It’s Okay to Cry Over Frozen Milk
Content Guidance: This story references an infant death.
Photo Courtesy | Christine Carpenter
BY CHRISTINE CARPENTER
I squeeze my engorged breast like a sandwich, twisting the swollen, tender flesh and shoving my massive nipple into the tiniest mouth I’ve ever seen in real life.
What am I doing? I am not prepared for this.
Before I became a mother, I never had a desire to breastfeed. I deemed it unnatural, awkward, and sexual; I had an actual physical aversion to the thought. I swore that I would never partake. At seven months pregnant, my feelings unchanged, I ordered a breast pump. My doctor’s office handed me the slip of paper to submit to our insurance, and it was covered at one hundred percent. I had no intention of using it, but I mechanically filled out the form. Pregnancy, for me, was all about going through the motions and attempting not to drown in a sea of depression. And so I scrawled my signature at the bottom of a slip of paper in exchange for a tool that I assumed would collect dust.
My son was born at 3:57 pm and the first photo of me holding him, both of us somewhat cleaned up, is timestamped at 5:04 pm. I know that this is not an incredibly long time in the grand scheme of life, and I realize how fortunate I was to have experienced a safe delivery and a healthy baby in my arms. A baby whom I could press to my chest sixty-seven minutes after his birth. But that hour seemed like twenty. It felt longer than my entire (albeit short) labor and delivery combined. While some describe seeing their baby for the first time as an unbelievable love-at-first-sight experience, I was instead flooded with insurmountable relief. I couldn’t wait to hold the baby I wasn’t even sure I wanted just a few hours prior.
“Do you want to try breastfeeding?” asked the sweet labor and delivery nurse, the one who had held me so tight, to keep me still, and with much compassion, when the epidural needle punctured my spine.
“Yes,” I responded breathlessly, hearing a level of confidence and conviction in my voice that surprised even me.
I heard my husband laugh softly, a sound that confirmed the irony of how much life and our opinions can change in mere moments, especially the seconds when our warm, swaddled baby is placed into our arms.
If only our lives could be lived backward.
For about six weeks, I attempted to nurse my son. A month and a half of reflux which we attempted to manage with craniosacral chiropractic therapy, a tongue-tie procedure that failed to improve his latch, and end tables littered with silicone nipple shields in multiple sizes, (I never did figure out exactly what size was correct) before it was over. I spent each of my twenty-four hours from the moment he was born until I stopped breastfeeding doing what I now know is called triple-feeding; breastfeeding for twenty minutes on each breast, proceeding to bottle feed to supplement, and finally, pumping at least fifteen minutes per side. Feedings that occurred every two hours bled into one another. One ended and there would be fifteen minutes or so to wash bottles, flanges, pump connectors, and tubing before the next began. By the advice of a friend, I would sometimes gather the pump parts into a Ziploc bag and stick them in the fridge, preventing germs (and avoiding time-consuming washing) in preparation for the next feeding.
After weeks of vomiting after nearly every feed, our little guy was diagnosed with a dairy protein allergy by a pediatric gastrointestinal specialist. When the GI doctor, pediatrician, lactation consultant, and my husband were all in agreement, I knew our time was up. All parties urged me that formula was a perfectly healthy way to feed our son and endlessly iterated the telltale; “fed is best.” l finally deemed this a failed breastfeeding relationship and cried over what I thought might be and eventually was in fact, my last nursing session.
I was crushed.
We just weren’t a match. I sobbed with the same intensity as when I found out that I was pregnant and wasn’t certain that I even wanted to be a mother. Me, the one who didn’t want to breastfeed long before children were a part of the equation, shed tears over the final moments of what would be a final session nurturing my little boy from the food my body generated for him. The food that I produced was silently made without my permission, without my agreeing to feed him in this way. This would be just one of the many instances where motherhood would teach me to practice less judgment. I was nervous that without breastfeeding, the bond I was establishing with my son would suffer, and that I was somehow doing a disservice to both him and myself. What I didn’t realize was that without the frustration or anticipatory anxiety before every feeding, I could breathe easier. Removing that stress would allow me to feel even closer to my baby.
Ironically, I did not have a problem with supply and gradually weaned off pumping to avoid mastitis. I didn’t have the heart to discard the milk that I was pumping, even though I knew that it would expire long before my son turned one, the point at which the pediatric gastrointestinal doctor suggested that we reintroduce dairy. A basement freezer packed with bags of frozen milk would become completely unusable, and yet I compulsively saved them. Countless hours spent gazing down at my oddly elongated nipples as the irritating flange extracted my milk, were all for naught. The rhythmic noise of the mechanical pump would echo in my ears long after I sealed, labeled, and froze each bag.
