jitdy was a baby, the Turks came to his village in the Old Country. They were looking for Christian babies to kill. The Mahmoud woman took your jitdy and put him among her own children. When the Turks came to the door and said, 'Are there any Christian babies here?' she said 'No! All these children are my own.' And to convince them, she put your jitdy to her own breast and suckled him.

Anne-Marie MacDonald. Fall Down on you Knees. Chapter “Over Here”

… The corners of Lily’s mouth run with clear saliva, she is incapable of closing her mouth or of taking the next breath. Frances touches Lily’s fist, unlocking her throat. The air pours scraping in, and corrosive sobs begin.

“Come here, Lily.”

Frances opens her nightgown and guides Lily’s mouth to drink.

Anne-Marie MacDonald. Fall Down on you Knees. Chapter “Blue Dress”

'Wvery,' replied his parent, wilth a sigh. ’she’s got hold o' some inwention for grown-up people being born again, Sammy; the new birth, I thinks they calls it. I should wery much like to see that system in haction, Sammy. I should wery much like to see your mother-in-law born again. Wouldn't I put her out to nurse!'

Charles Dickens. The Pickwick Papers. Chapter XXII

A day came - of almost terrified delight and wonder - when the poor widowed girl pressed a child upon her breast… How she laughed and wept over it - how love, and hope, and prayer woke again in her bosom as the baby nestled there.

How his mother nursed him, and dressed him and lived upon him… It was her life which the baby drank in from her bosom.

W. P. Thackery. Vanity Fair. Chapter XXXV

The parting between Rebecca and the little Rawdon did not cause either party much pain. She had not, to say the truth, seen much of the young gentleman since his birth. After the amiable fashion of French mothers, she had placed him out to nurse in a village in the neighbourhood of Paris…

He preferred his nurse’s caresses to his mamma’s and when finally he quitted that jolly nurse and almost parent, he cried loudly for hours.

It is a fact that even the poor gardener’s wife, who had nursed madame’s child, was never paid after the first six months for that supply of the milk of human kindness.

W. P. Thackery. Vanity Fair. Chapter XXXVI

…her grief at weaning the child was a sight that would have unmanned a Herod.

W. P. Thackery. Vanity Fair. Chapter XXXVIII

…When she nurses her baby she often reads a book, sometimes smokes a cigarette, so as not to slink into the sludge of animal function. And she’s aware of the nursing shrinking her uterus and flattening her stomach, not just providing the baby - Noelle - with precious maternal antibodies.

“Good thing you weren't going to drink that yourself,” the girl from the library said to Kath. “It’s a no-no if you're nursing.”

“I guzzled beer all the time when I was nursing,” the woman on the stool said. “I think it was recommended. You piss most of it away anyhow.”

Alice Munro. Jakarta (short story published in Saturday Night, February 1998)

As a man who had seen something of life, and neither a fool nor an invalid, he had no faith in medicine…

Tolstoy. Anna Karenina

“There speaks a Protestant,” Mr Visconti said. “Any Catholic knows that a legend which is believed has the same value and effect as the truth. Look at the cult of the saints.”

“But the Americans may be Protestants”.

“Then we produce medical evidence. That is the modern form of the legend…”

Graham Greene. Travels with My Aunt

… his students… wouldn't believe their grandmothers had wrinkles if they couldn't measure them with a micrometer

Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels. (Clement Hollier to Maria Theotoky)

… though she was interested in everything that did not concern her, (she) had a habit of never listening to what interested her;

Tolstoy. Anna Karenina

When power is scarce, a little of it is tempting.

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale. (Professor James Darcy Pieixoto, Keynote speaker “Historical notes on The Handmaid’s Tale”)

It (William Randolph Hearst’s castle) is like making love in a confessional with a prostitute dressed in a prelate’s liturgical robes reciting Beaudelaire while ten electronic organs reproduce the Well Tempered Clavier played by Scriabin.

