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Ode to Breastfeeding
The eternal call and response between mother and child
Tonight I will breastfeed my second child for the last time. She’s fourteen months old and has been an absolute champion nurser since the moment she was born. The nurses placed her pink newness on my chest and she did the “breast crawl” toward her source of nourishment and latched right on. It felt like my reward for a difficult pregnancy (again) and for making it through the crushing pain of a vaginal birth after caesarian. It felt like a homecoming to the essential, to again be a mother nursing a newborn child. It’s the only super power I have ever had.
Ani DiFranco wrote this on pregnancy in her recent memoir: “At first it is something that happens to you, then it becomes something you do, then, many months after that, it becomes a relationship between you and ‘someone else.’”
For those who are able to, and who choose to, breastfeeding is a huge part of the early relationship between you and that new, all-important someone else. It’s how you tell your child that you’re there, that they are going to be OK, that the loud, bright world is scary but that they are not alone and that a bit of milk can make existence more palatable. A warm embrace and a comforting presence is the only language that a new baby can understand. And for me, it’s always felt like they do…
