Beyond the Margins: Why Black Breastfeeding Matters
Anayah Sangodele-Ayoka. Photo Credit: About.me
By Jaimee A. Swift
Anayah Sangodele-Ayoka (she/her/hers) was almost kicked out of a community clinic for breastfeeding her newborn baby. After such an unbelievable experience, Sangodele-Ayoka turned her anger into action by co-founding Black Breastfeeding Week and standing in the gap for Black people who breast and chest feed.
In the United States, particularly, there has been such a great stigma, shame and sexualization of breastfeeding. Several women, particularly cisgender women, have shared their stories about the incessant shame and judgement they felt when others condemned them for breastfeeding in public. Transgender men, transgender women, and non-binary people also experience further shame and stigma when they breast and chest feed. While it became legal to breastfeed in public in all 50 states in 2018, the criticisms and shame experienced by Black women, Black men, and Black people when it comes to breast and chest feeding, in and even out of the public-eye, still remains.
And Anayah Sangodele-Ayoka, CNM, MSN, MsEd, was tired of it.
A South Side Chicago-born, Washington, D.C.-based nurse midwife, maternal and child health advocate, a consultant with MomsRising, a cultural worker, and a self-described “Black Woman and Mama all the time”, Sangodele-Ayoka had a personal experience of being judged and discriminated for breastfeeding her newborn child. This demoralizing experience prompted Sangodele-Ayoka to ensure positive imagery of Black women breastfeeding by co-founding “Brown Mamas Breastfeed”, which later spurred into Black Breastfeeding Week. Held annually between August 25-31st during Breastfeeding Awareness Month, Black Breastfeeding Week highlights Black families, images, and voices that have been historically and traditionally overlooked in the conversations on obstetric care, breastfeeding, medical racism and neglect, and more. Moreover, Black Breastfeeding Week highlights the critical racial disparities between Black women and white women when it comes to prenatal and postnatal care including breastfeeding rates; high Black infant mortality rate; high rates of diet-related diseases; lack of diversity in the lactation field; socio-economic and cultural barriers unique to Black women; and food-deserts in Black communities.
As the co-author of the book, “Free to Breastfeed: Voices of Black Mothers”, Sangodele-Ayoka is working hard to ensure that Black mothers and their babies are seen, heard, and are provided with proper care.
I spoke with Sangodele-Ayoka about her unbelievable experience of being shamed for breastfeeding in public; on the resurgence of Black people working with Black midwives and doulas as opposed to conventional obstetric care; and challenges in the field of midwifery when it comes to prenatal and obstetric care for Black transgender parents.
In your experiences as a Black woman, a nurse midwife, maternal and child health advocate, and cultural worker, how have you seen anti-Black discrimination and prejudice manifest when it coms to Black mothers and Black mothers who breastfeed? Have you experienced such discrimination and prejudice in your personal life?
Anayah Sangodele-Ayoka (ASA): “When I was a new mom with my oldest child, when he was a baby, we were going to a community health clinic where my pediatrician was located. My husband and I had an African-centered pediatrician, who so happened to also be my husband’s pediatrician when he was a kid and even up until he was an adult. We were really excited because he was well-versed in different modalities of treatment and we felt like we could have really great conversations with him. He was a really good counselor in regards to understanding our child’s developmental stages and our roles in conjunction to those specific developmental stages. We thought he was a really great guide for us and not just a pediatrician. He was also located in the hood, which was where we lived too, so we felt like this was the bomb place for us in Brownsville, Brooklyn.”
“However, the receptionist asked me to leave because I was breastfeeding. I said, ‘What?’ She responded, ‘Well, some people aren’t ready to explain what that is to their children.”
“One day, when I went in for a visit, I was breastfeeding my son in the waiting area of the pediatrician’s clinic. Most pediatricians have hours for patients to bring their newborn babies, which is what I was there for. However, the receptionist asked me to leave because I was breastfeeding. I said, ‘What?’ She responded, ‘Well, some people aren’t ready to explain what that is to their children.’ If the mind-blown emoji could come to life, that was me! Here I am, with other mothers in the clinic, with breastfeeding-aged babies, all newborn babies, and the idea of breasts being sexualized to babies was ingrained in the receptionist’s mind so much so, she thought it was a dirty act that needed to be covered up. She tried to put me into a clinic room and then asked me to leave. It really shocked me and I told her I wasn’t going anywhere. When I talked to the pediatrician about it he said, ‘Most people here don’t do that and we have to make sure we make everyone feel comfortable here and not just you and your baby. You should think about covering up or going into another space.’
