Milk Fever

by Lissa M. Cowan

  “Where is Rose-Marie? What happened to her?” I asked deliriously.

  “She is asleep in a basket by your bed. There, you see?”

  I raised my head and glimpsed her round face peeking out from the covers. She batted the air with her fists, emitting rapid cries. Margot sat on the bed and looked upon me as a mother does a daughter. “You were burning up.”

  “Yes. I have spent the night watching saints and others battle the fires of Hades.”

  “Take the child. She needs your milk.” Margot handed her to me and I brought her to the spot of all my woes.

  Amazed to find that feeding her soothed the pain in my bosom, I felt my fever much less than before. A sensation that I cannot put my finger on took hold of me when my milk fever subsided and I became bright-eyed and shiny as a new coin.

  I am no more able to understand my transformation than I am able to blame Rose-Marie for taking me from intellectual pursuits. My melancholia vanished with the morning mist.

  My baby’s little mouth curled and eyelids like pea pods opened and closed. When she looked up at me with knowing eyes, I couldn’t help but think it was my milk that produced such a state. My heart was suddenly joyful and I reasoned that there was no better place to be. Her gurgles and chirps told me she was happy in my arms and I now sensed the same emotion holding her. Ten little fingers and ten little toes, she was built of the stuff that made a body unstoppable. I held her always, all day, bestowing kisses upon her downy head. I couldn’t believe that this little nut, this sleeping angel, was mine. I cried and laughed as I rocked her. My words were caresses for her, flowing and erupting. She drank in my sweet hums and coos, her mouth lingering at my every syllable.

  After feeding, I wrapped Rose-Marie and myself in a blanket and madly raced down the stairs toward the door. As I combed the garden for a bit of wind to quell what was left of my fever, I sensed my present life slipping away. My head and heart informed me that mothering wasn’t contrary to learning, yet instead part of it. I can write and reflect and talk philosophy just as I can suckle a child. No one can tell me—not even my own father—that it is not a woman’s privilege to do both. October 7, 1784

  Last week my flow suddenly diminished. I wanted so desperately to nurse my baby that I hired a poor woman to let me give suck to her infant. Margot told me that Rose-Marie alone would help the milk flow resume, yet I wanted to do everything I could to keep nursing. When two neighbours heard of my motherly problems, they told me not to bother nursing as the government paid wet nurses and I need only sustain minimal costs. They are so very wrong to think I would hire a woman to nurse my own child. After nursing Rose-Marie and the other infant for a little over a week, I am overjoyed to write that my milk came back stronger and with greater consistency.

  This afternoon I cradled Rose-Marie in my arms, swishing her around the room in a dancing motion. She uttered gurgling sounds, and I found that her language was close to being decipherable although I admit that I was at a loss to repeat it. Every day there is some change in her body and mind. Where before, she had no hair, my little girl now has golden curls sprouting on top of her head. Her eyes chase me around the room and she listens intently to me. I feel that my mother’s milk makes her head quicker. It gives her the nutrients she requires to develop and grow, as she should.

  Yet many gentlewomen who become mothers prefer to send their babies off to the country to be cared for by a wet nurse rather than experience this miraculous stage of life. With Margot’s help and the latest edition of Avis aux Mères, I vow to do it all myself with no help from either wet nurse or physick. In Madame Le Rebours’ book she states that nursing mothers must get ample rest and eat soft foods such as lettuce, while eating squash and carrots is also good for them. This may turn the milk yellow in colour, yet not to worry says the midwife, as the milk is only taking the colour of the nourishing foods. To nurse an infant is a course in morals. Margot told me to stay away from sweets so as not to communicate my fancies to my daughter. She also said not to take my eyes off the child for they are such delicate creatures. I have moved everything into my one room so I can watch her day and night.

  Two days ago, I had a strange request from a young woman named Gabrielle. She cradled a baby in her arms while a little boy stood by her side lifting his legs one by one like a soldier in a marching band. It looked as though he hadn’t walked very long because he stumbled each time a leg came up. Gabrielle was short, wore a blue shawl and her hair was pulled on top of her head. Her fringe cascaded over her brow and eyes. The bottom of her skirt was thick with mud.

