Recipe For Induced Lactation

Take two fully-functioning breasts.

Using a manual breast pump, stimulate at least every 5 hours, day and night, for 15 minutes each time.

Motilium. Take 2 x 10mg tablets four times a day, half an hour before meals.

Fenugreek. Take 2x 1000mg tablets four times a day. Smell like maple syrup.

Water. Consume at least 3 litres a day. Pee a lot.

Calendula cream or lanolin. Apply to nipples to alleviate dryness and soreness.

Oats. Eat as much porridge as possible.

Stout. Drink with abandon.

Fennel tea. Tastes foul so drink one pot whenever you are feeling brave.

Milk thistle tea. Drink as a reward for keeping down the fennel.

Recipes and results vary according to local custom, medical advice, and individual levels of patience and persistence.

She Spits Out Stars

My mate Mimoiselle was wielding possibly the sexiest camera ever. I was Hera, with beaded milk/star nipple tassles and big hair. There were lychees and milk and silver cachous and much spitting and dribbling, spills and splashes and sucking, dancing about and twirling around... We (ie M- I have no idea how such matters work) have yet to edit it, but it should come down to three minutes of softly-saturated colour and dreamlike food porn and a galaxy created in a fishbowl...

Abstract For A Conference Paper Yet To Be Written

Making Myself Milky: Exploring the Auto-Erotics of Induced Lactation

This paper will explore the auto-erotics of lactation, from inside a milky body. It is the result of my own induced lactation project, which I engaged in for a number of reasons- including a curiousity regarding the erotic potential of making myself milky.

'My breasts are full again and I reach for the gender-neutral coloured plastic sucking device and rhythmically squeeze my milk out into the bottle. Ten minutes each side, then unscrew the lid and drink my own sweet liquid. Aaaaah...

In certain ways it is similar to masturbation. Satisfying most of the time, a beautiful act of auto-eroticism and self-care, a treat to relieve horniness or the desire to be touched or boredom. There is a 'money shot', a release of tension, and milk is just as likely to glue your magazine pages together as most other bodily substances.'

I am eating myself out, seduced by my own juices. I do not need to connect with another body in order to lactate, I pump away on my own and consume my own body fluid. When the pump loses its grip on the breast, slips and lets milk flow over my chest or spray onto my thigh, this is erotic. When I sit naked and allow the milk to trickle and drip across my flesh, course
in viscous rivers all down my stomach, this is erotic. When I lie in the bath and squeeze my milk into the water, clouding it and softening my skin, this is erotic. The temperature, the taste, the smell, the buildup of tension, the erect nipple, the engorgement, the fullness to bursting point, the letting go of letdown, the impulses that take over and give you no option other than to give in- all of this is erotic. Female orgasm often causes lactating breasts to ejaculate their fluid, and increases the amount of milk produced. Oxytocin is released with each let down, and the hormone works on the uterus as well as the breast to produce contractions that may last up to 20 minutes beyond stimulation. The stickiness and the seepages and the spillages and the spurtings are sometimes self-servingly sexual.

Breast, Brain, And Brawn

I have just come out of a meeting with my supervisor and feel like I could easily vomit. Shaky, disassociating, almost out of body, panicked, on the verge of tears and possibly hyperventilation. And its not a bad thing at all.

I am reminded that writing is a physical process. That I need to push my body to its limits, that this is what my work is about in so many ways, the boundaries of what the body, my body, is capable of. Since I have returned to study I have felt like I should get into training, my body is craving large plates of green vegetables and litres of water and long walks and stretches before and after each bout of writing. I get incredibly hungry when I am at my desk, which I used to ascribe to boredom or procrastination until I realised that thinking uses up more kilojoules than I had ever given it credit for. Brain and brawn are not opposing forces. I'm not just writing about the body, I am writing with the body, I am writing the body. (Geez, I probably sound like a second year cultural studies student, but its one thing to know something with your mind and another to comprehend it with your flesh.)

At the moment I have much to learn and ponder about using my practice as a research methodology, and how to incorporate this into my dissertation. When I began considering including performance pieces alongside the written work I conceptualised these almost as illustrations for the text, a way of adding clarity and explanation. Now I place these works (or more the process of creating them) as the text, and the words as the way of making sense and debate of what has been said. I'm lost, a little, as have never done anything like this before, but not only does it feel right, it feels necessary.