True story:  When I was pregnant with my daughter, my husband and I took a trip to Atlanta.  He was going through the admissions process for a PhD program at Emory University and I tagged along with the intent of scoping out places to live, work, and daycares.  I was hungry though.

We suspended our scouting and headed to one of my favorite Caribbean spots.  I stood at the counter, rubbing my belling in anticipation of all that I would devour and placed my order.  We sat and waited for our food.  Our server, an older gentleman with a thick Jamaican accent, came to our table with hot plates of food and set them before us.  “Ah! You’re a goddess!” he exclaimed as he took in my pregnant state.  He told me to eat up and enjoy.  Then he asked what I was having.  “A girl” I told him.  He clapped his hands and smiled “a goddess begets another goddess!”  I was elated.  I basked in his praised and my husband’s gaze of admiration.

This moment gave me the confidence to breastfeed.  My mother did minimal breastfeeding, a couple of weeks at most.  I saw my sisters also make attempts and fail at nursing. Neither had a formal source of support to coach them through the process.  Here I was pregnant with lofty goals of breastfeeding but no example, no education or confidence, just a steely resolve to give my baby the best start I could.

I did have some complex feelings about reconciling my breasts as sources of nourishment and sexual pleasure.  But being called a goddess was affirming and life changing.  I was encouraged to accept my pregnant self as glorious at that moment as I was in the moment of conception. I accepted the multi-purposes of my body as one with life and pleasure giving property.

This experience serves me well now.  As a social worker working with moms who receive state medical benefits I encourage breastfeeding to a population for whom this practice is quite foreign.  In addition to being a health behavior they are rarely exposed to, the idea of their breasts being sequestered for feeding rather than pleasure for themselves or their partner is an idea that creates too much dissonance to bear.

At a training I attended to become a Certified Lactation Counselor a fellow student told me how one of the moms she worked with said she could breastfeed because her breasts were her “special spot”.  Her response to her client: “wait ‘til you see what comes out of your other special spot in a few months.”  Pregnancy, birth, nursing doesn’t nullify your sexual being and your sexy self doesn’t leave when you become a mom.

While our uber-celebrities gestate, deliver and nurse in secret emerging only for the perfectly crafted photo op, our experience is much more public, raw and less glamorous.  We, as promoters of breastfeeding and its multitude of benefits, must tailor our message so that it acknowledges the pervasive social perspective of breasts and breastfeeding.  When we understand that the influence of what society thinks with regards to breastfeeding or breasts as primarily sexual anatomy, is powerful enough to persuade young women not to breastfeed even in light of being aware of the health benefits of nursing their infant, than we become more empowered to create a powerful, relatable campaign to increase rates.

Furthermore, exploration of this new role is a great way to engage fathers in the expanse of what it means to be a woman.  Male support of breastfeeding initiation and goals is bound to have a significant impact.  Women I help may not mention when the father of baby is in support of breastfeeding but they definitely make mention when he is not on board.   I was able to breastfeed for four months before extenuating health circumstances forced me to stop;  but being sick and trying to breastfeed post c-section would have been even less possible if my husband wouldn’t have been such a great support.  His praise of my efforts, bringing the baby to me in the middle of the night to nurse, and being vocal about his attraction to me that had increased since I became a mother.

Together we defined breastfeeding as normal, achievable, desirable, and even protective—all capacities that a goddess embodies.  Like goddesses do I took his compliment and multiplied its benefit…nursing and nourishing at the same time, nursing and protecting at the same time, nursing and loving at the same time.