What the breastfeeding removes and the weaning restores: maternal narratives about tensions and health discourses and educational materials

Contemporary pro-breastfeeding speeches reinforce certain meanings about breastfeeding, while silencing others, such as the woman’s relationship with her body, sexuality and work, as well as the weaning process. In this article, based on the discourse analysis by Foucault, on psychoanalysis and on feminist studies, we seek to reveal the meanings attribute by women who breastfeed to their experience while breastfeeding in all its complexity, including weaning. We interviewed 11 women who had breastfed and waned their babies up to two years ago. We found similarities between maternal narratives and official speeches, but we also identified tensions, losses and resignificances that women went through during breastfeeding. Their answers about weaning (and its consequences) indicate its association with the sense of freedom, and with the restoration of aspects of the female identity that had been taken away from the woman during pregnancy and the breastfeeding period