by Faith Salie
I can take breastfeeding when it sucks, but I can’t take it when it bites.
Minerva went through two spells of biting me. Each lasted over a week. She thought it was really funny. I thought it was really obnoxious. I also started to live in fear. She and I were alone on her first Valentine’s Day, and my little lover spent the day biting the crap out of me. I’ve had to fill a box with objects to distract her so she doesn’t chomp. These objects, which I call Weapons of Mass Distraction, include but are not limited to: an iPhone charger, a Lord of the Teething Ring necklace, an expired Amex card, and a hippo keychain.
While she’s on me, I hand them to her, one by one, for her to scrutinize, rotate, and then listlessly fling over her shoulder as if she’s Cleopatra.
It’s Soothing
There was a night, around when Minerva turned a year old, when she was sick. She kept uncharacteristically waking up—first mewing, then crying, clearly in discomfort. All I knew to do, after dosing her with Motrin and trying to cradle her, was to put her on my breast. She didn’t want her father. But I was so, so exhausted. I was frustrated that I was the only thing that could soothe her—and not even entirely, at that. I was giving her my body. I couldn’t give her more. It was like I was Jesus or something. But Jesus never had to worry about having his nipple severed while he sacrificed himself. I sat there in the dark, in what should have been this beautiful moment of motherhood, resenting the whole setup, asking God why She ever even bothered to give men nipples.
It’s Bonding
Breastfeeding Minerva has made me belong to her in a way I’ve never belonged to anyone before.
Sometimes I want to consume her as much as she consumes me, which is to say I can’t get enough of kissing her, smelling her, smushing her cheeks in my lips. Our three to sixteen daily feeding sessions have separated me from my husband and from my son. She and I disappear into the breastfeeding corner, and I close the door behind us. When Augustus asks to sit on my lap or for me to read him a book or pick him up, I have to say, “I will, honey, as soon as I’m done with your sister.” I register the flash of pain on his face as he’s reminded, yet again, he’s been knocked down in the pecking order. I feel awful that I have to triage one baby before another.
What this has also meant is that my day—“my” day, the moments that I spent either happily or guiltily away from my child, especially during her first six months—was constantly interrupted. Breastfeeding forced me to quit whatever else I was doing all day long and sit quietly with my newborn, who has become almost a little girl, literally under my eyes. For all the times it felt like a chore and for all the times I missed wearing turtlenecks, I was also depleting my potential future regret account. When I think back on this time, I won’t remember whatever it was I was doing that got interrupted, but I will remember that I stopped, held my daughter in the purple glider, and looked down on her fuzzy head and perfect eyelashes.*
I never had to make a decision about weaning Augustus, because my fertility doctor told me to stop pumping once I started IVF drugs. It wasn’t a tough choice between giving my son more milk or a sibling. I was relieved to stop because I “had” to. I remember sitting in a hot bath about a week after my last pumping session and barely touching my nipple, just to see what would happen. Milk immediately emerged. I was overwhelmed with melancholy that I hadn’t known was still there—like the breast milk, sadness had been suppressed but not evaporated. Those drops were a manifestation of the life force that had improbably made my son, and I was shutting it down (prematurely?) in a gamble to make another baby.
Now I’m a little embarrassed that I’m breastfeeding Minerva well into her second year. I never thought I’d be one of those women who made it past six months. I didn’t give birth to her at home in a pool. I didn’t make a smoothie out of my placenta. I don’t sleep with her. But here I am, still breastfeeding her three times a day. Here she is, at an age when she actually says to me, “All done.” I think I speak for many of us when I say that’s creepy. I’m still doing it not because I love it or because of how much I love her; I’m doing it because I’m not sure how to be her mother without it. I guess that means I’m afraid to lose that connection even though I want to be liberated from it.
I need to shut it down before the orthodontist pries my teenaged daughter and her pitiful overbite off me. I want my body back. I don’t have anything interesting to do with it once I get it back, but I’d like it back. It will be nice to start drinking again during the day.
When I first wrote this chapter, it ended rather poetically. Minerva was six months old at the time, and I could only conclude elliptically.
This is what I wrote:
So I do not want to stop. Or, more truly, I do not want her to stop. She is my last. I do not want my baby to stop being a baby yet. I do not want her to stop needing me and only me so fundamentally. I do not want her to stop opening her mouth eagerly as soon as I pull out my breast or making satisfied, quiet swallowing sounds while her hands try to yank my hair out of my scalp. I do not want to stop looking down at her delighted smile when she pops off and remembers Mommy’s the vending machine. I do not want to cease being her source of energy. I do not want to get old. I do not want to dry up. I do not want things to end. We are a dyad I don’t want to die.
That was true then, if mawkish. But now she’s not a baby. She’s a toddler, and she’s walking away from me, just as she’s supposed to.
