Are You Still Breastfeeding?
By Ashlee Gadd
@ashleegadd
// January //
“Are you still breastfeeding?” the pediatrician asks, turning her head away from the computer to face me directly. Her hands remain frozen on the keyboard. My daughter, who’s just turned one, squirms in my arms.
“Technically, yes …” I start, contemplating whether or not to add a disclaimer.
The doctor stares at me, waiting for more.
“Well, I’m only nursing twice a day,” I continue, “And, honestly, I don’t think she’s getting very much?”
Her fingers type furiously, entering data into a chart I cannot see. (You know the one—it secretly keeps record of whether you’re passing or failing as a mother?)
“Oh that’s fine, dear, it’s still good for her immune system,” she says, typing away.
I nod.
Her immune system.
Neither one of us has any idea the whole world is about to be hit with a plague.
// February //
My milk supply is dropping. On the outside, I remain calm and collected, joking with friends about finally buying pretty bras again. The robots in my phone hear me and start showing me regular advertisements for Pepper—a brand that specializes in “bras designed to perfectly fit small boobs.” I am offended for a split second before clicking the ad and mentally bookmarking their Laidback Lace bra for later.
Meanwhile, I start to unravel at the thought of weaning my last baby. Acutely aware I’ll never breastfeed again, I begin buying fenugreek pills in bulk and popping them like candy. I make waffles and banana bread just to have an excuse to add brewers yeast to the batter. I drink the teas, bake the cookies, mix lactation syrup into my orange juice. My efforts feel a smidge pathetic, desperate even, like an old woman rubbing wrinkle cream into fine lines etched in her face. Is this too little, too late? Am I simply in denial?
Every time I sit in the rocking chair to nurse, I wonder if it will be the last time. One evening, I ask my husband to take one final picture, just for me.
// March //
The conference I am supposed to attend in April is cancelled, and while I am disappointed, I also feel a surprising, underlying sense of relief. The world may be falling apart, but at least we can keep breastfeeding. My new weaning deadline is bumped up to June, another conference in Indianapolis. Things are supposed to be better in the summer, and she’ll be 17 months by then, a good time to stop.
A few weeks later, the June conference is cancelled, too. Things are getting worse, not better. There is just one silver lining: with nothing on the calendar—no commitments and no places to go—there is nothing in our way.
Everything is canceled.
We barely leave the house.
She keeps nursing.
// September //
“Are you still breastfeeding?” a friend asks.
I’m sitting with a group of friends in my backyard around the firepit. My husband comes out with our daughter on his hip, asking if I am going to feed her before bed. We both know the ounce or two of milk she’s getting at this point does not constitute “feeding” so much as the familiar comfort of a bedtime routine. I shake my head no and tell him I’ll see her when my friends leave.
“Yeah … still breastfeeding, but I don’t think she’s getting very much,” I tell them. “I’m heading to Austin in November, though, and plan to wean her before that trip.”
I say it matter-of-factly, even though I practically choke on the word wean.
// October //
“Couldn’t you just bring your pump?” she asks.
Two friends and I are sitting at a picnic table under twinkle lights at a makeshift parking-lot-turned-patio. The weather has transitioned from summer to fall in the course of 24 hours, unbeknownst to me. My legs and arms are covered in goosebumps and I keep eyeing the nearby heaters wondering if the table of men sitting directly under them will mind if I ask the server to turn them on.
“I mean … I could … doesn’t that seem kind of pathetic, though? I don’t think I’d pump hardly anything,” I say, dipping another french fry into a ramekin of ketchup.
My trip to Austin is around the corner, and I’ve just confessed how sad I am at the thought of weaning my daughter before getting on the plane. I’ve never breastfed a child this long, and my own reluctance to stop has caught me by surprise. I tell my friends how much I’m still enjoying it, how much I’ve come to value the stillness and familiarity of our sweet, twice-a-day-routine.
“If you’re looking for someone to tell you it’s okay to bring your pump—it’s okay to bring your pump,” my friend says, scooping a heap of mac-n-cheese onto her spoon, “Do you even hear yourself right now?”
I laugh, my shoulders relaxing a bit back into my body.
“Yeah … okay … maybe I will bring the pump,” I say, considering the idea for the very first time, cautiously accepting a permission slip I didn’t know I needed.
// November //
“Momma, nurse?” my daughter asks, her lovey in one hand and paci in the other.
I am still getting used to the sound of her little raspy voice, and the fact that she can talk at all, let alone ask to nurse. I weaned the other two before they could say Momma.
I nod yes and she runs into her room with a smile stretched across her face, pausing at the rocking chair waiting for me to scoop her up. Once I do, we settle into position, like two puzzle pieces clicking into place. I can feel my heart rate calming as I move sweaty strands of hair off her forehead.
And then it begins: the stillness. I take a deep breath, inhale the familiar scent of her room. I study her body like an artifact—the freckle on her ankle, the way her honey-colored hair is lighter at the top, the tiny traces of eczema sprinkled across her feet.
I close my eyes just in time for her to pop off with a request, “Tinkle? Star?”
I sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and mid-how I wonder what you are, she is already making her second plea, “Elmo?”
I don’t know how these two songs became the only options in our nursing karaoke routine, but I go back and forth between singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and the theme song to Elmo’s World, again and again. She puts her dimpled hand on my heart, and I am reminded of how I used to put my hand on my belly when she was still inside it, thumping with hiccups.
We stay here like that—perfectly in sync—for two blissful minutes. The hum of the sound machine drowns out the noise of anything outside this room. For once, I think of nothing. I’ve left any and all agendas and concerns at the bedroom door. The election, the pandemic, the fires raging up and down my state. There is not a single worry taking up space in my heart, not a single to-do list forming in my head.
I am simply … here.
Eight months ago I had convinced myself our breastfeeding journey was coming to an end. I don’t know what changed, if all the pills and potions finally worked, or if all the time being stuck at home, forced to slow down, did something to us, but—somehow—we are still going.
It’s been a saving grace to still be nursing at 22 months, this year of all years. To still have this moment each day, to feel the rhythm of the rocking chair swaying back and forth, to feel her weight in my arms, grounding me. In this nightmare of a year that feels like it will never end, the irony is not lost on me: 2020 has dragged on and on, and with it, so has the stillness and intimacy of a season I will never have again.
Perhaps that is what I’ve been clinging to all along.
I doubt these few tablespoons of milk are making any difference in my daughter’s immune system, as the doctor said. But I do know this: nursing comforts her.
What I didn’t expect—amidst this uncertain, unpredictable, grief-filled year—is how much it would also comfort me.
Photo by Brett Gadd.