Just Who is Nursing Who?

The first time I held a baby to my breast to nurse, I felt a wet tugging at my nipple. My body was exhausted from the labor, but when collostrum flowed out into his ready little mouth, I sat there amazed.

Perhaps because I’d just endured a day and a half of labor, and perhaps because I was still reeling with thoughts of I have a baby boy—sweet mother of God! I have a baby boy! I looked down on his pink face too stunned to cry.

Looking down into his moist eyes as they took all of this new world in — the lights, the shapes, the sounds no longer filtered through what I imagined to be the red canopy of his life for nine and a half months.

I cradled his hot body against mine, and skin-to-skin, thought nothing could be as simultaneously bizarre and natural as this.

When I nursed my babies during their first year, although it often occurred as a responsibility — something to do in the middle of errands, dinner, phone calls — I have to admit it was also a break. In fact, if I could arrange it, I usually took my baby, first, my boy, and a year later, my newborn girl, to my room, shut the door, dimmed the lights, and leaned back, cradling them against my bare skin.

Sometimes their hands were chilly, gripping my warm skin a few inches below my armpits, sending tingles into that hollow area; sometimes their nails were too long, scratching the ridged texture of my hardened areola; sometimes their hands were searching, finding my necklace, my chin, my lips, and resting on my cheek; but mostly I heard their sighs and their gulps and closed my eyes with the strange realization that I wasn’t exactly sure just who was nursing who.

By Anjie Reynolds