Dr. Leaky

(TMI warning – graphic discussion of breast feeding)
Years ago a friend of mine, Madame L, had a baby and decided to breast feed the baby. Having recently learned that this was a healthier option for those who could tolerate the extra year of alcohol, tobacco and caffeine prohibition, we were all very supportive of her choice and understood that she’d made it for the right reason.

She breastfed that boy til he was five.

None of us could have anticipated this. We tried to understand and yet terrible, judgmental and horribly unenlightened terms came to mind. I remember having a conversation with her about how yes, it was healthier for a baby, but I couldn’t see myself doing it. I can barely manage the writing and teaching schedule I currently have, let alone add a half hour every 2-3 hours to sit and nurse a kid. Not to mention, I’m a college professor. I can’t have my breasts leaking in the middle of a class of 18-year-old boys. After years of frustration at how much and often women’s bodies want to leak and what a pain in the ass it is to constantly monitor and manage, I certainly didn’t need to add yet another leakage point. Baby or no. There were certainly ways to be a great mother without worrying about all that constantly.

It’s funny how time and circumstances change things.

Yes, I’m breastfeeding Connor. The time needed to care for him as an infant meant that I had to cut a deal with my chair for some flexible teaching options. What I got, with my mid-semester delivery date, was a frontloaded 5-course semester, a first session class that ended online when my students e-mailed their final paper and two online courses as my last requirement for the Spring semester. The possibility being there, I’ve taken the opportunity to do it.

The second day at the hospital, my pediatrician said that my son was suckling in an effort to “call down the milk.” It’s a poetic way of saying that Connor’s demand was initiating my supply. I had visions of his little mouth using the breast like a grammaphone: “Miiiilk! Milllllkkk!!” I’ve never really loved the stuff and now I’m drowning in it. Briefly, it’s like living in a river of milk. The goddamn stuff is everywhere. Milk in the baby, milk on the baby, milk on the burp cloth, milk on the bra, milk literally falling out of me sometimes and, yes, spraying out at others. I was typing with one hand once and heard Connor fussing, only to look down and see his head decorated with tiny white droplets. It’s times like that I feel like a bad mother – but then I remember all the times he’s dropped the nipple in mid-sleep, to get a jet in the eye or ear. Poor baby.

So it comes to this. A fleshy, saucy, bourbon-swilling, wisecracking, chain-smoking, post-modernist PhD in motherhood, I’m not really much more than a sleepier variety of cow.

The boy is oblivious as he tugs on the breast, one hand by his ear and another on his favorite friend, the left breast, his mouth bent pointy like those children’s drawings of birds as he drinks. I wonder what he’s thinking about, if he’ll remember this, and what he’ll call down next.