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Being Mammalian

Although my one-month-old possesses leech-like qualities, he is showing tiny hints of personhood

Kelsey Breseman
Modern Mothers
4 min readDec 19, 2024

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A photograph of a baby handprint and footprint pressed into circles of white clay
Photo by the author

When the baby was born, I immediately felt that I should rewatch all the instructional videos: how to hold a baby, feed, clothe, dress one. But before I got around to it, instinct kicked in. My hands knew how to lift him, my body made milk, and I could often guess at the reason for his cries. He didn’t feel so fragile in my hands.

This squishy little creature is entirely dependent: he can’t even move his head around without risk of it flopping over. He eats, sleeps, excretes, and that’s about it. He can smile, but only incidentally: they call it a ‘reflex smile.’

As humans, we try to forget that we are animals. Our most basic physicalities are layered in taboos: sex, bodies, excretion. Outside of athletic feats, humans tend to act like we’re bodily inconvenienced minds. But producing a child is brutally challenging to that fallacy. The body takes center stage.

We are “mammal” after the mammary gland, and that’s where a lot of my energy goes lately. I live in this reclining chair, and every task — even my own feeding and excretion — comes second to baby’s.

Over the past weeks, I’ve learned to milk myself. It doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s useful and…

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Modern Mothers
Modern Mothers

Published in Modern Mothers

Dedicated to exploring motherhood through articles, personal essays, and a bit of fiction.

Kelsey Breseman
Kelsey Breseman

Written by Kelsey Breseman

An adventurer, engineer, indigenous Alaskan writing the nitty gritty. See my recent posts for free on Substack: https://ifoundtheme.substack.com/

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