I spent this month making posts and attending events and webinars concerning breastfeeding. I learned how to properly look for a latch and how to readjust mom and baby from a lactation consultant among other wonderful topics. I took this time to go back and ask my grandmothers, great aunts, aunt, and mother if they breastfed and the resounding word that came was no. My maternal great-grandmother breastfed most of the children she had along with my grandmother but no living relative could remember for how long. My paternal grandmother was raised by her sister and so was not breast fed, nor were her sibling. My father and his brothers were breastfed but my mother and her brother were not, although my grandmother did try to with my mom for a few weeks. My mother read up on what she could and tried her hardest to breastfeed me, had a successful latch, and did not struggle with anything that she could remember, but she never made enough milk to feed me and so gave up.
I learned from my paternal grandmother that breastfeeding wasn’t something that many women had time to do. I thought she was going to say because of work, but she also said it was because of where we were in the deep south. It was hard to fight for your rights and make a better world for your children, while breastfeeding your children. I look at mothers now who show up to political stages while breastfeeding and I feel conflicted because she doesn’t favor me. My maternal mother’s grandmother and those before her worked the land as sharecroppers but some had to go back into the role of a wet nurse even after the civil war.
Wet nurses, when looking at the antebellum period, were black female slaves kept for the sole purpose of feeding caucasian babies. They were categorized by multiple factors: how old their child was, how many caucasian babies had she fed and for how long, and how much milk does she produce. Many black women had no milk for their own babies after feeding their master’s children especially because there were no pumps then only hand-expression. If the slave’s child died, that was seen as a good thing because the master’s child didn’t have to share milk anymore as well as had a choice of both nipples because they were not allowed to suckle from the same one. I can only imagine the pain of having lost a baby and having to feed another’s child. That person more likely than not the reason why your baby died. In different articles I see that slave master’s referred to their female slaves and getting the “sadness” or “the sulks” and I can’t only think that the grief drove their body to stop. That they prayed to whomever they believed in to stop feeding the child of their tormentor, but at the same time a child is a child. I will not put the entire blame on slavery, but I will say that it does play a large factor in the sexualization of the black female form and the violation of the sacred breastfeeding of our people. Breast milk has so many benefits to mom and baby and by forcing someone else into that moment is sickening. Mentally and physically along with spiritually, that had to be draining for them.
Even after the civil war where they were “free” I know that it wasn’t the case either. They were given jobs and most did not pay enough to live and so they ended up being sharecroppers and lived in the slums to avoid going back to the plantation. Men gave their bodies and worked the land to survive and so women were forced to give themselves as well to help make ends meat for their children. One of those roles was to go back to being a wet nurse. Most were paid a wage or used their money to pay their sharecropping fees, but were basically thrown right back into slavery. They were at the children’s beck and call, sometimes not allowed to go home and see her own children for weeks at a time. She was a nanny, a wet nurse, and a maid. She slept little and worked for much for little money, but every cent counted. I think a deeply rooted repulsion to breastfeeding began to form. I think the PTSD from the abuse they suffered kept them from teaching and encouraging their daughters even when times got better. I think that pain ran deep from the slave ships and into both my grandmother’s veins. Milk is made from elements of our blood, and we carry that into current times. I carry that with me in my body now. Generational trauma is a theory that the complex post traumatic stress accumulated from past family members is transferred onto their offspring. I believe that trauma along with lack of community knowledge and support kept my mother from breastfeeding. I believe that with time we will heal but we need support like Black Breastfeeding Week. We need black doulas, black midwives, and black people in the healthcare system in order to heal our culture starting in preconception and continuing on after the children are born. Maybe then, our blood will finally run clean of this generational curse.