4
Breastfeeding


Sperm Whales

A perforation of turbulence interrupts the otherwise tranquil blue sea. The anomalous patch is caused by boxlike faces cutting in and out of the water. Amid the froth, a pale floating line appears: the umbilical cord of a newborn Sperm Whale. The mother gently lifts her baby’s body to the water’s surface for his first breath of air. She then slowly guides the baby to meet each member in the circle of family. In an exquisite coordinated gesture, the infant finds his mother’s nipple, fits his mouth, and begins to nurse.

 

Far off the Spanish and African coasts lies a remarkable archipelago, a group of islands called the Azores. On the surface, they are no more remarkable than any other distant isle, but something about them pulls the eye, like a magnet, to venture beyond the cover of ocean glass to the depths below. It is here, where sunlight grows dim and dark replaces dazzle, that you find the ancient birthing waters of giant Whales.

These waters are a meeting place of many kinds. The islands are located along a triple tectonic junction where three plates come together: the North American, African, and Eurasian. Millions of years ago, ascending molten mantle plumes pushed through the poorly stitched tectonic seam to form a beaded string of volcanic isles as the triple junction migrated north.¹ Around this seismic diverging convergence is another intersection, the nexus of cold and warm ocean currents that cultivates a superrich chain of food for marine life, including the Sperm Whale.

Sperm Whales belong to the order Cetacea. The name comes from the Greek word for “huge fish,” and indeed they are. Males reach eighty feet (twenty-four meters) in length and weigh in at one hundred thousand pounds (45,359 kilograms), and the relatively smaller females can reach an eye-opening forty-five feet (almost fourteen meters) and thirty thousand pounds (13,607 kilograms). Along with Dolphins, Porpoises, and Orcas, Sperm Whales belong to the suborder Odontoceti, toothed Whales. In contrast to their food-sifting cousins, Blue Whales, Sperm Whales and the other odontocetes are armed with an effective set of conical teeth and a sophisticated sonar system, enabling them to pursue, catch, and chomp their food.

Each day, adult Sperm Whales consume nearly a ton of Squids, Octopuses, and Sharks, a quantity comparable to the weight of their own newborns. To catch their food, Sperm Whales can dive as deep as 1.9 miles (three kilometers) and hold their breath for up to two hours. They have the largest brain of any Animal on the planet.² Their very big brains, combined with a cranial “melon” (or “junk”) composed largely of fat and connective tissue, give rise to the Sperm Whales’ distinctive box-shaped head.³

In terms of social and ecological habits, Sperm Whales and Elephants have much in common, exhibiting a “colossal convergence.”⁴ The organizing nucleus of both Elephant and Sperm Whale societies is the natal family, a group of closely connected, related adult females and variously gendered youngsters who travel, eat, and rest in contact with other families.⁵ Although they are Mammals, Sperm Whales have some precocial traits; for example, newborn Sperm Whales can swim up to hundreds of miles on their own power during their first week of life.⁶ Nonetheless, they are also altricial. Much of Sperm Whale culture revolves around the birthing and care of babies. Like the allocare culture of the Efé in the Ituri Rainforest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo,⁷ and nomadic foraging peoples in general,⁸ Sperm Whales are immersed in the accompaniment of many.

They spend the majority of their time together, in intimate contact. Every day, often in the afternoon, Sperm Whales stop their diving activities for about six hours and gather together in tight, slow-moving clusters at the surface.⁹ “During these times,” according to researchers Linda Weilgart, Hal Whitehead, and Katy Payne, “the whales often touch and move about one another, sometimes caressing each another with their flippers and jaws.”¹⁰ Critically, these activities are carefully designed to maintain infant care continuity. When, for example, the family is out on expeditions to find Octopus and Squid, adult and juvenile Whales “stagger” dives so that younger Whales who are not yet able to make the forty-plus-minute foraging dives are always accompanied.¹¹ Allomothers help nurse and tend to baby when biological mothers are gathering food, engaged in other activities, or too ill to nurse. According to Hal Whitehead, who has studied Sperm Whales for decades, compared to other species there is “a big difference in the degree of allonursing in sperm whales. The infant sperm whale typically suckles off a number of females.”¹² Sperm Whales are “a kind of poster child for allosuckling” because half of all calves observed suckle from “at least 1-2 non-mothers.”¹³ Similar to the weaning of our human ancestors, Sperm Whale weaning takes place after four years of age or when the first adult molar appears.¹⁴

