BREAST STORIES
My Breast Summer Ever
Did I say breast? I meant worst
“Do your nipples stick out when you’re aroused?”
The lactation specialist, Nancy, was a busy woman. She got straight to the point. Rather, the lack thereof of my two points.
We’d been waiting all day for her to show up, but where were we going to go? I had an I.V. in my arm, a catheter between my legs, and a fresh six-inch incision just below the tattoo I got on my 18th birthday.
I wasn’t going anywhere. My husband Steve had use of his faculties. He could leave the stuffy cinderblock room (similar to the dorms at college, but more sterile and less air-conditioned), but I was stuck in the hospital bed. He changed our newborn Cy’s zillion diapers and swaddled him, handed him to me every two hours to try to get him to eat from my nonexistent nips.
“It’s something I’ve always been insecure about,” I said. “They, like, firm up but don’t stick out.” I arched my back and gestured with my hands to my left boob and then the other, voguing my topless chest as though the two-dimensional nipples weren’t already obvious. My epidural hadn’t entirely worn off. I got extra because of the emergency c-section.
“Hmm,” Nancy said, in a tone that sounded more tssk than oh dear.
