Thoughts on My Mothering Journey (as I embark upon the journey to become a LLL Leader)
My mothering journey began nearly four years ago on March 3, 2007 when my first child, Birdie was born still after a 24 hour labor at home (for a planned homebirth) turned emergency and an emergent c-section to try to save her life. I had read so much about breastfeeding on various natural birth blogs, breastfeeding blogs, the Sears books…I knew that it was going to be right for me and my baby and for our family. Then, after the death of our daughter, when her milk came in and immediate steps were taken to make the milk go away, something within me awoke, even at the beginning of my grief journey, something deep inside my soul drove me to believe that someday I would have a living child to nurse, someday the precious milk my body was very capable of making would nourish a living child.
It was around day four after arriving home from the hospital with no baby that I noticed that there was some milk present and quietly pooling within my breasts, it leaked just enough that I reluctantly and desperately opened the package of “organic nursing” pads that I had received as a gift at our baby shower months before my due date. (Baby shower’s to me now feel very uncomfortable until one’s baby is in fact earthside, alive & breathing)
I was told not to take a shower that would be too hot, that the hot water if it got upon my breasts could cause the milk to come out. I headed this warning, though there were a few times when in my deep grief I stopped caring if the milk poured forth and made damn sure that my breasts, my nipples felt the hot water. I wanted to know what my babies milk would have looked like, what did it feel like? Taste like? I can remember the homebirth midwives telling me “ You look like a milky mama”. I felt that I was meant to be too, with all the weight I had put on. Pre-pregnancy my body is petite/slender 115lbs, during pregnancy I put on 60-70lbs. As it turns out, I grow really big babies! Birdie was 9 lbs 5 oz and 22 inches long! So, I can only guess how her milk would have nourished her to grow and gain quickly.
Losing Birdie lead me to lose myself for a time. I became very enthralled in the darkness of my grief. For a long time I couldn’t stand to be near pregnant women, babies, families. It all made me sick. I turned inwards, I let go of my hopes, my dreams to be that natural, lovely breastfeeding mama that I had envisioned for those 9 months. My world was turned upside down, my heart shattered into millions of pieces, my soul blackened, and my hair began to gray. For a long time, it was all too much. So, I stepped away, but I started to “journal” or “blog” about my very different mothering experience. It was all I could do most days, for months but to write out what was inside my heart, my heart that still held a beat, but probably skipped from time to time when all I could do was think about how much I loved and missed my girl so desperately.
(more to come)
