Parenting Beyond the Pale

Naughty Noa is REALLY trying to get herself weaned... she is taking great delight in trying to saw my nipple off with her serrated little teeth.  I don't know how much longer I can keep this up - my stomach gets all queasy as I steel myself to put my tender skin in harms way.

Still, bruised and bleeding nipples of today don't compare to "DDD Day" - my personal breastfeeding emergency.  Several times last December I needed to fly to Berkeley to meet with the the various boards in charge of my dissertation.  Even though Noa was only 7 months old and still breast-feeding exclusively, I couldn't take her along, as I had no one to care for her at my destination while I pitched my project.  So I organized these excruciating travel days where I'd fly to California in the early AM and be back in Washington by midnight.  Excruciating for Noa's caregivers because she wouldn't take a bottle (they found she would sip breast milk off a spoon); excruciating for me in that even though the hungry baby is 800 miles away, the breasts keep pumping out the milk, and mom has to get it outta there or pay the price.

So, one fateful December evening, I lovingly cleaned the bottles, the breast-pump tubing, and those thingys that cover your nipples.  I packed my proposal, some snacks and a photo of the baby to help me "let down" milk.  I nursed her and waved goodbye at the airport, and four hours later, when I had reached my destination, I was really, REALLY ready to pump.  Finding a private room, I unpacked my pump, plugged it in, hooked up the nipple thingys to the bottles, reached for the tubing....  which was sitting on the edge of the sink, in my kitchen, at home.  Oh, shit. 

I hear that many women can "express" milk by somehow stroking the duct and having it dribble out of their breast.  I can't.  I find it hard enough to produce milk when the industrial-powered Medela milker is turned up to full wack sucking both of my breasts into pointed bruises.  That whole mysterious "let down" reflex is a hard-won mental trip for me, as I squeeze my eyes shut and imagine baby toes... little rolls on baby thighs... baby cries... you get the picture.  So I burst into tears.  Imagined knocking on doors up and down the streets of Berkeley looking for a baby who could suck this painful gallons of milk away.

Steeling myself, I borrowed a phone book and called every pharmacy and baby shop within walking distance...nobody carried tubing.  Panicking, I looked up the La Leche League and called the info line which gave me a list of Leader's phone numbers.  I dialed the first number, and told the woman, "Help!  I have a breastfeeding emergency!"  She sounded skeptical.  A breastfeeding emergency? I tearfully explained:  the distant baby, forgotten tubing, breasts that felt like bags of hot coals throbbing painfully against my chest.  "Wow, that IS an emergency!" she exclaimed.  Needless to say, the nice woman found me breast-pump tubing in Berkeley, and another valiant heroine drove me to fetch it.  And (not for the first time) I looked more kindly on those women who choose not to breastfeed, for whatever the reasons...  because sometimes, breastfeeding really SUCKS.