Navigating Expectations and Reality: A New Mother's Journey of Love and Breastfeeding
Key Highlights :
Becoming a mother is often seen as the most natural and instinctive thing in the world. But for many, the reality of motherhood can be quite different than what was expected. For me, it was the challenge of breastfeeding that gave me the biggest shock. When my newborn daughter came home from the hospital, she was struggling to eat. Despite all the preparation for pregnancy and childbirth, it was only after delivery that I realized the difficulty of the journey ahead.
The question of how to feed our newborns is one that is rife with judgment, and has been for generations. I had assumed that breastfeeding would come “naturally,” but in reality, nothing about the process of becoming a mother was natural. I had wondered for years whether I should have a child, but when my due date approached, I would have been happy to extend the gestational period if it meant I didn't have to find out what happened next. But when my daughter was born, I knew that I wanted to breastfeed her. I wanted to give her the best, and I wanted to be the sole source of her nutrition.
A day after we returned from the hospital, a lactation nurse came to our apartment. I was desperate for her to arrive, and when she did, she lit candles and told me to think about my baby and look at photos or watch videos of her while I breastfed or pumped. The love, she said, would make the milk flow more freely.
My home became devoted to the cause of increasing my breast milk. I ate lactation cookies, drank oatmeal, and even tried to drink Guinness. I took supplements and prescribed myself an anti-nausea medication that had the side effect of increasing the hormone responsible for milk production. But despite all my efforts, it became clear that I would never make enough milk to meet my child’s needs.
The symbolism here was almost too clear. For all the pressure I have felt as a doctor or a writer, there is nothing that compares with the expectations placed on mothers. We are supposed to fall in love with our babies immediately, to experience motherhood as a transcendent state. We are told to breastfeed for up to two years, as though that is a reasonable thing to expect, as though everyone’s lives and bodies can accommodate such a mandate. But that is not the only way to be a mother.
For those of us making the complicated decision to have a child later in life, there is inevitably something lost even for all that is gained. There is unimaginable joy and with it, the alternate life we will not live. But that is why I love my daughter so much. When I see her little clothes around the house or she smiles at me or splashes her feet in the bath, she breaks my heart open.
At night, when she wakes up, there is no more thrashing and flailing. I place her under my chest, her warm body close to my heart as it was for so many months, and she feeds. I feel her own chest rise and fall, listen to the sound of her breathing and watch her little toes wiggle in delight. I know that the milk might not fill her, and so she will have formula later. But I am OK with this; there is value here that cannot be measured in ounces.
Maybe that is what it is to be a mother, to create a family: to hold your child tight while you feed her, even if that food does not come solely from your own body. And to know that, too, is love.
