The One Good Thing
May. 9th, 2005 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ailbhe(I wrote this a while ago, and wanted to wait until it hadn't won the competition I entered about successful breastfeeding stories. But it's just as true now, except the dates...)
It's 10 o'clock at night, three weeks before her first birthday, and my daughter is asleep. She had her last breastfeed of the day over two hours ago. I sat cross-legged and tried to stop her wriggling far enough to fall off the bed without unlatching.
She's always been an agile feeder, and an eager one. She wriggled constantly, from 16 weeks gestation to the day she rolled over in her hospital bassinet. She was trying to reach me for a feed that time - I couldn't move, between transfusions and catheters and multiple tears from the birth - and her bassinet was hooked over the edge of my bed, as for women who've had a c-section.
The early days with my daughter were hard. The birth was bad. I was left doubly incontinent and in constant pain. I was on high doses of codeine until after the first bout of repair surgery, when she was 8 months old.
But feeding was easy. I held her to my breast before the anaesthetic wore off after they wheeled us out of theatre, and she sucked. I couldn't feel it, but I could see it. After the anaesthetic wore off, people laid her on my hospital bed and she sucked lying beside me, or propped us both up on pillows. My lower body was in a puddle of blood, and my upper body in a puddle of creamy milk. I needed a lot of help to sit up, eat, use the toilet, have a shower - but Linnea needed no help to feed. She opened her mouth, tipped her head back, latched on, and MUNCHED. The hospital gave me nipple salve and changed the sheets several times a day.
My largest maternity bra was a 36B. Three days after she was born, I was tiger-striped and begging someone to go and buy a 38DD or E cup. By the time we got back from hospital, I was on the way back down, and settled in to a comfortable 36C. The stripes are still there. They are my triumph. I have no stretch marks on my belly to show for the nightmare of birth, but it is written on my body that *I feed my daughter*. I feed her *myself*. This is *mine*, to give to her, and even if I couldn't pick her up for days after she was born, I filled her hungry tummy with good, fatty milk and she grew.
I failed to deliver naturally. I failed to recover from the birth in a timely fashion. I will never have another vaginal delivery. I will never go into labour again. I can't have sex until after at least one more bout of surgery. But I am a SUCCESSFUL breastfeeding mother and I LOVE it.
MINE.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-10 12:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-10 12:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-10 12:55 am (UTC)It was hard work some days, especially if she did it while we were out, but she "grew out of it"
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-10 01:18 am (UTC)But, with everything you've gone through (which is all detailed in the story anyway), I think you're entitled to be pleased about the one biological thing that did work well in your case. It's not working well in her case, but then she had a near-perfect birth. It's swings and roundabouts, by the sound of things :/
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-10 01:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-14 08:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-14 09:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-14 09:46 pm (UTC)Would you mind terribly if I gave copies of these to my lecturer, a self confessed 'lactivist'? I would credit you fully, I just think they would make great material for the new students to look at - she's always trying to find personal accounts for them to read :-)
Sorry for intruding, I just wanted to let you know these were great :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-14 10:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-09 09:12 pm (UTC)