Umberto Eco. Travels in Hyperreality

His face wore that everlastingly peevish and woebegone look which has been so sourly imprinted on all the faces of the Jewish race without exception.

Dostoyevsky. Crime and Punishment (even smart people can be anti-semites)

There is nothing harder in the whole world than frankness, and there is nothing easier than flattery. If there is only one hundredth part of a note of falsehood in your frankness, at once a discord is created, followed immediately by a row. If, on the other hand, everything to the last note is false in flattery, it is still pleasant, and is listened to not without satisfaction; with a coarse sort of satisfaction, maybe, but with satisfaction still. And however coarse the flattery may be, half of it at least always seems to be true.

Dostoyevsky. Crime and Punishment

…so many different sorts of business men have recently become enthusiastic adherents of the common cause, and so dreadfully have they distorted in their own interests everything they touched that they’ve absolutely discredited the whole thing.

Dostoyevsky. Crime and Punishment (Razumikhin)

Well, don't you think that one little crime could be expiated and wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For one life you will save thousands of lives from corruption and decay. One death in exchange for a hundred lives-why, its a simple sum in arithmetic!

Dostoyevsky. Crime and Punishment

He was…one of those men who select their opinions like their clothes, according to the prevailing fashion.

“You see”, said Berg to his comrade, whom he called his friend only because he knew that everyone has friends.

“…In these days”, pursued Vera - speaking of “these days” as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of “these days” and that human nature changes with the times…

Tolstoy. War and Peace

…we may be pretty certain that persons whom all the world treats ill, deserve entirely the treatment they get. The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

Thackery. Vanity Fair. Chapter 2.

Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?

Thackery. Vanity Fair. Chapter 35.

Compiled by Jack Newman, MD, FRCPC

Fact or Fiction?

Such advice (re: breastfeeding and HIV positivity) reflects the Western prejudice that artificial milks are innocent until proven guilty, whereas breastmilk is guilty until proven innocent.
Short RV. Breastfeeding, birth spacing and their effects on child survival.
Nature. 1988;335:679-82 (page 682)

Fact - Studies show that exclusive breastfeeding may inhibit HIV transmission.

Hourly feeding is exhausting for the mother, painful if you are breastfeeding, unnecessary for the baby, and interferes with his developing more normal and healthy sleep-wake and feeding patterns.

If your baby has been feeding every hour, begin to increase the time between feedings by an amount you feel comfortable with - perhaps 15 minutes per day - until he is being fed every two hours, then every two and a half or three hours.
Ferber. Solve your child’s sleep problems. page 42

Fiction - Babies need to feed on demand.

Regularity of nursing is most important. The infant should always be fed exactly at the stated hour and never at irregular intervals, as this upsets the baby’s routine and soon leads to stomach trouble. If the infant wakes up and cries before the feeding hour he should be examined to see if he is wet, and if so, changed and then offered some plain boiled water. If the infant is asleep at the feeding hour he should be awakened. It is remarkable how these infants learn to wake up at or shortly before the appointed time. After a few days' training they behave like little machines.
Frederick Tisdall. The Home Care of the Infant & Child. JM Dent & Sons Ltd. Lon & Tor 1931

Fiction - Babies need to feed on demand, water is not necessary, don't usually need to wake a sleeping baby, a baby is not a machine. Schedules are for trains.

This disease (rickets) is confined almost exclusively to infants who are artificially fed. ...Just what exists in breast milk that prevents, and what is absent or present in cows' milk which permits or causes the symptoms of rickets to appear, has not been clearly defined.

Fact - the cause is lack of vitamin D. Breastmilk contains a form of vitamin D that is easily assimilated by the baby; the only breast-fed babies who require vitamin D supplements are those who have zero or extremely little exposure to sunlight.