At some point, when internal clocks begin to quicken, young male Whales leave the matrilineal family to swim forth and explore wild waters where they join southerly “bachelor” groups.¹⁵ Although they roam quite widely to the edges of the ice,¹⁶ and distances between individuals are significant compared with the spatially tightly knit natal family, male Sperm Whales form deep, long-term relationships with each other.¹⁷ Their keen click communication system, which allows them to hear one another at distances of up to six miles (almost ten kilometers), maintains connection in the absence of sight.¹⁸ At any sign of threat or distress, such as danger from Orcas or human hunters, Sperm Whales respond at high speed. In preparation for and during an attack, they may form a “marguerite,” a circle of protection, where the Whales face inward like petals on a daisy.¹⁹ If one of their family is injured, others remain, often with fatal consequences.²⁰

Sperm Whales remind us that differences in outward appearances can belie internal psychological and physiological commonalities. We share much more with this immense, sensitive being than our physiognomy suggests. For one, humans and Sperm Whales possess the innate response, predating the Dinosaurs, to be close to a maternal physical form. Like Salmon drawn to natal streams, we return to source, often the arms and breasts that first gave us life. This ancestral pull can show up at any and all points in life, particularly when a profound vulnerability reminiscent of being a newborn is experienced. As a seasoned Elephant sanctuary worker commented: “In all my rescue work, I have only known a handful of times when an Animal in need does not gladly warm to being held, their head resting on my chest. Even someone as large as a Horse or Elephant instinctively yearns for the reassurance of being held to a mother’s breast. I have experienced the same thing with gravely wounded humans, many close to death, who finally relax and rest when their head and shoulders are held in the protection and love they received as a baby.”²¹

Nursing is an extension of life in the womb. Before birth, the embryo is an integral unit enmeshed inside his mother, completely engulfed with love and buffered from external stressors. Until newborn Mammals emerge from their mothers’ wombs, they are sustained by uninterrupted nourishment transfused into their bodies through the mother-child interface organ, the placenta. The placenta delivers nutrients and oxygen to the embryo from the mother’s bloodstream and, in reverse, removes wastes via the umbilical cord.

Inside mother, the baby knows no danger. At birth, however, everything changes. From a realm of safety and nurturance, the baby is pushed into an unknown void outside. In response to the abrupt shift from unity to separation, there is an immediate effort to restore union. Infant-initiated connection and nursing are among the first gestures of agency in a newborn. Under natural conditions, mothers instinctively move to protect and feed their young, and babies seek that same connection, as part of the continuing maternal body-to-body biochemical signaling that supports healthy development during early life years.

The first food for Mammalian young is the gift of milk. Breastfeeding is an intricate, interactive process of “need-receive” communications between a mother and her baby. In a universal gesture, Animal young sidle up to mother and, by pressing their heads against her body, tell her, “Mother, I want some milk—now.” In naturalistic human births at full term, where there is no or minimal involvement from institutionalized procedures, a human baby instinctively moves to reach mother’s breast, pushing and pulling himself along in search of reconnection by crawling up to find and massage a nipple. After a few moments of licking the nipple, the child actively milks the breast, drawing in the areola and the nipple to the back of his mouth.