  “Can you nurse the baby?” She asked, her hazy green eyes imploring.

  “I am not a wet nurse,” I said in a way that I thought would end the discussion.

  She then went on to share a surprising bit of gossip about me.

  “I heard from villagers you have too much milk,” she said, and then added, “I will reward you for your efforts.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Gabrielle let go of her little boy’s hand and hugged the baby to her chest. Swaying back and forth, the dirty edge of her skirt made a swishing sound on the front doorstep. I soon learned, when I led her and her little boy into the drawing room, that the baby wasn’t hers.

  “I very much need the money that the baby’s mother, Madame Blausen, pays me to nurse her. Even if you give me half of what you earn it will be enough.”

  Her sullen face tugged at my heartstrings though her story confused me.

  “The milk has all but dried up and I have no way to feed my boy until my husband works again.” She explained to me that he went away to find work in the next town.

  Her son stood at my escritoire and hugged the seat cushion. Gabrielle then began crying uncontrollably. I reached for the baby who was clearly upset by the wet nurse’s state. I rocked the baby softly back and forth, which soon quieted her. Her little eyes shone in spite of the fact that she cried and was hungry.

  “This milk fever gave you more than one woman need have. Margot the midwife said so. Please, Madame.”

  While I was bedridden and feverish, the midwife said I had too much milk and that it needed to come out. She didn’t mean I had more milk than most women. Gabrielle clearly misunderstood.

  She proceeded to add layers to her story.

  “Villagers say your milk fever is as a result of a spell gone wrong.”

  For many weeks I was consumed by my melancholia and not visible to anybody. I had no knowledge of any rumours developing about me. As she sat in the drawing room, she on the sofa and me on the dormeuse with the infant, she told me a random tale of superstition that I supposed had stirred her imagination to believe the gossip she heard about me.

  “A housewife in another village used a spell to make her cow give milk. After her husband filled all the containers in the house, the milk kept coming. The husband and wife were forced to bring in a witch to stop the flow. The old woman burned a rope and told her and her husband that no cow in the neighbourhood would give milk that night.”

  Gabrielle folded her hands across her chest as though she just told me a great mystical secret of the ages. She pulled her mantelet that fell down her back, onto her shoulders and to her neck.

  “Many women can be ill with milk fever,” I said hoping to talk some sense into her.

  In spite of the woman being superstitious, I undid my bodice to nurse the baby, assuring myself that it was to placate the woman and sustain the child, thinly and pale from lack of nourishment. The downy head sunk into my nipple, and a flood of memories came pouring back to me about my dark reveries brought on by milk fever.

  After seeing the saints and those who were plucked early from life, I stumbled from my bed and opened the window. My house was a burning cinderblock teeming with bodies, mothers, daughters—all of them women. I reached down to take hold of a groping hand and flames as long and wide as a river t
hreatened me. Fire attacked my arms, licking away particles of skin. I bent my body inside and shut the window. Back in bed, I could hear the incessant struggles and moans. Dreadful noises were embedded in the floorboards. They were part of the house, a part of me.

  As the baby’s little bud of a mouth intently sucked, eyes fluttering beneath closed lids I began to sense my spirit lifting to yet another height. The joyous sensation that filled me was not unlike teaching someone to read. Young or old, their eyes showed a spark of life because of what they were taking in. “To nurse is like teaching, but in a subtler, fluid form,” I said laughing at this discovery of mine. Had my years of formal instruction led me to this? The wet nurse gazed on me as though I lost my senses.

  “I will try again Madame Vivant,” she said with a little cheer in her voice. “I’ll do as you advised and visit Margot for some elixir to make the milk come back.”

  She took the child and said, “There’s a bit of rose to her cheeks.” Then she smiled. “This is the first time I’ve seen any life in her for days.”

