In Which I Speak Freely Of Breasts

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you.” -Isaiah 49:15

People don’t like to talk about this, but when your milk first comes in, your breasts become engorged. Which is a completely inadequate term for describing how they become the size of melons and the consistency of rocks, and ache so badly it’s hard to sleep, which is saying a lot in the setting of sleep deprivation. Typically the engorgement gets worse the closer it gets to his every-three-hour feeding time.

Today D brought the baby to the doctor’s for a follow-up visit; we figured it would be easier if I in my pajama-zombie state just stayed in to watch E rather than all go together. My breasts were starting to ache already when they left, but he wasn’t due to feed for another hour and we figured he’d be back by then. Then D texted to say the baby had to get a blood test before coming home.

By then it was around his feed time, and I was in serious discomfort. Luckily my mom had arrived for lunchtime. I think she may have fed E and I may have tried to eat a few bites, but in the end all I could do was sit and stare stupidly out the window at the driveway. My breasts ached and pounded and became inhumanly hard and I couldn’t think of anything else except where he was, waiting in line for some blood draw, crying and hungry and for the first time not within arm’s reach.

Finally D said they were on their way back, and I sat upstairs in the rocker where we nurse, having taken off my bra because it hurt too much to wear, holding a towel to my breasts, which had started to leak whenever I thought about him. I was never more glad to hear the garage door open. They were just thirty minutes late for the feed.

I didn’t cry when labor was finished and they laid him on my chest for the first time. But I cried when he finally came back to nurse.

I will never, ever look at that verse the same way again.