“Mama Jen?” Dad said quietly from the hallway. “I think she’s still hungry.”
I was already headed in her direction. She had been crying for two minutes or so and, as any breastfeeding mother can tell you, my milk ducts had already responded en force.
“I’m sorry. I know you need to work. She ate the two bottles you brought, but I think she needs more.” My parents had kindly offered to watch my 5-week-old daughter so I could carve out a couple of hours to spend in front of my laptop finishing up a project for a client. In anticipation of my work night, I had pumped two bottles, the only “liquid gold” I could manage extract between Lyla’s nearly constant feedings.
I sped over to the chair where Mom was holding Lyla, rocking her and soothing her with a voice I hadn’t heard since I was a child. “She needs her mama right now,” Mom said with knowing eyes. Bending down to scoop up my red-faced babe, I briefly cursed myself for thinking I could maintain a vital career and be the type of mother I wanted to be. Clearly I was failing on both counts.
Lyla and I retreated to my parents’ living room and her hungry little lips latched onto my heavy breast. I tried typing with one hand while cradling her in the opposite arm. When that proved too tedious, I began making a mental list of all of the things I needed to accomplish before the week was out— maternal, personal and professional tasks. I felt my blood pressure rise.
When I was only 3 or 4 months pregnant, Mom asked me if I was planning to breastfeed. She beamed when I responded with a resounding “of course!” “You’ll love it,” she cooed, slipping into a dreamy, nostalgic state.
I do love it. I love that my body can produce everything that my quickly growing daughter needs. I love that I can give her something that no one else can. I love that we have moments throughout the day (and night) that are reserved for just the two of us.
But some days I’m just a human couch with milk spigots (my sister’s apt description). On those days, each time I try to perform basic hygiene or get out of my mismatched pajamas, each time I try to respond to an email, each time I try to go to the bathroom, pleading little sounds and eyes draw me back and we nurse…and nurse…aaaaand nurse.
I am grateful for the ability and desire to breastfeed my daughter. I am also grateful for a lifestyle that allows me to do so. I work primarily from home, and most days I am able to complete that work and have plenty of time to spend with my darling “nugget.” Both my husband and I have worked hard to be in a position where I can work part-time from home in a fulfilling career and mother Lyla in the best way I know how.
What’s more, I have an incredibly supportive husband who cooks, cleans and never misses a chance to interact with his daughter. Even though I know we have worked hard to get here, I still can’t help but feel like I won the lifestyle lottery. Most days I don’t feel like a woman “oppressed by motherhood” (French writer Elizabeth Badinter’s theme de préférence), nor do I feel like I’m somehow less of a mother for maintaining a career (a common American maternal anxiety). I feel like a pretty great mother, actually.
Then why have I felt so “off” these past few days? So torn? Searching for the answer, my mind traveled back to the conversations about breastfeeding I’d had with my mom before Lyla was born. Well, she didn’t work while she was breastfeeding me, I reasoned, so there you go. All she had to do was concentrate on me and my needs. She must have been happy with that. But I knew deep down that wasn’t true. My mom has never been the “housewife” type. She’s a woman of action, a woman of vision. I know there were times when she felt cooped up when she was at home with us. I also know that she loved that time in her life more than words.
How did she do it? The answer came to me as soon as I asked the question: she has always been wonderful at living in the moment. For better or for worse, I have always excelled at speeding ahead into the future, relying on multitasking and overloading my schedule to get to the next step, the next level— either personally or professionally.
That was it. In the best interest of my daughter, and in my best interest, I would have to swap out my lens, to adjust my perspective.
So, I’m taking a page out of my wise mother’s book and trying my darndest to stay in the moment. Yep… easier said than done, but this truth reminds me of the importance of trying: If there’s anything lovelier than my beautiful daughter nursing merrily while never breaking eye contact with me, I have yet to experience it. I know these days will pass too quickly and someday, like my mom, I’ll speak of breastfeeding in rhapsodic terms.