Milk and its delivery are seamlessly coupled. As we saw at the Sheldrick Trust, in most cases Elephant orphans are instinctively drawn to the triad of carer, nipple-bottle of constructed formula, and blanket that must serve as a makeshift, make-do substitute for an Elephant mother. As Daphne Sheldrick describes it, “Each elephant hones in on its particular spot, knowing exactly which bottle is his or hers. Some hold the bottle themselves, curling their trunk around it and tipping it up until it is drained, downing the contents greedily before waiting for the keeper to hand them another.”²² Reunion after birthing separation among Sperm Whales is also, as D. H. Lawrence writes, immediate and love-infused, in which “enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-tender young and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of the beginning and the end.”²³

Evolution has matched breast, body, and milk to fit every variation of the species’ theme. The coevolved milk-mammary-mouth architecture is a beautiful, efficient nursing system designed to optimize baby-mother connection. Unlike human nipples, however, those of mother Sperm Whales do not protrude, and in lieu of arms, baby Whales are held in the fluid embrace of the sea, mother’s touch, and family. To nurse, an infant Whale presses up and nudges his mother’s body. Stimulated by her baby’s communiqué, a mother Sperm Whale’s nipples emerge from mammary slits. At the same time, the infant rolls his tongue into a U shape so that it wraps perfectly around the nipple. Mother’s nipple muscles relax, milk begins to flow, and the baby suckles.²⁴ This time-tested fit allows baby to take in thick, nutritious milk without it being seriously diluted or dispersed. Mother’s milk is not to be wasted.

Lactation—the making and provisioning of secretions for young Animals—is an ancient phenomenon that has been a part of Nature for more than three hundred million years.²⁵ Each species has evolved its own milk recipe with varying amounts of fats, sugars, and proteins that, detail by detail, mirror the ecology of the world in which the baby will grow, mature, and participate. Infants separated from mother for hours or days at a time—like Lions and Wolves, who use protein as an energy source—tend to receive thick, protein-rich milk, while those in continuous contact with their mothers—like Red Kangaroos and Bears—tend to receive less concentrated nutrients.²⁶ Primates, who grow slowly and stay with their mothers for extended periods of time and feed frequently, have lactose-rich milk. Human milk, with 3–5 percent fat,²⁷ and that of Black Rhinoceroses are on the thin side relative to other species, such as the Sperm Whale, at 35–50 percent.²⁸ Sperm Whales have evolved to thrive on a milk diet higher in carbohydrates and lower in fat content than, for example, Harbor Seals. Young Seals nurse for six weeks on a fat-saturated milk (60 percent)²⁹ before they wean and can begin catching and eating Fish on their own.³⁰ The length of time spent breastfeeding in the human species lineage has increased as evolution has progressed. Our Homo ancestors, for example, breastfed for years longer than our extinct relations Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus, who weaned after a few months.³¹

If Daphne Sheldrick’s coconut-based formula had not matched Elephant milk closely enough, it would not have been possible for her and the other carers to save as many rescued infant Elephants as they have. Still, even a carefully prepared formula cannot come close to the real thing. A formula can serve in emergency situations to bridge a baby from certain death to resuscitation, but it lacks the vital ingredients of a species-typical breast milk that includes, for example, appropriate proportions of amino acids and bacteria for the developmental stage and state of the child. Modern breast milk replacements have typically lacked many key ingredients that breast milk provides.³²

Mammal milk is filled with species-designed enzymes, hormones, and immunoglobulins that promote the health and development of an infant’s brain and other body systems.³³ Breast milk builds the immune system, which for humans takes five or six years to reach adult levels.³⁴ Its content is 80 percent alive,³⁵ containing digestive enzymes and other factors that feed the gut’s microbiome to build the immune system and foster healthy digestion.³⁶ Colostrum, a mother’s first milk, and breast milk are particularly important early on because infants do not have the enzymes to properly digest anything else until several months after birth.³⁷

Importantly, breast milk amino acids can cross the blood-brain barrier, and in so doing they create a “brain bath” of hormones needed for neuroendocrine and neurotransmitter system development.³⁸ In the first year of life, the human brain doubles in size with the expectation of receiving human breast milk loaded with the right proportions of oligosaccharides, enzymes, and amino acids. Major advances in the field of glycomics have allowed increasing insight into breast milk composition. One finding shows that human milk appears to have more soluble oligosaccharides of greater complexity than any other Animal milk.³⁹ An infant who is fed formula misses out on these healthy brain- and body-building ingredients that contribute so significantly to short- and long-term health.⁴⁰ Through breastfeeding, epigenetic effects take place that decrease the child’s stress reactivity.⁴¹

Adiponectin, for example, which is available in breast milk but not in formula, affects how the body processes sugars and fatty substances in the blood, and is associated with lower levels of obesity.⁴² Breast milk fats and cholesterol co-occur with specific enzymes, such as lipase, that break down fats and carry vitamins and minerals that are more readily absorbed than those included in formulas. While formula manufacturers continue to add certain ingredients to their products in attempts to match breast milk, these formulae are not derived from human sources; nor are they systematically monitored for safety and effectiveness.⁴³ Mothers’ milk, however, is not just about basic nutrition; there are more dimensions to nursing and milk that reveal the intricacy of evolution’s design.

