Five Things I Learned About Myself After Breastfeeding for a Year

I really like my body for the first time in my life and has nothing to do with how it looks in the mirror.

Mar 14, 2023

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1. If Something REALLY Matters to Me I Can Make it Happen

Do you know how many journals I’ve started and abandoned?

How many fitness apps I’ve downloaded and left unopened?

So much premium gear purchased for hobbies that I never really started.

Who has the time?

And that was before I birthed a helpless mammal!

Me? Too busy, too intense, too damn interesting to make time for small routine things that would likely steadily improve my quality of life.😎

Until I saw my daughter latch for the first time. Since then I seem to always have time because I make the time. Time to side lay down and deeply stare into my daughter’s strangely cosmic and mature gaze. On the days where I need to be away for a few hours, I can still find the time to pump 4 to 6 oz, even if that means starting pumping an ounce here and there days before. I have the time in the middle of the night. I have the time to put my stupid little phone down and stroke her hair.

I’m on my 13th month of exclusively breastfeeding my daughter. My goal is two years and somehow that feels easier than stretching for 10 mins everyday.

2. My Body is Perfect

I have many more chins than I’d like, my clothing size now features an ‘X’, I think the last time I shaved my legs was during the Trump presidency and yet, for my daughter, my body is perfect. I produce the perfect food. My breasts--despite their two different sizes and shapes--are perfect. I am the perfect home. My body temperature is exactly the right level of warmth for her to snuggle against at night. In no other context is my body so flawless.

3. Despite being a Clumsy and Unathletic, I am extremely strong

The physical endurance required of me during my fourth trimester was herculean, as it is for millions of women. Mine wasn’t anything out of the ordinary: massive abdominal surgery, little sleep, cracked nipples, operating purely on animal terror. Yet at no point did I consider not nursing my baby. The intensity of her demand was unrelenting, all my body wanted to do was curl up and go comatose but I clawed myself upright, plopped that little meatball shaped baby on a pillow and nursed. I was physically annihilated but I somehow punched through. I don't know what Navy Seals do to train but I’m sure I did it too, topless.

4. I Chose the Right Partner

My husband is a talker. He talks and jokes constantly. His jokes can be caustic and punchy. Most of the time he gets me belly laughing but there are also times where I want to submerge half his body (the top half) in concrete. Nevertheless, this motormouth has never said anything that wasn’t totally supportive and praising of my breastfeeding. He’s been kicked out of our bed many times so the baby and I could get a more restful sleep. He washed pump parts at 2am. He had to come into the bedroom trembling and downcast (with the posture of a pangolin) to confess that he accidentally spilled a half ounce of breastmilk and suffered my screams. While I have been nourishing our baby, he nourishes me.

My liege, I seem to have spilled the breastmilk..

5. My Body Can Rule My Brain

I'm a pretty think-y person. My body has always been secondary, it's a thing that carries my brain around to its various activities. And this brain of mine kind of feels like a Google spider trawling through the vastness: constantly looking around for more stimulation, data, problems, arousals, dramas, downers, and so on. But nursing pours rivulets of dopamine and serotonin on my brain making it a little quieter, less jumpy, less spidery and more … mammalian?

The world feels smaller and my brain is interested less in the expanse. Time slows down. I feel more like an animal with a body that’s connected to nature than a middle class consumer stuck in a declining empire. When I nurse my brain (eventually) lets go and lets my body take over. My daughter’s latch is like the still point of the turning world.