The responsibility for the failure to conserve the maternal milk-supply, while dual, rests with greater weight upon the physician, who, while realizing the value of natural and the dangers and uncertainties of artificial feeding, has failed to become fired with that enthusiasm which the subject demands.
Lowenberg H. A Practical Treatise on Infant Feeding and Allied Topics for Physicians and Students. FA Davis Co. Philadelphia. 1916

Fact

We therefore speak of a kidney infarct and a urine infarct; by the latter are indicated the masses of urate passed in the urine which are frequently visible as a brick-red powder, and which appear under the microscope partly as an amorphous and partly as a crystalline precipitate. The phenomenon of the so-called "infarct urine" must be looked upon always as a physiological process, even though it may be absent in some cases.

Most infants sleep during the first hours of life and show no signs of hunger. Should they be awakened they usually fall asleep at once. In the majority of cases this condition lasts the whole of the first day. The rule that a child should not be fed during the first 24 hours may therefore be laid down with confidence.

During the first and often also during the second day of life urine is usually only passed at rare intervals: one to two, or three to four times in twenty-four hours. It also happens not infrequently during the first day that a child does not pass any urine at all; this occurs in actually 34 per cent of all cases, according to Kotscharowski, but is not clinically to be regarded as an alarming symptom.
Diseases of the Newborn. August Ritter von Reuss.William Wood & Co. NY. 1921

Fiction - re not feeding for first 24 hours and not passing urine, crystalline urine can be an indication of dehydration.

They who on meare curiositie (where no urgent necessitie requireth) try whether their children may not as birds be nourished without sucking, offend contrary to this dutie of breast feeding and reflect that meanes which God hath ordained as best; and so oppose their shallow wits to his unsearchable wisdom.
William Gouge, Of domestical duties, 1622

Fact

In the very act of lactation there is, by nature, generated such an endearment of the suckled child to the nurse, as that she began it perhaps only for hire, finds herself engaged by a growing affection to supply in some measure the place of the mother to the orphan or deserted babe.
Nihell E. A treatise on the art of midwifery, London 1760

Fact

No mineral water--very hard on mothers who need it for biberons. They can always boil the tap water, of course.
Mavis Gallant. The Events in May. A Paris Notebook I

Pro-Bottle

... the idea of bottle feeding just to "involve the father" is one more instance of preserving the status quo at a price to the baby.
Marni Jackson. The Mother Zone. Macfarlane Walter and Ross, Toronto, 1992

Fact - mothers are for feeding, fathers are for playing.

It (bottle feeding) also made a fetish out of cleanliness, and maybe all the washing and scrubbing has further reduced the pleasure we take in our body and in life.

Certainly, before bottle feeding, mothers had no choice but to let the infant suck pleasurably from her body, and in the absence of 'baby foods', this tended to go on for a considerable time. ...A great deal of modern drug and sex behaviour has its roots in the desperate effort to set things aright--to give the pleasure principle a belated chance to assert itself, after denying it too early.
Bruno Bettelheim. The Children of the Dream. Paladin. 1971

Fact - meet baby’s needs now or adult will need to meet them later in life in unhealthy ways.

No one who has seen a baby sinking back satiated from the breast and falling asleep with flushed cheeks and a blissful smile can escape the reflection that this picture persists as a prototype of the expression of sexual satisfaction in later life.
Freud. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) (London: Imago, 1949) p. 60

Negative connotation associating breastfeeding with adult sexual feelings that baby is not capable of having.

The moment it is born, the cord is cut or clamped, the child is exhibited to its mother, and then it is taken away by a nurse to a babyroom called the nursery, so called presumably because the one thing that is not done in it is the nursing of the baby. We live in the logical denouement of the Machine Age, when not only are things increasingly produced by machine but also human beings are turned out to be as machine-like as we can make them, and who therefore see little wrong in dealing with others in a similarly mechanical manner; an age in which it is considered a mark of progress when whatever was formerly done by human beings is taken out of their hands and done by machine. It is reckoned an advance when a bottle of formula can be made to substitute for the contents of the human breast and the experience of the human infant at it ...

