39 Breastfeeding Encouragement Quotes to Inspire Your Journey
Let's talk about one of the most magical, messy, and downright miraculous parts of motherhood: breastfeeding.
From the marathon nursing sessions to those hilarious milk-spraying mishaps, it's a ride unlike any other. And what better way to capture the essence of this wild adventure than through some witty and wise words?
Join us as we dive into a collection of the best breastfeeding quotes that'll have you nodding in solidarity, laughing out loud, and maybe even shedding a tear or two (thanks, hormones).
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Breastfeeding Encouragement Quotes
“Bottles fill his stomach, but breastfeeding fills his soul.”
-Diane Wiessinger, IBCLC
“It is the lucky child who still breastfeeds past two years old.”
-Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop
“My birth instructor said this… ‘The breast is like a muscle you haven’t used yet. ‘Remember taking up a new sport?’ she asked… ‘Remember how much the new set of muscles you used surprised you by aching so much?’ Well, she said, that’s what it’s like to use your breasts, for the very first time, for the purpose they have been awaiting all your life.”
-Julia Glass
“The whole human world is born from the womb of mothers, and if we can’t make the motherly act of breastfeeding free from stigma in such a world, then it’s an insult to our very existence as a species.”
-Abhijit Naskar
“A pair of substantial mammary glands has the advantage over the two hemispheres of the most learned professor’s brain, in the art of compounding a nutritious fluid for infants.”
-Oliver Wendall Holmes
“Imagine that the world had created a new ‘dream product’ to feed and immunize everyone born on earth. Imagine also that it was available everywhere, required no storage or delivery, and helped mothers plan their families and reduce the risk of cancer. Then imagine that the world refused to use it.”
-Frank A. Oski
“Mothers and babies form an inseparable biological and social unit; the health and nutrition of one group cannot be divorced from the health and nutrition of the other.”
-World Health Organization
“A newborn has only three demands. They are warmth in the arms of its mother, food from her breasts, and security in the knowledge of her presence. Breastfeeding satisfies all three.”
-Dr. Grantly Dick-Read
“Breastfeeding is a mother’s gift to herself, her baby, and the earth.”
-Pamela K. Wiggins
“Mother’s milk is, I think, a symbol of compassion. Without mother’s milk we cannot survive, so our first act as a baby together with our mother is sucking milk from our mother, with a feeling of great closeness. At that time, we may not know how to express what love is, what compassion is, but there is a strong feeling of closeness. From the mother’s side also, if there is no strong feeling of closeness toward the baby, her milk may not flow readily. So, mother’s milk is, I think, a symbol of compassion and human affection.”
-The Dalai Lama
“Ah, the joy of suckling! She lovingly watched the fish-like motions of the toothless mouth and she imagined that with her milk there flowed into her little son her deepest thoughts, concepts, and dreams.”
Milan Kundera, Life is Elsewhere
When you hold a child to your breast to nurse, the curve of the little head echoes exactly the curve of the breast it suckles, as though this new person truly mirrors the flesh from which it sprang.”
Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber
“Nursing does not diminish the beauty of a woman’s breasts; it enhances their charm by making them look lived in and happy.”
-Robert A. Heinlein
“Breastfeeding is an instinctual and natural act, but it is also an art that is learned day by day. The reality is that almost all women can breastfeed, have enough milk for their babies and learn how to overcome problems both large and small. It is almost always simply a matter of practical knowledge and not a question of good luck.
-La Leche League
“Breastfeeding reminds us of the universal truth of abundance; the more we give out, the more we are filled up, and that divine nourishment - the source from which we all draw is, like a mother's breast, ever full and ever flowing.”
-Sarah Buckley
“Something as simple as better breastfeeding could save a million children a year.”
-Anne M Mulcahy
“While breastfeeding may not seem the right choice for every parent, it is the best choice for every baby.”
-Amy Spangler
“Breastfeeding is a natural ‘safety net’ against the worst effects of poverty. If the child survives the first month of life (the most dangerous period of childhood) then for the next four months or so, exclusive breastfeeding goes a long way toward canceling out the health difference between being born into poverty and being born into affluence…. It is almost as if breastfeeding takes the infant out of poverty for those first few months in order to give the child a fairer start in life and compensate for the injustice of the world into which it was born.”
