Most babies are born without teeth. Their baby teeth come in between 6 months and 1 year. If you think about it, newborns don’t need teeth, since all of their nutrition comes from milk. It’s my understanding that babies are occasionally born with teeth, but it’s not common.
Kind of a hijack, but I’ve often wondered, do women need to get pregnant in order to produce milk, or can any adult female be stimulated into milk production?
MsWhatsit, thanks for fielding the potential conflict for me - you pretty much perfectly expressed what my reaction was. eleanorigby, I’m not at all spoiling for a fight or mad at you, really, just confused as to why you were bringing things up in the way you did - I guess I misread your tone.
justanoldvet, your questions are really interesting, thanks. And yeah, without hormones and/or galactogogues, plus true suckling (which means drawing the nipple and areola up to several inches into the mouth, not just your standard sex play sucking) 8-12 times a day, you’re not going to make a woman start lactating. And no, babies (generally) are not born with teeth. They’re called “baby teeth” because they come in when you’re a baby, and fall out to make way for permanent teeth.
CarnalK, I see what you’re saying. I’d certainly be interested in the experiences of men who remember breastfeeding. But I think the discomfort comes from an unnecessary equation of breasts with sex. For households used to nursing, a breast is no more an exclusively sexual body part than the mouth is. Both are certainly used in sexual contact, but have other ordinary and nonsexual uses in daily life.
See posts 9, 12, and 13.
Unauthorized Cinnamon, thank you. Unfortunately, my son died in 2000, but he had a good mom until then.
No, it comes from an extremely solid CONNECTION between breasts and sex. There would be an extremely uncomfortable EQUATION between my mother’s breasts and my sex partner’s breasts, if I was so unfortunate as to remember my Mom’s boobs in my mouth.
If only human mothers regurgitated partially digested food into their babies mouths, we wouldn’t have all these hangups?
Then you wouldn’t want to kiss! I was breastfed for a year and a half or more. I love boobs and have no hang ups. I also still like my wife’s breasts and she’s still nursing the little one 22 months later.
But unless you are one of a small percentage that has clear memories from that early an age it really doesn’t touch on my point. Do you have distinct memories of sucking your mother’s mammaries?
eta: regarding the anthropological research that shows weaning up to age 7: Isn’t that kind of crazy? Aren’t modern society humans eating with utensils by that age? Seems like a crazy waste of brain and teeth to be breast feeding that late.
Let me lay flat where my raised eyebrow comes from. As I said, most all of my earliest memories come from about the age of 4. One of my most personal and personally anchoring memories from then is of when my older sister got her long hair cut. I put on a big sulky pout because I was sure the only reason she got it cut was because she didn’t want me to be able to yank it when it we got in fights. Now, I’m sure there’s a couple out there that will say I haven’t changed much since then, and I guess down in the genetics that’s true, but that memory has always helped me get a little insight if I get into a trap of thinking everything’s about me or that the world’s out to screw me.
On the other hand, if one of my most clear memories was crawling on the couch, pulling down my mom’s shirt and begging for her boob I’m a little afraid of how that memory would serve, from a purely practical point of view, compared to the other.
I’m sorry, but “Eeeek” is really the most concise description of my feelings here.
r6`
Sorry 'bout that… Mrs. Justanoldvet was reading the Thread, and dropped the keyboard.
It’s all her fault.
Really!
CarnalK, I was breastfed until 2 or 2 and a half, and I do have memories from that age, but none specifically of nipple in my mouth. I do, however, have very warm fuzzy fond memories of snuggling with my mother, her long hair touching my bare arms and legs and me playing with her fingers while snuggled to her chest, my head somewhere south of her chin. I remember the light streaming through her long hair as it made a tent around me, and she’s the most beautiful person in the whole world, my own fairy princess.
Was I nursing during that memory? Perhaps. I don’t know. I was still of the age where I was being nursed, and the body mechanics suggest it’s likely. Or I might just have been being cuddled.
As for long term damage, there isn’t any that I can tell. 'Though I don’t “get” men’s fascination with breasts, but I don’t think I’m unlike other women in that respect.
