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TMI?

Lauren

Judging from the comments on this article at Salon, it’s gross to taste breast milk unless you’re a child under the age of two. But judging from my friends’ and my own experiences, it’s pretty common to have your intimates — and your own self — at least sample the goods when you’re lactating. Curiosity isn’t that outrageous.

30 thoughts on TMI?

  1. Well. In the interests of both disclosure and discretion, I’ll say that, while my tastes run very much toward the Vanilla end of the spectrum, bodily fluid don’t scare me one bit. (And are a bit fascinating…)

  2. I have tasted my own breastmilk. It tastes like sweet, slightly watery milk. My husband, surprisingly, has never tasted it.

    I’m not sure I would ever do erotic lactation, just because I’ve gotten kinda weird about my breasts while I’m lactating. They feel different now, and they’re so often being aggressively munched that I get quite protective of them, and don’t even want them played with much during sex, though I used to enjoy it. They need a breather! But to each their own, and I don’t find anything gross about it.

    I thought about looking for someone with a pregnancy fetish when I was heavily pregnant. Unlike, say, a disability fetish, I would be able to tolerate and even enjoy it because it was based on a temporary aspect of myself. But by the time I thought I was big enough to be interesting to such a person, I was too uncomfortable to go out of my way to find new partners.

  3. It didn’t taste too good to me. When I was expressing, I used to taste it when it came out of the bottle, and I thought it was off until I sampled the fresh variety. 🙂

    This was massively exacerbated by the fact that it tasted completely different when bub was 6 months old than when he was born (when I had first tasted the stuff). Newborn milk is much tastier than older baby milk. At least, at least from this manufacturer.

    No-one else got to sample, it was all too painful. Strictly available on a needs basis. Not gross in my world though.

  5. You’re a freak. You’re not quite as big a freak as I am, however, because now I’m imagining firefighters putting out fires by lactating at them.

  6. Well here’s what I posted on salon.com:
    Everywhere there are people who think they’re weird. That what they want to do makes them uniquely perverse. Articles like this one show them that they are neither unique nor even necessarily perverse. Would you say it was “too much information” for my sister to write that she had sex with a woman? If so then how would others like her know that, yes, this happens, and no you’re not some freak who needs to get treatment. I say tell what you know, so that others can know it too. If you enjoy something why not say you enjoy it so that others can enjoy it too? And what’s gross about breast milk anyway? It’s delicious, nutricious and not at all suspicious.

  7. I’m always surprised to hear about people who won’t taste it or find it gross, quite frankly. (There was an incredibly irritating Friends episode with a scene about this.) If I ever have kids I’m definitely tasting it. I just don’t understand the aversion to it at all, at least not from people who will drink regular milk. You’ll drink the fluid of a COW but not another human? It just doesn’t make any sense to me. I guess since it’s meant as food for little humans I don’t equate it with other body fluids. It’s meant to be consumed, what’s the big deal?

  8. You’re not a freak. I will admit to both tasting it and using it for a pinkeye remedy on myself and my children. I tend to get colds in my eye and I’ve never used anything that has worked as well as breast milk. And, by the way, I wouldn’t hesitate to use a friend’s breast milk for the same purpose.

  9. You’re not a freak. When I was breastfeeding I tasted it, and my husband tasted it, and my best friend was curious so we dribbled some off of the bottle and on to her wrist so SHE could taste it.

    I thought it was too sweetishly blech to be tasty for an adult. But wooby seemed to like it fine.

  10. Our daughter is almost one, and both my spouse and I have sampled the milk. I would say it’s normal, healthy curiosity. And Abby is right – for some reason breast milk is a great cure for a handful of health problems like pink eye and some skin rashes (it’s full of immunoglobulins and has other antibacterial properties – plus it’s totally safe).

    Also, at risk of a greater level of TMI… having a willing partner suck hard on a breast with a plugged duck is the fastest and easiest way to start getting the milk flowing again.

  11. What grossed me out about the article was the fetishy nature of the encounter. I think that any idle mention of a physical/medical/body issue on a first date that resulted in anything like what she described would send me running for the hills.

    But if you want to taste your own breastmilk or the breastmilk of someone who is comfortable sharing that with you? Eh, why not? I’d probably do it.

    Isn’t there something in Germaine Greer somewhere about tasting your own menstrual blood?

  13. I think this is one of those things that can be perfectly normal, or completely weird, depending on how you treat it. To paraphrase Hamlet, “Nothing is kinky or strange but thinking makes it so.” Personally, I agree with everything Abby and Grey Duck had to say on the subject.

  14. I haven’t tried breast milk since I was a baby, but my mom has definitely told me about how she tried it when she was nursing us. She said it tasted very sweet.

    On this humor blog called The Sneeze, the author does a feature called “Steve, Don’t Eat It!” where he eats crazy foods with bugs in them or whatever, and one of them was his wife’s breast milk. It was made out to be this big disgusting ordeal, equivalent to eating the fungus-infected corn he ate during another segment.

