…where a brave and beautiful bunch gather every week to find out what comes out when we all spend five minutes writing on the same topic and then sharing ‘em over here.

Go:

I feel a pause in the gentle tug and a rustle in the gauzy blanket as she latches on again. I grit my teeth to keep from startling her and mentally calculate how much cream I have left to repair the damage. Enough. Certainly enough for this tear. Shaking my head I sigh and resume typing in the early morning glow of the computer. It’s been almost eight months this time. Six years ago I started learning how to feed my children. Through pain, exhaustion, anxiety and more help than any woman daydreaming about motherhood could imagine ever needing I’ve plodded along. One day at a time. One nursing at a time. Over and over I tell myself just one more time. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. If it’s too much there are plenty of other ways to grow these sweet chubby darlings. Plenty of people are happy to offer them bottles filled with whatever I send along.

No one said it would be this hard.

Or this filled with wonder.

When Zuzu woke I would roll over and she would nurse and ease back into slumber. Eventually the feeding plan wasn’t necessary and the reassurances that a bottle won’t hurt her didn’t raise my heart rate. Two and a half years later I assumed she would have weaned herself, but she knew better than me that her sister would need her help. Somehow.  

When the Quail was born we were filled with wonder as she latched on for the first time. We were filled with worry later when it didn’t get any easier. When every trick and turn didn’t abate the daily struggle. When one referral led to another we plodded along. Just one more day. Just one more nursing. She is growing. They’re wrong. She can do this. In the end one way or another she did receive the milk for 15 months.

This spring, I wondered which time it would be more like. If any of the tricks and turns would make this any easier or if we would start from scratch yet again. If the combined chaos of two rascally doting sisters would keep me from feeding this baby the same way I had fed the others. Either way; one day at a time, one nursing at a time.

It isn’t like either time. And yet it’s the same. It’s filled with pain and irritation. With gentleness and comfort. It’s filled with wonder. Hers and mine. As I watch her easily double in size and snuggle the gauze up to her cheek. As she bashfully grins at me and her dad and sisters from her nest in my lap. As I feel her pause in the steady rhythm I look down to meet her sparkling gaze in wonder.

Stop

…where a brave and beautiful bunch gather every week to find out what comes out when we all spend five minutes writing on the same topic and then sharing ‘em over here.

Go:

Sometimes I miss the teenage me. The one that radiated confidence in what I knew. The one that while aware of the typical peer pressures that go hand in hand with that time in our lives, felt surprisingly comfortable in my own skin and certain in my choices. I made them intuitively, with little thought to how they may later influence myself or others and with the righteous voice that only the young can tenor.

Nearing 40, I think if my teenage self could see the woman I have grown into, she would voice her approval. Probably with that instinctual confidence that now, parallels the weary mother voice I seem to cultivate. For every certainty I knew then, I am proportionally clear of the absence of knowledge now.

Six years ago, I gave birth to my first child and with that change, my focus on the world grew blurry. I saw how unprepared I was as hormones fueled new worries and questions as to how to cope with the first corner of my heart that was meant to live outside myself. I struggled with post-partum anxiety. Some of it conscious, as I hoarded books and forums and other momma’s wisdom. Most of it unconscious as I ruminated in the unease of the beginning of the letting go of myself into this world I both love and now feared. Seeing Zuzu fight the need to be a central part of me and yet so much herself, I often found myself wondering if her strong spirit has always been in me waiting for its turn to meet the rest of the world head on. She is so much like me, she has that early voice of mine.

Then along came the Quail. My momma voice grew stronger out of need. It joined both the chorus of the other families like ours and resonated with the well-worn tracks of advocacy and inclusion that I had rehearsed in my college years. Yet still, a note was missing. I still found myself questioning my motherhood.

Finally, along came Sugarplum. From the moment we made the decision for her to join our family, her presence held the familiarity of a well-worn groove in a comfortable love song. We breathed in her milky presence and collectively sighed, “Oh, It’s you. Of course it’s you.”

Nearly six years into my role as a mother, I have found my voice. With one sweetly jammied plum of a baby  worn on my hip, I sign to her one sister and call out loudly enough to be heard by her other over the din of our three-ring daily circus. I hear my own voice in the overgrowth of this garden of a family quite clearly now. I hear it in my heart, my head and the muscle of my arms and legs as I alternately reach for and push these children out into the world that waits for them, and me.

Stop