My guess is that you don’t remember everything from the year you were 4, just the things that end up being significant or important - that trip to the zoo, the first day of preschool, Daddy’s ugly blue tie. If you’re “just” nursing like you always have, it’s probably not significant enough to form a lasting memory.
And if you did remember, so what? Wouldn’t that be just as likely to mean that you simply wouldn’t sexualize other women’s breasts? Maybe those men who are meh about breasts have some sort of programming that breasts aren’t sexy because they consciously or unconsciously remember breasts being food delivery devices. Doesn’t seem to impair their sexuality much - not finding breasts sexy, there are still a lot of other body parts to fixate on!
I’m so sorry. Thanks for sharing your story with us.
CarnalK, I’m with WhyNot. For instance, you probably have memories of your mom kissing you - I’d say most moms still kiss their adult children, if only on the cheek. Yet, you may have seen your mom kiss your dad in an entirely different way, and you probably engage with a girlfriend’s mouth in a very sexual way. But I doubt that combination of factors would give you the creeps, because mouths are not treated as *exclusively *sexual organs in our culture. And as I said, kids in nursing households don’t learn of breasts as exclusively sexual organs. To sum up: if you weren’t nursed late you might find hypothetical memories of nursing oogy, but if you were nursed late you wouldn’t find them oogy.
No I don’t remember everything from when I was four, I don’t remember everything that happened last year, lol. I remember quite a bit though. Broken slat on the back porch, my younger brother in his playpen, my sister getting a haircut that I mentioned. Not exactly earth shattering events.
Yeah, that might be what you’re missing here.
My bottom line is that I don’t think most guys would want that memory. I’m sure it’s great for the Mom extending this “bonding” time but it’s a little too much bonding for a son, IMHO. I don’t think seeing my Mom kissing my Dad really compares, Unauthorized Cinnamon, I really really don’t.
eta: Actually I had a friend who was kind of smart who used to brag about how he remembered almost everything from like 6 months on. When I asked if he remembered suckling at his Mom’s breast he kinda stopped bragging about it. We were 20 yr old guys prone to make fun of each other, though.
A tangent on that subject…in another thread I mentioned my friend who gave birth to her preemie (he’s doing great!). She had had complications through the pregnancy and was hoping to hold on to him until he was viable. His growth was impeded from previous bleeding so it was decided that they should take him at 32 weeks.
They gave her the gel to soften her cervix in the very early morning and it gave him conniptions, so they decided to do a Caesarian at 6:00 am. (It was maybe 4:00 at the time.) No one was there with her and her husband was sleeping at home and didn’t hear the phone (the cops were dispatched to go wake him up!). The anesthesiology team decided they had nothing else to do so they wanted to do the C-section immediately. She balked at this because she didn’t have him there yet and was very upset. The doc?
“Don’t you want to do what’s best for your baby?”
Her head just about spun around on her neck as she said “How dare you say that to me, you son of a bitch. Get the fuck out of my room NOW.” I’m so proud of her. I would have stared in disbelief and been unable to speak if someone said that to me after all she’d been through. Happily, he ended up doing a great job and hopefully he learned to choose his words a little more carefully.
As an American child born in India in the 1950s, I was that rare creature for my time, totally breast-fed – and my mom had natural childbirth, had me in the room with her 100%, etc. Of course, her mom had raised six children during the Depression and was renowned for the amount of milk she had; my cousin inherited it, and wet nursed a friend’s baby for six weeks when her own baby was also young.
Unfortunately, I didn’t end up with the endless milk supply, but I did have enough to nurse both of my kids for several months. There were no lactation consultants, and I don’t even remember hearing about LLL, when I had whiterabbit in the mid-70s, but my mom assumed I’d be nursing, and so I did. I guess I was lucky that I didn’t run into nearly as many negative attitudes about it as some folks here. I don’t recall any problems with latching on or anything else; both my kids just dived right in, given the opportunity.
All that being said, however, I will admit to being more than a little appalled when, a few years back at a homeowners association meeting, a neighbor’s 5-year-old daughter was brought into the meeting by her dad so she could run up to her mom, who was a member of the board, and demand to nurse, and mom thereupon whipped out her boob and obliged. It wasn’t even the age of the child, it was the utter inappropriateness of nursing in a business meeting! Some people are more than a little strange.
