Nursing a Miracle
Ute B.
NC USA
From: NEW BEGINNINGS, Vol. 18 No. 3, May-June 2001, p. 91
For a thousand nights I
wished that one day I would wake up next to a baby - my baby. After
years of thinking about having a child, I decided to start donor inseminations
in the fall of 1997. I was 33 and single and did not want to wait any
longer to fulfill my dream of motherhood. I thought I would easily get
pregnant within a couple of months, and when that did not occur after
six cycles, I underwent exploratory surgery. It turned out to be the
first of six surgeries that it took to bring my child into this world.
My miracle baby, Daniel, was conceived in my third cycle of in-vitro
fertilization, after two years of non-stop fertility treatments, at
a time when I had almost given up. Daniel was delivered after 37 weeks
of a high-risk pregnancy via a scheduled cesarean birth.
Of course, I wanted to nurse
my baby as soon as possible, but he was very difficult to wake during
the first few days, had great difficulties latching on, and had low
blood sugar. I tried very hard to give him the colostrum I had, but
he kept pushing my nipple away with his tongue. I tried to nurse him
every two hours. It took 45 minutes just to wake him up, and another
45 minutes to attempt to feed him, which left me 15 minutes to sleep
before the start of the next feeding. This was our schedule around the
clock for the first few days. It was physically and emotionally very
exhausting. I would have given my life for my newborn son, and he did
not even seem to want my milk.
A lactation consultant found
me silently weeping and showed me the long list of people who needed
her help. I was not the only one; I just had to accept that this was
one other thing that was not coming to me easily. Fortunately, fertility
treatments had taught me to persist, and after five weeks of hurting
nipples, we learned to latch on correctly with the help of our La Leche
League Leader.
My son is now five months
old and the early struggles are but a faint memory. Breastfeeding is
so natural for us now that I could not imagine it any other way. I am
so glad I did not give up. After feeling that my body had failed during
the fertility struggles, breastfeeding has helped me heal from my sense
of and inferiority, physical dysfunction and from the artificiality
of the process of Daniel's conception. My body feels powerful now, the
source of nutrition and comfort for the most precious being in the world.
The fact that breastfeeding
was a struggle for us initially is an advantage now. For example, having
had to work so hard for a nursing relationship, I don't have qualms
about nursing in public. I have nursed during business dinners and in
the entrance of a big discount store. Why hide an accomplishment? And
why worry about anyone else when my baby is hungry?
When people see me with Daniel,
often the first thing they ask is if he is sleeping through the night.
I look at them with surprise. I love waking up next to Daniel, no matter
what time it is, for there were a thousand nights in my life when I
would have given anything to wake up to the sounds of a baby. And that
was when I didn't even know how beautiful it is to be able to turn toward
his searching little mouth, hold my nipple to it and say, "It's okay,
Mama is here."
Last updated November 13, 2006 by njb.
Page last edited Sun Oct 14 09:30:32 UTC 2007.
