So....I have been thinking a lot about this whole breastfeeding situation. How reluctant I was to the idea of me doing it initially. No, sicked out is the more accurate description.
I will never forget leaving the parking garage from the hospital with Mike after we attended their breastfeeding class during my final trimester with my first pregnancy. I burst into tears of guilt for feeling so awkward about the idea of using that certain area of my sacred body to feed another person. An area that truthfully lured my husband's interested eyes into dating me (I swear he is not a perv, he liked a lot of other things about me too!). It's just that it's a section of the female frame that, whether we like it or not, is a sexual part of our lives as women.
And while I understood the best thing for my baby to drink would be breast milk and the class did a great job of emphasizing this, it still felt like we were a bunch of strangers sitting in a room watching soft-core porn. DOZENS of boobs openly exposed on the t.v. left me feeling rather uncomfortable. Because when else in your life do you sit in a room full of men and women you have never met and watch boobs? Um, never. So all of a sudden it's alright and normal, natural? I didn't think so.
It wasn't until my final weeks of pregnancy that I began to feel maternal and imagined my chest as just a couple of straws. I would have to trick my brain if I really wanted to give nursing a shot. This was what helped my mind prepare myself to becoming a feeding machine, nothing short of a human with udders, I mean, straws.
It went smoothly, not too painful and not as awkward as I thought. I even became that mother who nursed in public without a second thought. As for the videos, I was immediately reminded of each technique demonstrated when I was trying to figure it out with my baby. I admit that it was helpful to have seen the women in that video latch and unlatch. The advice from that class was probably the most beneficial of all received for my transition to Mommy.
When I have been around others who are nursing their newborns I have come to realize it still feels strange to the me who isn't actually at a nursing stage of my life. The idea of someone's exposed chest just makes me want to escape. It's just so bizarre to the non-nursing person that boobs are okay to be pulled out when a kid is involved, right in the middle of conversation. Now I guess I know how non-nursing people feel when they were/ will be around me during a feeding. Hey, what was I saying cos your boob is out and I really don't want to see it and now someone is eating from it and this is strange.
And I am about to become that lady in the conversation busting out a straw for my kid and thinking not much about it. And that's strange to me in my mind. Even though I know it will feel all natural and normal and necessary in the moment. I guess the best way to describe the transition is like all of a sudden they are just like our elbows. Or temporary prosthetic attachments (i.e. the straw idea works well this way). Completely unsexual in nature and thoroughly available for nonstop baby feeding. Which leads to excited visits to the pediatrician letting you know your baby is thriving. Then you feel like a rock star cos no one else can make that baby thrive the way mama's milk can.
