It is World Breastfeeding Week and we’ve been busy supporting celebratory events around the country. We donated nursing mama sculptures to the World Breastfeeding Week picnic in Springfield, MO and to two LLL Leader workshops, one in NY and one in Tennessee. Today, we donated a birth sculpture and 4o goodie packets to the upcoming Women in the Wild photo shoot in Kansas City and we also mailed a spiral mama sculpture and 20 goodie packets to a Live, Love, Latch event in Portland, TN.
Is there a Live, Love, Latch event near you? Check it out here: Events – Live, Love, Latch!
On August 22, we’ll be giving away some goodies at MamaFest in Rolla, which is also registered as a Live, Love, Latch event.
What is MamaFest?
It’s a celebration! A celebration of women, of community organizations that serve women, of women-owned/women-oriented businesses. We want you to come visit the vendors, have some refreshments, visit with your friends on the couch, and take home awareness of what your community has to offer YOU.
(Men and children are welcome to attend!)
via MamaFest 2015.
I’m particularly excited about the Women in the Wild event. This article about the effort really brings home why it matters:
…The women behind this photo would like to shift the paradigm, to change the narrative of shame that is inflicted upon mothers. They would like to celebrate the bodies of mothers, with all of their glorious imperfections, because they are strong, and beautiful. Mother of one, Jacklyn Kosakowski, shared: ”When the opportunity came up to take this photo, I honestly wasn’t doing it for others. I did it for myself. My changing body during pregnancy was difficult for me, and especially afterwards was hard. I’m at a good place with myself and I have just recently began to appreciate my stretch marks and mommy belly. This body carried and nourished my baby for nine months and pushed for four hours just to meet her, so I should be proud of this body. To just be out in the open, half naked, with other beautiful mothers was such an amazing feeling. There was no judgement, we all looked beautiful.”
You can also visit Erin White Photography on Facebook for more information and beautiful, inspiring photos.
The theme of the 2015 World Breastfeeding Week is: “Let’s Make it Work” and it focuses on mothers combining breastfeeding and employment.
The WBW 2015 theme on working women and breastfeeding revisits the 1993 WBW campaign on the Mother-Friendly Workplace Initiative. Much has been achieved in 22 years of global action supporting women in combining breastfeeding and work, particularly the adoption of the revised ILO Convention 183 on Maternity Protection with much stronger maternity entitlements, and more country actions on improving national laws and practices. At the workplace level, we have also seen more actions taken to set up breastfeeding or mother-friendly workplaces including awards for breastfeeding-friendly employers, as well as greater mass awareness on working women’s rights to breastfeed.
Images for the 2015 theme of “Let’s Make it Work” are available here: WHO | World Breastfeeding Week.
Why does the support of employers matter to breastfeeding women? It matters immensely. Women and their babies don’t exist in isolation, they are nestled within larger systems that can either help make or break the breastfeeding relationship:
“Governments and commercial companies will ‘invest’ billions in expensive new technology: roads, bridges, airports, dams or power generation plants, ‘for the good of society’. They may even ‘invest’ in schools and hospitals, but the crucial primary investment in the emotional, physical and mental health of all humans, which breastfeeding and mothering provide, is invisible.”
—Gabrielle Palmer (The Politics of Breastfeeding, p. 333)
via Breastfeeding as an Ecofeminist Issue: Collage Project | Talk Birth.
Seriously. This is why World Breastfeeding Week matters. It isn’t just about breastfeeding memes and platitudes, it is about systemic change in the US and around the world.
I was interested by this story about an Argentinian politician and her baby breastfeeding at work:
…We’re having a moment here when it comes to the cultural conversation surround public breastfeeding. When we talk about women balancing work and childcare, part of what we’re talking about is women living in a world that makes it difficult to care for their children while simultaneously managing the rest of their lives. It’s not that it’s physically impossible to care for a baby while going about one’s day, it’s that we live in a world in which women are shamed for things like breastfeeding in public.
…We are mammals because as a species we nurse our young. This is a fundamental tie between the women of our time and place and the women of all other times and places as well as between the female members of every mammal species that have ever lived. It is our root tie to the planet, to the cycles of life, and to mammal life on earth. It is precisely this connection to the physical, the earthy, the material, the mundane, the body, that breastfeeding challenges men, feminists, and society.
Breastfeeding is a feminist issue and a fundamental women’s issue. And, it is an issue deeply embedded in a sociocultural context. Attitudes towards breastfeeding are intimately entwined with attitudes toward women, women’s bodies, and who has “ownership” of them. Patriarchy chafes at a woman having the audacity to feed her child with her own body, under her own authority, and without the need for any other. Feminism sometimes chafes at the “control” over the woman’s body exerted by the breastfeeding infant…
Past World Breastfeeding Week posts:
- Wednesday Tidbits: World Breastfeeding Week!
- World Breastfeeding Week Post Round Up
- Tuesday Tidbits: National Breastfeeding Month
- The WHO Code: Why Should We Care?
- Tuesday Tidbits: Breastfeeding and Ecofeminism | Talk Birth
- Tuesday Tidbits: Breastfeeding Research | Talk Birth
Sign up for the Brigid’s Grove Newsletter for resources, monthly freebies, + art and workshop announcements.
And, as is our tradition, in honor of WBW and National Breastfeeding Month, you can get 10% off items in our shop throughout August: WBW10OFF.
Talk Birth 
Molly, I was intrigued by the title and maybe I’ve been living under a rock, but I didn’t know that there is a World Breast Feeding Week, so I applaud with an open heart. When I had my first child in 1965 they didn’t believe in breast feeding and thought that the formula was better for the baby. Isn’t that something. Love this.
Thanks, Maha! There has definitely been a pendulum with regard to breastfeeding information and access to support. La Leche League was actually founded in 1956 by seven Catholic women in Illinois. They were inspired by the statue of the La Leche Guadalupe in California. They had homebirths and breastfed their babies at a time when such things had fallen out of favor and were viewed as somewhat “primitive.”
wow, I never knew this. Thank you Molly for sharing.