some forms of
breastfeeding support
can be pricey

others are priceless

altogether. My milk would dry up, and that would be that. Bar closed.

In Mongolia, that’s not what happens. Discussing breastfeeding with my friend Naraa, I asked her when her daughter, who was then six, had weaned. “At four,” she replied. “I was sad, but she didn’t want to breastfeed anymore.” ;en Naraa told me that, just the week before, when her daughter had returned from an extended stay in the countryside with her grandparents and had wanted to breastfeed, Naraa obliged. “I guess she missed me too much,” she said, “and it was nice. Of course, I didn’t have any milk, but she didn’t mind.”

But if weaning means never drinking breastmilk again, then Mongolians are never truly weaned—and here’s what surprised me most about breastfeeding in Mongolia. If a woman’s breasts are engorged and her baby is not at hand, she will simply go around and ask a family member, of any age or sex, if they’d like a drink. O;en a woman will express a bowlful for her husband as a treat, or leave some in the fridge for anyone to help themselves.

While we’ve all tasted our own breastmilk, given some to our partners to try, maybe used a bit in the co;ee in an emergency—haven’t we?—I don’t think many of us have actually drunk it very o;en. But every Mongolian I ever asked told me that he or she liked breastmilk. ;e value of breastmilk is so celebrated, so ;rmly entrenched in their culture, that it’s not considered something that’s only for babies. Breastmilk is commonly used medicinally, given to the elderly as a cure-all, and used to treat eye infections, as well as to (reportedly) make the white of the eye whiter and deepen the brown of the iris.

But mostly, I think, Mongolians drink breastmilk because they like the taste. A western friend of mine who pumped breastmilk while at work and le; the bottle in the company fridge one day found it half empty. She laughed. “Only in Mongolia would I suspect my colleagues of drinking my breastmilk!”

Living in another culture always forces you to reevaluate your own. I don’t really know what it would have been like to breastfeed my son during his early years in Canada. ;e avalanche of positive feedback on breastfeeding I got in Mongolia, and Mongolians’ wholehearted acceptance of public breastfeeding, simply amazed me, and gave me the freedom to raise my child in a way that felt natural. But in addition to all the small di;erences in our breastfeeding norms, the details of how long and how o;en, I ended up feeling that there was a bigger divide in our parenting styles.

In North America, we so value independence that it comes through in everything we do. All the talk is about what your baby’s eating now, and how many breastfeedings he’s down to. Even if you’re not the one asking these questions, it’s hard to escape their impact. And there are now so many things for sale that are designed to help your child amuse herself and need you

Show your support for
breastfeeding moms with
International Breastfeeding
Symbol T-shirts, onesies,
stickers, and more, available at
mothering.com/shop.

NURSING: EARLY WEEKS Our method: on demand. Our madness this: the wren lands on the fence and so we nurse and when an hour later he returns we mark the glad occasion with a feeding we nurse because it’s morning noon or evening the sun across the silent window drifts the wren up gathers ;utters in the trees no eyelid lifts and milk pools in the sheets the moon is in the trees we ;ing our clothes the wren lands on the moon and someone kicks an arm is numb a heavy head ears roar no one can count the hours we’ve been like this and even in our sleep we keep our vow turning to one another: feeding now. ;HEATHER ROOTE FALLER