I also know that I have a great support system. When Michael gets home from work he’ll be there to play with Lyla while I do my work, or bathe, or have a glass of wine—whatever I feel is the top priority at that moment. When I greet him with un-brushed teeth, tangled hair and tired eyes, he’ll immediately know what kind of day I’ve had: a human couch day.
Today was one of those days. “She only sees me as a food source,” I lamented. “She doesn’t play with me like she does with you. She doesn’t smile at me as much.”
“Yes,” he replied. “But you’re the reason she’s so happy and healthy. You’re the reason she’s growing so well. Plus, I saw her crack a few smiles while you were talking to her in French this morning.”
“You’re right, she did like that,” I remembered as I stepped into the shower.
Yes.
Perspective.
#1 by Kate Kunkel Bailey on August 5, 2011 - 23:25
Awwww. This brought *so* much to the surface for me, Jen. Thank you.
You know, when I think about mothering newborns, I remember contented sighs from tiny bodies, curled warm against my own. I’m no longer embarrassed by the thought of answering the door in two-day-old pajamas, stained with spit-up–and probably smelly.
When I think about terrible twos, I giggle at the thought of my middlest daughter. She was a master of the chin-quiver, and my heart swells at the thought of her mid-tantrum: golden ringlets bouncing, pink cheeks glistening with tiny, grumpy tears. Until tonight, I’d forgotten the ghastly moment that I realized that I was being irrationally sarcastic with a toddler.
When I think about sick preschoolers, I remember my eldest daughter, always a go-getter. At five or six, she was already too independent for much snuggling or cuddling. When she was sick, though, she’d let me hold her bony, fevered self in my arms for hours on end, playing with her hair and singing her lullabies. I was grateful for those hours, but I didn’t know it, then.
Your conversation here reminded me a bit of this article that a friend sent me last year. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elisha-goldstein-phd/why-parents-hate-parentin_b_649715.html
I had a major “aha” moment upon reading this article. What if, even in those hardest moments of life, I am really, truly happy? What if I just don’t know enough to recognize it? I think about that all the time now, when things get tough.
On one of my hardest days as a mother of tiny children, an awesome mama-friend suggested that when things get really tough, I should stop, close my eyes, and send my future self a blessing. Today, when things are really challenging, I swear I feel that love enveloping me, reminding me that I am, in fact, strong enough to do whatever it is that I need to do.
It was the best advice I ever got. Worthwhile tasks are rarely without effort. Monumentally important tasks are sometimes, well, monumental. And, certainly, to selflessy love another person is the perhaps the most monumental work of all. But there’s really something powerful and present about loving yourself enough to take a moment and send a mental hug to your future self. It’s not just living *in* the moment. It’s living also for every moment yet to come.
And when you send your blessing off, listen closely. There are an awful lot of mamas out there right now, sending blesings in your direction.
Anything I can do, just ask, you feisty, fiery, brilliant, foxy, creative, productive, accomplished human couch.
(Sorry for babbling in your comments)
#2 by luciditewriting on August 6, 2011 - 10:01
Thank you for your lovely and thoughtful words, dear Kate. They mean so much to me, especially your “aha” moment– so true.
I came across this (long) quote a few weeks ago and it spoke volumes to me (I was particularly sleep-deprived at the moment). Here’s to honest, loving, self and child- respecting parenting!
