Comments on: Finally, the post you’ve been waiting for

By: ShelleyK

ShelleyK — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:12:23 +0000

I was never in the same zone of what rose describes but definitely moments of ecstatic pleasure – orgasmic, almost but not quite? Too hard to describe, but immensely pleasurable and wound up in the whole bonding experience but I was lucky in that I had a pretty easy time of it (save for mastistis once – ouch.) I think Kristeva writes about this — and would be worth looking at… It’s interesting the disjuncture that Kate mentions between the hippy-sexy 70s breastfeeding mother imageand the reality here about the low rates of breastfeeding . What’s going on there?

By: kate

kate — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 12:17:36 +0000

It’s amazing how Rose is describing the same event as mine, with such a totally different experience of it. The let down hurt, not all the time, but enough to make me tense up before feeding for the first few months.

By: bluemilk

bluemilk — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 01:14:59 +0000

Thanks for the fascinating responses to this post. Rose – I hoped someone would come through for us and you did. Talk about wired differently – let-downs felt like a dull ache to me. The first many times my baby latched on the “little tug” was a toe-curling pain. Your experience teaches me a big lesson about generalization, I really mustn’t do it. I can relate to your love of breastfeeding in the end though.

Pluckymama – thanks for reminding me about the leaking breasts during sex side of it all too, I should have mentioned that in the post. (Thanks for the tagging, I will get around to responding).

Kate – re. your first comment, I will certainly raise this question if I get a chance to see this academic’s presentation. I agree with you about the unsexiness of the house of a newborn, not the environment to bombard you with sex vibes.

Marcy – thanks for the encouragement to go back and face the topic more head on and thanks for possibly providing the groundwork for people like rose to come forward and illuminate us.

Thanks all for your incredible honesty in response to the topic.

By: rose

rose — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:54:14 +0000

I LOVED breastfeeding. My milk didnt let down properly till I got home from hospital and began to relax. The first two or three let downs gave me orgasms – (too much information?)and even after that the let down remained hugely pleasureable. – I loved the feeling as the baby latched on – the little tug, then the feeling of the milk starting to flow. I still remember the marvel of her tiny mouth, and those little fingers on my breast when I was feeding her – then her milk drunk face as she finished her feed… fifteen years ago, and the memory of it makes me shiver with pleasure.
My partner was pretty much excluded at this time. Long story, but whenever he made me feel bad, I had this astonishing little person to hold – so I let myself disappear into sensuous baby twilight zone.

strange, about eight years after my first, I held a friends newborn, and let him go to sleep held up against my breast. We stayed like that for over an hour. I was thinking about the baby while I was under the shower, and the let down kicked off. Five years of no baby.. and there were beads of milk forming on my nipple.

Dating while i was breastfeeding my third child (!) I found one man was insistant I wean the baby (he told me he only knew one woman who had breastfed longer than six months – and her husband left her. He went because I find oblique threats insulting.) the other man I dated was turned on by it.

By: bluemilk

bluemilk — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 05:56:31 +0000

For those who felt ripped off by the lack of sexy breastfeeding experiences in this post… I went back and tackled that more directly in this follow-up post.
http://bluemilk.wordpress.com/2007/06/21/or-maybe-this-is-the-post-youre-waiting-for/

By: Feminism Friday Round-Up « Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog

Feminism Friday Round-Up « Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 01:52:51 +0000

[...] Bluemilk takes on Sex and Breastfeeding. [...]

By: pluckymama

pluckymama — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 04:21:18 +0000

you’ve been tagged…sorry.

By: kate

kate — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 01:29:18 +0000

Mostly I’m just concentrating on getting the kid fed without a bad attachment that’ll hurt, or getting bitten, which will hurt. On the good days, it’s relaxed (but not relaxing), it’s never been erotic. On the first day my partner was in the bathroom of our room at the birth centre and heard ‘argh getoffgetoffgetoff’. Then there was three months of keeping the nipple sheilds in the right spot.

By: marcys

marcys — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 00:52:45 +0000

When I saw the title of your post, I expected it to be about the erotic feelings that can arise during and as a result of breastfeeding. I didn’t breastfeed my babies, to my everlasting regret, but I did experience a rush of erotic feeling once or twice while holding them close and feeding them by bottle. And I’ve heard many women say breastfeeding turned them on. I raced through your post looking for something about this, but found nothing. Have you never even thought of breastfeeding in this way? Or is the very idea of it anathema to you? I would imagine a lot of women who do experience eroticism while breastfeeding have feelings of shame about it, and need to know it’s a common reaction.

By: kate

kate — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 00:46:48 +0000

My counter to the 1970s ‘breastfeeding is sexy’ stories is that in Australia in the 1970s I believe breastfeeding rates were at an all-time low. There may well have been lots of books around talking the sexy talk, but out in the burbs, most mothers got their kid on the formula pretty quickly. That way of talking about breastfeeding can’t actually have resonated with the populace at large.

I found (and still find at 6 months in to this mothering lark) that the problem is not a lack of libido or desire, which is what I was expecting, but a lack of energy to put it into practice. I think for the bloke, as well as the exhaustion, there was also a terror of getting me pregnant again for the first few months. Because all the care in the world didn’t prevent it from happening once.

There’s also something distinctly unsexy about having baby chuck, breastpads, toys (in the sense of rattles and books with crinkly pages) and milk leaks all over the place.