When Ola, a thirty-two-year-old artist from New York City's Washington Heights neighborhood, describes herself as "stubborn," there's a hint of pride in her voice. If she weren't so stubborn, she says, she would've given up on breastfeeding early on.
Ola's family were not breastfeeders. In fact, until she met her partner, and he explained that his mother breastfed him, she had barely even realized that babies could be fed from their mothers' breasts.
"I know it sounds crazy, but I didn't know anything about breastfeeding at all until I was pregnant," Ola says. "I didn't know people who did it. I honestly didn't know that you could feed your child without using milk or formula because I'd never seen it. It never happened in my family."
During her pregnancy, Ola read everything she could find about childrearing. While the experts had different perspectives on temper tantrums, teething, and the terrible twos, they all agreed on one thing: Breast milk is the best food for infants. The idea that her body could provide all the food her baby needed in the first months of life was a revelation for Ola. The idea of giving the milk from her breasts to her child made her feel powerful, like she possessed a hidden talent that she'd never even realized.
"As I got more and more pregnant and my breasts started filling up with the milk, I thought, 'This is great'" Ola recalls. "Once I realized that this was something I could do, something that I was meant to do even, there was absolutely no turning back."
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