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I always used to think that there was a special kind of grief reserved just for mothers who lost their little ones in the first year of life.   Whatever you thought those first 365 days would be like, you could not have imagined it ending with death. Now that I am older and way wiser, it doesn’t matter how old you or they are, there is no preparation for the loss of a child. I was invited in to a moment of a dear friend who yesterday wanted to share with me the birth of her now dead daughter who would have if she had lived would have celebrated her 58^thbirthday with her mother. The day that the two of them would forever share.

Birth, anniversaries of precious events still ring true and ever present knowing no time or distance between mother and child.  It occurred to me that there are other kinds of loss. Estrangements, separations, consensual or otherwise that activate the grief button. It is not depression, it’s not something you get over. There may be comfort and solace, but it is something we learn to live with as if an essential part of us, a missing limb is now gone.  You live differently, you acknowledge the special place in your heart and your memory and your expectations and desires.

It also occurred to me that even if you didn’t experience such a loss, most mothers live in abject fear that once the love and connection has been made, everything at all cost must happen to prevent anything or anyone from causing or contributing to that loss. The fear of separation, actual or virtual is intolerable. So, we hover, we smother, we meddle, we neglect our own lives in avoidance of feeling even the threat of that potential separation or the belief that we or anyone in any way could cause harm to our baby.

Blessings to you, or to anyone feeling the loss and searching for a way to fill the void. Tears are sweet.  Today, I learned even cows cried tears when they missed their babies.

Please tell us your story. We are listening and standing by.

Their comments seemed harmless enough at first, but the feeling of disapproval lingers and stings.

“How many times are you going to feed that baby, he can’t be hungry?”

“They better learn now; someone is not going to pick her up every time she cries.”

“You are spoiling that baby!”  “No one is going to watch her for you, and she won’t ever take a bottle if you keep that up”

You need nerves of steel to keep the milk flowing and not take to heart when the people you know, and love don’t get it. Strangers of course are a different category of misery.

When I think back especially to those times, it was my first time as a woman when I decided to nurse that I stood up for myself and did day in and day out what I thought was best for me.  A classic conflict avoider from birth, I usually remained silent and just did what I wanted to do anyway and hope I didn’t get caught in having to explain.  Nursing my baby just because I wanted to… forced me in some ways to take a very public stand about my own values and beliefs as it related to my own well-being.  I could rationalize from time to time that it was for the baby when in fact it was absolutely for me.

I remember once the little one was crying at a large gathering of extended “family” and friends. Most everyone thought they were being helpful by passing the fussy, cranky smelly one around, asking for a bottle, a pacifier, jiggling and shaking the baby and I heard my mother in a mildly annoyed way.  “Give that baby to his mother please…” They belong together.

My mother’s defense of me caught me off guard, it was my husband who usually stood between me and the crowd of parenting style police. She had taken on a not so new role of advocacy for me that allowed me the courage to step in to my rightful place of connection with my own baby. I lost my fear, and I know longer cared what other people thought about the things that were within my power to do something about. It was my first and best attempts at consistently choosing love.

Being a mother made me fierce and confident and able to stand my ground.  It would be many many years later that I would get my words and my voice on how being a mother made me feel. Until then, just claiming my space and nursing my baby was enough.

Please tell us your story and recollections.  How did you handle harsh criticism of your desire to nurse and stay close to your baby? Especially when it seemed like the baby was seen as competition for your love and respect and you weren’t seen at all.

What did you think? How did you feel?

If you were very very young; before you could talk, or it was your mother, or your sister, or an auntie or family member and you nor they felt no shame; imagine how normal you would think nursing a baby would be. What if you never saw a bottle, or saw someone give a baby a bottle?

On the I Love Lucy Show, Ricky and Lucy, husband and wife slept in separate twin beds.  That was normal. On television, babies slept in cribs in separate rooms in another part of the house, they cried a lot, you  or someone (other than the mother) had to pick them up and give them a bottle so “it” and you could go back to bed presumably to sleep or back to sex with your spouse.

This wasn’t how it was at my house. But normal, or middle class, or appropriate was most often defined by someone else in the visual media.  What was the social or familial critique on child rearing and child bearing? What were you taught?

What if the first naked breast you saw was not your mothers and you were hiding or peeping or did not have permission to view an uncovered body part.  What if modesty was valued above all else and even viewing the breast or touching the breast or any body part even your own was suspect, and wrong, or sexual or all three.  It would make breastfeeding counter-intuitive, just plain odd, or novel and a curiosity of monumental proportions.

If the human breast has never been seen as a functional organ, how did you make the switch? If nursing was for puppies or kittens, but not human babies, then where does that leave you!