“The baby’s needs are very insistent, and they’re normally not responsive to things like the mother’s needs for sleep, or food, or rest or break. That experience the first night of being more incredibly tired than I’ve ever been in my life, from having gone through the experience of the labor, and it was grueling as they tend to be. And just thinking that I felt badly deserved of a break — long, uninterrupted sleep, and not getting it, and the dawning realization that the days when you could depend on justice, in that sense, were over. That happens immediately, or it did for me. You can feel yourself kicking against it in an ineffectual way, but you realize that things have changed. How soon you accept it is another issue, but it is a source of frustration and guilt, because it sounds so selfish to talk about posing your own needs against those of your helpless infant, but we’re only human, and we do do that. And it seems unfair, feels unfair, much of the time, but we do it anyways. To me, that makes women quite heroic.” – Susan Maushart
#3 by Mary Gallardo on August 6, 2011 - 10:46
I have come to believe that in those weeks and months that we “warehouse” our little bundles, it SEEMS the primary function we perform is growing a healty baby to deliver into this world. BUT, truly we are are the ones growing. Our mothering self is being formed. Our female selves are completed. How else can one explain the profound wisdom that such a “new” mother as yourself already personifies? It began when you were that little “nugget” in Barb’s warehouse
)
I smiled and cried as I read your words this morning. Reminiscing to both those frustrations, feelings of failure and most importantly those moments of pure bliss. The moments of clarity when you know this is exactly what you want,no matter the cost (personal or professional). I hugged myself in rememberance of those awe inspiring moments when these mamms were more than just something that make bra shopping awful! I could almost feel them filling and releasing and remembered the look in each of my children’s eyes as they were soothed in a way that only I could provide.
I chuckled about the feelings of “Daddy being preferred”…..just you wait. You will come to wear that as a badge of merit on the day the she whispers to you, “please don’t tell Dad!”. Motherhood is without a doubt the hardest title you will ever hold…….you will wonder who the heck that “Jen” chick is one day amidst all the “Moooooom’s!” called, yelled, cried, whined and giggled through. And then you will be asked to let it all go. To return to the beginning. Become you again. To go from Mom and Dad back to Jen and Michael. And it will be just as hard and just as wonderful as all you are growing through now! You will read something very much like what you have written and you will feel like we all do. Knowing. Remembering. Envying. And yes awaiting (or for D and Barb, enjoying) the grand child.
Remember when I told you to trust your instincts? Well, as you said, “I feel like a pretty great mother, actually”……..it’s because YOU ARE!!!!!
#4 by Ashley on August 6, 2011 - 12:10
Yes, Jen, if only I had had the self-discipline to reflect in this way during my BF-ing years. I remember feeling the same anxiety. As soon as I would sit down to write or edit, I’d hear those cries. On some days, they hit me in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes we cried together. But what happened, eventually, though never soon enough, was to realize that there was nowhere else I could be. It was what was best for the children, obvs. And that was enough. But on my worst days, when the pain for me was at its peak and the deadlines were passing me by, I’d wonder: when do I get something back (those super early months were a blur of basic human need–the smiles and interaction came later). At first, every session felt like a hindrance (I’ll never write again! My “severely traumatized nipples will never heal!) but over time, I realized that each session was a break I was being given a break. The breastfeeding relationship forced me to just…stop. I would never have stopped moving on my own–you know how I am. But both Hudson and Joey told me, with their need, that I had to be still. Once I realized that we could both be still together, many times a day, I realized that this BF-ing was a gift for me, too. No one would expect me to clean up the house. No one expected me to answer an e-mail. No one expected dinner right at that moment. When I picked one of them up to BF, THIS became my deadline. THIS became my pressing structural issue I had to work out.
Anyway, thanks for such a candid essay about breastfeeding. Too many times we read nothing but how blissful and amazing and wonderful breastfeeding is; that makes those mothers who had a more complicated experience of it (pain, etc) feel as if they are doing something wrong or are bad moms. Complexity is life. Thanks for sharing yours.
#5 by Barbara Bujold-Martinez on August 7, 2011 - 10:21
And for some, it may not stop with breastfeeding. In light of this conversation, I feel safe to admit feeling frustration when the forkful of food headed for my mouth was detoured to that of the toddler sitting on my lap. Parents are still human. They get hungry. They get tired. For a moment, they think of themselves first. Congratulations Jen, and welcome to this self-expanding experience of love and securing the survival of the species. Barb
#6 by luciditewriting on August 8, 2011 - 07:32
Thank you, friends and mothers for your lovely, honest words. I appreciate your comments more than you know.