I added to my stash, counting the weaning ounces that would eventually go to waste, still unable to throw them away.
When a friend mentioned reaching out to find local mothers in need of breast milk, I initially couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the sustenance that my body had made for my baby. I felt selfish hanging on to something that would undoubtedly go to waste, and yet, I wasn’t ready. I closed the freezer for the time being.
As my son began to thrive, he soared from the zeroth percentile to the fourteenth. (Yes, zeroth was where he stood on the growth charts, according to our pediatrician. This information prompted my husband to inquire, “What is he, invisible?” Cue the crickets from our baby’s doctor at my husband's attempt to bring lightness to an unsettling situation.)
A few months would pass before I opened the basement freezer to dig out some frozen meat, and the copious bags of chalky-colored milk stared back at me. I decided it was time to let go of what I had been senselessly holding onto.
Within minutes of posting my available ounces on Facebook, several local moms pointed me in the same direction; a ten-month-old baby living just two towns away was suffering from a rare disease that only allowed her to eat via a feeding tube. Breast milk was easiest for her to digest, and there was an ongoing collection, organized for her daily requirements. The baby’s father had just lost a longtime battle with addiction and her mother, wracked with depression and grief, could not care for the baby, leaving her in the care of a good friend. This baby’s story seemed to have tragedy interwoven with tragedy. I arranged for the milk to be picked up by a friend of the baby’s family. When the doubled brown paper Trader Joe’s shopping bag filled with nearly seventy ounces of my milk was handed off at an acceptable social distance, I closed my front door behind me, clutching my son as tears slipped from my eyes. It felt so right to hand off this piece of me, of us, to help sustain another life. It was a moment akin to observing your child from afar at the beach; you know it’s a beautiful scene, and yet it’s bittersweet — you begin to see flashes of their life unfolding before your eyes, growing at a pace at which you can’t keep up.
Once the milk was out of my hands, I didn’t give it much thought. At the time when I saved it, it became physical evidence of a bittersweet ending to mine and my son’s initial physical bond. When the transaction of handing it over was complete, I found myself blanketed in the warmth of donating something that had been so precious to me. I gave away a tangible part of myself for the benefit and the thriving of someone else’s child. I thought about how grateful I would feel if the roles were reversed. While the milk was useless to me, the magnitude of that gift settled into my bones. In my mind, this milk might potentially be even just a small positive contribution for a child with an already difficult beginning.
Life moved forward, and this little girl consumed my thoughts. She was especially prevalent in my mind in the weeks leading up to Christmas. I also thought of her mother, knowing the heartache that the holidays can bring for so many. I decided to reach out to the friend who had accepted my milk donation, to inquire about how the baby was managing.
Two days before Christmas, my phone buzzed with a notification on Facebook messenger from the friend who had collected the milk. I swiped the message open as my son softly snored on my chest: “Hi Christine, thank you for reaching out. Unfortunately, such tragic news, [the baby] passed away about three weeks ago.”
My heart clenched, sinking to the hollow of my stomach, my womb aching for another mother’s child.
This little girl, whom I had never met, had been at the forefront of my mind, at the exact time that she had died. Were we inexplicably linked by the very milk that my son was intolerant to?
Now my baby is nearly two. It’s late morning and we awake together, in the cool quiet of April, where only the sound of birds chirping is the soundtrack of our morning. I carry him downstairs to our kitchen while I brew coffee and fill his Elmo cup with fresh water. Yanking his sleeper down with one hand, he reaches the other inside to rub his chest, giggling. I realize that he’s discovered his nipple. I name the body part aloud for him, slowly and phonetically. He repeats the word in garbled baby talk.
Oh my baby, if you only knew what mine, sagged and marred, tried to give to you.
Each day, I marvel at the growth and million little new discoveries we get to experience together; him for the first time, and me again, through his thick-lashed, curious eyes. I make room for all of life’s inevitable heartache and joy, savoring the bond we’ve secured in the simplest of moments.
Scooping him up, I press our chests together.
CHRISTINE CARPENTER is a mother and storyteller from New York. She is passionate about composing and sharing her journey through non-fiction stories, poetry, and an iPhone camera roll with over 70,000 images. She approaches her craft with a strong intent to make women feel less alone in motherhood, anxiety, and creative living. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys knitting, asking too many questions, reading, and most of all, quality time with her family.