A Surprisingly Sane Blog

Well, weird for our society, anyway. We’ll call it “off the beaten path“, since that just about sums up my whole being in a nutshell.

I breastfed my friend’s 2-week-old foster son yesterday. (This is before the day got crappy… the good part that I didn’t blog during because I was so busy taking care of three munchkins.  As in, before nap time.)

So my friend dropped her little guy off with me for a couple hours, and I jokingly asked her if I should just pop him on the boob when he got hungry.  She was like, “Sure!  I wouldn’t mind at all, go for it.  It’d be good for him.”

Well, so I did just that.

Little J woke up and screamed a teeny-tiny cry.  I cuddled him for a minute, and I could tell he smelled milk on me with the way he was rooting against my shirt.  So I had a seat on the couch next to Julie, whipped out my boob, and stuck him on there.  Julie was very excited to see a different baby sucking milk out of me.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to breastfeed a 2-week-old baby who has been bottle fed from the instant they’ve emerged from the womb, but it can be difficult.  I’ve helped friends do it and held their hand while they cried in frustration.

Not this little guy.  Man, he latched on like a pro and started gulping milk like he’d been starving to death for two weeks.

And I had this incredible, indescribable feeling wash over me as I did this for him.

Little J is not your average newborn.  He’s had a much tougher time in his short lifespan than most of us have ever experienced.  He was born addicted to meth and cocaine and nearly died from the trauma of being weaned from those drugs a few days after his birth.  While he is no longer addicted and has been given a clean bill of health, he has been slightly more subdued and mellow than most new babies.

But he loved being on the breast.  He was making all kinds of happy little gurgling baby noises, and he opened his eyes to stare at me and the girls, who were climbing on me while he nursed.  It dawned on me that this was probably the most comforting moment he had ever experienced.  He drank in the experience, cuddled against me, like he was my own little boy who loved me.

My friend was so excited when she came to pick him up.  For the first time, he was completely alert, content, and as interactive as a newborn can be.  She couldn’t believe the immediate and extremely noticeable change in him.

And I realized that for once in the strange life that I lead, I actually enjoyed breastfeeding.

I’ve never taken the fact that I have been able to nurse both my girls for granted, but I never until that very moment realized what a gift I have given them.  While it’s been frustrating and annoying both times through, it gave me a bit of a different perspective when April jumped on for her routine booby gymnastics.

Somehow, even with all of my own irritation with a natural process that is the most unnatural thing I’ve ever done, I was just so glad I stuck with it.

And for a blissful short time, I could share it with a baby who needed it the most.

Current Mood: Happy

Tags: breastfeeding

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 11:15 am and is filed under Make Me Smile, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.