The benefits to the mother of immediate breastfeeding are innumerable, not the least of which after the weariness of labor and birth is the emotional gratification, the feeling of strength, the composure, and the sense of fulfillment that comes with the handling and suckling of the baby.
Ashley Montague. Touching. Harper & Row 1978

Fact

You may feel some resistance to the idea of such intimacy with an infant who, at first, seems like a stranger. To some mothers it seems better to keep the baby at arm’s length, so to speak, by feeding plans which are not so close.
Infant Care. US Children’s Bureau, HEW. 1963

Bottle feeding propaganda

And hence at our maturer years, when any object of vision is presented to us, which by its waving or spiral lines bears any similitude to the form of the female bosom, whether it is found in a landscape with soft gradations of rising and descending surface, or in the forms of some antique vases, or in other works of the pencil or chisel, we feel a general glow of delight, which seems to influence all our senses;
Erasmus Darwin. Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic Life. 1794

Fact

...a baby nursing at a mother’s breast ...is an undeniable affirmation of our rootedness in nature.
David Suzuki, Toronto Star, April 18, 1992

Fact

Mothers ought to bring up and nurse their own children; for they bring them up with greater affection and with greater anxiety, as loving them from the heart, and so to speak, every inch of them.
Plutarch. De Lib. Educ., Cap V

Fact

The mothers shall give suck to their offsprings, for two complete years.
Quran Surah II (Baqarah) Verse 233

Fact

The La Leche League succeeded by reconstructing the neighbourly networks which medicine had tried to discredit. League members began to trust and rely on one another. Their confidence in their intuitive connection with their children grew; and for both of these reasons, they found it less necessary to rely on doctors, except in emergencies.
David Cayley. CBC radio Ideas. April 1985

Fact

In modern consumer society, the attack on mother-child eroticism took its total form; breastfeeding was proscribed and the breasts reserved for the husband’s fetishistic delectation. At the same time, babies were segregated, put into cold beds alone and not picked up if they cried.
Germaine Greer. Sex and Destiny. Harper and Row New York. 1984

Fact - Explains sexualization of the breast and separation of the mother-baby dyad.

In the late 19th century, as the chemical composition of milks was determined, animal milk was modified to approach human milk more closely in gross composition. Milk first was diluted with water, so that protein and electrolyte concentrations were reduced. Babies fed this diluted formula failed to grow. Experiments revealed that caloric density of human and cow’s milk were similar. Subsequently, sugar was added to the mixture. Some infants fed these formulas lived. Manipulating the composition of formulas heralded the advent of Pediatrics as a specialty.
Lewis Barness. Remarks to AAP, March 19, 1991 San Diego, California. In Pediatrics 1991;88:1055

Fact - Explains how formula companies and pediatrics came to be while pointing out some of the shortcomings of formula feeding.

In the near future, it appears prudent to continue recommending full breastfeeding for the term infant. Eventually, formulas may equal breast milk and studies should continue to improve formulas and to make more elegant measurements of outcome.
Lewis Barness. Remarks to the AAP. March 19, 1991. San Diego California. In Pediatrics 1991;88:1056

Fact re breastfeeding for 1 year. Formulas will never equal breastmilk ... no living cells.

As part of Ross Laboratories' ongoing research to ensure our infant formula products provide the very best nutrition, we have increased the level of linolenic acid, an essential fatty acid, in our powdered infant formula products.

If mothers do comment on this colour variation, please assure them that it is a modification brought about by an improvement to the product in our continuing effort to provide the very best infant nutrition for their babies.
Letter to health professionals from Ross Laboratories, October 1991

This statement is typical of Formula company progaganda.

