Special Issue From the Breast: Representations and Interpretations of Breastfeeding and Infant Feeding in Pre-Modern Cultures Seminar Series and Workshop Creagh, Lisa (2024); ‘The Holding Time Project: Realities, Reflections, and Action for Breastfeeding in the UK’ Rosetta 28.5: 131-142 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25500/rosetta.bham.00000023
I’m an artist practitioner, and my project, Holding Time, explores the structural, physiological, and, above all, cultural barriers to breastfeeding. Before I gave birth, I had no opinion about breastfeeding. I wasn’t breastfed and I didn’t come from a culture where breastfeeding was the norm. I knew almost nothing about it, except that it was ‘natural’ and ‘breast is best’. So, on day ten after giving birth, when I was diagnosed with double mastitis, I was taken aback by the paroxysms of guilt, fear, and extreme distress I felt about having to stop. Those around me had one mantra, “Give her formula”. I agreed, formula was the only answer. We got the bottles, the powder the steriliser. And had she been able to keep formula down, this may have been the end of the story. But she threw it all up. And then cried a lot, loudly and refused to go anywhere near the breast. She was hungry, starving. I was feverish and my milk supply was all but gone. I looked desperately for breast milk to buy, to borrow. There was no infrastructure in place for cases like mine. I was in free fall.