There’s nothing quite like nursing a babe in the middle of Times Square during the Macy’s Day Parade.
Anyone who’s birthed another human is always willing to regale other females with the tale. I’ve spent many an evening in the company of other women who are all too eager to share the gory details. Tales of 24 hour misery. Horror stories of nearly making it to the hospital in time. Sad feats that end in a C-Section. Advantages and disadvantages to pain medication. In any large group of mothers, these stories can take on a life of their own: snowball, spin, and dive from one to the next.
But, for whatever the reason, no one told me their story of sustaining and nourishing that small, dependent life after birth. No one told me about nursing.
No one told me about the discomfort of engorgement. The need to cool your swollen chest with bags of frozen peas and corn. The jokes and wise cracks you suffer through—at the expense of your husband and mother, for pete’s sake—for wearing a vegetable side dish under your shirt. The inability to sleep, roll over or find a comfortable position—despite the fact that you no longer have to make room for a nine-pound baby inside your tummy. No one told me of setting the alarm to wake yourself up in the middle of the night for extra pumping sessions, because baby was sleeping too long and you just couldn’t wait that long.
No one told me of the pain—horrifying, grit your teeth, and attempt happy thoughts pain—associated with a baby who can’t latch on properly, but must eat regardless every three hours. No one told me they’d rather go through labor ten times over than to have to nurse their baby for the first week of their life.
No one told me of the weeks in which I’d awkwardly sit, trying to get things to line up right, debating about if she’d eaten long enough, if she was full, if she was still hungry. No one told me about the need to develop yet another, new wardrobe—one with easy access to hungry, impatient little babes. No one told me about the boredom that inevitably evolves with sitting in the same seat, unable to do anything more than sit, for four hours a day. Or of the need to constantly be around, or to pump, or to remain uncomfortable for hours on end.
No one told me there would one day come a time, about fifteen weeks into the experience, when the thought would surprisingly dawn, “This doesn’t hurt anymore!” . Things would ease a bit and the previously difficult would become the new normal. Moments that used to be boredom would then become peaceful times to sit, reflect, and receive inspiration. Hours crafted for nothing but to find new reasons to love your little babe—the way her little ears curve; the slope of her nose; the chubby roll on her thigh; the crease in her neck; the dimples on the back of her knuckles. No one knows quite a baby so well as the nursing mother.
No one tells you about how six months will roll around—you’ve officially met your predetermined nursing goal!—and you’ll find it easier to continue than it is to purchase formula and transition to a bottle. But this ease, comes at a cost: You must always be within a three-hour reach of your babe; evenings away are overshadowed with the fear of bottle rejection; logistics of leaving her behind become difficult and often impossible; you feel strapped down, tied to this little life, with a sense of responsibility you’ve never even known before. No one can pick up this burden from you. You can’t skip a feed out of convenience. Nothing your husband can do will make it any easier. Indeed, I figure this is the Refiner’s Fire of Motherhood.
No one tells you about how the day will eventually dawn when all good things must come to an end. While you love the little one, you need a bit more independence. You drop one feeding and they cry, look at you as the betrayer, refuse to drink from a sippy and make you question everything. No one tells you about how sippys eventually become the new normal, and they no longer miss being held, rocked, and fed in your arms.
No one tells you about how hard it is to drop that very last feeding, when you know for sure it will be the official end of something you love so much. So you just keep feeding early in the morning, because you can’t give it up—the one chance you have to make soulful eye contact, the chance to snuggle and breathe in the baby chubbiness, and the chance to feel that you are giving of yourself for a better cause.
In case no one told you before (you never-been-through-the-experience-before-new-moms), consider yourself told. Despite all the pain in the beginning, nursing is something to love, cherish, and mourn in passing.
P.S . For those of you in different experiences please understand… I hold no ill-will towards bottle-fed, formula babes and their moms. Sometimes we don’t have another choice; sometimes we can no longer go on; sometimes it’s the most convenient. Formula is an amazing feat of engineering that keeps our babies alive. For that option I am grateful. I know bottles have been a great experience for some, it’s just not my experience.
