Breastmilk (2014)

I recently watched The 2014 documentary film, Breastmilk, which follows the stories of several families as they welcome their little ones into the world and attempt to breastfeed. The film is really interesting because it tackles various angles with really different families including a family of biologists, a lesbian family in which both mothers breastfeed, a single mother (who produces TONS of milk!?), etc etc.

The film scratches the surface of discussing the stigmas around breastfeeding in public, but does discuss in detail the cost effectiveness of breastfeeding, and the complicated relationship women have with their breasts and the line between them seeing their breasts as maternal and sexual at the same time, or not being able to. It also examines the commandment that we're told breastfeeding is better for mother and child and is the best option yet so few women succeed in breastfeeding exclusively for the first six months. (And examines why there's such an emphasis on exclusively breastfeeding).

I was really fascinated to see the diagnosis of one of the babies as tongue tied and the procedure to snip the baby's frenulum. It was really cool to learn that the reason some babies are not visibly tongue tied or badly tongue tied and yet still cannot suckle enough to gain weight is that it has to do with palate, mandible, and tongue mobility in combination. If the baby cannot reach its tongue to the top of the mouth that is the problem that prevents them from being able to breastfeed properly. I loved seeing the procedure wherein the ENT doctor snips the frenulum and immediately helps the child latch and suckle from his mother.

It was also really awesome to see how important IBCLCs are, and how important the work IBCLCs do is. Additionally the film showed a lot of what WIC does and community health worker Patrece Griffith-Murray asked a really interesting question towards the latter portion of the film, "What if WIC stopped supplying formula?" Of course, limiting the options of WIC would be just that, limiting, but it's an interesting question considering the way many women "give up," on breastfeeding in The United States, feeding into what one of the films' commentors calls "The scarcity model," in which we think we cannot produce enough milk. And what does this say about how we think about motherhood, or how capitalism devalues women who are mothers and says they need to hurry back into the workforce, in which working around breastfeeding and pumping (in which women produce less milk anyway) is too much work when you could be replaced by a worker who does not need those breaks in the name of efficiency?

While the film seemed to skirt around a lot of the most contested aspects of breast-feeding-- public breastfeeding, this aspect is interesting especially for me right now, following a recent scandal in my college's town where a daycare owner asked mothers not to breastfeed in the public space of the daycare for the comfort of fathers and grandparents (yeah I know, right?) In general, I felt the film presented a lot of different people in very different situations and their experiences breastfeeding, or choosing not to, and I definitely recommend it for those interested whether in lactation as a political resistance of mothers to the demands of capitalism, or just for those interested in breastfeeding themselves.

Mostly though, fuck capitalism.

-M