Mother’s milk is minutely tailored and individualized to meet a baby’s specific developmental arc and environmental setting at the moment of need. This precision is essential. With signals from the baby’s saliva, for example, the mother’s breasts change milk composition, thereby increasing fat content during periods of growth spurts or creating antibodies to guard against infectious agents.⁴⁴ Not only does the breast produce different milks depending on the biological sex of the baby;⁴⁵ breast milk composition also varies throughout the day, such as in the case of tryptophan levels.⁴⁶

Tryptophan is an amino acid linked to the sleep-wake cycle and is a precursor to serotonin, an ancient molecule common to vertebrates and invertebrates that is associated with learning speed⁴⁷ and self-regulation, like food intake. Serotonin is released via the brain stem with a key form (5-HT) that resides primarily in the gut, where it is modulated by the microbiome that breast milk populates and feeds, as part of the gut-brain axis.⁴⁸ In early life, tryptophan ingestion leads to more serotonin receptor development.⁴⁹ At night, breast milk contains more tryptophan and amino acids that promote serotonin synthesis.⁵⁰ Only recently have infant formulas started to include tryptophan.

When we start to map the “rhythms” of various vitamins, hormones, and other breast milk ingredients, it is astounding to discover the intricate timetable that mother’s milk composition follows. Mother’s milk directly from the breast is synchronous with the circadian cycle, which enables baby to recognize night and day and behave accordingly.⁵¹ Cortisol, a mobilizing hormone, is almost three times higher in morning milk than in evening milk. On the other hand, levels of melatonin, a hormone secreted by the pineal gland at night that aids sleep and digestion, are negligible in mother’s milk during the day but increase as night unfolds. Night milk also contains higher levels of certain DNA building blocks that help promote healthy sleep. Day milk, however, has more activity-promoting amino acids. Iron contained in milk peaks at around noon, and vitamin E peaks in the evening. Minerals such as magnesium, zinc, potassium, and sodium are all highest in the morning. Key antibodies and white blood cells that fortify the immune system are also much higher during the day.

All these differences reflect the tight coupling between parent, baby, and Nature. The synesthesia that a child experiences when breastfeeding—smell, touch, taste, sight, balance—merges with their relational connection to their first “other,” the mother. This experience promotes a sense of unity and oneness in multiplicity.⁵² Perinatal neuroscientist Nils Bergman, cofounder of the Kangaroo Mother Care movement, describes it this way: “Breastfeeding is a behaviour which shapes and sculpts the brain and that brain shaping stays for life. Skin-to-skin contact is what the newborn requires in order for the brain to be shaped in the best possible way, and breastfeeding in the fullest sense is not about eating, but about brain growth, and the development of good relationships.”⁵³

Many other aspects of breastfeeding dynamics directly relate to brain development. Human newborn brains start out at no more than 25 percent of adult brain volume, and they more than double in volume in the first year.⁵⁴ Over one million neuronal connections per second grow during that time period, requiring a constant intake of calories to build a healthy brain and body.⁵⁵ To accomplish this, Nature has created a number of strategies in addition to milk composition specificity.