I kind of envy you being able to nurse for so long. I had some health issues with my daughter that forced me to stop nursing when she was just a few months old, and my son weaned himself at 4 months – we were traveling cross-country, and I had no access to a good breast pump (they weren’t available for rent or anything, at least not that I ever heard of at that point), so I brought along an emergency bottle of formula. He took one taste of the formula and decided he liked it a lot better than my breast milk. My sister, who had a friend very active in LLL, called her in to advise, but even so we weren’t able to persuade the little brat to continue nursing. Of course, his desire for quantity over quality was just an warning of his teenage food consumption, but that’s another can of worms entirely. (Which he never ate that I know of, but he probably would have at that point if the worms were properly seasoned!) I missed the nursing, though; it was a special cuddly time.
I can’t speak for all nursing mothers, but I found this to be the case. When I had a kid hanging off my boob for the better part of a day (the first baby was a leisurely nurser) the last thing I wanted in bed was any more attention to those parts. Stimulation just wasn’t pleasurable. Add to that the fact that those suckers were loaded and prone to going off and making their very own wet spot(s), and my husband learned that boobs are off limits until weaning. This all reversed as soon as the babies were weaned, thank goodness.
Hmm, OK how about this? I’m betting your mom wiped your butt and washed your penis for you when you were four-ish - do you have memories of these things, and if so do they squick you out?
BTW, I’m not trying to pick on you or anything. I think it’s important to have wide, clear boundaries between one’s sexual activities and one’s children. I just think, as much as it seems otherwise to you with your experience, that nursing dyads don’t consider their activities at all related to sexuality. I’m not aware of knowing any adult men who remember nursing, so it is an interesting question to which I have no definitive answer.
Mama Tiger, that is amazing - I can’t imagine trying to cope without LLL, pumps, lots of information availability and so on. Your son reminds me of my husband’s stories about when he was playing high school football - he says, “I’d eat stray pieces of furniture.”
Solfy, I was fine with being nursing and sex, never had problems with too much touching . . . until a couple weeks ago. With a baby inside me kicking me, my husband trying to cuddle me on one side, and my daughter squabbling with him for cuddling rights on the other side, I kind of freaked out and thought, “OK, now I know what that ‘touched out’ thing feels like.” (And I told them all to cut it out - two of them listened.)
I don’t have kids of my own so my opinion can’t carry too much weight here. In college I nannied two summers for two young boys the first summer 2 and 3 the next 3 and 4. I did things like help them in the bath and wipe because their arms weren’t long enough. At three and four years old though these boys were their own people…not babies. I made them sandwiches and macaroni and cheese and they told me things about their life. They didn’t need any help when it came to nourishment. They did need help in the bathroom. I just can’t imagine the boys that I knew being breast fed. It just creeps me out. And I have no reason or evidence for why that is the case I just have a very strong reaction to it. I wish I knew why. I think a lot of people have a very strong reaction to the idea of a four year old being breast fed. I’m not saying that means it’s fucked up I’d just like to explore why it makes me feel awful.
Some possibly foolish questions, but genuine ones:
When a woman is done breastfeeding, how does the milk stop? I mean, like after she has weened the baby/child. Does it stop all at once? Gradually taper off? Does the milk go sour if the kid doesn’t nurse?
Totally jibes with my memories. I wasn’t a “baby” at four. My mom didn’t wipe my butt at that age (she would likely have followed me in but only discreetly offered advice if needed). I remember the age of about 5 or 6 screaming for my Dad to come in and help 'cuz I “caught something” when zipping up. Even at that age I didn’t want my mom coming in to help.
You are starting to use utensils and sippy cups by 4. I really think breast feeding at this age is infantizing and like I think I spelled out, creepy thing for a kid to remember. I don’t notice of any statistics showing any real benefits carrying it on this long, so it just seems wrong to me.
I don’t get irked out by women breast feeding in public. I actually think it’s one of those circle of life assuring things to see. Also, I’m more of an “ass man” when it comes to women’s bodies. I really don’t think this is some specific bizarre hang up of my own.