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Your success in breastfeeding depends greatly on your desire to nurse as
well as the encouragement you receive from those around you.
– Brinkley, Goldberg and Kukar, Y
our Child's First Journey
(copyright © 1988, 2nd Edition, page 173)
"Is there anything coming out?" He peers curiously, at the baby's head, my covered breast.
  "I don't know, I can't tell," I wince.
  "What do you mean, you can't tell? It's your body, isn't it? I mean, you must be able to feel something," scratching his head.
  "Nope, only pain."
  "Oh." Blinks twice. "I'm sorry. I'm very proud of you, you know."
* * *
The placenta slips out from between your legs like the hugest blood clot of your life. The still-wet baby is strong enough to nurse but cannot stagger to her feet like a fawn or a colt. You will have to carry her in your arms for a long time. You console yourself with the fact that at least you are not an elephant who would be pregnant for close to another year. This is the first and last time she will nurse for the next twelve hours.
  "Nurse, could you please come help me wake her up? She hasn't breastfed for five hours now."
  The nurse has a mole with a hair on it. You can't help but look at it a little too long each time you glance up at her face. The nurse undresses the baby but keeps the toque on. The infant is red and squirmy, and you hope no one who visits says she looks just like you.
  "Baby's just too comfortable," the nurse chirps. "And sometimes they're just extra tired after the delivery. It's hard work for them too you know!"
  "Yeah, I suppose you're right."
  "Of course. Oh, and when you go to the washroom, I wouldn't leave Baby by herself. Especially if the door is open." The nurse briskly rubs the red baby until she starts squirming, eyes still closed in determined sleep.
  "What do you mean?"
  "Well, we have security, but, really, anyone could just waltz in and leave with Baby," the nurse smiles, like she's joking.
  "Are you serious!"
  "Oh, yes. And you shouldn't leave valuables around either. We've been having problems with theft, and I know you people have nice cameras."
  You have just gone through twelve hours of labor and gone without sleep for twenty-eight. You do not have the energy to tell the nurse of the inappropriateness of her comment. The baby does not wake up.
  Your mother-in-law, from Japan, has come to visit. She is staying for a month to help with the older child. She gazes at the sleeping infant you hold to your chest. You tell your mother-inlaw that the baby won't feed properly and that you are getting a little worried. "Your nipples are too flat and she's not very good at breastfeeding," she says, and angry tears fill your eyes.
"Are you people from Tibet?" the nurse asks.
Breastmilk is raw and fresh.
–
Your Child's First Journey
(page 174)
You are at home. You had asked if you could stay longer in the hospital if you paid, but they just laughed and said no. Your motherin-law makes lunch for herself and the firstborn but does not make any for you because she does not know if you will like it. You eat shredded wheat with NutraSweet and try breastfeeding again.
  The pain is raw and fresh.
  She breastfeeds for three hours straight, and, when you burp her, there is a pinkish froth in the corners of her lips that looks like strawberry milkshake. You realize your breastmilk is bloodflavored and wonder if it is okay for her to drink. Secretly, you hope that it is bad for her so that you will have to quit breastfeeding her. When you call a friend and tell her about the pain and blood and your concerns for her health, you learn, to your dismay, that the blood will not hurt her. That your friend had problems too, that she even had blood blisters on her nipples, but she kept right on breastfeeding through it, the doctor okayed it and ohhhh the blood, the pain, when those blood blisters popped, but she went right on breastfeeding until the child was four years old.
  When you hang up, you are even more depressed. Because the blood is not a problem and your friend suffered even more than you do now. You don't come in first on the nipple tragic story. You don't even come close.
"This isn't going very well," I try smiling, but give up the effort.
  "Just give it some time. Things'll get better." He snaps off the reading light at the head of the bed. I snap it back on.
  "I don't think so. I don't think
things
are going to get better at all."
  "Don't be so pessimistic," he smiles, trying not to offend me.
"Have you read the pamphlet for fathers of breastfed babies?"
  "Uhm, no. Not yet." Shrugs his shoulders and tries reaching for the lamp again. I swing out my hand to catch his wrist in midair.
  "Well read the damn thing, and you might have some idea of what I'm going through."
  "Women have been breastfeeding since there have been women."
  "What!"
  "You know what I mean. It's natural. Women have been breastfeeding ever since their existence, ever since ever having a baby," he lectures, glancing down once at my tortured breasts.
  "That doesn't mean they've all been enjoying it, ever since existing and having done it since their existence! Natural isn't the same as liking it or being good at it," I hiss.
  "Why do you have to be so complicated?"
  "Why don't you just marry someone who isn't, then?"
  "Are you hungry?" My mother-in-law whispers from the other side of the closed bedroom door. "I could fix you something if you're hungry."
Engorgement
– (page 183)
The baby breastfeeds for hours on end. This is not the way it is supposed to work. You phone the emergency breastfeeding number they gave to you at the hospital. The breastfeeder professionals tell you that Baby is doing what is only natural. That the more she sucks, the more breastmilk you will produce, how it works on a supply and demand system and how everything will be better when the milk comes in. On what kind of truck, you wonder.
  They tell you that, if you are experiencing pain of the nipples, it's because Baby isn't latched on properly. How the latch has to be just right for proper breastfeeding. You don't like the sounds of that. You don't like how
latch
sounds like something that's suctioned on and might never come off again. You think of lamprey eels and leeches. Notice how everything starts with an "l."
  When the milk comes in, it comes in on a semitrailer. There are even marbles of milk under the surface of skin in your armpits, hard as glass and painful to the touch. Your breasts are as solid as concrete balls, and the pressure of milk is so great that the veins around the nipple are swollen, bulging. Like the stuff of horror movies, they are ridged, expanded to the point of blood-splatter explosion.
"Feel this, feel how hard my breasts are," I grit my teeth.
"Oh my god!"
"It hurts," I whisper.
"Oh my god." He is horri
ed. Not with me, but at me.
  "Can you suck them a little, so they're not so full? I can't go to sleep."
  "What!" He looks at me like I've asked him to suck from a vial of cobra venom.
  "Could you please suck some out? It doesn't taste bad. I tried some. It's like sugar water or something."
  "Uh, I don't think so. It's so . . . incestuous."
  "We're not blood relations, we're married, for god's sake. How can it be incestuous? Don't be so weird about it. Please! It's very painful."
  "I'm sorry. I just can't." Clicks o
the lamp and turns over to sleep.
Advantages also exist for you, the nursing mother . . . it is easy for you
to lose weight without dieting
and regain your shape sooner.
– (page 176)
"You look like you're still pregnant," he jokes. "Are you sure there isn't another one still in there?"
"Just fuck off, okay?"

