Being a woman is kind of bad-ass. Our bodies create people. From scratch! And when they arrive, we can provide everything they need to survive and thrive, like a self-sufficient farm. Moo. In a world of technology and science, it’s a powerful feeling to know your baby only needs you.
Breastfeeding can feel like a symbol of motherhood—proof that you’re a good mum, that you were meant to have this baby. That it’s the two of you against the world.
But it’s not as easy as just putting your baby to your boob.
Oh, if I had a dollar for every nurse who told me ‘If you’re doing it right, it shouldn’t hurt’. (I’d have about six dollars, but it felt like a lot at the time). I’m sorry, but unless you’re a former dominatrix or you’ve just stepped off shift as a dairy cow, your nipples are not used to that much action. It will hurt.
Some women almost give up because when the pain makes their toes curl, they assume something must be wrong.
There’s nothing wrong. You’ve just got soft little white-collar nips that have never done a hard day’s work, and they’ve got to toughen up a bit.
For the first few days of your baby’s life, your boobs will basically be big ol’ dummies for your baby to chew on. You might squeeze out a few drops of colostrum but no real milk.
Your milk has to ‘come in’. And if you’re not sure if it’s ‘come in’ yet, IT HASN’T COME IN.
They say ‘come in’ like the milk will knock on a door and you’ll sing out, ‘Come in!’ and the milk will politely open the door and there it’ll be. No.
It won’t be a subtle development. You won’t need to be in tune with your body to know it’s happened. You will wake up one morning with a couple of porn star rockmelons bolted to your chest, like someone has snuck in overnight and implanted cement under your skin. Welcome to the dairy farm, Bluebell: your milk has COME IN.
Your baby by now will be ravenous, but trying to put a wailing, furious newborn onto a concrete boulder is an exercise in futility. Poor lamb’s got nothing to grab hold of. It’s like trying to rock climb up a window.
So your boobs feel like they might actually split open, your baby is livid and thrashing at your skin, and in waltzes a nurse … to milk you. You heard me.
Have you ever been milked before? No? Well, let me assure you that having a stranger grab your boob and squeeze your teats will make you reassess everything you’ve ever known about yourself. Again, medical staff can forget this is all new for you, so they’ll swan on in, grab your rock-hard breast without a word and get to milking. Yes, just like a cow.
Another fun technique nurses love is the old ‘bub-smash’. This can happen when your baby is squealing like a stuck pig and you are mentally packing your bags and preparing your getaway, and a midwife barges in, grabs your child’s head in one hand and your overinflated goon bag in the other and smacks them together, as if the surprise attack will shock you both into just bloody getting it right.
Where did they even come up with this? Back in the olden days, when a little villager woman had just given birth and her baby was struggling to latch, did she just belt her kid in the face with her tit in frustration and then, to her surprise, find that he opened his mouth and started suckling? Did she then spread the word among the womenfolk about this new trick where you sock the kid as hard as you can with your boob?
Adults eat three times a day. Or if you’re a grazer like me, about five. Either way, adults spend a civilised percentage of their day on food.
Newborns eat eight to twelve times a day.
I’ll wait while you do the maths.
YES, that’s every TWO TO THREE HOURS, 24 hours a day. Yes, even in the middle of the night. The only thing you do now is feed the baby. Better pull up a comfy chair; you’re going to be in it forever.
I should point out: that’s not a two-hour break in between feeds; that’s two hours from the beginning of one feed until the beginning of the next. If you start at 9 a.m., you’re going to need to start the next one at 11 a.m. A slow eater can take up to an hour to feed so that leaves you a one-hour break in between feeds. One hour to stand up, go to the toilet, eat something and sit back down to start all over again. This titbit of info never seems to be mentioned to a mother-to-be because WHO would sign up for that?
But eight to twelve times a day is nothing if you’ve been through a cluster feed. ‘What’s a cluster feed?’ you ask. Oh, a cluster feed is when your baby is going through a growth spurt and decides to eat non-stop, so you sit, trapped under your child, feeding every half hour until you’re not sure if you’re a human or a tree anymore and you can’t spell your name and you’ve forgotten how to speak.
Your baby doesn’t care that you’re exhausted, bleeding, in pain and possibly vomiting from the pain relief you’re on (yep, that can happen). The baby must be fed. Your needs are inconsequential.
This is how babies break us. I’m sure it’s in The Art of War somewhere, where you crush the spirit of your captives so they lose their sense of self and submit fully to your control. So if you survive a couple of days of cluster feeding (and it does end, I promise), your transformation from independent woman to baby slave is complete. Well done.
Hot pins and needles. A vice tightening on your mammaries. Straight-up fire. As the milk lets down (starts to flow) it can cause an intense sensation—sometimes painful, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes strangely mixed with a giddy dose of oxytocin. You’ll feel a raging Saharan thirst and after skolling a litre of water, you’ll need approximately half a packet of biscuits to chase it down with.
The milk doesn’t come out of just one hole, by the way. That nipple is like a nifty little fountain, spraying milk out all sides. Some babies will be lucky enough to get a mother whose let-down is like a steady, reliable garden sprinkler. Other babies will get a mother who moonlights as a human water cannon with the riot police, keeping the great unwashed under control with her mammaries.
These are often the mums whose milk lets down any old time of day or night—at the supermarket check-out, at dinner with the in-laws, signing for a package with the postman. No baby necessary, just ‘Hello! I’m leaking!’.
A shower is always a fun time for a new mother, the warm water setting off a symphony of leaks. Boobs spraying the walls, wee and lochia running down the drain. Hot, bitter tears of exhaustion joining the chorus. Ah, motherhood.
But if you’re able to get the whole thing working, when you’ve pushed through the initial pain and accepted your fate as a couch-dwelling, boobs-out dairy cow—this could be the most beautiful part of becoming a mother for you. Truly.
Being able to feed your child whenever, wherever, with the food you make yourself is precious. It’s easy, it’s portable, it’s always the right temperature, it’s free! It’s the perfect way to settle a hungry child, a tired child, a scared or upset child. It’s a cure-all for babies. Whatever it is, try the boob first and watch the spell being cast.
You look down at sleepy lashes, chubby fingers on your chest, pink cheeks filled with sweetness and realise you are the life-source for your greatest achievement. It’s intoxicating.
Unless it’s not.