Ep.22: Understanding breastfeeding aversion with Zainab Yate MSc, BSc

This week on the boobingit guest my special guest is international speaker, campaigner and author Zainab Yate. Zainab is a breastfeeding advocate and infant feeding research ethics specialist. She’s also a specialist on the complex topic of breastfeeding aversion and agitation having suffered from negative emotions whilst breastfeeding her own children.

Last year Zainab released her book about aversion, called ‘When Breastfeeding Sucks’ based on the research she did with thousands of breastfeeding people around the world. Her findings have shaped how we view breastfeeding aversion and have helped many seek help and be better understood by the breastfeeding supporters who work with them.

In our chat, Zainab explains what breastfeeding aversion is, how it can come about and what we can do to seek help and support. It’s not always a case of needing or wanting to stop breastfeeding.

Zainab also talks openly about her own experiences of aversion with her two children, how it defined her early motherhood and why she struggled to tell anyone about it in the beginning. In her Iranian culture and as a Muslim woman, breastfeeding was assumed, and so for Zainab there was no other option but to breastfeed. She tells us how she found it difficult to describe what was happening to her and why this motivated her to do her own research into the phenomenon.