-James P. Grant
“If a multinational company developed a product that was a nutritionally balanced and delicious food, a wonder drug that both prevented and treated disease, cost almost nothing to produce and could be delivered in quantities controlled by the consumers' needs, the very announcement of their find would send their shares rocketing to the top of the stock market. The scientists who developed the product would win prizes and the wealth and influence of everyone involved would increase dramatically. Women have been producing such a miraculous substance, breastmilk, since the beginning of human existence.”
-Gabrielle Palmer
“It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment.”
-Honoré de Balzac
“Breastfeeding is nature's health plan.”
-Author Unknown
“The benefits to the mother of immediate breastfeeding are innumerable, not the least of which after the weariness of labor and birth is the emotional gratification, the feeling of strength, the composure, and the sense of fulfillment that comes with the handling and suckling of the baby.”
-Ashley Montague
“No one could give her such soothing and sensible consolation as this little three-month-old creature when he lay at her breast and she felt the movement of his lips and the snuffling of his tiny nose.”
-Leo Tolstoy
“When she first felt her son's groping mouth attach itself to her breast, a wave of sweet vibration thrilled deep inside and radiated to all parts of her body; it was similar to love, but it went beyond a lover's caress, it brought a great calm happiness, a great happy calm.”
-Milan Kundera
“The moment she had laid the child to the breast both became perfectly calm.”
-Isak Dinesen
“Who fed me from her gentle breast
And hushed me in her arms to rest,
And on my cheek sweet kisses prest?
My Mother.”
-Anne Taylor
“If a new vaccine became available that could prevent one million or more child deaths a year, and that was moreover cheap, safe, administered orally, and required no cold chain, it would become an immediate public health imperative. Breastfeeding can do all of this and more, but it requires its own ‘warm chain’ of support – that is, skilled care for mothers to build their confidence and show them what to do, and protection from harmful practices. If this warm chain has been lost from the culture or is faulty, then it must be made good by health services.”
-Lancet, A Warm Chain For Breastfeeding
“Mother’s milk, developed through evolution with thousands of ingredients to build the human brain, body and immune system, is incomparable with a man-made product of a couple dozen ingredients that are non-human and in wrong proportions.”
Darcia Narvaez, Ph.D.
“A baby nursing at a mother's breast is an undeniable affirmation of our rootedness in nature.”
-David Suzuki
“Breastfeeding is an unsentimental metaphor for how love works, in a way. You don't decide how much and how deeply to love you respond to the beloved, and give with joy exactly as much as they want.”
-Marni Jackson
”My body, my life, became the landscape of my son’s life. I am no longer merely a thing living in the world; I am a world.”
-Sarah Manguso
”The natural power of breastfeeding is one of the greatest wonders of the world. It is about real love. It is about caring and celebrating the wondrous joy of nurturing a new life. It is about enjoying being a woman.”
-Anwar Fazal
“A little child born yesterday a thing on mother's milk and kisses fed.”
-Homer
“I’m an advocate of ‘indiscreet’ breastfeeding – the more that people see babies at the breast, the more normal it will be.”
-Dr. Jack Newman
“It is true that breasts can induce sexual tension in men, but truer than that is the fact, that breasts are the primary and healthiest source of nutrition for the infant, so, if men can't use their higher mental faculty of self-restraint at the sight of breastfeeding at public places, then it's not the women who need to change their breastfeeding place, it's the men who need to work on their character.”
-Abhijit Naskar
“Mother's milk is soul food for babies. The babies of the world need a lot more soul food.”
-Ina May Gaskin, Ina May's Guide to Breastfeeding
“Breastfeeding is a beautiful thing, one of the most beautiful things that exist in nature. Think about how a woman can literally feed her baby with her body! In my eyes, this is a certain form of beauty, of divinity! To know that my body can not only form and bring another human being into the world, but that I can actually feed babies with my own milk from my own breasts— that puts me in a state of awe each time I think about it. It is an honour to be a woman.”
― C. JoyBell
”13 to $20 billion a year could be saved in health care costs by demedicalizing childbirth, developing midwifery, and encouraging breastfeeding.”
-Frank Oski
“A mother’s worth is measured in love, and not ounces.”
-Stacey Stewart, CLE, Founder of Milkology®
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