  I resigned myself to go with the motherly sensations moving through me, whatever form they took. To completely abandon myself to the wonder and to my fear of what would happen if I let go. The women in my fevered dream kept surfacing in my mind. Sad, hopeless faces, hands clawing towards me. How could I refuse to open the window to my bedchamber—to my heart?

  October 16, 1784

  My lover arrived yesterday. After being separated for many months his appearance stumped me at first. All decked out he was in Parisian dress, skin smelling of Indian cinnamon and hair tucked beneath an absurd powdered perruque. He wore a pair of black silk breeches, satin shirt and pointed shoes on his feet. When we saw each other, we both erupted with laughter.

  “I mistook you for one of the King’s courtiers,” I said to him.

  He bowed to me as though I was his queen. His attire was meant to delude me into thinking he was now a man with refined tastes and a bag of tricks with which to woo me. Then when I saw that he brought me no ladies’ gloves, no perfume, and no feather purse, I knew he was still the same country boy.

  He took one look at our precious Rose-Marie, gave me a wet, fiery kiss and then rhymed off a multitude of incoherent sounds just for the amusement of our little nut. The instant bond he clearly had with her, warmed my heart and gave me the impression that we would be a family at long last. He gently placed Rose-Marie on the sofa in the drawing room and surrounded her with cushions. She just fed and was soon sleeping soundly.

  “This is for you.” he handed me a Latin dictionary. “It is a new edition that I have been using to teach my students.”

  Although not the kind of gift gentlemen typically buy their ladies, he understands what attracts me. How wonderful of him to remember that mine is old and tattered and good only for the fire.

  “And here my love is something of a lighter, saucier variety.”

  It was Aretino’s little book on sexual positions, a book I had heard of, yet not read.

  “I vow to commit to memory this little book as I am certain that my body will rejoice in this newfound knowledge.” I leafed through the sonnets and erotic drawings before setting it down.

  We had not embraced since last winter. While he was away, I wondered whether our minds and bodies would be as they once were. I began to undress the man and his secret scent told me that, yes, it was still my Robert, the same young man who measured the river’s quickness, who counted stars at night next to the chapel. The very one who touched my heart in such a way the organ began to improvise its own melody. I tossed his girlish perruque in the air, nudging his precious shoes off his precious feet.

  When I got past his waistcoat, satin shirt and breeches, our smiles caressed and his hands washed over my face, neck and shoulders. His fingers were softer than before, cool and feathery as Chinese silk, perhaps from all those days and nights turning pages in the library. He swiftly moved around me on the small rug in the drawing room decorated with dancing peacocks and olive trees, gently stroking my skin with a silk handkerchief straight from a Paris boutique. With each touch, my body lit up.

  “What a heavenly body you are,” he said as he licked away a line of milk running down my ribs. His tongue danced around my nipple, until finally he was in the throes of sucking. This act of whimsy aroused within me an intensity of feeling that took me back to our first love encounter beside the river. Yet then he abruptly pulled away from me and sat up.

  “What is this I hear about you nursing our baby? Is that not the work of peasant women? You must rest more. You are looking pale and fatigued. Hiring a wet nurse will help restore your health.”

  “Margot is a godsend,” I replied defensively. How dare he call me pale? My cheeks are rosy as any twenty-year-old’s are. “I consult l’Encyclopédie and Madame Le Rebours’ Avis aux Mères qui veulent nourir leurs enfants when a problem arises that I cannot solve myself. So you see my dearest, I am not entirely alone in my mothering.”

  My husband has no idea that I not only nursed Rose-Marie with no assistance from a wet nurse, but that I also agreed to nurse another baby for a short while. The decision came when Gabrielle, the wet nurse, who visited me more than one week ago, returned to see me a couple days later after Margot gave her herbs to bring on her milk. I told her there was nothing I could do and that she would have no choice but to let Madame Blausen feed her own child. She then explained to me that Madame Blausen does not care to nurse her own as she’s afraid of becoming predisposed to diseases of the nipple, and prefers to feed her baby cow’s milk or worse, sugar water. I admired the young woman’s conviction to do what she thought was right for the child, and so I agreed to help her until she and the baby regained their strength, and her milk began to flow as before.

