Disclaimer
I wish we didn't need a disclaimer, but we do because mothers are such an oppressed group of people. The catch-all of society’s faults and gaps, mothers receive little help and tons of blame, while they are trying so desperately to hold the world together.
My intention here is to reflect on my own breastfeeding journey, the privileges and sacrifices that made it possible, the reasons I continued until my child weaned herself, and what I’ve learned from this experience. Although I hope it may help some new or future moms make more empowered and informed choices about their own breastfeeding journeys, I am being descriptive, not prescriptive. I don't want to judge, shame or blame anyone for their choices. I want to validate, encourage self-empathy and offer information.
I know and love many moms (also gay dads and nonbinary parents) who could not breastfeed: adoptive parents; moms whose bodies couldn’t produce any milk, or enough milk, or sustain milk production over time; moms who whose illnesses made their milk unsafe for their babies. I think of my grandma Lalita, the midwife, who nearly died of puerperal fever after her first son was born. My grandpa Luis kept my newborn uncle César alive by feeding him donkey’s milk! It was 1936 and in rural Mexico there weren't many options. Thank goodness for formula. How many of us can say we have a lactating donkey mama around when we need her?
Formula is a life saver and I am so very grateful it exists. I am also angry that in order to make huge amounts of money, formula companies paid off doctors, manipulated mothers and brainwashed society. They created most of the myths that still persist about breastfeeding being inconvenient, unnecessary, subpar, etc. Shame on them for using a life saving product to exploit the very humans they purport to be helping.
***
An era ended on Saturday. My 3-year and 10-month-old daughter Sophia climbed into our bed that morning and said what she’s been saying since she learned to speak, “Mama milk.”
I lifted my PJ shirt and offered my large, floppy breast while half asleep.
Sophia latched on for a second, then let go, “I don't think there's any more milk in there.”
Slightly more awake now, I wondered if this was it. Was my body done making milk or was Sophia weaning herself at last? “That’s because you are not a baby anymore. You're not even a toddler. You are a girl and you drink water and tea, you eat all kinds of food.”
Sophia held my breast tenderly, “Maybe I don't need mama milk anymore.”
I pulled my shirt back down and gave her a hug, feeling both relief and sadness, “Maybe you don't, my love.” We lay cuddling in bed, with my sleepy husband beside us. No drama, no tears.
If I add up the months I was pregnant to her current age, I have been feeding Sophia from my body for four and a half years. The person I was before her arrival is nothing but a wispy memory. I am first and foremost Mama, she who is tethered to her progeny by the breast. Sophia is the barnacle to my whale, the clinging vine to my tree, the hermit crab to my anemone. The tether is now loosened.
It’s been a few days. I feel like my breasts are exploding, my mind is unscrambling, the milky fog that has pervaded my thoughts all these years lifting at last. Who knows what hormonal cocktail courses through my veins, in a 46-year-old body caught between perimenopause and breastfeeding, “Wait, I know our baby-making days are almost over, but we need to feed this one baby just a little longer… And now we’re done.”
Extended breastfeeding is so rare in industrialized countries that there is scant research about the changes in breastfeeding hormones on the mother’s body, let alone an old mother like me. I have seen my appetite adjust down from the early days postpartum, where I had to fill my lactation station with snack bars and eat for two, to several years of bacon and egg breakfasts, to being satisfied with a mushroom-egg omelet nowadays.
Another welcome change is the end of my insomnia. Before pregnancy I’d never had trouble sleeping. From the end of pregnancy until now, I developed tremendous tolerance for Sophia waking me up at any hour demanding milk. Even after she moved out of her crib and into her own bedroom, she’d come to me in the wee hours wanting mama milk. I would hear the creak of her door opening, check the clock to confirm it was sometime between 3 and 5 am, and listen for the pitter-patter of little feet coming toward my side of the bed. How many times did I help her up beside me and repeat the ritual? I’d pull up my shirt, offer one breast and wait for her to say, “Other side milk.” Then “All done.” Having had her fill, she'd fall back asleep and I’d be left wide awake. How many times did I wander my house at night, wired and dreading the sleep deficit I knew would come back to bite me by midafternoon?
