“Think of it like eating a cheeseburger,” she said. “You don’t just bite right into it. You gotta squash it down so it’ll fit.”
This was the first time I ever compared my breasts to cheeseburgers.[Note: If you’re a man, you may not want to read any further. I’m going to talk—at length—about breastfeeding. Fair warning.]
But the nurse had a point, and she was speaking a language I could understand, even in a state of utter exhaustion following 25 grueling hours of labor. In such a state, you need a tough-shelled, serve it up straight with a side of compassion real “New YAH-kur” kind of nurse.
I don’t remember that nurse’s name. But I remember that she gave me my first education on breastfeeding. And over the remaining 1.5 days that I spent in the hospital many other nurses whizzed in and out of my loud, crowded room to try to educate me on the finer points. There was one, an Eastern European with a lopsided face who came to my room in the middle of the night, sat beside me on the bed and repeatedly commanded ‘space for breathing!’ while jabbing her index finger between my nipple and Drew’s tiny mouth. She believed that I needed to be careful to ensure that my rapidly expanding, engorged breasts didn’t suffocate the little guy. I didn’t tell her that Cheeseburger Nurse was of the school of thought that babies instinctively know when to come up for air. I was too fixated on her face. I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened. Was she born that way? Was there a traumatic event? Is this what Bells Palsy looks like? Perhaps it’s better to fixate on these types of things when you’re suddenly faced with the reality that you your boobs are now responsible for keeping another human alive.
I shared my hospital room with another new mom. Not by choice; this was Manhattan, space is tight everywhere (except in executive offices). During the night, the woman had repeated breakdowns. Her little girl wasn’t latching on. She paged the nurses, cried weepy, frantic tears. The nurses reassured her in soothing tones, but only for a minute or so each time. Then, she was left alone to try again. And again. I sat in my bed, inches away but obscured from view by a thin ugly curtain, unsure what to do. I wasn’t having difficulties.
Or so I thought. Only hindsight made me realize that this probably wasn’t because I was such a pro, but rather because I hadn’t really been feeding Drew. Many of the well-meaning nurses had told me to try feeding him often so that we’d both get the hang of it and so that my milk supply would come in sooner. But unless he was wailing frantically, I didn’t really try. If he wasn’t crying, I figured he was fine. I’m not sure if I was in denial or clueless or a little bit of both. It’s all so overwhelming that first day. Looking back, I don’t think the kid really ate for the first day or two of his life.
Nurses, doctors, anyone with scrubs or a white coat asked me how nursing was going. “Fine,” I responded. I didn’t know how it was supposed to be going. I didn’t know if I was doing it right or if he was getting anything. He couldn’t tell me. I didn’t know how long I was supposed to feed him for, when to switch sides, how to know if he was full. While plenty of people were full of advice as to how to get him to latch on, the rest, I now believe, you just have to learn on your own. You’ll know when you know. But you won’t know until you know. You know?
Away from the hospital and settled at home, I kept up with nursing. I love a challenge, and I was determined to rise to this one. A close friend had continued nursing her son when her mother passed away from cancer. Through the funeral and tremendous grief she kept it up. I thought to myself, if she could make it through such challenging circumstances, what excuse did I have not to keep up? It was hard, yes. But it could have been much harder.
That friend promised it would get better. “I hated it for the first five or six weeks,” she said. “But then, I started to love it.”
“Love it?!” I couldn’t imagine loving a task so painful and so draining. I couldn’t imagine enduring four more weeks until even the possibility of loving it emerged.
The weeks passed, though, in a blur of endless, sleepless cycles. There were breakdowns. When the alarm bell of Drew’s cries went off every two hours, when my nipples cracked open and bled, when cluster feeding struck—feedings every hour for 13 hours straight—and I dissolved into overwhelmed tears—I am the ONLY person who can feed him!—I stuck through it. I do not like to fail. For me, stopping would have felt like failure.
It did get better. The periods between feedings grew longer. I grew to not mind it, then enjoy it and then love it. What did I love? How do I explain it? Physically, the feeling is a bit like that of finally peeing after holding it in on a long car ride. There’s a release. The pressure is gone, you feel empty again, free. Emotionally, now that’s harder to explain. Seeing your child nestled into you, sighing a tiny contented sigh then settling into a drowsy sleep because of something that your body provided—you feel proud, grateful, amazed, powerful. You feel like you could do it again. You feel like it’s worth the discomfort and the hassle. And I think, as much as I hated that it had to be me, all the time, I loved that it had to be me. We all want to be needed. Breastfeeding is neediness taken to an extreme degree.
So I did it again. And again, and again and again and again. Six months passed, then I figured I might as well go for the gusto and try for a full year. I set a new goal—to go straight from breastfeeding to cow’s milk, bypassing formula all together.
It’s true that I had grown to love it. I loved the warm and fuzzies but there were other more superficial things I loved too. I loved that it was free. I loved that I was losing weight at an incredible rate. I loved that I was losing weight at an incredible weight while still being able to eat an incredible amount of food. I loved not having to remember to bring any supplies when we went out (I am terrible about remembering supplies). All I needed to bring was me…and the baby.
Six months turned into a year turned into nearly 14 months. The weaning process was rather drawn out. I had to come to terms with the fact that I was no longer so ‘needed’, at least not in this way. My approach was to drop a feeding, let a week or two go by then drop another. By the end, I was nursing only at bedtime. When two weeks had passed, the typical amount of time I let lapse before dropping a feeding, I made excuses. I said that he still seemed to need it, and I worried aloud that he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep without it. I knew, though, that he didn’t ‘need’ it any longer. And he would fall asleep, even if it wouldn’t be as gracefully.
I struggled over ending this bond that only he and I could share. The physical act was ending, yes, but I needed to realize that our bond was cemented, and could now grow in so many other ways. One night I finally worked up the courage to drop the feeding. We still settled into the same rocking chair, snuggled close, but this time I brought a sippy cup of water and some books. When Drew turned to me and pointed around in confusion, seemingly wondering when we were going to nurse, I shook my head and said, “No, no we’re all done with that now.” And we are.
