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Milky Sweet Daydreams

by Eileen Lawrence

                "Okay kiddo," Sandy mumbled in a flat, tired voice. "We're going to do this until we get it right. Or until it kills us both."

                She shifted her weight on the couch, took a quick breath and positioned her fingers around Isabelle's  head, placing her thumb on one ear and her little finger on the other, just as she had been taught. She cradled the baby's body with her free arm and scooped her into what she  hoped was the correct feeding position. Isabelle could smell the milk. Her head bobbed forward in anticipation while her mouth opened and closed in a rabid, attack-like motion. Sandy was always taken aback by her baby's seemingly desperate approach to feeding. And ashamed of her own urge to protect her raw nipples,  rather than offer them to the hungry infant. 

                "We can do this, we can do this, we can do this," Sandy repeated. 

                The lactation consultant had suggested a number of feeding positions  designed to make breast feeding easier, but Sandy never seemed to get any one of them just right. The pillows the lactation consultant adjusted so easily never seemed to stay in place for Sandy .  Isabelle's body never settled comfortably until the consultant moved an arm a bit higher, a leg a little lower. All was just right with the consultant in charge. Isabelle's lip would fall into the correct nursing "latch." Sandy 's nipples would stop screaming in frustration and pain. For a brief moment, with her confidence restored, she could  relax and feel like a provider, a comforter, at one with her child.  She so longed for the blissful, easy "I am women, see me care for my child" serenity evoked by the nursing women in the birthing videos, or the women mingling in the birthing center, juggling their newborns and toddlers just as easily as they slipped in and out of their Birkenstock sandals.

                "Maybe bare feet is the ticket to happy nursing," Sandy had once thought in a daze of sleep deprivation and anxiety. "No, no." She had reminded herself. The woman featured in the breast pump ad was wearing a suit and heels, right? She was smiling and ready for her day at work, signing papers and talking on the phone – all while two suction cups swished and whooshed her valuable breast milk into two plastic sanitary bottles. "No hands necessary,"  the ad had promised.

                "If she can do it, I can do it," Sandy reassured herself. "I don't even wear heels." 

                Earth mother. Super mom. Sandy didn't want to be either. She would  settle for "in-between mom", "relatively competent mom." She wouldn't mind being labeled mediocre, just as long as she could nurse without such distress.  But her nursing contentment never lasted long. The lactation consultant always went home, and Sandy , left alone with Isabelle, felt as scattered as the sheets and pillows surrounding her. 

                "Why can't I do this ?" she would moan as she attempted another feeding. But today, today would be different. She was determined to get Isabelle to feed correctly, to feel the sense of empowerment she craved. It was possible. She knew it. The woman on the brochure had professed it. The lactation consultant had proven it.

                "Birkenstocks be damned," Sandy thought just as Isabelle gave a squeal of frustration. "Oh, sorry, sorry," Sandy said, startled from her reverie of nursing bliss. "Be kind," she pleaded with Isabelle as she brought her to her swollen breast. Isabelle took a few gulps and began to cough. Too much too fast.

                "Take it easy, Izzie," Sandy whispered. "Slow down."

                Sandy considered it very ironic that all through birthing class and breast-feeding class so much emphasis had been placed on making sure a new mother produced enough milk to  nourish her child. She came home from breast-feeding class laden with pamphlets filled with lists of potential warning signs for lack of adequate milk production. "Does your baby have moist lips while nursing?" "Wet x number of diapers per day?" "Poop green,  black, purple, etc.?"

                What no one ever mentioned was the possibility of producing too much milk. The nightmare of awakening in the middle of the night with rock-hard breasts while one's child slept soundly.  How to handle breasts that leaked so much they left a trail on the hardwood floor. Sandy had considered leaving the sweet, cloudy milk drops where they had fallen, so her husband could retrace her every step when he came home from work. A sort of follow the yellow brick road to insanity. But she didn't think he'd see the humor in it. Plus, it created a safety hazard. No use slipping on one's own milk just to prove something. Especially when Sandy wasn't quite sure of what she wanted to prove.

                No one had warned of breasts becoming so much larger than their original size they would become unrecognizable. Sandy had ceased to think of them as part of her body. They were separate beings with their own lives. She was merely their carrier, a host. She knew of people who named their breasts while nursing. She had considered doing this, but what could she possibly call them?   "Heidi" and "Helga?"   Nah, too German, too matronly. Mary and Margaret?  Too  nun-like.  Trixie and Ruby? Too cheap. How about Old Faithful and Mount Vesuvius ? Appropriate, but perhaps too much so. Daisy and Matilda?  Nope, too cow-like.  Bill and Bob? Too freaky. And so it went until she gave up.

