I like to know what I'm in for, so before I started breastfeeding, I read the books. You know the ones I'm talking about. Books with titles like The Trillion Benefits of Breastfeeding (98th Edition)...The Nipple is Your Paintbrush, the Baby Your Canvas...Breastfeeding in a Thousand Easy Steps...the you-can-do-it, how-to, self-help books about breastfeeding that make you feel it's all under control.

But in the end, breastfeeding my baby blew the books' covers off their spines. My baby and I followed no book; we followed our guts.

Being an older mom, being a breastfeeding mom-- being, let's face it, an anxious, older, unconventional, take-it-to-extremes breastfeeding mom--makes for tumultuous breastfeeding.

What you're about to see is a glimpse into the world of my breastfeeding baby and me. It's not a pretty world. It's not a sanitary world. It's not a sentimental world. It's a world of agonizing pain and transformed identity, of mental blackness and regurgitant whiteness, of sacrifice, love and the need for a good chiropractor.

So here's how the breastfeeding thing went down for me.

Hey, here's a flash! I'm still pregnant! I think it's called the fourth trimester of pregnancy, or extended pregnancy, or something like that, that means “you aren't out of the zone yet, sister.” Because during breastfeeding, a woman's normal hormonal state (whatever mythical beast that is) never actually resumes; one remains in a sort of twilight zone of extended pregnancy. Hormonal fluctuations are now the rule, and the new mom must obey.

"How about a stir-fry for dinner?"

"I can't believe you have the gall to suggest I'm fat now."

"Um, with fried rice?"

"You know, you're really hostile tonight."

"By the way...when was your last period?"

"Why are you asking? Are you implying I'm not being easy to get along with? You have no idea how wrong you are. I'm feeling fabulous tonight. I'm ordering out a pizza."

"Um, you know what? I gotta go see a man about a dog."

"Where are you going? I'm talking to you..."

She may have breastfed me, but her memory's blocked that period away in a secured file, and she's lost the password. Fairly soon after I started breastfeeding, I learned not to ask my mother for advice; the only thing it accomplished was to make her feel insecure. (You are aware, aren't you, that insecurity in a mother can rebound dangerously on the offspring?)

"Mom, remember when we were babies?"

"Of course, sweetheart. You were such a quiet baby. You slept through your whole first year."

"Did you breastfeed my brother?"

"You know, I don't remember."

"Did you stop breastfeeding me when you found out you were pregnant with my brother?"

"You know, I don't recall."

"Did you ever get mastitis?"

"You know, I'm not sure."

"Did you--"

"Honey, you slept through your first year. You didn't cry at all."

"You keep saying that! But how did I learn to crawl if I slept through my first year, huh? Tell me that."

"I don't remember. But it's true. You slept that whole year."

"I slept? Or you slept?"

Cooking with a baby around is a treat and a torment—a treat because it means I'll finally get to eat something, a torment because that won't happen without multiple setbacks.  I'm in the middle of cooking dinner at the broiler. 

I say, "Are you hungry?" and try to translate his response.  The parenting advice books all reassured me that I'd come to know my baby's cries with a familiarity that borders on invasion of privacy.  Yet, as I've learned, this child's vocal and wiggle responses can mean anything from "Feed me now, and I do mean NOW" to "I dunno, I could eat, but I'd just as soon play with that rattle under the table" to "Au contraire, I'm thinking of spitting up the last meal." 

So I offer.  And he refuses.  Repeat five minutes later.  And five minutes after that.  It's hard for a woman to keep her dignity with this kind of thing.

I offer again, expecting rejection.  Only this time, while dinner burns merrily, he drinks gustily. 

Feeding a baby by breast is more like a dance than anything else.  A square dance.  And the baby calls it.

I had a choice.  No constitutional law or Dr. Phil prohibited my stashing the infant in another room for the night.  And I'd have done it, too, if I were willing to go mad with exhaustion.  But the circus of back and forth, back and forth, cry and run and feed and rock, cry and run and feed and rock, proved too chaotic for me. 

Of course, moving the baby to the marriage bed meant one or two small sacrifices.  Rethinking the linens.  Rethinking the sex life.  Rethinking, as the baby rolled off the bed, the bed frame.

Now he hollers, I roll over, he gulps, and we're both back asleep in a flash.

I'll give up my blankets, my bed, and, for a temporary period not to exceed X amount of time, the Deed.  I won't give up peace-of-mind, convenience, comfort, and sleep—for what it's worth.

I don't feel like a cow. No, I feel like a pair of boobs with legs. Really, I've developed an entirely new relationship with these suckers. They're the subject of conversation at breakfast. I think nothing of lifting my shirt to squeeze an areola to see what my supply is like. I cup 'em while I'm cooking to feel how full they are, squeeze and massage 'em at the dinner table to juice 'em up for Junior.

"You must feel very female," says a girlfriend who opted out of breastfeeding.

"No, the word that comes to mind, actually, is mammal..."

It was one of those freak accidents so implausible that a sensible person wouldn't even try to convince someone else it really happened.

So, okay, here's what happened.  I'd just nursed and the nipple kind of stuck out.  Not that I was paying attention--until I went to load the laundry into the dryer and briskly slammed the dryer door shut on my nipple.

I stifled my scream, went back to bed, and then when the baby woke up,  fed him in silent agony.

Okay, here's my real problem.  There's a lot of advice to be found for injuries sustained due to baby's bad latch or mom's lack of experience, but nothing--I mean a total dearth of concrete recommendations--about attacks by your laundry appliances and how long it takes resultant milk blisters to heal.

And it's not like this is an injury I can bring up with my lactation consultant, not without knowing full well she'll be serving it as an anecdote at the dinner table.  "For privacy reasons, I can't tell you who this happened to, but one of my patients went to do her laundry after breastfeeding..."

You know the scene. Misty-eyed mother smiling down into baby's eyes as baby beams back at her. Oh, it happens. At first. But it's like marriage. Once you get over the first glow, you stop spending all that time gazing tenderly into each other's peepers.

Now I gaze into space, wondering if I have enough celery seed left for coleslaw. The babe reaches out his hand to flick my lower lip over and over and chuckles each time it goes plub-plub. I find my glasses yanked off, my ring pried past the knuckle, and my still-tender-from-birth abdomen frenetically kicked--all of which is the baby's version of reading the newspaper at the table.

Then I happen to glance at him and he happens to glance at me and--well, you know the scene.

I look at my child. I see he's grown big and tall on breast milk. I'm proud as anything. I say, "I did that!"

And you know, I did.

Thanks for reading! While I can't take credit for the fabulous Creative Commons pictures contributed by the talented photographers blmurch, Daquella manera, quinet, and chispita_666, the text of this article is the copyright of Chris Telden, so please don't copy or redistribute any of it without permission. I mean, have mercy. I wrote the thing, and it wasn't easy. If you want to put it on your blog, here's how you can do it. Don't copy the text. Just set up a link to this page and write, "This is an article about breastfeeding by Chris Telden and it's not your everyday nursing advice," or something similar. I'm sincerely grateful for that form of flattery!