I’m hibernating with my baby; consumed with learning how to meet his needs. I gaze at him, in wonder and in love.
Nothing prepared me for how intensely physical caring for him is. I understand why Anne Enright said, “This is why mothers do not write, because motherhood happens in the body, as much as the mind.”
My baby’s scent fills my nose and mouth, as if I have inhaled him. Even my love for him manifests itself in my throat, infusing every breath. Skin-on-skin contact triggers a barrage of happy hormones. I’ve never taken hard drugs so can only imagine that this is the type of high people chase. When I’m feeding him, stroking his soft pudgy arms and legs, I feel electrified by an ecstatic rush up my spine. It’s utterly intoxicating and disarming.
Chiefly, I am now a massive pair of heavy breasts on legs, feeding whenever he demands. When he cries and roots around with his mouth for a breast, I pluck one out and pop it between his jaws. When he clamps on there are a few seconds of searing pain, and then he starts to suck and gulp and relieve them of some weight.
Babies start off getting colostrum from the breasts before the milk comes in after a few days. When my milk came in my breasts swelled up like lead balloons. I couldn’t even discern a nipple. They were terrifyingly rock solid. I didn’t see how the boy would ever get such a breast into his mouth. I envisioned having to go to hospital to have them pumped. But my baby was undeterred. He persevered in chomping them into shape and fed away. I marvelled triumphantly, ‘we are one organism’. The baby intuitively knows what to do. Lead on, baby.
The midwives tell me that my baby has a good latch. He is feeding well. He is gaining weight. Sometimes he feeds for over an hour at a time, one moment gulping the milk, then sleeping at the breast and using me as a comfort dummy before resuming his sucking again. The midwives tell me not to unlatch him, in case he is slowly taking in the hind milk after the first thirst-quenching milk. This leaves me pinioned to one spot for a long time, frozen as I wait for his feed to end. And then there may just be a short break before the cycle starts again. He also pulls and tugs at my nipples a lot when he is sleeping at the breast but won’t release me from his determined bite. This hurts.
I haven’t figured out how to feed discreetly yet. It seems enough just to be able to feed at all. In the hospital the midwives showed me how to feed lying down, which is most relaxing. I lie on one side and he lies on his side facing me, his nose to my nipple. So I spend most of the first days lying half-naked in bed, feeding the boy. Why bother putting my breasts away? I have never been so naked with such abandon in my life. Just when my body is at its most broken and misshapen, I feel strangely strong and unselfconscious. My body feels both foreign from me and yet also fully inhabited for the first time. It’s purpose is not to be looked at, but to provide for another. Ironically, more people are seeing more of it now than ever before. If people want to visit then I give them the breast warning, or else retreat from their company. I am immodest, beyond worrying about others’ perceptions, I have a mouth to feed.
Sometimes after feeding, he withdraws satisfied and contented, and then lays his head on top of my breast, alongside his tiny hand, using my bosom for a pillow. He exhales deeply in a sleepy milky dream. It is such a tender sight. I behold him with adoration and awe. These are the magic moments.
I am a hormonal soup. I feel overwhelmed - with love, responsibility and worry. When he cries loudly, I sometimes cry too - because I hate to see him distressed, because I feel helpless to take away his pain, because I don’t know what to do, because I worry about how many ways I might fail him now and in the future, and because it’s a godawful sound. I don’t know how to reconcile his supreme innocence and vulnerability with the outside world. I don’t yet know how to be in the world with him, as his Mum. I have to stop my mind racing ahead and just take each day at a time.
I battle all of these emotions in a battered body. We’ve already heard enough about my breasts, but they preoccupy me every moment of the day. They ache because they’re heavy with milk and they’re supremely sensitive. I can’t bear for the towel to even touch them after a shower. I want to press against them between feeds to take away the pains. Meanwhile, down below I’m recovering from the stitches and waiting to heal. Another sensitive area. I have to be careful and gentle when going to the loo, careful when out walking, careful of positions when sitting. I have a numb patch above my right knee, apparently likely to be some (hopefully temporary) nerve damage from the epidural or spinal I had in hospital. And finally, I’m bleeding. My favourite perk of pregnancy was the absence of periods. But then, after birth, you bleed for around six weeks. The shops sell special ‘maternity pads’ for this level of bleeding. One super period to reimburse the universe for all the periods you missed over the last nine months. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
And yet, and yet, none of it really matters. Whilst the baby is feeding and growing and I can meet his needs, all is bearable. More than bearable. Wonderful. I inhale the sight of my precious bundle. I caress his soft skin. The love catches in my throat.