Her Milk.
(part one)

I have been thinking about Birdie's milk a lot as my nursing relationship with Holdyn so lovingly continues on it's path. I have been thinking about Birdie's milk more after I took part in a SHARE parent panel that was speaking about baby loss to hospital staff/nurses/doctors/doula's etc. a few weeks ago. While I always truly love to speak of my bird, of course speaking about the experience of the events leading up to her death brings so much to the surface...emotions that now 3 years later, as Mama to a living child are quited a little.

It has been a long time coming for me to really speak to this. As I sit here now, quite in my home, on the couch...I think hard back to the talk, the chatter around me, the almost rush to protect me from the milk that would come. My little bird's milk, HER MILK. Milk that she couldn't suckle to remove from my breasts, and milk that I was encouraged to almost immediately to slow from coming if not stop it from coming. I asked one time if maybe I should donate my milk to help another, I was gently discouraged from this.

I wish that I had not been. I wish that I would have been told that that would be OK. I wish that our midwives/nurses/doctor would have had information about milk donation after a baby dies. In addition to the more than 100 photographs that we were blessed to be given by NILMDTS, donating Birdie's milk would have been an additional way to heal. It's only in hindsight that I see how cathartic it would have been.

I can remember the mention of Sage tea as a sort of "prescription" that I would drink to keep my milk at bay, or slow it down. Cabbage and cabbage leaves were in abundance in our hospital room, it was incredibly devastating to have Matt be in charge of making sure that I had cold cabbage on my breasts, changing cabbage leaves numerous times a day for many days. It was beyond sad and devastating to have done this.

I wish I had just let the milk come in as it should have, as it was meant to be there filling my breasts, ready to pour forth to my sweet smelling newborn.

But there was no baby to suckle at my breasts, no baby to give this incredible living food too. No.

I wish that I would have held strong to my instinct to see my breasts fill, to allow my body to feel what would have been, I SO badly wanted to see what my milk looked like, would it have poured forth as I took a scalding hot shower after scalding hot shower? Would it have been creamy white? Yellow?

Would it have been OK to squeeze some colostrum out and into her mouth...?

YES. YES. It would have been OK.