During suckling, for example, the human tongue, lower lip, mandible, and hyoid bone coordinate together as an “oral motor organ.” Nursing promotes proper facial, jaw, and tooth morphology, unlike bottle-feeding, which can impair such morphology and lead to sleep and orthodontic issues in later life.⁵⁶ While nursing and cuddling, baby and mother bodies spontaneously move and mold together, their heartbeats coming into synchronous rhythm. Breastfeeding promotes proper motor development, better sleeping patterns, psychosocial development, and other critical areas of early infant development.⁵⁷

Human babies are born with a subcortical brain that operates automatically, but postnatal care is needed to expand and refine cortical control. Because babies don’t breathe in the womb, newborns must learn to shift from their inborn subcortical system to an externally learned cortical control. Some babies do not achieve this milestone, which, if not practiced and mastered, increases the chance of death.⁵⁸ Breastfeeding offers a holistic way for babies to learn to cortically control the flexibility of using the nose or mouth for breathing. This helps a baby learn how to alternate from using the mouth to the nose as needed in a given situation. Breastfeeding on request provides the necessary scaffolding to learn to live (breathe) outside the womb. This technique is best facilitated by what biological anthropologist James McKenna calls “breastsleeping”: breastfeeding while safely sharing a bed.⁵⁹ Through the mechanisms of breastfeeding alongside the mother’s body rhythms, the human infant learns to breathe, and breathe deeply. It’s a brand-new skill acquired after spending nine months as a fetus receiving oxygen through the red blood cells of the liver. While bottle-feeding delays this development,⁶⁰ babies who are not breastfed can receive similar scaffolding through extensive carrying, holding,⁶¹ and safe co-sleeping.⁶²

Breastfeeding matters for mothers, too, with long-term health benefits such as decreased risk of cardiovascular disease,⁶³ diabetes,⁶⁴ and stroke,⁶⁵ and less cognitive decline.⁶⁶ It also has immediate beneficial effects. Just after birth, when a newborn licks their mother’s nipple, oxytocin is released into mother’s bloodstream, causing the uterus to contract and expel the placenta, decreasing the chance of hemorrhage.⁶⁷ Whether she is a Sperm Whale, Bear, or human, a mother’s prolactin and oxytocin prepare and stimulate her breasts to let down milk, simultaneously providing oxytocin to the infant. Suckling also increases prolactin. Facilitated by estrogen, prolactin increases with maternal caregiving behavior.⁶⁸ Sensory input from baby activates specific regions in the brain that contribute to and play important roles in maternal behavior.⁶⁹ Women who breastfeed tend to display more sensitivity to their children over the following ten years.⁷⁰

In many ways, it is more accurate to think of breastfeeding as full-body nourishment. Not only are the milk, function, and shape of a mother’s breast designed for her baby; her breast is part of a partnered constellation of mother-baby mind and body. When we look at artwork from around the world depicting mothers and babies, in most cases the mother will be holding her baby to the left and face-to-face, in what is called a left-cradling bias. This is no random choice; in fact, left-cradling bias is positively related to maternal empathy and inversely related to depression.⁷¹ When a mother left-cradles, her left eye’s visual field and that of the baby are directed toward each other. While activities such as foraging correspond to the brain’s left hemisphere, left-cradling positioning of mother and baby allows for visual information to be readily processed by the brain’s right hemisphere, where most social and emotional learning occurs. Body motion, posture, and geometry affect brain function and development, which in turn affects psychological and emotional states.

Left-cradling is reflective of lateralization, the preferential choice of position for diverse activities experienced and expressed in both vertebrates and invertebrates. Bird infants recognize kin and nonkin through the right brain hemisphere; Coho Salmon, a favorite summer meal of Grizzly Bears, prefer to watch their fellow species-mates with their left eyes. Frog tadpoles do so as well, a choice that positively influences their growth and development.⁷²

Left-sided bias in mother-infant interactions is also found in Whales.⁷³ Belugas, Orcas, and Humpback Whales prefer to travel and nurse on the right side of their mothers, and they reverse to her left side in the presence of a threat, such as a boat.⁷⁴ While left-cradling has not been observed among Sperm Whales, “there is a left-side bias in peduncle diving, which is related to nursing,” probably because, it is speculated, their blowhole position is to the left of center.⁷⁵

In Nature-based human societies, it is common for carers to use all manner of slings, baskets, pouches, and movement to hold their baby while carrying out a task smoothly and safely. Baby is part of it all.⁷⁶ Often, carers wear loose or thin clothing that maintains physical intimacy and skin-to-skin connection.⁷⁷ This coupled closeness satisfies a baby’s need to be sensed and optimizes the opportunity to breastfeed at will, as well as mother’s ability to respond. As soon as she hears or senses her baby lip-smacking, fist-sucking, or rooting to nurse, mother offers her breast. Even older children are carried in ways that allow the mother to work and the child to retain easy access to a breast for suckling.⁷⁸ In some societies, if mother is busy, a grandmother, another female, or even the father will offer a breast for suckling comfort.