They were difficult to keep clean, and infants surely must have found them uncomfortable, but for almost 2000 years, pottery nursers (complete with pottery nipples) were used for feeding babies. Mothers had no choice - glass was unknown at first, then later only a curiosity.
Anonymous. Feeding baby through the ages. Today’s Health (US magazine for general readership). April 1964

Fact

A pair of substantial mammary glands has the advantage over the two hemispheres of the most learned professor’s brain, in the art of compounding a nutritious fluid for infants.
Oliver Wendall Holmes

Fact

Bread is for us a kind of successor to the motherly breast, and it has been over the centuries responsible for billions of sighs of satisfaction.
Margaret Visser. The Rituals of Dinner. Chapter 1. Behaving.

Fact

It is most distressing, for instance, for a man sitting on his beach-front verandah with his family to have a woman with a large family appear, sit calmly upon the edge of the boardwalk and expose her person to feed her baby.
Toronto Evening Telegram, 10 August 1933, page 9. Comment attributed to representative of homeowners of the eastern beaches.

Negative

At birth the baby should sleep almost 23 hours out of 24.
He should sleep at least 18 hours a day until 6 months old.
At least 16 hours until 1 year old.
At least 14 hours until 4 years old, part of which should be in the afternoon at a regular hour.
The baby should sleep alone in a room or at least have a crib or a bed to himself.
Never rock a baby to sleep. Never put a baby to sleep in your arms; it is a bad habit, tiresome for yourself and unwholesome for the baby.
Canada’s Baby Book. 17th edition. Rice, Montreal. 1928

Fiction

If I hadn't had my children, I wouldn't have written more and better, I would have written less and worse.
Margaret Laurence. Quoted by Jay Scott in Chatelaine, October 1989

Fact

It is well that a growing infant should cry a little every day. ... The baby should be made to cry every day by slapping him on the buttocks.
The Normal Child by Alan Brown. Frederick D. Goodchild. Toronto. 1923 p. 42

Fiction - Babies cry for a reason ... Crying is a late hunger cue.

The selection of the nurse-maid is a matter of considerable importance. ...Women who are of about middle age, at which time the attractive qualities of policemen and grocery-boys have faded into a dim recollection..very often make capable attendants.
The Normal Child by Alan Brown. Frederick D. Goodchild. Toronto. 1923 p. 6-7

Sexist

When the baby is just born, and during the first few days of life, it is very little more intelligent than a vegetable.
The Normal Child by Alan Brown. Frederick D. Goodchild. Toronto. 1923 p. 52-3

Fiction

If these parts are not kept thoroughly clean, secretions may form to such an extent as to act as foreign bodies, drawing the child’s attention to the parts and in this way frequently lead to masturbation.
The Normal Child by Alan Brown. Frederick D. Goodchild. Toronto. 1923 p. 29

Fiction

Badly managed and spoiled infants often cry vigorously when left alone, and when attention is given to them and they are taken up or talked to, the crying ceases. page 43
The Normal Child by Alan Brown. Frederick D. Goodchild. Toronto. 1923 p. 43

Fiction - can't spoil a baby, crying is a late hunger cue or baby is in discomfort.

Community traditions of midwifery and mutual aid were discredited as women were urged to trust their doctors rather than their neighbours or themselves. Medically prescribed childbirth became an alienating surgical procedure and child rearing a rigid clockwork routine devoid of sensual pleasure.

... People came to accept the idea that relevant knowledge about children and childbirth was vested in professional experts who stood outside the network of family and community relationships.

By becoming merely the agents of the latest theory, mothers gave up the last vestige of their traditional authority and independence.
David Cayley. Ideas. Doctoring the Family. CBC radio. April 85

Fact - explains how mothers have been manipulated by the medical profession.

A young baby is sufficient unto himself. He derives all necessary stimulation from his own activities and his own immediate surroundings. Playing with a young baby is never necessary and it is often harmful ... A little play in the middle of the afternoon, say for 10 or 15 minutes, with a baby of four months or over may be permitted ... The best practice is to have a physician trained in the care of children to look after the baby from birth, to whom all matters of this sort may be referred.
Alton Goldbloom. The Care of the Child. Longmans Green. Toronto 1928

Fiction - babies are born with only 25% of their adult brain capacity. Left alone, they will die. Babies who are fed but not held also die.