                Sandy looked down at her nameless breasts. Isabelle was feeding with a tenacious determination, purring with contentment. "Oh, no. No wonder mommy's nipple are falling off," Sandy said as she gently  pulled Isabelle's lower-lip into place. The lactation consultant had pinpointed the source of Sandy's pain after watching Isabelle feed for a few minutes. Isabelle was a "chomper" whose only objective was going for the gold. She couldn't care less about technique. The consultant had told Sandy to remove Isabelle's mouth from the nipple every time she didn't latch on correctly.  But Sandy had found it too cruel.  Two months later, the only thing that felt cruel was having to continue to nurse. Sandy considered switching to formula, but she had once spoken to a La Leche League member who lived a few doors down and was taken aback by the league's fervor and absolutist stance on breastfeeding. She was certain the league must have a neighborhood watch, and she couldn't bear being confronted, bottle in hand, by a mother with a four-year-old attached to her breast.

                "Okay, that's better, Izzie," Sandy said while inspecting Isabelle's first few gulps. "Much better."

                Sandy rested her head back on the couch and closed her eyes, praying the pain wouldn't come back. And it didn't.  In fact something seemed to be reawakening in Sandy. Something familiar, yet distant. Her thoughts drifted to her husband – so wanting of sex, so annoyingly considerate of her overwhelming need to avoid it. Sandy knew, despite his façade of understanding, he was a bit troubled by her lack of desire. She felt compelled to read him passages from baby books that attested to the lack of sexual desire in postpartum women.  "See, see," she wanted to shout at him. "This is normal. I'm  not a freak." How could she possibly explain to him her body was no longer his, not even hers? A hapless shell of its former self, it belonged completely to Isabelle. But nobody would dare point a finger at Isabelle as the cause of Sandy's see-sawing emotions. Her friends, obstetrician, Isabelle's pediatrician, female relatives, know-it-all brother-in-laws, they could all tell her what the problem was. Hormones. Villainous, devious, insidious hormones. But how could her own body turn against her?  Sandy couldn't help but  imagine a mad puppeteer yanking strings of progesterone and estrogen, her emotions dancing to their erratic rhythm.

                As Isabelle continued her steady, cadenced sucking, Sandy gradually relaxed, letting her half-naked body sink into the couch. She thought of her husband, of their easy life together before the baby. There were so many things she had taken for granted.  The sweet abandon of walking around the apartment shamelessly naked--the  beauty of not giving her bare body a thought--except maybe to notice the pleasure the sight of it brought to her husband.  The luxury of lazy Saturday morning sex. Ah, yes, morning sex. Now that was something Sandy really missed. Maybe it was the energy from a good night's  sleep or  the feeling of waking up next to a warm, naked body that made sex in the AM so appealing. But for whatever reason, Sandy felt much less inhibited in the morning light. So when on early Saturday her husband suggested they pull out their copy of The Joy of Sex and try a new position, Sandy was willing. 

                She had received the book at her wedding shower, but had been intimidated by some of the positions. "Viennese Oyster " could only come to a painful end.  "Pattes d'araignée"? If Sandy couldn't pronounce it, she certainly wasn't going to try and perform it. So she had slipped the book under some loose papers in the second drawer of her night stand and forgot about it. But apparently her husband hadn't. Sandy recalled flipping through the pages together, giggling like teenagers at the explicit drawings while trying to make their choice.

                "What was the name of that position?" Sandy murmured to herself. A siren wailed outside the window causing Isabelle's little body to jerk, her arm flinging sideways as if to banish the disruption. Sandy, determined not to lose what was turning out to be quite a pleasant daydream, pulled Isabelle more tightly against her, concentrating on the details of that sunlit morning.

                She remembered lying on her back, eyes closed, as her husband’s fingers traced the outline of her breasts. And how her nipples had registered their pleasure after he retraced them with his tongue. She could almost feel herself surrendering to the warmth of his body, hungering for his touch. She had stroked his wavy hair as he kissed her stomach and continued downward until he reached her tender skin. And when Sandy had thought she could hold back no longer, he placed one hand on the inside of each of her thighs and began slowly guiding her to the edge of the bed so her head hung slightly over the mattress. "Don't move," he had whispered in her ear. But Sandy had wanted to move, needed to move – she was desperate for release.

                Sandy's breath began to quicken as a wave of heat spread through her body.  She clutched the arm rest of the couch, and her back arched slightly.  The room was quiet except for the sounds of Isabelle's purring and Sandy's breathing.  Then, suddenly, Isabelle pulled back from Sandy's breast and gave a loud burp - satisfied at last.  Sandy jumped, startled to find herself in the living room.  She felt exposed, even a tad guilty, yet somehow exhilarated.

                "Maybe the La Leche Leaguers should use that as part of their marketing campaign," she mused to herself with a little laugh.  Then she leaned forward and kissed Isabelle's soft, silky head. 

                "Well, sweetheart, I think we finally got it", she said with a smile. "I think we got it just right."