With Child and I

When you’re breastfeeding, lying down on the bed beside me, your one hand either plays with my hand or my boob. Playing can either mean flapping the object in your hand up and down or ringing it. Like ringing out a cloth. Your hand closes around my hand or boob and proceeds to do what feels like the milking of a cow. I have no other way to describe it. I have no other way to feel about it. You might think I’d hate this, to feel like a cow. But I don’t. I find it very funny. I lie with you feeding on me, handsfree, most of the time and I get a lot of work done on my phone. But a lot of the time the phone is down or off and I stare at you milking me. There, I said it. And I think about how incredibly precious you are and that this moment won’t last forever. Breastfeeding has been one of the very best parts of raising you so far.

The first few days were not fun. Things were cracked and bloody and swollen, and I thought they’d never improve. But my milk came in and with the wonders of breast milk and its healing properties, my damaged nipples recovered, the pain subsided, and all I had to concern myself with was how to hold you without throwing my back out. You were so small and I held you like you were the most precious thing in the world. Because you were. You are. I was so consumed with holding you properly so you could drink with ease that I sacrificed my posture a lot of the time. I was very tense. But I would do anything for you. I tried all the different hold styles but eventually you grew, I worried less about you being fragile, and I learnt to feed you in a more reclined fashion. Now, my favourite is to lie in bed with you at my boob, my hands free, and my head either lying back on the pillow blissfully or curled up in your suckling, pouting face. Your fish lips take breaks as you start to fall asleep and a nap begins. These are my moments of calm.

A fellow mother explained it to me before I found out I was pregnant. She said she would lie in bed at night and let the babies come as they wished. Her boobs were free, unclothed and the half-asleep dance between feeding and sleeping and comforting would continue through the night, resulting in a rather peaceful slumber. Unexpectedly. I feel this too. I wake up feeling restored. I know this because in the beginning when you’d wake up every hour crying or grunting, I was far from calm in the mornings. To be in this dance now when I can worry less, about you breathing, always about you breathing, and feed more freely is happiness.

I didn’t realise I’d be the mom talking to a stranger while whipping up her top quickly to put baby to the breast. But I am. The reactions are funny, mine too. I have no shame, no discomfort. Baby needs to feed. You’ve given me this, confidence in motherhood, calmness. I’m so grateful for our breastfeeding journey.

I hope these eight months of breastfeeding turn into a year and another year. Keeping you healthy, growing and strong with my milk has taught me to look after myself. Milk isn’t a given. And I remember that daily. The blessing of breastfeeding.