So the real news, the thing that no one ever tells you about breastfeeding is this: it’s both miraculous and brutal. It’s both at the same time, and that’s why it sucks so damn hard. Breastfeeding is exactly like motherhood—relentless and rewarding, depleting and renewing, universal and intimate, isolating and bonding, merciless and sweet, seemingly ceaseless but painfully fleeting.
For all these reasons breastfeeding sucks. And, for now, for just a little bit longer, will keep on sucking.
“All done.”
* * *
* Sometimes I would look at my iPhone and google How much kate middleton gain pregnant
Dear Minerva,
You already have my approval.
I hope I’ll have yours.
I’m dedicating this chapter to you and not your brother, because, by the time you read this, I’m pretty sure the world won’t have changed much. I’m pretty sure there will still be a million more ways for a woman to gain or lose approval than a man. If your brother identifies as a girl, then we’ll all have lots to talk about and some clothes to share, but for now I think I have more to offer you by way of advice.
An improv expert once told me there are two different kinds of improvisers: floaters and scrappers. People always seem to envy the floaters, their unsavory name notwithstanding. Floaters don’t worry about whether they’ll be funny; they don’t plan how a scene is going to go. They completely trust themselves, or maybe they’re a little lazy. Floaters float. I don’t love floating, because I can’t see what’s under me. I’ve always been a scrapper. Planning (albeit futile in improv), practicing, trying, and trying again. In improv and in life, though, it’s served me well. Still, I’m starting to float more, resting on the tide of my experience. I hope you will be both a scrapper and a floater. Maybe a scroater. No, that sounds gross. Be a flapper.
Seeking approval has not undone me. It’s done me; it’s dinged me; it’s built me. I want the same for you. At this point in your life, I clap for you when you do something like eat corn. I anticipate the days when I applaud you for things like devouring books or gobbling up attention for—I don’t know; you choose—poetry slamming or parkour or chocolate robotics competitions. (As of this writing, “chocolate robotics competitions” are something I just made up, but I hope they will exist by the time you’re in high school, and you’ll be the national champ and allow me to eat your failed inventions.)
So. A shortlist from your mother who doesn’t always know best but has learned a lot…
• Coco Chanel: “Before you leave the house, look
in the mirror and remove one accessory.” Your mother: “Before you leave the apartment, look in the mirror and remove your Breathe Right Nasal Strip.”
• There are many second chances to make a first impression, because people forget. They forget you! This is good news! Or they just don’t remember how bad you might have bit it!
• Dry shampoo makes life 33 percent easier.
• Don’t sleep with people just to prove you can. That’s not exactly sticking it to the Man.
• Focus on being beautiful if you want to get something from people. Focus on being smart and/or funny if you want to give something to people.
• It’s okay to get angry at people who deserve it.
• Don’t hold on to the treadmill. This is both an earnest workout tip and a life lesson. Who are these people who get on the treadmill and then clutch it while they walk uphill, half-assed? Let go and trust yourself that you can go harder. If the incline feels too steep, then slow yourself down, even as you march uphill. You can’t speed past the arduous slogs in life. You need to summon all your energy if you want results. (The other thing about hanging on to the treadmill is that it’s very germy.)
• Don’t change yourself for someone else. Change yourself for you, as often as needed…it’s how you discover who you are.
• Ignore people who talk about “safety schools” and “back-up plans.” Be safe in traffic and sex but not in life goals.
• There is no downside to:
• Making good grades
• Doing the extra credit
• Not doing drugs
• Praying
• Asking questions, except “Does this make me look fat?” and “Do you love me?”
• Taking the stairs
• Learning people’s names
• Writing thank-you notes
• There’s probably a downside to consuming artificial sweetener, but this is a do as I say and not as I do bullet point
• Marry a mensch who’s generous enough to think he’s lucky.
• Don’t miss out on the kind of heartbreaks and disappointments that propel you. (I know I’m supposed to want you to have a better life than I have, even though I pretty much love my life, despite the fact that you may have noticed we don’t have a washer/dryer in our home. I pray you have your own washer/dryer as you approach middle age.) Anyway, my point is, the things you think you’ve lost, like jobs and loves and babies, either come back around or leave a fertile wake.
I hope that you’ll care just enough about the approval of others that you will always try your hardest, even if it’s to flout or flummox your detractors. Or, better yet, to win laughter from your supporters.
I hope you’ll care a lot about winning your own approval—enough to stretch, appreciate, and occasionally embarrass yourself.
And this may be my most impossible wish: I hope you’ll love yourself as much as I love you.
My friend Don says that if you get to the end of your story, and you’re the hero, you told it wrong. We’ve come to the end. These are my heroes.
To my editor, Suzanne O’Neill, I hope you permanently fall into the arms of someone who often tells you what I’m about to: You’re always right. You made me dig so deep that I wrote most of this book in China. Thank you for having all that—there’s no other way to say it—faith in me.