Baby-initiated feeding has nearly vanished in modern human societies, causing a deep and growing concern for health professionals. In modern industrialized nations today, breastfeeding only takes place for a brief time, or not at all.⁷⁹ The World Health Organization (WHO), for instance, maintains that “over 820,000 children’s lives could be saved every year among children under 5 years, if all children 0–23 months were optimally breastfed.”⁸⁰ A special panel of scientists convened by preeminent medical journal The Lancet concluded that “children who are breastfed have lower infectious morbidity and mortality, fewer dental malocclusions and increased intelligence, which persists until later in life. There is also growing evidence that breastfeeding protects against overweight and diabetes. . . . Breastfeeding also brings benefits to women, including prevention of breast cancer and birth spacing, as well as likely reductions in diabetes and ovarian cancer.”⁸¹ (Notably, most comparisons are made for three months of feeding practices, not the fuller length of time for which our species evolved.)⁸²

As a global effort to promote breastfeeding, in 1991 the WHO and UNICEF launched the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative.⁸³ In 2011, the US surgeon general mobilized hospitals to become more “baby friendly” in light of the fact that only 4 percent of US hospitals and birthing units were rated as baby friendly.⁸⁴ Baby-friendly practices include immediately allowing mother and child to practice skin-to-skin contact after birth, avoiding certain common practices like giving newborns sugar water (to quiet them) or giving them formula for no medical reason, and making sure medical personnel know how to support breastfeeding. However, in 2022 less than 30 percent of US hospitals were baby friendly.⁸⁵

The movement to promote breastfeeding has been thwarted by pervasive formula marketing designed to “free up” nursing parents, and by the widespread offerings of free formula samples in hospitals and clinics. The WHO created the International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes (i.e., the “Code”) as a way to control advertising for formula that often touted formula feeding as the scientific way to feed infants.⁸⁶ Although the Code was aimed at practices in all countries, its focus was diverted away from practices in high-income countries, and greater attention was paid to lower-income countries. Since then, the World Trade Organization has undermined countries’ ability to enforce the Code.⁸⁷ With an ongoing lack of education about the vital importance of breastfeeding for long-term health combined with the presence of aggressive marketing,⁸⁸ formulas continue to be considered a sufficient replacement for breastfeeding under normal circumstances, rather than being limited to use in emergencies.⁸⁹ In the United States, exclusive breastfeeding rates fall to 25 percent after six months, and only 34 percent of babies are still breastfed at one year.⁹⁰ Parental leave after a new baby is born facilitates breastfeeding, as does the ability to take baby to work, but both options are lacking for most US mothers.⁹¹ In some communities, milk banks⁹² or wet nurses⁹³ are available so that breast milk can be provided to infants whose mothers cannot breastfeed.

The practice of breastfeeding is also hampered by numerous misunderstandings and misperceptions. For instance, there is a common belief that a baby can’t be hungry less than an hour after feeding. Actually, in our ancestral context, young babies fed on average three times an hour. Baby brains are growing millions of synapses a second, and they need the fuel. The young human stomach is tiny, and human milk is thin. Another common belief is that you can overfeed a breastfeeding baby. This is also untrue. Unlike bottle-fed babies who can hardly control the amount of liquid pouring down their throats, breastfeeding babies have control over how much they eat and will not overeat. Feeding a baby not when they are hungry but according to a schedule is a dangerous practice that has led to many infant deaths.⁹⁴ Putting baby on a schedule to match the needs of an adult world does not follow Nature’s rhythms.