Your belly has a loose fold of skin and fat that impedes your vision of your pubic hair. You have a beauty mark on your lower abdomen you haven't seen for five years. You wonder if you would have had a better chance at being slimmer if you had breastfed the first child. There is a dark stain that runs vertically over the skin of your belly, from the pubic mound, over the belly button and almost in line with the bottom of your breasts. Perversely, you imagined it to be the marker for the doctor to slice if the delivery had gone bad. The stain isn't going away and you don't really care because, what with the flab and all, it doesn't much make a difference. You are hungry all the time from producing breastmilk and eat three times as much as you normally would; therefore, you don't lose weight at all, you just don't gain on top of the residual fat you have already achieved.

  "You should eat as much as you want," your mother-in-law says. She spoons another eggplant on to your plate and your partner spoons his over as well. The baby starts to wail from the bedroom, and your mother-in-law rushes to pick her up.
  "Don't cry," you hear her say, "Breastmilk is coming right away."
  You want to yell down the hall, that you have a name and that it isn't Breastmilk.
  You eat the eggplants.
The hormone prolactin, which causes the secretion of milk, helps you to 
feel "motherly." 
– (page 176)
Just how long can the pain last, you ask yourself. It is the eleventh day of nipple torture and maternal hell. You phone a friend and complain about the pain, the endless pain. Your friend says that some people experience so much pleasure from breastfeeding that they have orgasms. You tell your friend that if that was the case, you would breastfeed until the kid was big enough to run away from you.
  The middle-of-the-night feed is the longest and most painful part of the breastfeeding day. It lasts from two to six hours. You alternate from breast to breast, from an hour at each nipple to dwindling half hour, fifteen minutes, eight minutes, two, one, as your nipples get so sore that even the soft brush of the baby's bundling cloth is enough to make the toes of your feet squeeze up into fists of pain, tears streaming down your cheeks. You try thinking about orgasms as the slow tick tick of the clock prolongs your misery. You try thinking of S & M. The pain is so intense, so slicing real, that you are unable to think of it as pleasurable. You realize that you are not a masochist.
Because you must sit down or lie down to nurse, you are assured of get
ting the rest you need postpartum. 
– (page 176)
You can no longer sit to breastfeed. You try lying down, to nurse her like a puppy, but the shape of your breasts are not suitable for this method. You prop her up on the back of the easy chair and feed her while standing. Her legs dangle, but she is able to suck on your sore nipples. You consider hanging a sign on your back. The Milk Stand.
  Your ass is killing you. You take a warm sitz bath because it helps for a little while, and you touch yourself in the water as carefully as you can. You feel several new nubs of flesh between your vagina and your rectum and hopefully imagine that you are growing a second, third, fourth clitoris. When you visit your doctor, you find out that they're only hemorrhoids.
"I'm quitting. I hate this."
  "You've only been at it for two weeks. This is the worst part, and it'll only get better from here on," he encourages. Smiles gently and tries to kiss me on my nose.
  "I quit, I tell you. If I keep on doing this, I'll start hating the baby."
  "You're only thinking about yourself," he accuses, pointing a finger at my chest. "Breastfeeding is the best for her, and you're giving up, just like that. I thought you were tougher."
  "Don't you guilt me! It's my goddamn body and I make my own decisions on what I will and will not do with it!"
  "You always have to do what's best for yourself! What about my input? Don't I have a say on how we raise our baby?" he shouts, Mr. Sensible and let's-talk-about-it-like-two-adults.

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