[Breast feeding and pleasure].

Thirty-six Sicilian women (mean age 26.2 years, range 18-34) who had chosen to breastfeed their newborn babies were included in the study. A semi-structured questionnaire was used by a pediatrician to interview all subjects 4 months after the birth. 94.7% of the women interviewed (36 cases) said that they had derived pleasure from breastfeeding while 5.3% (2 cases) stated that they had not. 44.7% (15 cases) experienced strong uterine contractions (described ad "cramps") during breastfeeding (these were described as occurring "often" in ten cases and "rarely" in five cases); in 6 (35.3%) out of 17 patients "uterine cramps" were a cause of "pleasure", whereas in the rest (64.7%) they were described as "bothersome" (5 cases), "painful" (2 cases) or "indifferent" (4 cases). If sexual pleasure is derived from the breastfeeding one's offspring, it may be to a certain extent represent, together with the joy of bringing up children, a compensatory substitute for the couple's sex life following the change of the woman's centre of attention from the sexual pole to that of the continuation of the species.