 If the breast is primarily a sexual fetish commodity, associated with mystery, illicit pleasure and indeed the property of someone else for whom sexual favors are exchanged; then nursing a child for one to two years would be virtually impossible.

What if you never saw a mother and baby couple? Mother and baby attached and not separated from one another until they were good and ready.

Please tell us your story of your first encounter with the breast yours or someone else’s?

Several years ago, in early 2012, I wrote a book called “Little Black Breastfeeding Book”.  The book was conceived as a letter to my daughter in honor of my mother. Somehow, some way I was called to honor and listen to the voices of women who wanted to mother their children in a very specific way.

My goal then and now is to be a supportive voice for women who want to breastfeed their children. I am listening.  As a woman, as a mother, as a daughter, and a grandmother and a midwife, I am listening. The book was designed in three parts. The first was a series of five questions that I knew as a mom and a midwife were very important in determining how women really felt about nursing their babies. I was so curious to hear what women thought and felt.

Part 2 was my attempt at least at that point in time to carefully answer those five questions for myself. I was surprised as to how hard it was to put those experiences and feelings in to words.  Part 3 was the section where I was able to share what I learned from sitting still and listening to women. Somehow, some way, someone actually thought we could promote breastfeeding and health on the planet without listening and honoring the women who would mother our children. We were an essential part of the earth. As a healer and a writer, I was fascinated with the answers and the women who were talking and learning and sharing and so successfully navigating their worlds at work, in the home and with their families.

I first thought my audience was all the new mothers out there and pregnant women who may be contemplating nursing their children for any length of time. Now I realize that my task was to reach a much broader audience by honoring and sharing the legions of women who have successfully nursed their babies for generations with little fanfare or support. They represented our true success stories! Who thrived, who flourished and who would easily be able to support women who grew as mothers through their connection with their children. In nature, the separation of mother and baby mammals means certain death. We learn to breastfeed at the breast. We now ask questions of people who have never successfully nursed a child for at least one year. We must not lose these stories and the treasures that are often unspoken and secret.

We can create a forum together that allows and encourages women to discuss the maternal experience and benefits of nursing our children! 

So often we are not listened to, treated like milk machines or the needs of our children are seen as separate and apart from the needs of their parents. Women especially their mothers are inconsequential or denigrated as temporary holding tanks. So often we suffer in silence or unaware that another woman has successfully navigated this space and feels like we do.  While we listen and hope for experts to research and save us; dare we not lose our ability to save ourselves with careful attention to our own ability to heal and do what’s best.

So… another question, and know I am really listening not just because I care and I love you, but because we matter, and our very lives depend on it. Who listens to you? Where and how do you know your voice is being heard? What does that look like and how does that help you to enjoy your experience as a nursing mother?

References

https://adams.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/congresswomen-adams-and-underwood-launch-black-maternal-health-caucus?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=6f6e4402-9d29-41df-b63b-81a17bb710b4

https://blackmamasmatter.org/bmhw/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=6f6e4402-9d29-41df-b63b-81a17bb710b4

In my last blog entry, I wrote about my recollection as a nursing mother experiencing pleasure. I was curious about how other mothers felt about their own sexuality during lactation. Frankly, this was an area we chatted little about.  Privacy and confidentiality notwithstanding, this was protected information for those mothers who felt that if anyone knew that the baby was not the only one getting their needs met; there would be a lot of explaining to do.

I had completely forgotten a habit of mine to wear a bra when having sex.  I knew nothing about oxytocin then, but I learned the hard way that if I came, milk squirted all over the place and we both got wet. The baby was nowhere around when the mysterious let-down reflex suddenly became Niagara Falls.  Before I had the good sense to wear my bra and to stuff a few of my best cotton nursing pads under my pillow just in case; we would have to rush for towels to keep the bed and pillows from getting wet. We didn’t make love often, and I certainly didn’t experience the Big O orgasm every time; but when it did occur it was quite magical. We would be smiling and laughing and then giggling and as if on cue that would wake the baby with the smell of warm wasting milk and pillow talk.  That would be the end of our brief alone time together and we would transition back to our other roles, or just the return for all of us to blissful sleep.  So that began the practice of putting on my bra if it looked like we might be moving in that direction of making love should the opportunity arise.

We didn’t speak about this ever, but I do believe that it was pretty weird to know that orgasm and the easy flow of my milk was somehow closely related.  Happy, relaxed joyous and free, feeling secure in the arms of my lover and my baby.  