“His statement really shocked me. I began to wonder what led him to believe that people in his clinic didn’t breastfeed? And later, I started to put it altogether: they do not see people breastfeed; they do not talk about it; they hide it; there is no information about breastfeeding in this clinic; there are no posters or pamphlets about breastfeeding –– but there are pamphlets for infant formula. If you go back to that clinic today, everything is different because of the work and activism we have done with Black Breastfeeding Week. Now, they have a breastfeeding clinic.” [Laughs] But the whole situation shocked me and it was outrageous. Not to mention, it was our first time traveling on public transportation and I was so flustered about how to feed my baby in public. My baby needs to eat and if he starts crying on the subway, do I get off the subway to breastfeed him so I feel like I am not being sexualized? It was so nerve-wracking to be a new mom and trying to figure out what to do in regards to breastfeeding in public, and then having people stare at you. People already treat you like crap when you have a new baby in a space full of adults. And if that baby cries, everyone wants you to shut up your baby at once. I had never really thought about being a breastfeeding advocate. I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I was just mind-blown that in this space for newborn babies, specifically a place for Black babies, wasn’t even going to support me breastfeeding my child and was trying to send me off in a dark room.”
Black Breastfeeding Image via Black Breastfeeding Week Website.
What was the moment/moments that spurred Black Breastfeeding Week?
ASA: “It started from my personal experience of being dismissed at a Black-owned and run clinic by a Black woman receptionist because I wanted to breastfeed my baby. I really realized how deeply misinformed and entrenched our views and values are that we cannot suspend not sexualizing a woman’s body to feed a baby. My first foray into doing any of this work was a campaign I worked on called ‘Brown Mamas Breastfeed.’ A friend of mine, who had her first child around the same time I had mine and who was about to become a nurse midwife, she and I decided to gather photos of Black mamas breastfeeding their babies and put them on the internet. We did this as a Mother’s Day gift and asked participants to share why they breastfed and what was notable to them about it. At that time the campaign was started, when you searched Black breastfeeding, you would get porn images or you would get white women but there was a word attributed to the color ‘black’ in the SEO but you would never see images of Black women breastfeeding online at that time --- and this was not even 10 years ago!”
“Black Women Breastfeeding is about breastfeeding, but it also about how we as people can reclaim ownership over our bodies and not have our bodies solely scripted with the narrative that capitalism gives it.”
“The project went viral because people never really saw images of Black women breastfeeding. Eventually we wrote the book, Free to Breastfeed: Voices of Black Mothers and from there, I was invited to do work with organizations that focused on intersectional feminism and parenting. This is how I started working with MomsRising. They have a whole platform about how feminism has left out parenting and made parenting into a concept for women as being solely subservient to patriarchy as opposed to ways society needs to be restructured to view parenting differently and equalizing the work of parenting and supporting parents. From there, Black Breastfeeding Week grew out of this, where we specifically created a culture of celebrating and highlighting the work people are doing –– whether they are the person who is breastfeeding, whether they are the support people in the community, or the people who pass down information to their families, or the people who work in the WIC offices. We created a family reunion, celebration, and cultural thing that has changed everything. Now, people can go online and see Black women breastfeeding. It makes it better for all of us to break down the barriers that oppress us in different ways. Black Women Breastfeeding is about breastfeeding, but it also about how we as people can reclaim ownership over our bodies and not have our bodies solely scripted with the narrative that capitalism gives it.”
How have you seen Black mothers thrive with Black nurse midwives and doulas in comparison to utilizing conventional obstetric care?
ASA: “There are so many different models people use but overall looking at the different models and the way people provide care and even looking at the studies done, there is a difference. There have been studies done on cultural congruence in healthcare, and how when your healthcare providers come for your cultural and ethnic background, people generally have better outcomes because there is more trust. One of the things that Black women report the most is that they were not being heard. They also report people were trying to manipulate them into making a specific decision about their care because the healthcare provider wanted that specific care for them. You will find that when one has a Black midwife, there are less reports about not feeling heard or about manipulation. Black women feel less like a number just passing through; they feel like they are heard and are actually understood.”
“When you have women who are going to group prenatal care. Instead of going to a doctor’s visit individually, you meet in groups every couple of weeks or every month until you have your baby. This particular model is very different because it is trying to delegitimize the hierarchy of healthcare, where you go to your healthcare provider and they tell you what to do. Here, in group prenatal care, the provider is talking as little as possible and the group of pregnant people are acknowledged as experts in their experiences and share information with each other, which makes for several different experts in the room. This type of care has shown for Black people providing information and care to other Black folks, you find less prematurity and more babies being born after the point of prematurity. Black babies overall are disproportionately born too soon or too early and need to stay longer in the hospital for intensive care and treatment. That is one of the factors we know that racism causes: which is the chronic stress of Black women, which often leads to this. Nobody really knows why this care –– specifically providing Black care –– decreases premature births in Black babies except that we know it does.”
