Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding, or nursing, is the process by which human breast milk is fed to a child.

This is love ~ Leo Tolstoy

To think such breasts must suckle slaves ~ Lord Byron

Quotes

• The other as goodly sight I saw, was women travayling the way, or toyling at home, carry their Infants about their neckes, and laying the dugges over their shoulders, would give sucke to the Babes behinde their backes, without taking them in their armes: Such kind of breasts, me thinketh were very fit, to be made money bags for East or West-Indian Merchants, being more then halfe a yard long, and as wel wrought, as any Tanner, in the like charge, could ever mollifie such Leather.
  • William Lithgow, Totall Discourse, X. 433. Northerne Irish women giving sucke to their Babes behind their shoulders.

• Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
    Our virgins dance beneath the shade—
  I see their glorious black eyes shine;
    But gazing on each glowing maid,
  My own the burning tear-drop laves,
  To think such breasts must suckle slaves.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto the Third, CI

• Thy minnie scorns to suckle thee, thy minnie is an elf,
  Upon a bed of rose’s-leaves she lies and fans herself;
  • William Cosmo Monkhouse, "The Faëry Foster-Mother"

• Enough for Him whom Cherubim
    Worship night and day,
  A breastful of milk
    And a mangerful of hay;
  • Christina Rossetti, "A Christmas Carol"

• Anyone offended by breastfeeding is staring too hard.
  • Dave Allen, quoted in The Mammoth Book of Irish Humor (2013), p. 56

Leo Tolstoy, On Life (1888)

On Life. By Leo Tolstoy. Translated by Mabel and Agnes Cook. Revised, chiefly by F. B. R. Edited by A. C. Fifield (Free Age Press, 1902), p. 120

• A mother who suckles her children gives herself directly, gives her own body to nourish the children, who are unable to live without it. This is love. So, the workman, who for the welfare of others, wears out his body by toil, and thus brings himself to the verge of death, also gives himself, his body, to nourish others. And such love is possible only to the man for whom, between the possibility of the sacrifice of himself and those beings whom he loves, no obstacle to sacrifice exists. The mother who trusts her child to a foster-mother cannot love it; the man occupied in acquiring and keeping riches cannot love.
  • Chapter XXV. Love is the sole and complete activity of the true life.

In Islam

• Mothers shall suckle their children for two whole years; (that is) for those who wish to complete the suckling. The duty of feeding and clothing nursing mothers in a seemly manner is upon the father of the child. No-one should be charged beyond his capacity. A mother should not be made to suffer because of her child, nor should he to whom the child is born (be made to suffer) because of his child. And on the (father's) heir is incumbent the like of that (which was incumbent on the father). If they desire to wean the child by mutual consent and (after) consultation, it is no sin for them; and if ye wish to give your children out to nurse, it is no sin for you, provide that ye pay what is due from you in kindness. Observe your duty to Allah, and know that Allah is Seer of what ye do.
  • Quran, 2.233 (Translated by Marmaduke Pickthall)