I could’ve just weaned her, I suppose. Even some well-intentioned mom friends would mutter things like, “What do you want? A medal? You're already in the 100th percentile for time breastfeeding.” Or the classic, “Are you going to breastfeed her until she goes to college?”
Just to be clear, my goal was not to extend breastfeeding as long as possible, but only as long as it served my child and my ability to parent her.
We actually had a false weaning alarm two months earlier. Toward the end of February Sophia went 48 hours without asking for breastmilk. I didn't offer it either, waiting to see if she was ready to wean, following her cues as I do in most matters. Then on February 21st, as the novel Coronavirus dominated news headlines all over the world, she developed a 101 degree fever, and was achy and cranky. After two days without, Sophia not only asked for mama milk but clung to my breasts. I kept her home from preschool. She breastfed and napped often, barely eating solid food. She recovered in five days.
Then I got sick and the virus flattened me for weeks. I still wonder if it was COVID-19, since the dreaded virus had reached our area months earlier. I had cycles of fever, chills and sweats. My body ached like I'd been trampled by wild animals. My breath was labored and I had a horrible sinus infection, although no cough. I lost my appetite, my sense of smell and taste. Just as I was beginning to feel better, our city went into lockdown in response to the pandemic.
In the throes of this awful illness, I was filled with gratitude that my child intuitively knew to return to breast milk. My body was powerful enough to make antibodies for her one last time, allowing her to have a mild case and a quick recovery.
***
Before having Sophia I was ambivalent about motherhood. I had worked hard to heal from a pregnancy by rape in my teenage years. I loved children, but as a trauma therapist I’d known too many whose lives were marked by abuse. I was worried about a world ruled by oppression and hurtling toward environmental catastrophe. My fertile years flew by without a willing partner, and having a nephew with a complex disability had shown me how incredibly hard the path of motherhood can be.
By the time I opened up to the possibility of becoming a mother, I was 42. I had a wonderful husband who wanted to be a father and I felt truly empowered to have a conscious parenting journey. Between my clinical training, my work with hundreds of families, and reading classic books like Magical Child, The Continuum Concept and Our Babies, Ourselves, I knew a lot about attachment bonding, that miraculous web of biological mechanisms that benefits babies and moms alike and forms the blueprint for all human relationships.
I wanted to avoid a hospital birth and plan for my baby being born at home, but my risks were too high. My team of obstetricians and midwives strongly suggested inducing me at 37 weeks of gestation, and since my daughter was stuck in frank breech position, I had a Cesarean.
Only the loving presence of my husband and doula, and my years of meditation kept me calm in that cold operating room full of machines. And because my baby was premature and didn’t pass through the birth canal or expel the liquid from her lungs, those very machines were needed to keep her alive.
I worried about the massive disruptions to our attachment process. They kept her in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Her latch was weak and she struggled to feed. Drugged with narcotics and in pain from my cut belly, I would shuffle at all hours of the day and night from my room to the NICU to bring her the colostrum I'd pumped, to hold her and try to teach her to feed directly from my breasts. Every time the nurses placed her back in her plexiglas bassinet and told me to go get some sleep, I took my broken heart and ravaged body to bed.
There was so much pain those first days. On day five my breasts were engorged, hard as rocks as my milk came in with an accompanying hormonal storm that threatened to tow me under. In a terrifying taste of post-partum mental instability, I fantasized about kidnapping my baby from the NICU and running. But how? Where to?
I began taking capsules of my placenta and felt better. Sophia learned to breastfeed with the help of a nipple shield. On day six they let her sleep in my room and the next day we were free to go home.
In contrast to what many moms experience, I had tons of support during the first year of my breastfeeding journey: my mom and husband, kind lactation consultants, free support groups, a family-oriented yoga center, a baby-carrier lending club, even a new moms’ singing circle.
