So I was driving the other day with Amelia in the carseat sitting behind me. We’d been out running some errands and she was napping sweetly and quiet as we were heading back home.
I was anticipating doing another stop off and was attempting to gauge how much time I would have before absolutely needing to take her home to feed her.
Without an ounce of hesitation or self-consciousness I shoved my hand up the front of my shirt and gave my breasts a handle and squeeze.
While in the car.
With people in cars to he right or left of me.
To check and see if the boobs felt plump which is a good way for me to see if the baby might be hungry since Amelia’s nursing schedule had synched up with milk production.
At that point I realized, wow. I just felt myself up in semi-public.
And woah, I’m overdue to write this blogpost about what I’ve been going through with breastfeeding.
A nerdy metablogging aside: I’m kinda curious to see how well i can googlebomb this blogpost about a korean woman’s boobs, asian boobs, titties, breasts, tig ol bitties, jugs, melons, nipples, boobies, cleavage, rack, to really skew some search results.
My boobs are, pretty much, her most favorite thing ever. They are The Beatles, Elvis, and Jesus to her. Amelia is now 4 months old and fed nearly exclusively via breast. But it definitely wasn’t easy getting to this point.
There seems to be an impression that breastfeeding is a natural and instantaneous bond between mother and child that requires no adjustment or learning. After all, it’s an animal and primitive process that has managed to keep the species going for thousands of years. Right? Right.
Now, I’ve never really been a boobie girl. People rarely, if ever, remark on my rack and I myself and written more than once on my annoyance at my lack of boobage. During the pregnancy I noted that a few physiological changes were odd for me including the change in areola color and general nipple morphology changes from something that used to not be pokey to well… pinky nubbin-ish. I hadn’t thought too much over breastfeeding during the pregnancy, just assuming that things would work itself out and happen in stride.
Though, now that I think about it, I do recall being slightly horrified by the flashback image I had of my maternal grandmother and her jugs. Now, harlmohnee was a cute and delightfully funny woman who, while we couldn’t communicate with each other very well, shared a bond of suffering through my harabohjee’s snoring during the summer that they came to visit and slept in my room with me. Harlmohnee was approximately 4″8, slightly round, and completely covered with wrinkles. She resembled a sharpei. But one that would do shots of Johnny Walker black with you on New Years Eve.
During the summer visit in 2000 when I went to Korea, it was, I believe, one of the worst heat waves in recent history. I was staying in the countryside at my aunt’s home and sharing a bedroom with my harlmohnee. Harlmohnee slept topless. Time and the fact that she’d nursed my mother and 6 other children were not kind on her boobs. And frankly, with her short stature as it was, her breasts, without any hyperbole whatsoever, hung to her waist.
I think I’d blocked that image from my mind until this exact moment.
Now, Amelia, being an emergency c-section baby, threw a few kinks into the plans re: nursing.
For the first few weeks after Amelia arrived, breastfeeding was extraordinarily stressful for me. Because my body was going through extensive stress post-surgery to repair itself and get me back on my feet, I simply wasn’t producing very much milk at all. So we were supplmeneting significantly since she wasn’t regaining the weight she’d had at birth.
This was emotionally very disheartening since it’s so easy to readily assume that your body would automatically be fully capable of providing for your most precious cargo. This brought back wful feelings for me from the previous miscarriage about my own body betraying me in not being able to take care of my baby. Add to that some haphazard early latching and the nipples were in nearly constant pain. White, hard, and somewhat itchy. Pumping didn’t seem to help and I despaired on whether my milk would ever “come in” sufficiently enough for Amelia.
By the 5th or 6th week after Amelia was born we were still supplementing nearly half of her meals. Which of course makes reading anything/everything from La Leche League make me feel guilty or angry that I was getting lectured by a bunch of boob fascists. Hubbycakes had picked me up Fenugreek pill supplements that were supposed to help with lactation and I was still trying to find a solution to why my nipples kept hurting. Reading forums about how some women orgasm while breastfeeding made me want to punch things. Oh the humanity! Why were my boobs so lame!
By the 9th week or so, my milk production was finally beginning to come in and nearly all of Amelia’s meals were by boob. On the occasional “clusterfeeding” growth spurt we’d feed her formula and “top her off” with boob. And I’d finally found some helpful results re: my nipple pain. Apparently – early “Nipple Trauma” had damaged some ducts and caused them to be overly constricting. Taking a few ibuprofen daily pretty much made the pain disappear within a few hours and I started taking these every morning with my vitamins and fenugreek suplement. Still, the notion of “Nipple Trauma” cracks me up. It sounds like the boobs went to Iraq and came back with a disability and needed to hang out at the VA hospital with other veterans to talk about the “good old days”.
This is also around the time that my boobs turned into a bio-alarm clock. Where I was finally generating enough breastmilk that I leaked onto my teeshirt and woke me up in the middle of the night, just about 5 minutes before Amelia started fussing for a feeding. Since then the boobs have been a pretty good guage on if Amelia should be hungry or not.
Of course, the baby doesn’t *just* enjoy the booby for nutrition.
There’s comfort booby.
And sleepy booby.
And bored booby.
And play booby.
There are times when Amelia is so sated that she is limp, as if drunk and other times she is wailing in between suckles while beating at the boob with her tiny fists.
And the occasional times she sucks on the breast and then snaps her head back in dramatic flourish, stretching the nipple like a rubberband to snap back. Then releases to put her head on it like a pillow, a possessive hand gripping it’s side.
Which I know, makes the hubby jealous. Because he claims it used to be *his* booby. And makes him occasionally scold the child by saying “Those are only on loan to you. I get those back soon.”
So Amelia’s now at the 4 month mark with an anticipated 2-3 months more of pure breastfeeding before teeth come in or she’s ready for semi-solid foods.
Crazy.
That by the time that I’ve finally gotten the hang of this thing, I can see the end approaching.