Incest Breastfeeding Stories

Incest Breastfeeding Stories

News & Politics

Culture

Food

Science & Health

Life Stories

Video

About

Profile
Login/Sign Up
Sticky Header: off
Night Mode: off
Saved Articles
Go Ad-Free
Logout

Sticky Header

Night Mode

Published March 2, 2009 9:10AM (EST)

Related Topics ------------------------------------------
Love And Sex
Motherhood
New Mom Confessions
Sex

On Thanksgiving Day my boyfriend walked out the door. Our daughter was seven months old, and I'll never know for sure what put him over the edge. He was bipolar. He drank. He was fragile. He didn't leave a forwarding address.
This was a time when I believed that love would overcome anything. Well, it certainly overcame me. The very first thing I did, even before crying, was to sit down on the living room rug and nurse my daughter, M. Nursing was my landing pad. It was the place where my milk could turn my anger into white, warm calmness. Nursing had the same soothing effect on my baby, no matter how hungry, agitated, red-faced and cranky she was at the start. Nothing beat nursing.
No matter how alone I felt, those times that M. lay on my chest, her tiny hands kneading my breasts, milk flowing from me, I knew that I could do this alone. Not only did nursing nourish M., it nourished me. But it wasn't long after her father split town -- as M.'s first birthday approached without a sign from him, I knew he wasn't coming back -- that friends started to ask me, "When are you going to get back out there?"
As in date? They had to be kidding. Not only was I a 29-year-old single mom with dishes in the sink and baby clothes with stains I'd never actually scrub out, but I breastfed "on demand." How in the world could I even think about hooking up with some hot man when my cha-chas were making milk?
"But look at you!" my girlfriends (who were all married) said to me. "You’re attractive, and you're young."
Maybe they were right. About getting back out there, anyway. As the months passed, I started to notice men: our building manager -- who gave M. stuffed animals and called her "Little Guacamole" -- and the UPS man, who rolled his packages past me.
Still, noticing men in the hallway was not the same as dating them. I'm grateful that back then I did not sit down at my computer and type lactating and dating into Google. If I had, I never would have gone on a date. Because recently, while writing this essay, I turned to my computer to do some research, in hopes of finding a thoughtful example of what it means to balance these two acts. I hoped to come across a first-person essay in Redbook about a mother's deep feelings, something to inspire me as I worked.
One of the first things that came up, however, was a site called MilkMyTits.com. Men were looking for "mature women willing to breastfeed me."
Gross. I kept scrolling through the sites that Google brought up; there had to be something. But they were all the same: white men in their forties, in search of sweet breast milk. My breasts had always been one of the most sensual parts of me. Before motherhood, when a man put his lips around my nipple, it made my body rain -- not a light sprinkle, either. If I slept with a man as a nursing mom, my breasts would rain on him. Perhaps, after undressing, I could open my closet, pull out an umbrella, and hand it to him: "You might need this ..."
I couldn't remember if I'd slept with M.'s father in the weeks before he'd left for good. If I had, I didn't remember the details. He was shut down and hungover; I was absorbed with my baby. I lived in the world of womanhood for years, and now I was a mother. But who says that you can't live in both worlds? Some mothers I knew wore bras to bed because they didn't want to leak on the mattress -- or their husbands. That's how they divided their realms. But I wanted to be a woman who lived in both worlds; I wanted to be the kind of woman who didn't care if she spurted.
One of my best friends in New York City told me that she wanted to set me up on a blind date. Ironically, she was the same friend who, in 2002, was thrown out of the public library in Manhattan for breastfeeding her daughter. She'd been nursing in an empty reading room, when a female security guard screamed at her to "take that outside." The guard didn't know that my friend, Susan Light, was a lawyer who took it straight to the media, after which the library expressed "deep regret" over the incident and immediately sent a memo to remind staff of the right of women to breastfeed.
"I want to date, but I can't," I told my friend.
"What would I wear?" I huffed. "A nursing bra?"
"No, really," I said. "I'd have to bring my pump along, for after my drink."
Little did my mother-friend know that the blind date she wanted to set me up with might have had a breastfeeding fetish. She told me that he was a lawyer, too, "a cute one." After chatting on the phone with the lawyer -- his call woke me as I fell asleep while nursing M. in the bed we share -- I decided to go for it. I've always considered myself to be open-minded about anything intimate. Maybe I was rebelling against my Catholic mother, but I certainly was not a prude. I decided that I'd keep the date short and sweet -- and I'd nurse before leaving so (I hoped) I wouldn't leak.
The following Friday, after enlisting another girlfriend to baby-sit, I dashed out the door to meet the lawyer at a bar. When I got inside, he waved. I didn't see the cuteness -- he had a receding hairline -- but maybe I was too nervous.
Still, he did the right thing: He asked if I had a photo of M., and when I pulled one from my wallet, he used the word adorable.
"She is," I said. "I'm late because I was nursing her before bed --"
That's when I noticed the sparkle in his eyes. Maybe I'd misread? But no.
"A woman who's lactating!" he said, way too loudly. "What a turn-on!"
I waited for the punch line, but he was not joking. I've always had this untactful knack for blurting out details that shock people -- I do it without thinking. Why did I tell him that I was breastfeeding? Nursing was such an essential part of who I was, it was like telling someone, "The sitter was running late, I'm sorry --"
It's always after the fact when I realize I should be wearing a soft muzzle. The lawyer's enthusiasm was a sure giveaway that I'd said too much. I didn't know if I should crawl under the table or give him a high-five. Was I flattered or freaked out? Or a little of both?
But the truth was, if any possible romantic date of mine was squeamish about the fact that I was breastfeeding, I did need to know this up front. I mean, if I hadn't said anything, and then all of a sudden he looked down and noticed the wet spots on my blouse, that would have been interesting.
If you've ever breastfed, you know that just thinking about nursing can, well, have certain consequences. My breasts were flooding with milk. I had no control over it, and when I looked down, there was a damp spot on my chest.
Maybe it was all in the name of discovery, but perhaps more important, I liked the fact that this man acknowledged who I was: a woman as well as a nursing mother. He could have overlooked that wet spot on my blouse. He could have glanced at his watch, embarrassed, and said, "I'd better get home."
At the time I wasn't interested in having him -- or anyone, for that matter -- as a companion. I was an unseasoned single mom who was trying to get over her ex. I was still trying to get a handle on raising my daughter solo. I wasn't ready for a relationship. But I did crave sex. And I was curious. I wanted to know what it felt like to have a man drink my milk.
Afterwards, when I told a couple of friends what had happened, they scrunched their noses up. "You let him do what ?”
Much to the dismay of my girlfriend who was babysitting, I brought him home. As my daughter slept in the other room, I let him unbutton my blouse and run his mouth across the edge of my bra. I let him touch me. When I started to leak, he was ecstatic. He told me that he'd never tasted anything so sweet in his life. (Yes, I wondered if, maybe, his mother had never breastfed him.) But this is what mattered most: He wanted me as I was, and I didn’t have to hide any of it.
Rachel Sarah’s book "Single Mom Seeking: Playdates, Blind Dates and Other Dispatches from the Dating World" was published in 2007. Rachel is the single-mom columnist for LifetimeTV.com, and she has written for Family Circle, Pregnancy, Parenting, Literary Mama, BabyCenter.com and American Baby.

