Jealousy and breasfeeding

I'm late to comment on Erica Jong's article in the New York Times, Is Sex Passé? but one thing jumped out at me: when listing all the various ways that women have supposedly given up sex for motherhood, she says that if you 'breast-feed at all hours' then your partner 'knows your breasts don’t belong to him.'

Well of course he knows that, I thought. He doesn't need me to breastfeed to know that my breasts, like the rest of my body, belongs to nobody but me. Is this real? Do people really think like this? When we're in a committed relationship, do our partners 'own' our bodies?

To some people, it seems so. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on Beliefnet goes so far as to compare breastfeeding to adultery, as the mother 'gives her breasts to her son and takes them away from her husband'. So only one person can use your breasts at once, and if the baby gets them, Dad will just have to go without.

This is partly a problem with the oversexualisation of breasts (as I blogged about before) but I think some of this comes from an over-enthusiastic application of monogamy: for some, sexual exclusivity translates into ownership.

When I ran this idea past my husband, he was genuinely baffled. The idea that my breasts ever 'belonged' to him, as Jong said, or that he might be jealous of our child's access to my breasts was something that hadn't crossed his mind. Of course, seeing as he doesn't ask for exclusive access to any part of my sexuality, it's hardly surprising that non-sexual contact with my body doesn't bother him. But I hope that you don't need to be polyamorous to have a problem with this level of entitlement. Surely you can be monogamous without expecting your partner to actually belong to you?

Ultimately, I don't think this is a problem with monogamy, but I can see that perhaps a more open-minded attitude to relationship structures might help. When, like Jong and Boteach, your monogamous principles are challenged by the normal, healthy act of breastfeeding, it probably isn't the breastfeeding that's causing the problem. If people had a broader view of the different kinds of ways in which we can love, perhaps they'd be able to choose monogamy without feeling conflicted when they use their breasts to care for their child. (And as we're so far away from the WHO's goal of exclusive breastfeeding until 6 months, and continued breastfeeding until at least 2 years, we need all the help we can get.) Then, maybe, we'd be able to ditch the old-fashioned notion that sexuality and motherhood are somehow antithetical.

Body confidence and the lesser-known benefits of monogamy

I've written before about how I liked what pregnancy did to my body. That's really only part of the story: I liked it until the ninth month, and then I was too big to do much, and I got stretch marks.

I thought maybe that I had escaped, but then, only a few weeks away from my due date, they grew like a climbing vine up to my bellybutton. I didn't care that I had put on weight in pregnancy - weight can be lost - but stretch marks are permanent. I was upset, but I pulled myself together and decided that as long as they stayed below my bellybutton, I'd be okay with them.

Of course, they spread above my bellybutton. At 41 weeks pregnant, I had an angry red crack of lighting spreading up from my knickers.

Where polyamory comes into this is with potential new partners, or even current occasional lovers. If Gaius and I were monogamous, I wouldn't need to worry about what anyone else thought of me naked: his would be the only opinion that mattered. And as far as he is concerned, the fact that I carried and birthed his daughter can only make me more beautiful. If our relationship was sexually exclusive, I wouldn't have had any of these wobbles.

And even if Gaius, Jemmy and I were poly-fidelitous, my body troubles would be gone. Jemmy has an exceptionally catholic taste in women (physically, at least) and even if that weren't true, he has always made me feel beautiful for more than just my body. So it wasn't his admiration waning that troubled me either.

The reason for my (rather uncharacteristic) worries was that my two current partners are not "it" for me. New lovers are an unknown quantity. Will they be secretly turned off by my soft, wrinkled belly? Disappointed by my sagging breasts? These are fears that just wouldn't bother me if I were monogamous.

A few days before I actually gave birth, I am ashamed to admit, I obsessed a little bit about all this. After my friend Lori blogged about body confidence, I mentioned that I was dealing with it, and she and another friend were so sweet to me, that I cried. I am pretty sure now that I was actually in early labour at the time, which might explain my emotional knife-edge, but still. Their kind words were very reassuring.

What they told me was something I was trying to convince myself of at the time: our bodies change, but we shouldn't see changes as losing attractiveness, but as the mark of the things we have survived and achieved. They talked about the beauty of laughter-lines, and the story that scars can tell. They were, of course, right. Two months after Small was born, I looked down at my soft, wrinkled belly with its network of scars, thought "fuck it", and bought a bikini.

I still think that there is a chance that new lovers might find my body less appealing than they would have done before the baby. And while that is not ideal, it is okay. Between my lined belly and my lower, softer breasts, I have completely nourished two people for well over a year. My daughter is happy, healthy and thriving because of my body, and these changes will be a permanent reminder of this. I look down at my belly, with its network of scars and think "there was a baby in there", and that is miraculous and wonderful to me. If people can't see that when they look at me, then fuck 'em. I know that my body is amazing.

Breasts

When we discussed breastfeeding in our antenatal classes, we were told that although breastfeeding is perfectly natural, it may take us a little while before we are confident enough to feed our babies in public.  For obvious reasons, it takes a bit of a mental adjustment to think of whapping out one of your tits in Costa Coffee as acceptable behaviour. 

It will surprise no one who knows me well that I made this adjustment very quickly, but then, those who know me well know that nudity is a common side-effect at many of my social gatherings. 

Of course, there is a big difference between getting your boobs out for an orgy, and getting your boobs out to feed your newborn daughter, but even so, I think the orgies made the transition far easier for me.

I began breastfeeding our daughter about 5 minutes after her birth (as soon as she stopped screaming, pretty much).  At this point, with my legs in stirrups, waiting for someone to stitch me up, the relevant area pointing at the door (oh, the glamour of birth), showing a boob to the hospital staff was small potatoes.  Since then, however, I have breastfed her in cafes and pubs, in Sainsbury's, on benches in the middle of the highstreet and last week, in a shoeshop. I would not have been comfortable casually showing my nipples to strangers on the street pre-baby, but I am now.

People who don't have sex with piles of their friends at once (SUCKS TO BE THEM) might be surprised to know that the nudity at our parties is frequently non-sexual. Despite the very open appreciation of people's bodies, hanging out with your top off, or even totally naked, at a sex party is often just relaxed socialising.

I think that having lots of people fondle my breasts at once has, therefore, paradoxically, made me more ready to see my breasts as non-sexual. Not that they aren't still sexy, just that they now have dual purpose. Like a nice pair of legs can be devastatingly sexy, but still useful for walking around and fine to display in public.

But speaking of legs: can you imagine if you had legs your whole life, and your lovers told you how gorgeous they were, and wanted to touch them, but you never used them to walk or run? Finding out that this beautiful part of your body could also be incredibly useful would only enhance your enjoyment of them, surely? The fact that my daughter is not only nourished by my boobs, but is growing and thriving because of what they can do has made me like them more. I'll probably get tired of the leaking and the night-time engorgement eventually, but for now, I'm appreciating my body more than ever, for what it can do, rather than what other people might think of it. And flashing the general public, too.