If you’ve never nursed a baby, you might imagine that this list would be easy to make. If you are currently nursing a tiny baby, you might wonder if there IS anything to love about it. It’s messy, it hurts, it demands A LOT of your body and your time, it requires you to wear ugly bras and weird pads in the ugly bras, it has to happen in the middle of the night and whenever else the baby needs it, ready or not, and you are the only one who can answer the call.
Before I had my first baby, I didn’t think too much about breastfeeding. It was just something I would have to do. It seemed weird, and I had no idea what it would really be like. I would have to just figure it out. Once my baby arrived, I realized just how poorly prepared I was. It was NOT easy. It did not just come naturally to me or to my baby. We struggled, but we did it. And it was miserable…….at first. After a couple of months, we got the hang of it, and after a year it became effortless and wonderful.
And then I did it again.
Looking back now, there is so much that I miss about it.
Here’s what I loved:
1. Quiet time. For many women, especially at first, nursing demands your full attention and both hands. No TV, no mobile devices, no books, no crossword puzzles. You try to find a quiet place. You have to just sit and focus on feeding your baby. You have to be still and quiet. For me, this created plenty of space for reflection and for getting to know and love my babies. This is not a luxury I afford myself anymore, but when nursing a baby, this has to happen many times every day.
2. Happy baby. Once your baby is old enough to make eye contact and nurses more easily, breastfeeding makes happy babies. She latches on, takes a deep breath, then looks up at you to make eye contact with a look that can only express pure love and contentment. Amazing.
3. Easy. While leaky breasts can be really messy at first, it soon gets much less messy. When your baby needs to eat, there is a breast, that’s it. No bottles to wash, dry, or sanitize. No purchasing, packing, measuring, mixing, shaking or warming required. It definitely appeals to my lazy side.
4. Total nutrition. I loved knowing that my body was providing complete and perfect nutrition and protection for my baby. No one else could do it as well as I could. All of the wisdom and strength gotten from struggles and fights my body had to carry out all my life to combat illness and infection were being passed to my baby. Wow.
5. Simple. Breastfeeding does simplify feeding, but it also helps to simplify life. It can seem like all downside to HAVE to breastfeed your baby instead of being able to make up a bottle so that anyone can feed her, but being “tied down” by breastfeeding can have an up side. I had to say no to a lot of things because I nursed exclusively and wasn’t much good at pumping bottles full of milk, but the time I gained with my children was priceless and I wouldn’t trade it. It felt restrictive at first, but I soon realized that it was time that I needed to cherish. Staying home more was a simpler way of life. It gave me more unhurried and undivided moments with my babies. My life looks MUCH different now, appointments, rushing , scheduling, organizing, so I can fully appreciate the little bit of time when I was able to have a simpler life.
There are more wonderful things to say about breastfeeding, but these are my top 5. These are the things that, for me, made all the hard stuff very forgettable. When I was nursing babies, I liked to imagine a time when that was the ONLY option for feeding babies. How did they feel about the hard stuff? I guess that they didn’t think much about it at all, because that’s just the way it was for EVERYONE. That’s what you knew to expect, and that was the experience of all the other women around. That probably made it all easier to accept and therefore easier to embrace. There was no other way. Hmmm….I’m beginning to think I was born WAY too late.
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