  I did not wish to explain this to Robert just then. He was already annoyed with me for nursing Rose-Marie. I was angry with him for interrupting our lovemaking.

  “Now my dearest, if you were to offer your milk to the likes of me, Petrarch’s verses would surely flow from my lips as honey from an upset hive.”

  He took one of my breasts in his hand as if measuring the weight to judge how much milk was there.

  “What a true scientist you are.”

  “It is not the quantity of milk that counts,” he said, further lowering my bodice, “but the quality.”

  He crept under my skirts, his breath ignited my lower quarters, biting and licking the soft skin of my thigh and scratching and kneading my buttocks. His hands worked my flesh and heart into a whirl and his tongue found the spot where, over a year prior, its Master toyed for hours. When he came up for air, he nudged my neck with his wet mouth and nose and I applied love bites to his shoulders, back and the skin of his loins. To measure these nibbles was a lesson in control for my impulse was to devour the man whole and have him for my secret supper. There would be many courses to this ritual. Oh, yes, and the dessert would be one that no pastry chef in France could dream up.

  His member was persistent; I thought it would slice through me! Who was the Master of whom? For the hard, blushing flower of strangeness before me was clearly in charge of the scientist at that moment. I rode the Master, turning my back to the man who was at this point of no interest to me, except for his hands, which pinched and prodded my buttocks. A tidal wave of delight shot through me, filling my head with colours and shapes. The alignment of his Master with my Mistress gave me such bliss. These two led us to a heavenly fountain where Robert and I were mere spectators.

  October 20, 1784

  Robert found out that I was helping the wet nurse with the infant in her care. How could he not, as the young woman was over every day seeking my guidance. In only two weeks of me nursing the little nut, her cheeks reddened, her eyes, fingers, and legs were livelier, and she spoke using her own secret language of goos and gaws. As I gave suck to the infant, I went over with Gabrielle the importance of ea
ting nourishing foods, managing a good rest, and nursing continuously until her milk grew stronger. I told Robert that I would only help her a short while. He insisted I forget her altogether, take to my bed when I felt myself fatigued, and tend to my own daughter the rest of the time, as he reminded me, had been my wish to do all along.

  Can I help it that I have a heart to see the suffering around me: the pauper who scrounges in the ditch for a bit of food or the poor woman who has no inkling how to nurse her infant, and who has already lost two children in one year? Since I was ill with milk fever, the desire to reach out to others grows deeper. While a tyrannical empire ruins France and peasants grow poorer with fewer means to help themselves, let people say that Armande Vivant did what she could. I mean to continue recording my thoughts on mothering in this diary and to submit some essays to the Encyclopédie to be published. The essays are for gentlewomen like myself who see only the good in nursing one’s own children no matter what others may say against it.

  Today, Robert scolded me for writing in this diary and not rushing to calm my child who, only a few moments before, began to cry.

  “You told me you wished to care for Rose-Marie and not hire a wet nurse, yet your mind is elsewhere and doesn’t heed her incessant cries.” He stood there, a crooked frown on his face, pointing a finger at me as though I was his misbehaving student.

  “I will be along in an instant,” I replied. “Rose-Marie knows that I am never far away.”

  Robert said nothing in response and went back to the library to continue his study of plant anatomy.

  It is strange that women must be one thing or the other. Perhaps it is because we are both sharp and givers of life that men and unthinking women debase us. Bloated by science, men of the enlightenment talk of equal rights yet oppress the very sex that gave them life. My husband means well, has a gentle disposition most of the time and is honest and considerate. He is tasty between the sheets, and adores our little nut, yet sometimes I think he fears things he cannot measure or count. His greatest joy, like many reasoners before him, is taking a thing and plucking the life from it in order to see it clearly and classify it. I do not wish for an instant to take this away from him. Only, there is a rawness to the experience of being alive when you take what good comes your way with your hands open. My father always told me to follow my head, not my heart, yet I have learned that some possibilities may be gleaned over entirely if your mind is the only one mixed up in the decision.