Dairy Fairy

We celebrated Canada Day this past Wednesday (July 1^st). Our family headed out for some of the festivities, and part of our fun included an artist sketching our caricatures. He asked what we wanted to be, and I thought “hmmm, perhaps a fairy… I could sprinkle myself with some magical fairy sleeping sparkles” (this is the thinking of a proud, but tired, parent of a newborn). My husband has grandiose plans to be an organic farmer one day  (mind you, we have a hard time keeping our herb garden lush), and so he jumped at the notion of seeing himself in cartoon farmer form. Since our older girls already had their caricatures done, I realized our wee babe wasn’t included, so I asked the artist if he could attach a baby in my arms. He replied with “you want to be nursing?… you could be a lactating fairy”. “Perfect!!”, I thought! “I’m the Dairy Fairy”.

This is what nature intended after all (minus fairy wings and form-fitting green dress, of course). Breast milk is simply the perfect food for babies (not to mention the numerous other benefits of breastfeeding).

I understand that there might be very special circumstances where breastfeeding is not possible or is compromised, but these instances are not that common. It is more often a situation where the mother is unfortunately not supported in her efforts to breastfeed. Breastfeeding is not always that easy in the early formative weeks, and social, emotional, and even personalized support may be necessary. I’ve breastfed all of our children, and will jump out to admit that it’s not always smooth or easy. In fact, this time I’ve had to temporarily eliminate certain foods from my diet that have caused irritation to our daughter, including corn, tomatoes, citrus (lemons, oranges, limes), avocados, mushrooms, yeast, wheat and some other gluten grains. Thankfully it’s only for a period of weeks (or at the most a couple of months), but it certainly hasn’t been easy – or fun. And then, there are the more common troubles associated with breastfeeding, including soreness, engorgement, and being solely responsible for very frequent feedings. But, I’ve never considered formula as an option.  As tiresome as these challenges might be right now, they are indeed short-term troubles (breastfeeding gets much easier after the first couple of months) that I can work through for greater long-term benefits

Then there’s the matter of giving dairy to our young babes once they are older and beyond breastfeeding. This is unique to our species, to drink the milk of another mammal. And yet, most people don’t question it. If you take a moment to think about it, why drink the milk of a cow? The notion of drinking milk from another animal such as a dog or horse isn’t so comfortable or appetizing, right? If that milk wasn’t available in the two-litre at your local grocery store, can you imagine milking the cow yourself?… or, better yet, suckling from a mother cow as her calf would?

Just some food for thought. Plus, imagine this caricature with a cow outfitted in that green dress and fairy wings…  yeah, that image is hard to swallow.