Please share your story. Did you ever experience a let down reflex or the spontaneous flow of milk while making love? Are you just a “flowy” kind of person? Do you even know if you have G spot? Did you notice a difference in your response patterns in the early postpartum period as opposed to nursing an older baby or a toddler? Were you ever shy about talking about this? Did your husband feel curious or even jealous about your time with the baby… do you feel the intimacy of the mother baby couple?

Nursing your baby is “supposed” to feel really really good.   All the way from pleasantly relaxing to just a tad arousing. There is quite a spectrum. The longer you nurse the more you may note these gradations of sensations and experiences along the spectrum. This is so not just about making milk.

Breastfeeding your baby can be an intensely pleasurable experience designed to make you want to do it often and for there to be tremendous psychic and physical benefits to you, your child, your partner, your family, and the planet. 

 The veritable soup of hormones flooding your body lights up and connects many chemical and neurological receptors. Orgasm, Oxytocin, Prolactin, and Relaxin and the Let Down Reflex are all part of signaling cascading behavioral events that link us as mammals to our unique human experience of sex, childbearing, lactation and enduring positive social relationships.  

How women specifically and mothers in particular experience the impact of the presence of these hormones is not just new ground for research, but new ground for us to give voice to the waves of strong feelings and emotions as we nurse for at least a year after the birth of our babies.

Having someone you love and are attracted to be close to you and to suck on your nipple produces a surge of hormones for both parties especially with the mother-baby couple.  Is it sexual, of course it is!  How you feel about that is mediated with how you feel about all things sexual, physical and sensual and how you experience sensations emanating from your own body as you relate to others. Many of us do not associate sexuality and sensual experiences as pleasurable. The very same oxytocin that allows you to nurse your baby, allows for pleasure and orgasm, uterine contractions, the flow of your milk, as well as all sorts of things related to facial recognition and bonding.

While you are able to have sex, and get pregnant without an orgasm, having an orgasm with sex, especially during conception is so much more fun and strengthens those bonds of family and connection.

Nursing your baby comes from love and promotes love.  Pumping the milk from your breast with a noisy machine while sitting in a break room away from your baby does not promote the same experience as having someone you love and nurture suck on your breast.

 Maybe the first time you even heard of oxytocin was during labor when it was proposed to you as a stimulant given intravenously to induce or speed up contractions.  It made mild or so-called ineffective contractions occur more regularly and to function to move the baby out in a hurry because you were taking too long.  This is an abrupt shift in how we feel and it is definitely painful. Many women struggle to keep up with the stimulants given to speed the labor and birth of the child and forever experience a rush of pitocin, the other name for oxytocin as scary and painful.

There is a an incredibly complex tangle of hormones that we are still just learning about.  Oxytocin is still considered a mystery hormone and we are so unclear of what it does and the deep role it plays in reproduction, digestion, pain, and attachment. When women tell us more about what they experience, we can perhaps link those experiences, feelings and behaviors with the endocrine system as it surges through our bodies.  There is a strong mind-body connection that links love, emotions, stress, and a sense of well-being. While we can so easily see breasts as sexual objects of desire; it makes sense that we quickly reject breastfeeding as potentially unnecessary public displays of affection that promote sexual arousal in ways we find inappropriate, threatening and unacceptable.

While some may want to compare nursing your baby to learning to ride a bike; being scary at first where you learn new skills, fall a lot, and then identify a few things that just need figuring out. It is so much more than a mechanical act of feeding and nutrition. It is hard to put into words an activity that takes practice before you experience ease and mastery. Once you get the hang of it, few things are more exhilarating than riding a bike leisurely down a quiet path or at breakneck speed down a long windy hill; but nursing your baby is different in some important ways about what we learn and experience new things in relationship to others.

Please tell us your story about your experience of pleasure while nursing your baby.

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9071349

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3183515/

  I often don’t get enough sleep. I so love sleeping. Babies, old people, and cats love to sleep. I didn’t know how important sleep was for many years.  My mother would tease me as a small child that she promised I wouldn’t miss anything if I just lay down for a minute and take a nap. I thought insomnia, or not being able to go to sleep when I was so very tired was normal! 

I thought that being productive and working was more important and that sleep and napping, and just plain refusing to get dressed and go outside or anywhere were signs of laziness, procrastination and boredom.   The doctor ordered bed rest, but I just couldn’t sleep! I pushed myself to do stuff and “finish stuff” and was just not clear of the toll it took on my body, mind, spirit, and soul.  Sleeping is so good for you and so healing!

I didn’t know how much time I required to be alone, to be sleepy and to sleep and that I required solitude and time alone with my baby. Quiet time was as essential as breathing. The mother baby couple needs to sleep, doze off, sleep, eat some more and sleep…it allows the milk to flow and to build and strengthen relationships.