Scheduled feedings fail to keep in tune with the baby’s metabolism and often make them feel starved, stressed, and that the world is a place of scarcity. A baby’s growing intuition of how to be in the world, as well as their know-how for getting what they need at the right time—whether it be affection, hormones, lactose, or antibodies to fight a local infection—is disrupted. Anthropologist Ashley Montagu explains how scheduled feedings are detrimental to babies: “They deprive the infant of the feeling that it was his own signals that resulted in the satisfaction of his hunger. Disregard of his signals discourages, and he tends to lose the impulse to develop the mental and emotional techniques for handling the environment, and thus for the adequate development of self and personality.”⁹⁵ Baby-initiated breastfeeding is vital for optimal psychosocial development, self-confidence, and motivation.

Restricting feeding time also affects milk content. The milk at the front of the breast, the first to come out when the baby suckles, is like an appetizer—tantalizing, but lacking the punch of calories and nutrients of the “hind” milk, the flow of milk that follows. As a consequence, restricting the amount of time a baby is allowed to suckle on each breast restricts the baby’s access to the richer hind milk. The breasts misinterpret what is going on—they receive the signal that less milk should be prepared—so natural milk composition and flow are disrupted. Nursing a baby from two breasts is like feeding them “two servings of soup and no main course,” according to developmental psychologist Penelope Leach.⁹⁶ If milk accumulates in the breast and the breast is not emptied, that inhibits the production of more milk, which can happen if an infant favors one breast over another.⁹⁷ Milk buildup in a breast can lead to mastitis, an inflammation of milk ducts.⁹⁸

When feedings are controlled and limited, a baby may fail to take in enough calories, and the breasts will decrease their supply. This deficit is particularly acute during growth spurts. Milk mistiming can cause a cascade of problems. If mothers do not understand the importance of baby-initiated feeding and its frequency, they may feel like they don’t have enough milk or that something is “wrong” with the baby or the milk itself. When a baby’s desire for frequent feeding is misinterpreted as a mother’s inability to provide sufficient milk, the mother may feel inadequate or think she needs to supplement with formula. Decreased natural milk supply confuses and confounds the baby’s natural nutritional rhythms. Digestive difficulties may develop and precipitate further dissonance, such as the decoupling of weaning and maturing systems that otherwise cultivate a baby’s deep sense of living in an “expectable environment” where needs are met without significant delay.

With regard to learning natural mother-baby breastfeeding, it is crucial not to approach it like a schoolroom lesson. If it is a lesson, then it is a lesson more akin to learning a dance of relaxation in repose. When the baby feels mother relax, the baby will follow suit. With this attitude, a mother will be able to pick up on details that need attention. If a baby struggles to breastfeed, the cause may derive from a tongue or lip tie and may thus require remedying. A newborn may be too lethargic to breastfeed and may need special assistance if drugs were used during labor, because a baby’s organs are not sufficiently developed to eliminate toxins for several weeks. Epidurals (pain medications for the mother during labor) can impede breastfeeding initiation and length.⁹⁹

Although breastfeeding is adaptive, there has been a significant loss of breastfeeding wisdom. The absence of mothers who model breastfeeding to the young at home and in public to demonstrate its normalcy has created a gap in breastfeeding knowledge. Breastfeeding parents and babies often require practice and guidance provided by experienced mothers, elders, or other mothering accompaniers. The journey to breastfeeding is one of mutual benefit for baby and mother that must be supported by the community. Communal companionship care helps fill any gaps a mother may not be able to address.

Mother’s milk is just one way that companionship care of the evolved nest brings a baby’s entire system in harmony with Nature and optimizes health and well-being. When a baby can suckle at will, the baby’s communications and needs can be immediately “heard” and responded to. A mother’s responsive feedback fosters a baby’s first sense of self-efficacy, an understanding that they can have an effect in the world. The coupling of a baby’s and mother’s rhythms through breastfeeding bridges the temporary gap created in the shift from womb to world, and connectivity is maintained. At the moment suckling begins, the baby experiences being part of Nature’s cycles and the ethos of kinship with all. In the Andean Quechuan understanding of life, a baby becomes, as anthropologist Christine Greenway puts it, part of a “cosmology in which bodies and spirits are intertwined with mountains and stars in webs of reciprocal duties.”¹⁰⁰