WISDOM What happens to breasts after 7 kids and 16 years of breast feeding? An interview with Sharon Gavioli By Penny Scheenhouwer, Josephine Bell and Jennene Greenall.
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rom loathing to loving her breasts, Sharon Gavioli has spent five and a half years pregnant and sixteen years breastfeeding seven children, and over these years the relationship with her breasts has changed dramatically. We ask Sharon about the ideals and beliefs she felt controlled by, her self-worth, sex and the enormous pressure in being a ‘good mother who breastfeeds-on-demand’. Today Sharon lives as a woman enjoying and sharing with others the fullness of her lived beauty.
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We find out more from Sharon about this remarkable sea-change during this interview.
SHARON
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PENNY
JOSEPHINE
JENNENE
PENNY:
Sharon, what was the relationship with your breasts like, and your thoughts and feelings about them before you had children?
SHARON:
I don’t feel it was something I really thought about, Penny, other than I was never really happy with them prior to having children and then when I did have children, it was really interesting, I automatically thought, “they are just for breastfeeding”. When I had my first baby my breasts became like Dolly Parton’s, they were enormous, lots of milk. Not that I revelled in them being big as such, they were too big, huge and uncomfortable. But I just got on with it and did what I needed to do with them in order to feed my babies. I didn’t every really consider them other than, “this is what I use them for, to feed the baby”.