Not Much Time for Basking

Our guest blogger today is April from Plainfield. She is a mom of two, Doula, and green-smoothie queen!

Recently I got one of those emails updating me on my 2 month’s old development. I gave it the cursory glance, not reading it too much, after all he is my second child. I’m a pro at this, right? There was however one section at the bottom that caught my eye. It was a part of the newsletter where a question is asked and 3 different experts weigh in. The question was: “Is it okay to watch TV while I’m breastfeeding.” I almost chuckled reading the question, thinking to myself, “Of course it’s okay; how could there be any other answer?” I was almost shocked off my seat when all three experts gave a resounding “NO”! What? How is it not okay to watch TV while breastfeeding? All three experts went on to say that breastfeeding is a time to bond with your baby and all your energies should be focused on that during the feeding session.

This answer almost rivals a comment a doctor made to me when my first child, my daughter, was born. He told me, completely straight faced, that I should spend the next 6 weeks in bed with her, nursing her on demand, bonding with her and not getting out of bed except to go to the bathroom. No housework, no cooking, just laying around and bonding. I don’t know about you, but I don’t live in Biblical days where I have servants fanning me with branches and hand feeding me peeled grapes.

Just this week here are a few things I’ve had to do while nursing my baby because life dictated it be so: wipe my daughter after she’s done going potty, check on dinner so half an hour of work doesn’t burn, hold my daughter in my lap while she bawls after falling down on her bottom while going down the stairs, play Candyland with her, put together puzzles with her, clean up spilled water the dog left so no one (read my 3 year old daughter) falls down, and many more things than I can remember. Just because I have a 2 month old, dear baby boy doesn’t mean life is giving me the luxury of sitting and staring at his precious face while feeding him.

But this morning, I had a rare moment. My daughter was downstairs playing contentedly after breakfast and I went up to feed the baby and put him down. I was able to stare at his sweet little face, watch his eyes start to roll back in his head, wonder what those eyes would see during the course of his life. I held his little sweat soaked and milk sticky hand, counted and recounted each finger, wondering one day who his wife would be, whose hand he would hold. I stroked his chubby thighs, counting the chub rolls, down to his little toes, touching each one, wondering what they would look like in sandals when he went to high school. Then I looked back at his face, basking in its beautiful babyness, knowing all too soon that it would be gone and I would have trouble remembering what it used to look like.

And then just as suddenly the tree branches stopped their cool breeze and the peeled grapes disappeared and reality came back to me in the form of my daughter yelling to be wiped, the dog barking up a storm at someone walking by outside and…wait a minute…is that the smell of burning eggs…?

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