Mothers

From Erin:

I’ve known that my mother breastfed me my whole life. At least, I don’t remember not knowing. But this information – like the natural, un-medicated births that brought my brother and me into the world - was a fact, neither celebrated nor elaborated upon. My grandmother, on the other hand, nursed none of her children; she later claimed that her milk was ‘no good’. She gave birth four times under the influence of twilight sleep; she neither experienced nor remember any of these births, even that of her stillborn child. Did her mother’s experience shape my mother’s choices? Did my mother’s inspire mine? It’s strange to say this, but I don’t know where these strands connect. We had a turbulent relationship, my mother and I, filled with that mixture of bewildered hurt and anger that many mothers and daughters experience. I strove to be her opposite, as woman and future-mother – warm, loving, nurturing, understanding, compassionate. I judged her mothering harshly, in terms of the love and acceptance I could not feel.

When I was in my 20s, I discovered a picture of my mother nursing me. There’s something in the expression of her face in that photo – the sweetness of her smile, the peace of the moment, us looking at each other so deeply connected. It filled me with a kind of longing – a longing to remember, I suppose, when we were that close.

When I found the photo, I was many years – just shy of a decade – from a baby of mine own. Even before I got pregnant I knew I wanted to breastfeed. My mother – true to style – never provided concrete information about the process; mostly when asked she would just laugh and say, “I just hooked you up and you ate!” So she didn’t teach me to breastfeed (she who had never herself been taught, but learned by instinct). But she gave me a profound gift nevertheless – confidence. Despite the growing strength of the pro-breastfeeding movement, everything I heard about it while pregnant was negative – he wouldn’t latch! It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do! It was terrible! It hurt! I hated it! It’s too hard! She wouldn’t latch! I didn’t have enough milk! In spite of my own commitment, the negativity rattled me. But every time I got shaken, I thought of my mother’s casual offhandedness. It was natural. You just hook them up, and they eat. While I know of course this isn’t everyone’s experience (anyone’s?), it was important for me to know this was possible, that breastfeeding was, in fact, natural and instinctual and that I could do it. What greater gift can a mother give her daughter?

It turns out my mother loved nursing her babies. I had no idea, until I started to nurse my son. We spend a lot of time together, and she loves to watch me nurse. “It’s the best thing ever,” I sometimes say to her. “I know,” she says back, quietly. We repeat this conversation, mantra-like, every month or two. I look over my baby’s damp curls and we smile at each other. Understanding, confident, loving.