NMA: Newsletter 5 Article 10

During this past year, our church has begun a weekly group for mom and preschoolers and I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to be around toddlers and babies again. My own children are now 27, 21 & 16 and I’m in the stage of parenting where my children are young adults. Over the years, I’ve had to evolve into a different ‘mom’ to be present to their changing parenting needs. It’s been a wonderful journey and I couldn’t be more proud of them.

I nursed all of my children for their first year and somewhat beyond. Each of them weaned themselves before I was ready. The nursing relationship was one of the most fulfilling of my entire life. As a twenty-one year old first time mother, I remember looking in wonder at my breasts and having all my adolescent self-image angst wash away as I realized “So THAT’s what breasts are REALLY for!”

My first experience was nursing my daughter during the late 70’s when my husband and I were blessed to live with another nursing mom and her baby along with several other supportive friends. It was a help to know that I was always welcomed to nurse without anxiety about people’s sensibilities. With my second child, born in the early 80’s, the general climate towards nursing seemed more repressed. I tended to nurse in more secluded corners and never assumed people would be ok with it. But it was important to me and my daughter, so we had a morning and night nursing schedule for another year after I went back to work when she was three months old. Like many working mothers, I was stuck with pumping in the only place available to me- the bathroom. That was my hardest nursing challenge, to keep going with morning and night nursing for a year while away from 8:30-4:30 daily. My third child, my son, was born in the late 80’s and he also nursed only morning and night after the first six months. But this time it was so his father, who became primary daytime caregiver, could form that feeding bond with him.

Each time I gave birth, the nursing experience was the anchor during that period of adjustment to having a new baby in the family. I’ve said often, it’s not an arithmetic addition it’s an exponential one! Therefore, if you have two children you’re a Mom ‘to the second power’ and if you have three you’re a Mom ‘cubed’!

Nursing was a time of rest and nourishment for both me and my babies physically, emotionally and spiritually. I can’t say I can claim a direct link, but my sense of being ‘present’ for them while nursing has evolved into being emotionally ‘present’ for them throughout their lives. I have felt a renewal of the closeness of the nursing relationship when I hear them tell the stories of their lives and we together ‘soak up’ the nourishment of listening, laughing, crying and sharing, always knowing the depth of our love for each other.