For many years, much of the work I did as a mom, a nurse-midwife, teacher, counselor and even scheduled shift work as a nurse required long periods of time of broken rest and limited sleep.  It wasn’t till I stopped all of that or got really sick and was forced to sleep for hours and hours and hours unable to do anything else but sleep that I finally got it. I had created a sleep debt that couldn’t be filled.

Now I am the poster child for sleep and anyone who really knows me, especially my grown children know that when I am cranky; whatever ails me can be improved with more sleep or was caused by a lack thereof.

I had developed the habit of avoiding sleep so used to taking the quiet of night and the “excuse” of having to nurse the baby as the only reason for taking time alone with my little one. I am so proud of myself that I have the courage and privilege to SLEEP TILL I AM DONE SLEEPING now. I allow myself to rest and listen, and pray, and drool and not rush all the time somewhere or to do something.  I learned this treasure at the breast with my nursing baby.  I am forever grateful.  How much sleep did you get last night? Was it enough?  

Please tell us your story about sleeping till you’re done sleeping.  What would it take to get enough rest? Do you sleep better with someone or alone? Do you allow yourself the gift of sleeping with your baby…?

I often spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about money.  It is my number one stressor. It can without constant vigilance totally take over my life and block out every other emotion.  Working, earning a living, having my “stuff” to maintain the illusion of a middle-class lifestyle usually means a full-time job and more.  Money will have the final say. Having enough, wanting more, how will we pay for this?  Where will the money come for to buy the things we need and want?  How much stress do you have around money?  How much money would be enough for you to feel at peace to allow you to comfortably be with your baby? How does money flow to you now?  Where does the money go?  How do you feel when you’re in debt, when you owe what you can’t pay, and you don’t feel free to do what you would like to do with your own time and your own money?

If you are already living beyond your means, having a baby is an absolute game changer.  It can make a bad financial relationship situation much worst or it can shock you into a deep sense of clarifying every single value you have ever had about what’s really important to you.  If you had a savings account that would cover all of your expenses for one year, would you prefer to be with your baby and nurse that child than be anywhere else?

In the La La  alternative universe world where all pregnancies are planned, healthy moms and pregnancies don’t incur staggering costs. We are all insured with no deductibles. We are prepared and ready to handle every emergency.  Under no circumstances would we separate parents from their young children. There are no financial worries for basic necessities.

 I didn’t know how I would manage financially but I knew that I would be unable to leave my baby with someone I didn’t know until that little one was at least a year old and preferably not until they could tell me the whole story about what happened while I was away.

This is not paranoia, or merely because I wanted to breastfeed, it was what I needed for my own peace of mind. Why have a baby that I couldn’t be with and enjoy whenever I wanted to.

 If there is a limitless supply of love, and you were tapped into that and didn’t even know ABOUT the power of that much love until you became a mother, it might change your relationship with money and how much you would need to have. What if all your baby needed was you?

Please tell us your story! Did having a baby change how you felt about money?  Did having enough money influence your decision to nurse your baby? Was money a factor in determining how long you were able to breastfeed your child? What was your path to financial peace?

Who feeds you?  What is your favorite thing to eat?

Making milk is a full-time job. Eating well, feeling satisfied with your belly full makes you look and feel better and coincidently it has everything to do with maintaining your milk supply throughout that first year.  Every day for 365 days a year!

When you take the baby to the pediatrician, they are focused on weight gain, immunizations, and general growth and development.  How the baby is doing is a reflection of you as the mother.  At least, that is what most mothers think.

 When you go to the doctor, they are focused on your weight loss and returning all of your labs and body parts back to normal.  If the baby is not doing well, first thing may be to question the quality and the amount of your milk supply and consider supplements. First question in my mind is how do you look and feel?  Are you eating well, are you getting enough rest?  Supplementing you with better food, more frequent feedings and naps is the secret to a better you and your baby. What are you hungry for?

I had blueberry pancakes for breakfast. They were delicious. I made them myself.  Eggs, flour, buttermilk, warm maple syrup.  I could only eat one, but I savored every bite.  I love to cook and make new things, try new recipes.  For the whole first year, I probably never sat down to for a meal without a baby in my lap or on my breast.  I probably never finished a meal in one sitting. There was something about the smell of food cooking, or even opening the refrigerator to make a sandwich that would cause the baby to wake up, or start to get fussy. My grandmother would say if he’s hungry, you’re hungry.  He knows when you are fixing food, it’s time to eat. Every time you nurse, make it a habit to grab something to eat or drink. Woman does not live by granola bars and yoghurt alone.  In the dairy industry, pregnant cows with newborn calves get premium food including grains and forage but are separated from their calves who might “steel” the best milk.