Fairy godmothers exist. Mine was Rachel Klayman, who generously read my idea for a book, met me for lunch on a rainy day, and offered to send my “stuff” to Suzanne O’Neill and Daniel Greenberg. Rachel, thank you is not enough for being my Patient Zero, responsible for spreading my words. (And thank you, David Edelstein, for your good taste in women.)
Daniel Greenberg, besides my husband, you are the best set-up of my life. A massive grazie for the patience and therapy and for saving me from some of my own jokes. I have no idea if other agents are as dedicated, smart, and caring as you, and I intend never to find out.
Thanks to the beautifully supportive team at Crown—Molly Stern, Tammy Blake, Julie Cepler, Matt Inman, Trish Boczkowski, Courtney Snyder, Annsley Rosner, Gianna Antolos, Jenni Zellner, Julia Elliott, Matthew Martin, Kelsey Lawrence, and Tina “Blue Light” Constable. Also to Tim Wojcik at LGR and Mauro DiPreta.
Joanne Napolitano will tell me to shut up while I thank her, but I won’t. Thank you for being my platonic wife, my tireless reader, my Creamsicle Chew dealer, and for reminding me of MWS10. Let’s not fight about who loves whom more.
Seth Godin, I know you don’t need public gratitude, but you just have to sit there and accept it. You’ve taken so much of my chit. Every syllable of wisdom you shared with me has been true and invaluable. The problem with you, Seth, is I can never repay you, because you don’t want me to. I can tell you had a great mom.
Jancee Dunn, thank you to infinity, for being there always, a text or e-mail or lunch away. Thank you for being the most charitable writer and friend. Thank you for making me snort with laughter when I needed it and for getting empathetically stressed for me and stuffing Pirate’s Booty in your mouth.
Henriette Lazaridis, from Dunster House to Old John’s, thank you for being first a tutor, then a mentor, now a dear friend. Please close read me forever.
I’m grateful to friends who read versions of this along the way and kept me (arguably) from totally embarrassing myself: Lindsay Sturman, Mario Correa, J. J. Miller.
Thank you to my friends who witnessed the rock bottom of my junkiness and never looked away—April Audia, Julie Ann Lowery, Kathleen McMartin. You Three Graces offered me hands to get up. Nell Benjamin and Vonnie Murad, you kept checking in on me. Amy James and Rachel Spears, you’ve always approved, for some crazy reason, and I love you for it.
Dr. Maureen Moomjy, you’ve given me so much to write about and some of the most insightful notes ever, especially for someone who also has to focus on creating humans. Elanna Posner and Doctors Gabrielle Francis and Ilana Brownstein helped deliver these stories.
Sharon Schuster, for that prayer and all the images that remind me what’s important.
Mamie Healey, I feel like a macher that I get to thank you for your early-and-always support.
Manfred Kuhnert, without you there is no book. Thank you for encouraging me to be “Nakedly Human Publicly.”
Thank you to Adam Nettler at CAA for telling me I had to write a book and to Cait Hoyt for suggesting I write this book. Thank you to Michelle Howry for being the first person to suggest I could write a book (except for that psychic named Theo, pronounced “TAY-oh,” back in 1998).
Brian Fenwick and Jo Honig made sure I had a room of one’s own. Brad Mislow and Julie Abes were Spartan fact-checkers.
Thank you, Rand Morrison, for your support and patience.
Peter Sagal, kudos for your great idea.
Heartfelt gratitude to the people who helped love and care for my kids while I was writing: Gabrielle Salie, Lorei Salie, Isabelle Salie, Robert Lee, Angela South, Natalie Nevares, Suzy Giordano, Melody Swaby, Marci Guarriello, Deb Malkoff, Abby Gail Boyd, Victoria Oliver, Joelle Ganzoni. It takes a village to raise a book.
Sincere thanks to everyone who appears in this book, even if I changed your name, even if you’ll never read this, or will greatly disapprove of it. You were all part of this story. As Rascal Flatts sings, “Others who broke my heart, they were like Northern stars / Pointing me on my way….” Thank you, Faith Salie, for quoting Rascal Flatts. You’re welcome.
To my family—Dad, Doug, David, Mark, Lorei, Rita—thank you for letting me write about you, no questions asked. And especially to my father, whom I can never thank enough for gifting me a life worth writing about.
Thank you to my children, Augustus Cosimo and Minerva Gail Salie-Semel, who were tiny babies when I started this book, and who bloomed into sweet, happy people as I wrote it. You gave me the motivation to power through it, so I could finish and go play with you.
To my husband, John Semel, beside whom I’m literally sitting in the Roman Forum, writing the
se words on my laptop while you take a conference call, my deepest thanks for this journey. It started somewhat late, but we’ve made up for lost time. Now may we amble, hand in hand, through the rest of our lives.
And last but not least, to the one who approved of me first and always, thank you, Mom.
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