“People often choose midwifery care because we individualize care for that person. That sounds so basic and so simple but unfortunately, it is not the way healthcare is set up. For example, the medical model of birth says birth is an emergency until proven otherwise. When you have that frame of mind for a person who is in labor, you already know what you are going to do –– you are putting somebody on an assembly line. The idea is to get the labor done as quickly as possible. This is where America is with providing maternity care –– the U.S. spends the most money on maternity care of any nation in the world, has the worst maternal outcomes of any industrialized nation and has maternal outcomes on par with developing nations. A lot of this is because the current medical structure creates a path of care like an assembly line but it takes more than that. With the process of birth, there is a sacredness to it and there are still a lot of great unknowns to it and you still have to pay attention to it –– no matter what. So midwifery care is about paying attention. Midwifery care says that pregnancy is birth and birth is a normal time of the human life cycle and sometimes, it presents with emergencies. We have to become experts and very patient with what is normal and respond quickly to what is not.”
In terms of prenatal and obstetric care, a lot of the times the imagery and discussions surrounding Black motherhood are about cisgender women but there are Black transgender people and also non-binary people who give birth. How does midwifery provide care for Black transgender people? And what are some challenges do you see in midwifery when it comes to prenatal and obstetric care for the Black transgender community?
ASA: “The biggest issue is erasure. I know there are many barriers to healthcare access for Black transgender people. Just imagine having to call a clinic and talk to someone on the phone and you are a transgender person and the person on the other end that works at clinic does not understand that person idenitifies as a “he” and they are coming in for prental care and they act like they cannot treat or help you? I can only imagine that experience would make them feel uncomfortable and not even want to come in for care at all. During Black Breastfeeding Week, we feature stories and conversations of queer folks, gender-non conforming folks, and transgender folks on their experiences with breast or chest feeding. One thing that comes up a lot are people seeking community care or using networks they know. You are already in a vulnerable position and to have that extra layer of having prenatal care be so gendered already and then your gender identity being questioned, I can imagine transgender people want to go to a place where they want to be taken care of, feel safe and not be teaching at the same time while trying to receive care.”
“Transgender care should be integrated into our core competencies and not something that needs to be sought out when you are already a provider. We need to explicitly say that midwives are equipped and should already know how to provide care for transgender people.”
“We face issues in our speciality because midwife means “with woman” –– that is what it literally translates to. Within our professional organization, there has been this huge conversation by reproductive justice advocates who are saying that we need to address and expand the definition of the kind of care that we provide. Transgender care should be integrated into our core competencies and not something that needs to be sought out when you are already a provider. We need to explicitly say that midwives are equipped and should already know how to provide care for transgender people.”
Anayah Sangodele-Ayoka with her two children. Photo courtesy of Anayah Sangodele-Ayoka.
What makes Black mothers and Black motherhood radical to you?
ASA: “Recently, I have been thinking about the radicalism of Black women and how the way our society, white supremacy, and the export of white supremacy has informed the mind and politics around the world to define Black women as other and outcast for generations.The idea of Black women still existing valiantly as who we are when society is explicitly structured to say whatever you are is wrong, it is dirty, it is subhuman, and more, and yet for us to continue to advocate for being, for the value to be and to be who we are fully is the most radical thing we can do.”
“All of society is set up to deny us and crush us at the spiritual level so that we won’t be able to advocate for ourselves and that we won’t be able to create in the world in ways that are fully human. Yet, we keep showing out and we keep showing up as we are.”
“I think that is one of the most amazing things about Black women: is that Black femme identities and Black women are so undeniable. All of society is set up to deny us and crush us at the spiritual level so that we won’t be able to advocate for ourselves and that we won’t be able to create in the world in ways that are fully human. Yet, we keep showing out and we keep showing up as we are. You can keep trying to other us but you keep finding Black women innovating the world to make sense and to work for us instead of us perishing. We keep trying to shake-shift this world so our children can live as so they won’t be crushed. I think this is what is radical about us: we keep pushing forward. For some reason, we don’t give up. We may be angry and we may be bitter sometimes but we have an enduring hope that we hold on to that allows us to keep showing up for ourselves. That is the radical part.”
For more information about Black Breastfeeding Week, visit here.
For more information about Sangodele-Ayoka’s book, please visit here.