Make a collection of snacks to keep on hand near the place you are most likely to nurse.  Get a cooler or a pet proof container or snack back pack. Things on hand if you don’t quite make it to the kitchen. Fruit, juice, sandwiches, salads, smoothies, protein shakes or veggies.  Things that are easy to eat with one hand.  Or have your snack first before nursing.  

I was so hungry when nursing my babies. It seemed like I ate a tremendous amount of food but it didn’t seem like I ever got enough to eat.  When I looked in the mirror I felt fat and still pregnant so I would simultaneously talk myself out of eating what I really wanted.  While loving to cook, I was so grateful when folks cooked for me and brought me treats. The baby did not need another onesie, I needed food! Dagnabit! After nursing the little one, who might hold, play, or distract the baby while you make quick work of finishing your meal. If your baby is thin, fretting or not growing well. Ask who indeed is feeding you? How much time are you spending together, eating together, feeling full & satisfied?  Licking your lips with the pleasure of eating. Weaning is the time when the little hand reaches over to sample what is already on your plate to see what is making you smile and hum.

Please tell us your story of who best fed you while you were a nursing mother. Or best yet what was your favorite meal. What do you wish that someone had brought you to eat every day?

Have you ever been so very angry and frustrated with someone that you just stopped speaking to them? It’s one thing if you never have to see them or interact with them on a daily or hourly basis, but what if you are depending on them.  What if it is your lover the person you want most to please and be loved by and they hold you at bay with silence.  As a nursing mother; I felt at once both my most vulnerable and my most powerful!  Now he has the audacity not to speak to me when I was literally the life line to his child.  What a bold audacious and stupid move!  I would not hurt the baby, but I also had to sit with not hurting him for keeping a wall of silence between us.

I thought (or hoped) my milk would of course literally stop flowing and of course the opposite happened.  I nearly drowned the little one with the most milk ever…enough for two babies, sticky sweet milk spraying on the floor, on the bed, just everywhere.  It was like a loose garden hose; with the baby giggling as it was so hard to latch on…  It was one of those times the little one learned to actually stop the flow of milk by pressing his hand on the nipple or just watching it squirt out into the air with such delight…How could I have so much milk when I was crying with red hot fierce angry energy yet totally frozen out of the love loop?

Have you ever had an argument with someone; they made their point, you weren’t really listening and you made your point and they weren’t really listening and some mythical angel whispered in your ear and  told you that there was no communication because they weren’t really talking to you or about you.  

You were just the closest at hand and so the speech was delivered to you.  It was maybe about work, or the light bill, or someone left the water running.  Maybe that speech was for someone else long ago in their past. It may have also been about a worry on their mind that they could for no reason clear at that time could they justify or resolve the issue by sharing it with you. I heard in the lyrics of a new age forgiveness song that someone else may have been the one to cut you, but you were the one that made me bleed.  Yikes, I hate when I do that.

Silence can be golden at the time generally because it buys you time.  It gives you a break and in that moment of pause of grace, perhaps when you are not blinded by injury and rage you can see or hear another voice and perspective.  Wait it out, be willing to listen for signs of life.  You truly have the power to heal and sustain life.  Go to a quiet place. Nurse your baby and search and hold the love forever or as long as you can. Kiss and make up at your first opening when the coast is finally clear.  Love was there all along.

We all know that a silence can go on too long.  Irreparable harm is done and it is the hallmark of the beginning of the end. More often than not though, it is just a test of stamina and commitment and a made-up mind to stay… to hold on and to let the storm that was really not meant to harm you to pass.

Some mothers on the prickly fence about nursing their babies already wracked with fatigue use that moment of disconnect and anger to thrust the baby to the father or to anyone else’s arms and demand that they do “it” instead …since absolutely no one understands who you are and how you feel and there is nothing left to give.  Bone dry, no more milk, no more love!

Please tell us your story of what it felt like not to be spoken to or heard. There are those times when all you wanted to do was talk it out, have him listen and comfort you even if he did not understand.  You would give anything to have him speak a word of recognition, hope and encouragement! Remind you that all is well, or that it would be OK! …Touch me even if you can’t speak to me and have the anger go away. 

Maybe you recall what it was like for you to not speak to someone you once loved and trusted who then betrayed you. What was that like?  My favorite memory is of times I thought someone or even the baby was mad at me for something I did or said and then later learned it had nothing to do with me at all.