    I just don’t get it. Like anony said, we drink bodily fluids from cows on a regular basis. Why should we be grossed out by the bodily fluids from our own species that we’re biologically supposed to drink at a certain point in all our developments? In fact, we should probably be calling breast milk just plain “milk,” and what we call just plain “milk” should be specified as “cow milk.”

  15. Can you hear it? That essay was Salon jumping the shark. The irresistable combination between titillation, mommy-judging, fake female empowerment, and breast feeding seems to have been tailor made to get Salon more page views.

  16. I had similar thoughts to nora jean — but this kind of combination of “details of my sex life” and something with a political tinge (breastfeeding) has been a staple of Salon since waaaay back. In fact, they used to do it more in the old days when they were competing with Nerve and other “titillating autobiography” webzines.

    As for breast milk, I cannot possibly understand what the big deal is. Would these complaining people get all huffy about other stories on Salon where people talk about what kind of sex they’ve had? About other breastfeeding stories? Or are they just squicked out by breast milk? Look, human bodies produce fluids. This is part of why we have to practice safer sex! A lot of fluids get on each other when we have sex with each other! Is there something grosser about breast milk than semen, vaginal secretions, smeg, sweat, saliva, tears, or menstrual blood? I can’t honestly say I find any of those that gross. (But I am going to stop right now, before I engage in more “TMI.” Muahahahaha.)

    This could have been a more interesting article about fetishism and the complex and uncomfortable ways you feel when you are the object of fetishism, however. Oh well.

  17. My husband was very “regular” for a day or so after trying some suckling, but it wasn’t weird. Felt very normal. He just hated what it did to his insides. 🙂

  20. Chris beat me too it. I was getting all indignant on behalf of huitlacoche, which is indeed wonderful stuff. Mmmm….huitlacoche. I don’t think I would trust that guy’s tastes on anything.

    As for breastmilk, I tasted it. My husband tasted it, though generally indirectly, after checking the temperature of the milk in the bottle on his wrist.

    It’s milk, for Christ’s sake. It’s fine to drink milk from a cow, but disgusting to drink milk from a person? Whatever.

  21. It’s fine to drink milk from a cow, but disgusting to drink milk from a person?

    Vegan here. Don’t drink cow’s milk. Wife and I have a five-week old, and I tasted some of the goods a few weeks baack. Surprisingly sweet. And yes, vegans eat human body fluids — at least of other vegans!

  22. I wouldn’t taste my own breast milk and yeah it grossed me out, but…it’s because I hate milk. Cow’s milk, goat’s milk, any milk. Bleh. But I don’t think it’s weird that anyone else wants to try it or likes it. It is human milk meant for human consumption after all.

  23. honestly, my problem with breastmilk??

    it smacks vaguely of cannibalism, to me. i don’t know anyone else who feels this way. but i think of pregnancy as a total parasitic relationship (seriously. baby EATS the mother. ok, that is my emotional reaction to it, and has been since it was first explained to me at age 3)

    also, i cannot stand the way ANY milk smells. so… no. but again, thats just me. i don’t care what anyone else does.

  25. denelian – I guess to me it’s about the same level of “cannibalism” as swallowing semen, or tasting vaginal secretions or menstrual blood when you go down on a woman. Or when you cry hard and get tears in your mouth, or sniffle and feel mucus slide down the back of your throat.

    I mean, do I want to pour it on my cereal for breakfast? No. But it’s no creepier to me than consuming any other body fluid, which is hard to avoid contact with when you’re intimate with another person (or even just in the mundane intimacy of being yourself and existing in a physical body).

  26. I make milk, I’ve tasted it, its MY ilk. I’ve drank the milk of a cow I’ll never even know plenty of times each time I have cow’s milk with my cereal or pancakes or whatever. I never understood why tasting breast milk was gross but drinking spit or guzzling sperm was/is encouraged.

  27. Oppo;

    i said “vaguely”. also… it does kinda squick me out, when kissing my guy, if i end up with a LOT of his salivia. and, erm, blow jobs, well TMI but i spit. but all of that is *just* my reaction – what other people do, as long as it doesn’t involve me and doesn’t hurt anyone, their business. if a woman is breastfeeding in public, i just move away (did i mention that the smell makes me nausous? so does “regular” milk). and if other people like to drink each other’s breastmilk, have fun. just don’t give it to me lol (but i think ALL milk is gross. what can i say?)

  28. well TMI but i spit.

    You can’t possibly spit all of it. To be pedantic. 😛

    And, yes, I understood that you meant “vaguely” cannibalistic, and that you were speaking about your own personal opinions rather than being prescriptive.

    I guess I just find the whole nature of fluid swapping and intimacy (whether that’s sexual intimacy or a parent/child intimacy, or maybe other kinds of intimacies I’m leaving out) to be kinda romantic. In my own particular gross way which coincides with my interest in midwifery manuals and looking at super-macro pictures of bugs. What can I say? I’m a 6 year old boy at heart.

  29. Tastes like ice cream…what’s not to love? And think about it, cows stand in mountains of their own sh*t all day; humans generally don’t.

  30. I don’t meet very many breastfeeding women/couples who don’t taste it. It’s not like they nurse for twenty minutes a day; they’re just seeing what it’s like. I think maybe most don’t realize how common it is.

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