Copyright © 2022 Salon.com, LLC. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. SALON ® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon.com, LLC. Associated Press articles: Copyright © 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Light

Dark

Auto

Slow Burn: Roe v. Wade
Highland Park
Brittney Griner
Inflation
Jan. 6
Guns
Monkeypox
Thor: Love and Thunder

Light

Dark

Auto

About

About Us
Work With Us
Contact
Pitch Guidelines
Send Us Tips
Corrections
Commenting
Reprints

Subscriptions

Subscribe
Sign In
Account
Subscription FAQs
Podcast FAQs
Newsletters
Customer Support

Advertising

Site Advertising
Podcast Advertising
AdChoices
Cookie Preferences

Get Dear Prudence delivered to your inbox each week; click here to sign up. Please send your questions for publication to prudence@slate.com . (Questions may be edited.)
Got a burning question for Prudie? She’ll be online at Washingtonpost.com to chat with readers each Monday at 1 p.m. Submit your questions and comments here before or during the live discussion.
Dear Prudence,
My mom let me and my brother breast-feed until we were each about 5 years old. She let us touch and play with her breasts for years after that. She never told us what sex was, and later when I found out, I felt revulsion at the memories of how I touched, and wanted to touch, my own mother. Now I’m 18, a senior in high school, and I have a little sister who’s 9 years old. Mom breast-fed her until really late, and now my sister feels my mother’s breasts the way my brother and I did. My sister is my mom’s last child, and my mother persists in treating her as a baby. My mother refuses to consider she could be encouraging inappropriate impulses in my sister. When I tell my mother that I’m grossed out and that my sister’s too old for this, she won’t listen. But I don’t want my sister to have the same revulsion at her own memories and confused feelings that I suffered. I’m so disgusted it’s keeping me up at night. What should I do?
Dear No More,
I hope you missed the newsstands last week and didn’t see the cover of Time featuring a young mother with an almost 4-year-old latched to her breast. That picture would have given you some traumatic flashbacks. I’m not insinuating that women who breast-feed their children past toddlerhood are doing something wrong. It’s your description of the postweaning, clearly sexual breast fondling that is alarming. Your mother sounds like a sexual predator disguising herself as the ultimate attachment parent. Because there are so many more male molesters, it’s easier for sick women to get away with it. Being an earth mother is the perfect ruse that allows your mother to use her own children to gratify her disturbed impulses. It’s awful to look back on your childhood with shame, but it’s a good thing that you feel revulsion for what happened to you. It shows you are able to distinguish appropriate boundaries, see how you were manipulated, and mourn for your childhood. You don’t mention a father (or fathers), so I’ll assume he is not in the picture to provide help. As painful as it is to contemplate turning your mother in to the authorities, for the sake of your sister, that’s what’s you should do. But it would be best if you had some adult support in taking that step, which will be a life-changer for everyone in your family, perhaps in the most positive way if you mother gets some help. You could go directly to Child Protective Services, but as an interim step consider making an appointment to talk to your sister’s pediatrician, who perhaps is still your doctor, too. You might be more comfortable talking first to a professional who is familiar with your family. The pediatrician will be a mandated reporter, which means she or he will be required to forward any suspicion of abuse. You should continue your healing with a therapist who specializes in sexual mistreatment. This should help you feel comfortable with the normal sexual impulses your mother cruelly exploited.
Dear Prudence,
About a year ago my mother-in-law passed away and left us her house, which is within walking distance of ours. We decided to sell the property, and since it’s in superb condition, all we need to do is box up my mother-in-law’s belongings. My wife still misses her mother and finds it too difficult to spend much time there, and I’m busy with work, so the responsibility has fallen on our 15-year-old son, “Brandon.” During the course of packing, Brandon found a box of old videotapes and inserted one into her VCR. He discovered that his grandparents had been swingers for years. Brandon has already told his older sister, which I am furious about, and the two of them want to tell their mother. I want to throw the tapes on a pile and set them ablaze, but my children have convinced me that it is not my right. They say their mom should be told, and it should be her decision what to do with the tapes. Am I right for not wanting my wife to know about this? I certainly wouldn’t want to know if it were my parents.
