Nursing Your Baby 4e
Chapter OneThe Nursing Couple
The oneness of the nursing mother and her baby has always fascinated
mankind. Like lovers, they are united both physically
and spiritually. Unlike lovers, their union lacks the ambivalence
and tensions of sexuality. The Egyptians portrayed their chief goddess,
Isis, with the infant Horus at her breast. Christianity reveres
the Madonna, the image of mother and infant, as a symbol of pure
love. The Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, speaks
of compassion and altruism as first learned at a mother's breast, as
the mother gives of herself to her child. Artists through history
and across geography have been inspired by the nursing couple to
convey, in stone and clay and paint, two souls who are one.
It is brief, this unity. In most cultures, the baby is weaned in a
year or two -- or much less -- and his world expands beyond his
mother's arms. She then becomes a part of her child's life, sharing
its center more each day with other people, other interests, eventually
yielding her place of primacy entirely. Yet for all its brevity,
the nurs ... read full excerpt from Nursing Your Baby 4e ebook