I scrutinized my baby for signs of damage from our attachment disruption but found none. Our breastfeeding relationship was healing her. After all, her birth lasted a moment, the NICU a week, but breastfeeding happened a dozen times a day: more than 2000 times in the first 6 months! I had thousands of opportunities to show my daughter she had arrived in a world where she was safe and her needs would be lovingly met.
Before motherhood I'd been one of those people who thought breasts were for sex, but I quickly let go of that idea. No instinct was greater than the need to feed my baby. Nursing coverings were an annoyance. Breastfeeding shirts that allowed quick access but kept me warm were helpful, but in truth all modesty went out the window the minute my baby was hungry.
Life was reoriented to spaces where I could comfortably feed and care for Sophia. We built in visits to the bookstore where I could feed her in a rocking chair or the yoga center lounge where as soon as I opened my nursing top a helpful employee or fellow mom would offer tea.
The United States is notoriously bad at granting family leave, so my husband and I cut expenses to a minimum and planned a long maternity leave for me and a gradual return to work in my own business. I cared for Sophia full time for a year, feeling incredibly lucky for that privilege.
I began offering solid foods to Sophia at six months, but her interest was minimal. Her amazing pediatrician, a young Mormon and father of 3 who is used to thinking outside the box, said, “It’s fine if you come here when she's one and you tell me all she gets is breastmilk. Even when she's two.”
I stopped pushing food and let my baby set her own pace. Looking back now, it’s clear that our entire parenting philosophy can be summed up as TRUST. We trusted her to show us what she needed, and to move through her milestones at her own rhythm. We minimized power struggles and only set boundaries when it mattered.
When Sophia turned one, we hired a nanny three mornings a week so I could increase my work and writing time. I pumped my milk, her nanny gave her a bottle, and she increased her intake of solid foods.
When Sophia turned two, we sent her to preschool three days a week. I breastfed her at drop-off and pickup, and she didn't miss my milk in between. Contrary to people’s comments about breastfeeding keeping her a baby, my daughter’s development soared: her motor and social skills were on track, and her language and cognitive skills superb.
As Sophia got older, some of the people who’d supported our breastfeeding relationship began to change. When Sophia politely asked for “mama milk” and I opened my shirt for her, people looked away embarrassed or made snarky comments.
At times I fantasized about weaning her, wearing regular bras and clothes again and getting over the mental fog and sleep disruptions, but no reason seemed strong enough to endure her crying and deny her my milk. After all, I still had it in good supply. My milk got her through all the winter colds of her first preschool year, and whenever she had an “owie” or was emotionally overwhelmed, cradling up for mama milk was enough to reset her emotional buttons and return her to calm.
Two things helped me stop agonizing about weaning. First a fellow astrologer who pointed out Sophia's great emotional sensitivity and said “She’s the kind of child who would benefit from more time breastfeeding,” something I had already intuited about my Cancer Sun child.
Then another friend introduced me to a social media group about extended breastfeeding. With over forty thousand members from all over the world, posting a “brelfie”—a breastfeeding selfie—can yield you hundreds of “likes” and “loves” in minutes. Here moms can rant about unsupportive husbands who say breastfeeding toddlers is “disgusting”; dentists who blame cavities on mother’s milk (FYI, my daughter's tooth brushing is hit and miss, but she has no cavities); pediatricians, teachers and random people who tell moms that “they are breastfeeding just for themselves” or that “breastfeeding will stunt their kids’ development.” Invariably these moms receive an outpouring of unconditional support from their peers who know the average weaning age across the world is 4, and who trust that if we can keep making milk and it can keep benefitting our children, maybe there is no reason to stop.
So I continued. I never denied my daughter, regardless of the time of day or night, or her reason to ask for mama milk. Then last Saturday she lovingly informed me that she was closing this chapter of our lives, trading her mama milk for hugs.
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