Motherfest: Tales from the breast

A close friend recently mentioned she never knew I attended La Leche League meetings. Her saying this made me realize that, even though I breastfed for two years and attended numerous La Leche meetings, I wasn't much of an activist about it. Sure, I feel strongly about a mother's right to freely whip it out whenever needed, yet my breastfeeding experiences -- although unique  -- were private. Until now, that is.

Even the adoptive mother can say "moo."

It's true: you don't have to have been pregnant to nurse a baby. All it takes is stimulation of the milk ducts, which simply requires the adoptive mom to hook herself up to a breast pump twice a day, five or six weeks before the stork swoops in.

Ann Hintz breastfed her Korean-born son for a year, and was able to provide about 50 percent of his total nutrition. "It was an incredible experience," she says.

I planned to do this prior to adopting my son from Guatemala, but the surprise pregnancy in the middle of our adoption made the milk induction even easier. My son came home when he was nine months old -- I was six months pregnant at the time -- and although he refused to latch on after being bottle-fed for so long, I did "express" milk for him for the next year or so. My husband and I called the results "Kai's cocktails," which were a mixture of breast milk, cow's milk and rice milk in one bottle. Shaken, not stirred.

When my second son was born three months later, I stumbled into my own version of "tandem nursing," which meant feeding one baby at the breast, and in between, pumping enough milk for the other one. During this time I referred to my chest as "Mo's Diner," and it was open 24 hours a day for more than a year. I ate a lot of sub sandwiches during this time. And steaks. And bowls of Frosted Mini Wheats. And Little Debbie nutty bars (the star crunches were a fave, too.) Basically, if I wasn't feeding a boy, I was feeding my face.

And then there were three.

In the midst of my so-called tandem nursing, a close friend had a baby boy. Within a couple weeks of the delivery, she got mastitis -- a painful infection in the breasts -- and was unable to breastfeed her son. Breastfeeding was very important to my friend, so three of her nursing friends, including myself, offered to "wet nurse" the baby until she healed. More subs. More Little Debbies.

Wet nursing turned out to be an incredible experience. I never felt so giving in my life. I call this my "super earth mama" phase because coincidentally (or not) it was during my short-lived dreadlock 'do.

Later, I learned through Internet research that in some cultures, when women breastfeed their sons and the sons of others, the boys are called "milk brothers" and the relationship is regarded like biological brothers. Because there were two other women wet nursing with me, between us we had five little boys, plus the one we were breastfeeding, which makes a clan of six milk brothers. That's a whole lotta leche.

The notorious "pump and dump."

I nursed for a long time, and so that means I became very good at calculating exactly when it was safe to have an alcoholic beverage -- and how many. Once I put the babies to bed, I figured I could have a glass of wine -- or two -- as long as I had enough time to metabolize the alcohol before having to reopen the diner. And if they tried to foil my plan by waking up in the mean time, I had pre-pumped bottles ready to go.

On rare occasions, I slipped into pre-baby party mode and -- whoops -- drank a little more than Dr. Sears would have liked. In such cases, I found myself once again hooked up to the milker, only to empty out the ducts and dump the spiked breast milk.

"Most of us who breastfeed have done it, or should have done it," says Milwaukee mother of two, Sara Klein.

When this happened, I felt a healthy mother's dose of guilt and shame, but looking back, I know I needed to "cut loose" after months of selflessly giving every ounce of myself. Plus, the endless monotonous drone of the breast pump -- day in and day out -- would drive anyone to drink. Right?

These days, I'm free to imbibe, yet I'm less "woo hoo" than I thought I would be during my breastfeeding days. I do, however, enjoy wearing my "Mommy Needs A Drink" T-shirt to playgroups, just to see the assortment of reactions from the other moms. I usually get at least one high-five.

The cold-turkey wean.

I wanted my breastfeeding relationships to end naturally and gracefully, but after two years, my youngest son was still guzzling away. (To this day we're certain he's a future "boob man.") I had decided six months earlier that I was ready for things to change, and tried to cut out nursing except for at night, but it didn't work. Like his mom, my son is an all-or-nothing kind of person.

A friend whom I deeply respect as a parent told me that she weaned one of her kids cold turkey. I wouldn't have considered this, but when she said it, I felt like it was the "permission slip" I needed to try it. Suddenly, I really wanted my freedom and my body back, and it was another thing my biological son and I had in common that my adopted son and I did not.

So I went to visit my sister for the weekend in Atlanta. Alone.

I stocked up on liquid sage (sage helps women naturally "dry up") and had my sister pick up a head of cabbage. It might sound crazy, but cool cabbage leaves relieve engorgement. However, despite my attempt to remedy the situation, I still felt as if I had two flaming red fire hydrants on my chest, ready to erupt like it was summer in the city.

I still can't believe the timing of this, but my sister, who had a young baby at the time, had been struggling with a variety of breastfeeding issues, and upon the recommendation of lactation consultant, decided to wean the same weekend. We've shared a lot of things -- from bedrooms to sweaters -- but the tandem weaning was a squirt away from ridiculous.

And I don't know if this means anything, but ever since the weaning, I prefer my coffee black.