unexpected

I have grown to really like breastfeeding. I didn’t think I would; you’re constantly damp, it can be very inconvenient, and you constantly have something sucking at your chest. But, it feels right. I can’t think of any other way of explaining it. With all that’s wrong in the world, putting a baby on your breast just feels somehow right, like this is what I was meant to do. It’s a very subtle feeling though, I just started noticing it. Before I was too busy, I’d sit down to feed the baby, but my mind was elsewhere, I wanted to get up, to go here, to go there, breastfeeding was more like a stone dragging me down. Now I just sit. I know she’s going to eat, and I know how long it takes, and there’s nothing else I can do, so I sit, and I realized how nice it is. I know its hormones. Breastfeeding releases tons of hormones into your body to make you want to do it, and to feel good doing it. I understand that, I welcome it. I love my baby more knowing it. I have to say I was very ambivalent about this whole baby business, and I think that breastfeeding her has really helped move me from, yeah this is my baby to I love my baby. How can you not love someone who, by the simple act of feeding, helps you to relax and feel like you are doing something amazing. It also helps that she is now able to express some of her appreciation of my boobs. In the morning when she sees them she starts kicking her legs and waving her arms with this huge grin on her face like they are the best things in the world. Not even the boyfriends that I had as a teenager loved my boobs like she does. When she’s hungry she also will try to curl around my boobs, or grab them with both her hands and her feet and then tuck her head in so that her whole body is wrapped around me and my milk giving nipples. Then, while she eats, she will caress the boob that she’s eating from with her free hand, and I can almost hear her thinking, “my precious.”
Breastfeeding also comes with a great sense of accomplishment. Since she was born, my baby has almost doubled in size, and the only thing she eats is what I make for her. I can look at my growing, thriving baby and say, I did that, she is living and growing because I am making enough for her to grow on. I never thought I would say it, but I think I will be sad when she gets close to six months and we start feeding her solids. And then, when I wean her, how will I get my relaxing hormones? They should bottle the hormones and sell them, they are great! I can be pissed off, super mad, want to yell and scream at the world, but then I breastfeed and all is well. Sometimes at night when I can’t sleep I want to wake up the baby so that she can eat and relax me (I don’t, of course, I’m not as crazy as I look).