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