When the baby is crying, whether it is during the day or night, rocking, walking the floor, shaking or otherwise agitating the baby must be rigorously avoided. Few people realize the importance of vigorous, lusty crying in a healthy infant. It is as essential to the infant as exercise is to the adult. It is, in fact, the infant’s daily exercise. All young babies should have a crying period during each day ... The infant who cries regularly between 5 and 6, or 8 and 10 o'clock in the evening is doing what is called "reflex crying". It is not to be assumed under such conditions that he is suffering either discomfort or pain, but it is to be taken for granted that such crying is good for the baby and is as important as food.
Alton Goldbloom 1928

Fiction - today we know this period of crying as "grandmother’s hour" when mothers typically call their own mothers to come and lend a hand. Milk supply tends to be lower in the afternoon and baby becomes fussy.

The environment of the child must be guided by the physician. He must give advice concerning the details of early training in obedience, habit formation, temper tantrums etc. How often do we see the young infant stop crying at two weeks of age when it is picked up by either parent. Herein lies the potential juvenile court case. Unless the parents are guided by the physician, even at this early stage, the infant soon learns to put one over on its parents.
Alan Brown

Fiction - a baby is not capable of manipulating it’s parents. Babies cry for a reason.

... the American imagination demands the real thing and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake;
Umberto Eco. Travels in Hyperreality

Fact

Obviously advertising works.
Leslie Chester, business director for the confectionery division Nestlé Canada. Globe and Mail, November 9, 1993

Nestle is a formula company ... Example of Formula company propaganda

The environmental impact of the Great Flood of '93 will be tremendous and long-lasting, say scientists, and will illustrate how a century of levee-building and dam-constructing has taken a natural river system and turned it into something artificial, and perhaps even more dangerous.
William Booth, The Washington Post. Reprinted in Guardian Weekly, July 25, 1993

The same can be said of Breast vs Bottle

The recognition of oneself as part of nature, and reliance on natural things, are disappearing for hundreds of millions of people who do not know that anything is being lost.
Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels. (Clement Hollier to Mamusia Laoutaro)

Fact

The hidden intention is to go to the limit, to see how far can we ride the tiger. The more we know about the responsiveness of nature, the more somehow you can test the limits.
Wolfgang Sachs. Ideas (CBC Radio), June 1990

Fact

It is fortunate for the future of the human race that young women are transferring their allegiance from crochet and embroidery-needles to golf ...
The Normal Child by Alan Brown. Frederick D. Goodchild. Toronto. 1923 p. 43

Negative - encourages the mother to leave the home

If you can measure that of which you speak, and can express it by a number, you know something of your subject; but if you cannot measure it, your knowledge is meagre and unsatisfactory.
Lord Kelvin

Negative - refers to the misconception that when bottle feeding you can see how many ounces the baby is getting but with breastfeeding you can't state a "number"so you can't tell how much baby is taking in. Mothers need to learn to 'read' their babies' diapers. 6-8 soaking wet diapers, clear urine, and 2-5 poops per day means baby is getting enough to eat. If it’s coming out, it’s going in.

Do not expect that you will make any lasting or very strong impression on the world through intellectual power without the use of an equal amount of conscience and heart.
William Jewett Tucker (Principal of Dartmouth University, beginning century)

True

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived and dishonest - but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
John F Kennedy

True

People who value their privileges above their principles soon lose both.
Dwight D Eisenhower

True

Some people reach the top of the ladder only to find it was leaning against the wrong wall.
(Unknown source)

True

We must be the changes we wish to see in the world.
Ghandi

True

Compiled by Jack Newman, MD, FRCPC