Counting the Moments that Matter

This week is World Breastfeeding Week, and so it finally feels like the right time to share a post that I've been shying away from for months now. 

In part, I’ve been putting off writing this because life is busy. Constant. It’s 3 kids with a million questions, needs, problems, schemes, and feelings every hour. Each. In part, it’s moving into a new house 6 months ago and trying each day to make it a bit more like home. In part, it’s being present in the life of a vibrant church where my husband is the pastor and all the joys, heartaches, and celebrations it brings. And all the other excuses, whether valid or otherwise.

In part, this is still raw for me, even after 7 months. 

Every morning when I open my top dresser drawer to choose clothes for the day, my eyes always light on a small collection of undergarments that still lay there, although their usefulness has since passed. Occasionally, I still select one to wear because they are “more comfortable” or “I don’t want to wear one of my nice ones when I’m just going to sweat all day” (thanks, Texas summer).

But if I choose to unpack my intentions, even just a layer or two, I land hard on the truth: I’m just not ready to part with my nursing bras. Just yet. 

It’s been 214 days since my last baby breastfed for the last time. 214 days since my body gave nutrients, life, “liquid gold” to a human being that my body also grew and delivered. 214 days since I felt needed in a way I have not felt needed since.

Of course, my children still need me in nearly every way a kid can need a parent: Diapers, dressing, cooking meals, entertaining, buckling, unbuckling, kissing bumped heads, soothing hurt feelings... the list is an ever-changing, never-ending kaleidoscope. Some days their need for me feels like they want nothing more than to crawl back into my womb. And those days are hard. Exhausting, frustrating, sometimes downright infuriating.

But these are needs that can also be met by their dad, and for that, for the moment he walks into the door after work, I’m unbelievably grateful. Grateful, and yet also sometimes saddened, because I know that practically anything I can do for them can also be done by someone else. The one truly unique aspect of parenting I could offer, the one I was really good at, is obsolete. 

And what do I have to show for it, honestly? Three beautiful, healthy children, of course. But one could argue that, regardless of how they were nourished early in their lives, they would be just as beautiful, just as healthy, just as existent. And that's hard to argue.

So how, then, am I to catalogue, qualify, quantify my lived experience? Why does it matter so much?

Over my shoulder, seven months from the end of my breastfeeding journey, I think I finally realize something I could not before. From the day our oldest came bustling into this world over eight years ago, I've been counting. Only I didn't know it until the counting was done.

Thousands of round, sloshy milk bellies.

Hundreds of milk let-downs when your body knows it's feeding time.

Weeks of cracked and sore nipples.

Miles walked between our bedroom and the nursery in the wee hours.

Gallons of pumped milk.

Dozens of ounces of spit-up milk.

Too many tears dried and boo-boos healed by a minute or two at the breast.

Never enough adoring gazes as eyes slowly drift closed.

Two broken hearts and intermingled tears when it was time to wean.

2355 days of breastfeeding.

Three babies fed.

Laying all these counted, braved experiences out end-on-end and standing back, it all seems impossible. The numbers boggle my mind. And there's also something I can admit to myself: most days, I don't actually miss it.

I don't miss being trapped under a just-fell-asleep feeding infant when the doorbell rings or another child hurts themselves or needs a snack. I don't miss sighing and walking away from half the clothes on store racks because they aren't "breastfeeding friendly." I don't miss the annoyed and sometimes hostile glances from people in public when I dared feed my hungry child *gasp* uncovered. I don't miss the days of being completely touched out by lunchtime but still needing to feed the baby all day.

No one will tell you it's all smiles and rainbows. And if they do, they're lying.

It's only in the some-times, in the in-betweens, the rare slow moments that the lovely, sweet parts filter back and leave me unaccountably melancholy and weepy, such is their power. When the toddler lays a hand on my breast and gives me a puzzled look because a small corner of their expanding brain remembers when it belonged to them, too. When that same nearly 3-year-old no longer wants me at bedtime, only Dad, but I remember when nothing but boob would put her to sleep. Or when I see another mom put her newborn to her breast and my chest aches, just a little.

Sitting here, I feel poured out, laid bare, bereft. And to what end? Again I ask, why does my account matter, small as it is, in a fast and callous world? 

It matters exactly because we live in a fast and callous world which often tells us our stories don't matter.

But the mutual validation of life-changing experiences helps us to see each other, and ourselves, for the vital, vibrant links of wisdom and love that we are. All taken together, we form a glorious, tarnished, strong, broken, authentic chain of mothers.

And it matters because whenever we meet freshly minted mothers in brand-new nursing bras with brand-new life crying, grappling for nourishment and comfort, we can gently lay this delicate, yet unbreakable strand around her neck, kiss her cheek and whisper, "it's so damn hard, and you are doing an amazing job."