You Think It, I'll Say It(17)
As for me, at the grocery store, strangers would look at my belly and say, “Any minute now!” Then at five A.M. on a hot Thursday, after a bunch of contractions, an epidural, a lot of pushing, and a lot more pushing, she arrived; we had known in advance she’d be a girl, and we’d decided to call her Sadie. Everything about her was otherworldly and astonishing: Her eyes were big and brown, her nose was tiny and upturned, and her mouth was set in a nonplussed purse. “She looks mad,” I said, and my husband, Adam, who was choked up, said, “We have a daughter.”
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It was a month later that I saw Gretchen again, this time at the weekly breast-feeding support group hosted by the maternity boutique whose clothes I couldn’t afford. By then Sadie was sleeping at night in a carpeted cat box between Adam and me, and we’d removed everything but the fitted sheet from our bed, all in an effort to get some rest while not smothering her. Also, I was finding nursing unbearable. The moment of her clamping on was like someone biting your skinned knee, and whenever she turned her head toward my chest, rooting, I was filled with dread. Intermittently, I’d place huge green cabbage leaves on my boobs, between my bra and skin, a recommendation I’d read on a website, though I’d yet to experience any decrease in soreness.
Adam had returned to his office a week after Sadie’s birth. I, meanwhile, would have a three-month maternity leave before resuming my job four days a week, one of which I’d work from home. On the days I couldn’t be with Sadie, Adam’s mother would come to our house to babysit. Although my job was considerably less cool than what I’d once imagined doing with my life—my employer was a multinational food manufacturer that, as it happened, was the number one seller of infant formula, which I wasn’t planning to use—my flexible childcare arrangement made me feel as if seven years with the company and a good relationship with my boss were paying off.
The breast-feeding support group occurred in a room accessed by a curtained-off doorway at the rear of the boutique. Despite the swankiness of the boutique’s merchandise, this room was filled with furniture whose best days had come and gone: Three mismatched, stained couches and a handful of chairs formed a lopsided circle. Scattered about were those C-shaped pillows I had believed until shortly before Sadie’s birth were meant to alleviate the discomfort of hemorrhoids but now knew were platforms for nursing babies. When I entered the room, eleven or twelve other women, all with infants, were chatting, about half of them with their breasts fully or partially displayed; instead of being differentiated by their personalities, the women were differentiated by their nipples. I’d carried Sadie inside in her car seat, and I set it on the floor behind an empty chair, along with her diaper bag, and lifted her out.
Mother-baby duos continued to trickle in as the support group’s leader, a gorgeous and slender woman wearing a crocheted turquoise sundress, got things rolling. “I’m Niko,” she said. “I’m the mom of Scarlett, who’s six and has self-weaned, and Declan, who’s four and loves breast-feeding. I’m passionate about helping moms like you give this beautiful, natural, and super-healthy gift to your little ones.”
As with prenatal yoga, we were then supposed to go around and introduce ourselves. Gretchen went third, and after she’d said her name she said, “And this is Piper, who was born via C-section after a grueling twenty-six hours of labor. I was like, ‘No drugs! No drugs!’ and Carl was like, ‘Gretchen, seriously, you’re superwoman,’ but then there was an umbilical cord prolapse, so it was out of my hands. On the upside, Piper’s nursing like a champ.”
“If your delivery didn’t happen how you wanted, it’s important to grieve,” Niko said. “At the same time, don’t underestimate how amazing it is that now you’re literally sustaining her with your own body.”
The next person who introduced herself was named Jessica, her baby was Ethan, and both of them began to cry as Jessica described how challenging Ethan’s tongue-tie made breast-feeding, which caused me to perk up with interest. Introductions were then stalled for twenty minutes as other mothers murmured support and a discussion of positions occurred. Niko was soon on her knees crouched over Jessica, maneuvering Jessica’s left breast, though she looked around at all of us as she said, “Breast-feeding shouldn’t hurt. We wouldn’t have survived as a species if it did, right? So if you’re in pain, what it probably means is that you have a bad latch.”
Introductions never did get all the way around the circle, and the hour was finished—it concluded with Niko reading aloud a poem that rhymed lactation and revelation—before I’d said my own or Sadie’s name. I set my daughter back in her car seat, hoisted the diaper bag onto my shoulder, took all of us out to the car, and drove home, stopping on the way to purchase a 1.45-pound container of powdered formula. Fixing Sadie a bottle that afternoon felt at first like a transgression and then, as she accepted it unfussily, like a relief. I planned to alternate between formula and breast milk, but within a week, I’d stopped nursing altogether and was using my employee coupons to buy formula in bulk; needless to say, I didn’t return to the support group.
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The third place I crossed paths with Gretchen was at infant swim lessons. By that point, Sadie was six months old. The lessons occurred on Tuesday mornings, which was the day I “worked” from home, though my original plan to get things done while Sadie napped had been delusional and I’d basically given up on it. To seem productive, I sent frequent emails to my co-workers.