My husband suggested on evening to just write what I know…I got this out…

He (DH) got me thinking. And whether or not anyone sees this, I’m gonna go. Breast feeding. It’s amazing. One of the most satisfying, primal, honorable, Godly (not that if you don’t, it’s unGodly, I am NOT saying that) things you can do with and for you child. You envision that serene scene in a sunlit window seat, a whisper of a fulfilled grin on your contented, lightly made-up face, the child, round and warm, calm and satiated at your breast; an angelic gaze meeting yours, your eyes…pools of reflections of each other and all those that have gone before and will go on. A Madonna and her child, the two of you are, taking your place in the history of your ancestors, of all our ancestors, nourishing and nurturing your child. You can sense your holy task, the sacred duty and privilege that nursing your baby is. And all is right with the world. And so it is, as natural as natural is. Hell no it is not. At least not necessarily. My first 3 days with our first child…uneasy, unsure, he’s surely starving, does he need sugar water, is his circumcision (that I still horribly regret to this day) bothering him, NO FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT GIVE HIM A PACIFIER…DON’T YOU KNOW ABOUT NIPPLE CONFUSION?!? How can even the nurses be so stupid…are they foiling my attempts behind my back in that subversive place they call The Nursery? Can I meet his needs, will my milk ever “come in”? How can these AAs ever do anything but fail him? We left the hospital, milk still “not in”, and me beside myself with nerves that I could never help him grow…what was God thinking? My measly mumps of boobs? Feed a baby for like, 4-5 months or more? Does it have to be 4-5 months? Isn’t there an optimal cut off? And yet, we did it. All three of us. My righty, my lefty, and little baby. After a C-section, and 2 nights at home, IT hit me. The MILK. No colostrum this time, the REAL deal. I awoke in a unfamiliar sweat, my pajamas soaked along with the sheet all around me. I had erupted. My very small, very perky breasts were HUGE, and leaking. And hot, and tight like drums (and looked pretty darn good, great even, if it hadn’t been for the gelatinous belly full of stretch marks they had to rest on). IT was here. THE MILK everyone had told me about. And there was a hungry baby in the other room. The problem? My boobs were so tight, the little newborn boy mouth couldn’t get a grip to save his little newborn life. Each breast was like, twice the size of his downy, perfect head. Nipples too tight? I’d never heard of this. Yet, here I was, in the middle of the night, screaming baby, two too full breasts, and no one happy. CALL THE LADY! Blake stumbles around in the dark trying to discern whatever I could be talking about. Who on earth does one call at 2 am, hon, he is saying. THE LACTATION CONSULTANT MILK GODDESS NURSED 14 BABIES LADY!!! So the anwser? Express some of that milk right off the top of those babies, she said. What? Doesn’t that make even more milk? Well, yes, but not so much in the beginning that it’ll be an issue. Apparently my body, my boobs, and the baby will all magically sync up, soon. So First Boy gets the hang of it, I deflate my nipples down to decent latching on size, and start storing gallons of expressed milk in the freezer. He gets it so good that he’s demanding it nearly every hour and a half. At least I know he’s not starving. But there is a cost to all this milk demanding. My nipples pay a high price. They crack, they bleed, they begin to shred off in small chunks of gnawed on skin. And I have to do the “hee hee hee hoo hoo hoo” thing just to get through each feeding, which seems like 32 times every 24 hours. And I’m completely sleep deprived, and unclean. We both smell so much like puke, Mylicon and sour breastmilk that my mother demands that I hand the baby over one day, so she can bathe him, and I can shower. Which hurts my nipples. CALL NURSED 14 BABIES LADY! So I did. The answer this time? Air them out. Air what out, I whine. Air your nipples out. Oh. And the prescription for this means going without a shirt or bra for 2-3 days, and using copious amounts of the Diamond of All Balms, Lansinoh. And no, it doesn’t hurt the baby. So later that day when Mr. 4tops arrives home, there I am in the kitchen, in all my National Geographic-like glory, baby on in a sling across my raw chest, warming up a meal my mother had prepared and frozen in anticipation of the arrival of the Most Precious Baby on Earth. Hoping some shred of nipple doesn’t wind up in the dinner. Don’t ask, I tell my dear husband. Just hold the *&^*%%* baby and lemme go pee by myself. And later some time that week, which is like the 3rd or so we’ve been home, and feels like an eternity since our old life, the one I miss, and the one where I need not worry about someone finding bits of nipple scab in their meal, I decided I’d had it, and we’d ruined our life. On the boob, baby is blissful. Off the boob, our entire household is hell. I can’t take it! I wail, as I sit in the rocker for the gagillionth time that evening, to submit my poor breasts to the torture I know this feed will be. And my husband, in the loving, worried, I need to help her way that he should, suggests the unsuggestable. I’ll go get bottles, he said. And formula. This is too hard on you. WHAT!?!?! I shriek. This insidious, evil, unsupportive snake of a thought (not that I’m saying bottle feeding is bad, just a statement of my over ripe postpartum state, don’t tell me I’m against moms who choose bottles - I’m not) strikes me like a right hook to my post surgery swollen chin. And rob my baby of my IRREPLACABLE MAGIC MILK, and let his poor, undeveloped immune system be slaughtered by uncountable numbers of disease and plague? And what if we never bond and I hardly recognize him when he’s 14? Are you insane? Support me here! Which is, of course, exactly what he was trying to do.

So, slowly, we got First Boy into a more managable feed and sleep cycle (read here: I just stopped giving in every 90 minutes, sorry La Leche), and the seemingly interminable winter became spring, literally, as things thawed in our household as well. Jakey worked his way from those 14 feedings a day, to one little nip at the end of our days, just before tuck in each night, when he was 14 months old. The old girls really did toughen up, and adding 2 more children over the next few years have probably guaranteed never being as sensitive as pre-baby again. And that early spring, a lifetime from the previous, I remember one night I swear I’ll remember if I live to be 100. We sat down, settled in the well rocked rocker, and I began to arrange us. He sat up. This was odd. So I made the attempt again. He sat up. Milk? I almost pleaded, not allowing my heart to go where my brain knew this was taking us. “All done”, he signed (we’d done the baby sign language thing), and then signed “bed”. As if I’d been stabbed straight through the most tender spot of my heart, I slowly carried him in to his Daddy, unable to put him down without our blessed ritual. Watching him being carried off to bed, his Daddy able to do for the first time, I caught him smile and a wave nigh-nigh to me. And I felt as if someone had died. Over many tears, and with a truly broken heart, I cleaned up our dinner dishes (with my shirt on, and without bits of nipple), and realized the great break of independence that had just occured. That had to occur. The thing that I thought would nearly kill me to get going, nearly killed me to have to end.

So sometime the next month, we found out we were going to get to do it again. And 10 months later, Baby Lovey was born. I could hardly contain my joy that first couple of weeks as my poor breasts readjusted to once what was so familiar, painful and wonderful. This time, though, I knew we’d survive, and even thrive. And that it most certainly would not last forever. And heck, there was nothing a little nakedness and Lansinoh couldn’t cure. And I knew that without calling The Lady.