Dear Reruns,
A while back I had a letter from a widow who couldn’t bear to dispose of the erotic tape she and her husband had made but was afraid that if she didn’t, her children might find it when she was gone. It’s too bad your mother-in-law didn’t follow the brilliant advice suggested by readers for elders with similar memorabilia: Label the tapes “Matlock, Seasons 1-4.” That way the kids will dispose of them without being tempted to look. How shocking for your son to discover that his grandparents carried on like Dominique Strauss-Kahn on a business trip . It’s good news that he was apparently amused, not traumatized, by this revelation. Stop being furious at Brandon for telling his sister. The poor kid had to let someone know that Grammy and Grampy did more in the rec room than host bridge tournaments. It’s rather sweet that your children think their mother should decide whether she wants to track her parents’ aging by watching 20 years of their orgies. I agree she surely doesn’t want to know, but now that everyone else in the in the family does, it’s not going to work to keep this a secret. Think of how baffled she’ll be when her children snicker every time she mentions how devoted her parents were to each other. Tell your kids you’ll take care of informing their mother. Then say to her that Brandon found a box of videos at his grandmother’s house, he looked at one, and it was an erotic tape of her parents. (You don’t have to reveal there was a substantial cast of characters.) Chances are she’ll ask you to dispose of the entire oeuvre. Then you can tell your kids this is one of those things that they have to keep private, and if you hear them blabbing about it, you’ll make them watch the sex tapes of you and their mother.
Dear Prudence,
The other night, after a few drinks, a colleague told me that our boss had been very upset with me because of the birthday present I gave him last year. I was completely shocked. It was a nice fountain pen, but he said I was “cheap.” I have never even been greeted for my birthday all the years I’ve worked for him, and he expects an expensive gift for his birthday? Worse still is that he bad-mouthed me behind my back and has been giving me the silent treatment since his birthday. Do bosses really expect their workers to shower them with expensive gifts? There are no jobs in the market now, so it is really hard for me to look for a new one. Am I overreacting or should I just pretend I know nothing about this and hope he gets over this?
Dear Cheapskate,
Many workers are putting up with outrageous situations because of the bad economy—let’s include a boss expecting a Rolex and a foot massage on his birthday among them. If you have gotten the silent treatment for months because you got your boss a fountain pen, I’m surprised that this is the first clue you’ve had to alert you that for years you’ve been working for a nut. (No, people don’t give their bosses expensive birthday gifts—the office cupcake break is all anyone should expect.) You should have initiated a conversation with the boss once it became clear that you two have a permanent failure to communicate. It’s a helpful piece of intelligence that the fountain pen is the reason for his ire, but I think that’s information you should keep to yourself. Make an appointment to have a private meeting with him. Say you’ve noticed a change in your previously excellent relationship and you’d like to find out what’s wrong and how you can fix it. If things don’t get better, then take your problem up the ladder (if there is a ladder at your organization). Keep your performance and attitude excellent; you don’t want to provide a substantive reason for your boss to go after you. As much as I hate to say it—because it’s stupid and unfair and almost a form of blackmail—be prepared to invest in something really nice for this jerk’s next birthday, because it will be a small price to pay to make your life better. Let’s hope the job market improves enough so that this will be the last gift for him you have to buy.
Dear Prudence,
This weekend is my graduation from college. Due to personal and financial difficulties, it’s taken me eight years to earn my degree. I realize it’s a silly ceremony that doesn’t mean anything, but I was looking forward to the catharsis of walking the stage and having my friends and family there. I
Aspen Brooks Fuck
Bubble Butt Tranny Tumblr
Girls With Nice Butts

Incest Breastfeeding Stories

Report Page