La Leche

 

For some reason I am not in this photo

One thing I remember from my childhood are the babies. Mom had babies. I remember the dirty, smelly diapers, the crying, and the bottles. When Mom brought home a new baby sister or brother, the kitchen turned into some kind of steamy bottling factory. She had a big pot that she would boil bottles in to sterilize them. In one of the cabinets were rows of something that she mixed with milk to feed the baby. Formula is what I think it was called. Anyway, I stayed out of the kitchen for fear of getting involved with the care and feeding of anybody besides myself. Poor Mom. After nine months of discomfort, followed by the horrors of delivery (My opinion. Not sure if Mom thought it was a horror.) she then had to take care of that kid. After six babies, Mom had an epiphany. There was a way she could bypass all that hullabaloo in the kitchen. Mom discovered something called the La Leche League. A group founded in the 1950s that advocated breast feeding of babies. Put yourself in my mom's shoes. If you could easily eliminate a huge portion of infant care, wouldn't you? No more bottles, no more sterilizing those bottles, and no more buying expensive baby formula. (My dad liked that last part best.) After going through all that for six babies, my mom went with the breast milk for baby number seven.

On a hot summer day in 1958, Mom and Dad decided to take their seven children to the Brookfield Zoo. Here is my memory of that experience. It was hot, it smelled bad, and each of the animal enclosures seemed to be a mile apart. I was only eight years old, but already walking seemed to be a chore. Somewhere between the monkey house and the giraffes my baby brother started bawling like one of the monkeys, louder and louder.

"What the hell is wrong with him?" Dad asked.

"I think he's hungry." Mom replied.

Well sure. The rest of us had been gorging on marshmallows and peanuts. The poor little baby had nothing. Although I don't know what he had to complain about. At least he got to ride in a buggy. Anyway, Mom found a park bench next to the giraffe enclosure and prepared to feed him. How this was going to be accomplished was a mystery to me until mom said.

"Okay, all you kids stand in front of me. Come on, closer together."

Right there in the Brookfield Zoo, in front of God and the giraffes, Mom opened her blouse and fed that baby. I was horrified.