Still Milking
I weaned my son when he was thirteen months old. I would have kept nursing him beyond that, but he had the pesky habit of biting me while nursing, and since I couldn’t break him of the habit no matter what method I tried (and believe me when I say I tried everything) I went ahead and called it quits.
To tell you the truth, I was pretty excited to get my breasts back. I nursed my daughter until she was fifteen months old (and I was five months pregnant) and then nursed my son exclusively until his eventual weaning. According to my calculations, I haven’t nursed a baby in a year and a half. My breasts have shrunk back down to nearly the size they were before I started up with the whole pregnancy thing, but they’re still a little bigger…I don’t mind that.
So here is the funny thing: I still lactate. It’s not gushing out as it once was, but sometimes if I think about nursing or look at a picture of one of my kids when they were newborn, suddenly I’m leaking through my bra. I can still squeeze out milk from my breasts just like I could back when I was nourishing a baby. Isn’t that a little weird? I thought I would be all dried up by now, and I don’t mean that metaphorically.
It almost seems a waste to still have this ability, but with no baby to feed. I checked to see if one of the local hospitals accepts milk donations because I read about a program where women can donate breastmilk for preemies, but the nearest hospital to me with this sort of program is in another state. Every so often I’ll check to see if I’m still lactating and sure enough, I am. I just wonder when the time will come when my breasts decide to hang up their milk production hats.
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