Breasts Are Amazing
Have you ever walked past a car dealership and marveled at the beauty of the vehicles in the show room (I’m not talking about the Ford Fiesta S); the curves, the roundness of wheels or the vehicle’s headlight positioning? Vehicles are everywhere in North American culture; on billboards, on television, and on the Internet. We use them to sell movies, music and even pizza. Honestly though, behind the heavily marketed veneer of paint and curves, you’ll find processes that are simply amazing! It’s a shame that more people don’t appreciate how incredibly complicated a vehicle is.
I’m not talking about vehicles.
I’m talking about breasts.
Pre-Baby Breast Thinking
Before I had Benjamin, I fell into the ignorant category of thinking “Boobs are, well, boobs.” Growing up, I knew nothing about them other than that they made all the Sean Connery movies my parents watched slightly more tolerable. I grew up in a rural area with only three television channels, so yeah, I watched the Sean Connery movies with my parents. Really, though, Sean Connery is 87… would those twenty something girls in the movies actually like him? Umm, I don’t know.
Anyway, once we had Benjamin and I started reading about breasts and breastfeeding, it was like I popped the hood of a 1921 Helica de Leyat (Google tells me this is a rare car) and realized … “Hey! There is something amazing going on in there!”
Now I know the benefits of breastfeeding have been written to death by media, bloggers, and medical experts. From increasing your baby’s immunity and health all the way to giving the baby the ability to see though walls, the benefits are undeniable. The subject is also wrought with opinions and feelings and I am not trying to write that article again.
Breasts are more than Boobs?
When I realized just how incredibly fine-tuned these puppies are (pun intended), a sense of guilt washed over me about how I have viewed boobs my whole life. I’m not sure how to feel about the guilt. Am I mad at advertising? Am I sad? Like the time I found out that there is a lot more to Macaulay Culkin than the crafty little boy thwarting bad guys in the Home Alone movies? I just don’t know!
All I know is that when Benjamin arrived into this world, without even seeing a single Bud Light commercial, he instinctively knew that boobs are amazing.
He knew how to find them by the visual cues of the darkened areola and by the smell of secreting milk and colostrum. When Benjamin latched, his saliva sent information to the boobs about his nutrition and health needs. A Science News article that I read explained it best.
“Part of the immunity that breast milk imparts, it seems, may depend in part on a mixture of milk and baby saliva flowing upstream. This backwash may actually cause a mother’s body to create made-to-order immune factors that are delivered back to the baby in milk.” *
The information didn’t stop there. Because Benjamin was born with a lack of understanding between day and night, my wife’s breast milk apparently has “naturally occurring chemicals called nucleotides that have previously been linked to sleepiness and only reach their highest concentrations in human breast milk that is expressed at night.” **.
Thankfully, this stage is over but Benjamin used to use his mother’s breasts for comfort when he was upset and to calm himself to sleep. His mama’s breasts detect his body temperature and adjust accordingly to heat him up or cool him down.
They are, in a word, amazing!
Final Thought on Breasts
After witnessing all the wonderful things breasts can do, I’m closer to understanding why it has been so easy for the media to manipulate my mind into buying ridiculous things. It’s instinctual for a newborn baby to look to breasts for all the wonderful reasons mentioned above. So, as a teen and early adult, perhaps it was instinctual to seek breasts again when considering which loaf of bread to buy or which restaurant to patronize. Come to think of it, my favorite post-hockey place to eat when I was younger was Hooters! Case. In. Point.
Anyway, I know breasts can’t talk and I don’t even have any of my own. However, I enjoyed telling their story and I hope you enjoyed reading it.
Let me know about your feelings on breasts in the comments below and, remember, this is a family blog!
** https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17908-evening-breast-milk-means-a-good-sleep/